A Larger Hope 2

by Robin A Parry

  25. “Victory that is gotten by the Sword, is a Victory that slaves get one over another; . . . but Victory obtained by Love, is a Victory for a King” (quoted in Boulton, Gerrard Winstanley, 62).

  26. He had expected that, within ten days, four or five thousand people would come. The actual numbers were a tiny fraction of that.

  27. For an excellent discussion of Winstanley’s perplexing final years see Boulton, Gerrard Winstanley, ch. 13.

  28. See the appendix for a critique of McClymond’s suggestion that Jakob Böhme was an influence.

  29. The following in-text citations in this section on Winstanley are from The Mysterie of God, unless otherwise stated.

  30. So the Serpent was indirectly created by God. But it is not a creature in the sense of being a distinct substance, like humans are.

  31. Unless otherwise specified, all italics in quotations are from the original sources.

  32. For Winstanley, even if God were to make sinful creatures pure again, if they were left to live according to God’s holy law in their own created strength they would only fall into sin again. Deification is thus necessary to perfect creation.

  33. Winstanley sees the first death as the bondage to the Serpent brought about in Adam and the second death as the Serpent’s death in the lake of fire. Those delivered from bondage to the Serpent in this life (the elect) take part in the first resurrection and the second death has no power over them. However, those still under the Serpent’s power will enter the lake of fire with him until God finally casts the Serpent out of them too and they exit the fire, leaving the Serpent to his fate alone.

  34. For Winstanley, the biblical language of “eternal” fire and “eternal” punishment referred to punishment that endures for a dispensation, in this case that of the “day” of judgment.

  35. Winstanley, Law of Freedom, ch. 4.

  36. Contra David Boulton in Gerrard Winstanley and the Republic of Heaven.

  37. That said, his later radical apophatic agnosticism about the transcendental referent of language about God, heaven, and hell is in real danger of losing his earlier balance of transcendence and immanence, a balance without which both transcendence and immanence lose their power. While he does not deny transcendence, he loses interest in it, which is a big step toward losing it altogether. Then all we are left with is evocative language. He did not get to that point, yet arguably the fine-tuning of his earlier thought is both more profound, theologically and philosophically, and more helpful to his cause.

  3

  Platonists and Puritans

  The sixteenth-century Protestant universalists were, for the most part, not drawn from among the educated classes. However, that was to change in the seventeenth century. That century, in the period from 1658–62, witnessed a revival of interest in the works of Origen among certain scholars linked with Cambridge University, a small number of whom flirted with the theology of apokatastasis in one form or another. This was “an Origenist moment in English theology.”38 We also find some scholarly Puritans, with links to this same Cambridge movement, with distinctly Calvinist forms of universalism that are worthy of serious attention, not least because of the serious focus they place on the Bible. It is to the work of these Platonists and Puritans that we turn in this chapter.

  Origenian Universalism and the Cambridge Platonists

  During the Renaissance, Origen was read and defended by humanists of the caliber of Pico della Mirandola and Erasmus.39 In 1486, in the twenty-ninth theological conclusion of his 900 Conclusions, the former declared, “it is more reasonable to believe that Origen is saved rather than to believe that he is damned.” From the second half of the seventeenth century, Origen’s works began to enjoy a wider diffusion. His universalistic theories were sympathetically received by some thinkers such as the Cambridge Platonists40—a group of philosophical theologians working in Cambridge University.41 They were based in Puritan colleges, but drew on both Puritan and Laudian42 traditions, while subjecting both to critique and correction in the light of reason, understood as a gift from God.

  The Cambridge Platonists were much interested in Origen, a Christian Platonist, and in the Platonic tradition, which they tended to see as a perennial philosophy (philosophia perennis), the idea of the continuity of Platonism through all the ages as the true philosophy (an idea typical of Italian humanism, for instance Marsilio Ficino, and of philosophers like Leibniz).

  Like Origen, the Cambridge Platonists had both a theological and a philosophical formation; they did not deem philosophy and theology to conflict with one another, for they were convinced of the compatibility between biblically informed faith and reason.

  Henry More, George Rust, and Ann Conway

  Henry More (1614–87)

  Henry More, a fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he taught for many years, was raised as a Calvinist, though he could never come to terms with such theology. More wrote An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness: or a True and Faithful Representation of the Everlasting Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1660). Here he rejected Calvinistic predestination, just as Origen had rejected “gnostic” predestination, and insisted on the harmonization of justice and goodness in God, as Origen had done.

