Chapter 4

The “Gnostic Origins” Claim

If you want to discredit an idea, one of the oldest tricks in the book is to attack its family tree. Don’t engage the idea on its merits. Don’t wrestle with the evidence. Just find an embarrassing ancestor and hold it up for everyone to see. “Look where this came from!” you say. And you hope that will be enough.

This is the heart of Michael McClymond’s strategy in The Devil’s Redemption. His central historical thesis—the one that runs through both volumes like a spine—is that Christian universalism has its roots not in the Bible, not in careful theological reflection, and not in the witness of the earliest church fathers. No. According to McClymond, universalism first emerged among second-century gnostic teachers in Alexandria, Egypt, and Origen of Alexandria simply took that gnostic cosmology and gave it a “sanitized and more biblicized form.”¹ In other words, the whole universalist tradition is, at bottom, a dressed-up version of gnostic heresy.

This is a serious charge. If it were true, it would strike at the very foundation of the case for universal restoration. If the hope that God will ultimately save every person He has made is really just warmed-over gnosticism, then every Christian who holds that hope should be deeply troubled. McClymond knows this, and it is why the gnostic origins thesis occupies such a central place in his two-volume work.

But the charge is not true. It is, in fact, one of the weakest arguments in McClymond’s entire book. And in this chapter, I want to show you why—clearly, carefully, and with the evidence laid out on the table for you to examine yourself.

We will start by letting McClymond make his case in his own words. Then we will look at the specific problems with his argument. After that, we will build the positive case for where patristic universalism actually came from. And finally, we will deal with the strongest objections someone might raise against our response.

A. McClymond’s Argument

McClymond lays the groundwork for his gnostic origins thesis right from the opening pages of The Devil’s Redemption. In the prologue, he tells the story of how he came to this conclusion. He describes years of research, following the trail of universalist ideas through the centuries, and finding—to his surprise, he says—that the trail kept leading back to second-century Alexandria and to the gnostic teachers who operated there.²

Here is the core of his claim: universalist teaching, McClymond argues, is “rooted in an ongoing gnostic-kabbalistic-esoteric tradition that stretches from the early second century to the Middle Ages, into the early modern period, and up to the present time.”³ That is a sweeping statement. It links the entire universalist tradition—from its earliest expressions to its most sophisticated modern defenders