  Among More’s many literary works, there is one on the immortality of the soul dedicated to Lord Conway, his one-time student, and another dedicated to his wife, Lady Anne Conway.43 Ann Conway was both an informal student and friend of More and, as we shall see, a convinced supporter of the doctrine of universal salvation.44

  Belief in the preexistence of souls experienced a small revival in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and More, along with some of the other Cambridge Platonists, accepted the Platonic and Plotinian doctrine of the preexistence of souls. For More, this doctrine played a helpful role in theodicy, explaining how God is not unjust in allowing people to begin and live life on earth in such difficult circumstances. (However, while this belief was considered at the time to be Origen’s, it is not exactly in line with Origen’s own thought, but rather with that of later Origenism.)45 Furthermore, Henry More thought that the first human being was created as a pure spirit, and only because of the fall was it endowed with a body. (This too was considered at the time to be Origen’s teaching, whereas in fact Origen actually thought that all rational beings had a “subtle body” from the beginning.)46

  More also insists on the importance of human free will and auto-determination (“autoexousy,” a term also used by Ralph Cudworth). Here we see his Laudianism and his rejection of predestination at work, but these tendencies were reinforced by his Christian Platonism and easily grounded in the work of Origen. This affirmation of human freedom is, of course, not in contrast with universal salvation, as Origen’s own work testifies.

  Was More a universalist? Not as far as we can tell. His writings leave no direct testimony to that effect, though some have felt that his theology, especially in his Divine Dialogues (1668), which argue that God’s wisdom and power cannot be separated from his goodness, pointed in that direction. Additionally, he did consider that spiritual progress after death was a reality. It is not accidental that Henry More, who betrays a strong Origenian influence, was close with some who very explicitly flirted with universal salvation—Bishop George Rust and Lady Ann Conway, both of whom were followers of More.

  Bishop George Rust (d. 1670)

  One endorsement of the Origenian doctrine of universal salvation is found in the anonymous Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of His Opinions (1661). This work is usually attributed to George Rust, a disciple of the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, and a fellow of Christ’s College in Cambridge (1649–59). In 1660, Rust relocated to Ireland, where he was ordained a priest in 1661 (the year this work was published), later serving as Bishop of Dromore in Ireland, from 1667 un
til his death of a fever in 1670.

  The letter explores Rust’s understanding of Origen’s ideas under six headings:47 1. the Trinity (14–21); 2. the preexistence of souls (embodied in heavenly bodies) (21–46); 3. that earthly, material bodies were given to humans as punishment for sins committed in the “preexistent” state (46–55); 4. that in the resurrection we shall have heavenly bodies (a restoration of the kind of bodies we had before the fall) (55–71); 5. that after long periods of corrective punishment for the damned, they will be delivered to try their fortunes in regions of the world for which their present nature is fitted (71–81); 6. that the earth will become habitable again after being “destroyed” by fire (81–94). It will then be our eternal home. He then considers the objections to Origen from his opponents and offers what he sees as an Origenian response to each (95–135).48

  While presented descriptively, presumably because of the incendiary nature of its content, there is no doubt that the author supports the doctrines being set forth. He certainly goes out of his way to offer a positive case for the truth of what he takes to be Origen’s opinions (from reason and Scripture) and the problems with alternatives.

  The argument put forward in this letter is that God created all beings out of love and for the sake of the happiness of these creatures. What are the implications for eternal torment in hell? Rust, with a touch of humor, attacks those who uphold the eternity of hell for “having easie wayes of assuring themselves that it shall not be their portion.” In his view, punishments, both on earth and in the other world, are exclusively educative and purifying, inflicted out of love for creatures, with the end of perfecting them. According to the author, this makes it impossible to think that God created people who will eternally suffer merely retributive punishments, for such punishment would “have nothing in it of that end for which it was inflicted” (i.e., their perfection). The punishments of hell “are curative for the emendation of the party suffering; but this, if it be eternal in the scholastic sense of the word, leaves no place for the betterment of the sufferers, who are never to get out of this inexplicable labyrinth of woe and misery” (75).49 If God created creatures that could fall into a state beyond all hope of recovery, it reflects rather badly on his sovereign oversight of his creation. God would know whether certain creatures were beyond redemption and he would never have made them in the first place:

  That eternal minde therefore making all things out of a Principle of infinite love, and for the good and happiness of the things themselves, and seeing what he had made and how he had made them, and what was likely to be the lot of some of them from the necessary unperfectness of their Natures, if their future ill hap was likely to be more sharp and dolorous than all the good they should enjoy from him till that calamity befell them grateful and pleasant, his great compassion certainly would have persuaded him quickly to annihilate them; or rather his Wisdom would have judg’d it more decorous never to have made them. (72–73)

  To those who object to the possibility of the salvation of fallen angels, he asks:

  what difference is there in the distance betwixt a devil made an angel, and an angel made a devil? I am sure the advantage is on the ascending part rather than on the descending; for the mercy and compassion of God to all the works of his hands may reasonably be supposed to help them up though undeserving, but there is nothing in his most righteous nature which would cast them down without their high demerit. (131)

  Universal salvation, according to the author of the Letter, is not at odds with God’s justice, which perfectly harmonizes with mercy. Like Origen, Macrina, and Gregory of Nyssa, Rust warns that purifying suffering will be long and harsh. Only in this way will even the worst sinners return to God. Those who do not respond to “the gentler smart” of divine correction in this age will experience “that day of vengeance” when the whole cosmos will be consumed with fire. This is the “Lake of slow-consuming fire and sulphureous stench that unreclamable Devils and obstinately-wicked men shall by the righteous hand of God participate. A sad pitiable Fate and torture unsufferable! but no doubt as just as great” (74). Yet this conflagration is the very same fire that consumes the earth prior to its rebirth in new creation. And this fire plays a role in the restoration of sinners to fit them for participation in new creation. This notion of the length and harshness of otherworldly cathartic suffering was shared by other thinkers related to the Cambridge Platonists and by Jane Lead, to whom we shall return.

  Lady Ann Conway (1631–79) and Francis Mercurius van Helmont (1614–98)

  Lady Anne Finch, viscountess of Conway (1630/31–79),50 was a learned woman, well steeped in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. She had read many theological, philosophical, and mystical/esoteric works and engaged them in critical and creative ways. Among the influences that shaped her thought was Origen, probably through the influence of Henry More, her unofficial mentor.51 So perhaps her subsequent sympathy with universal salvation is unsurprising.

  A severe headache afflicted Ann all her life from the age of twelve. From 1670, her physician, the Belgian Francis Mercurius van Helmont, moved in to Ragley Hall in Warwickshire, the Conway home, where he remained for nine years until her death in 1679.52 His own intellectual development was interwoven with Ann’s, and both became increasingly influenced by esoteric texts, such as the works of the mystic Jakob Böhme,53 and especially the Jewish Kabbalism of Isaac Luria (1534–72). Luria’s system saw the transmigration of souls as essential to a theodicy aimed at explaining the suffering of the Jewish people—the Jews must be suffering for sins committed in previous lives. However, Luria also looked forward to a coming age in which all would be delivered from suffering. This intellectual system inspired both van Helmont and, through him, Ann Conway. Ann could not conceive of a good and loving God who should persecute her with constant headaches; the only explanation she found is that she must have sinned very gravely in a preceding life, and so needed a life of suffering as a purification.54 She thus shared with the Kabbalist Luria and the Platonists More and Rust a belief in the preexistence of souls. Indeed, she not only believed in preexistence, but also the reincarnation of souls in numerous human lives, and indeed even in non-human lives: those who have lived brutish lives will be reborn as animals.55 (In this conviction of hers, Lady Conway differed from Origen, who condemned the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.)56

  Ann also shared with Rust—and Plato and Origen—the conviction that suffering is necessary for purification and salvation.57 “All degrees and kinds of sin have their appropriate punishments, and all these punishments tend toward the good of creatures: under the influence of mercy and favour, judgment becomes a judgment in favour of the salvation and restoration of creatures.”58 That punishment aims at curing rather than crushing “is true even of the worst sinners.”59

  Ann Finch (Conway) supported the doctrine of universal salvation on the basis of two main principles, which were well delineated already in Gregory of Nyssa:60 the infinity of the Good, who is God, and the finitude of evil, which is nonbeing and will eventually cease, so that every soul will return to adhering to the Good. Suffering is part and parcel of this process of spiritual restoration and indeed contributes to the fact that in the end restored creatures will never choose to sin again. The patristic influences are clear:

  But because there is no being, which is every way contrary to God, (viz. there is no being, which is infinitely and unchangeably evil, as God is infinitely and unchangeably Good; nothing infinitely dark, as God is infinitely Light . . .) hence it is manifest that . . . nothing can become infinitely more dark, though it may become infinitely more light: By the same reason nothing can be evil ad infinitum, although it may become more and more good ad infinitum: And so indeed, in the very nature of things, there are limits or bounds to evil; but none unto good. And after the same manner, every degree of sin or evil hath its punishment, grief, and chastisement annexed to it, in the very nature of the thing, by which the evil is again chan
ged into good; which punishment or correction, though it be not presently perceived of the creature, when it sins, yet is reserved in those very sins which the same committeth, and in its due time will appear; . . . by that the creature will be again restored unto its former state of goodness, in which it was created, and from which it cannot fall or slide any more; because by its great chastisement it hath acquired a greater strength and perfection; and so is ascended so far above that indifferency of will, which before it had to good or evil, that it wills only that which is good, neither is any more capable to will any evil. See Kabbal. denud. Tom. 2. Tract. ult. p. 61, §. 9. p. 69., §. 21. and 70., §. 5. & ibid. Tract. 2. p. 157.

  And hence may be inferred, that all the creatures of God, which heretofore degenerated and fell from their primitive Goodness, must after certain periods be converted and restored, not only to as good, but unto a better state than that was in which they were created. . . . Now seeing a creature cannot proceed infinitely to evil, nor slide down into inactivity or silence, nor yet also into eternal passion, it uncontestably follows, that it must at length return unto Good; and by how much greater its sufferings are, so much the sooner shall it return and be restored.61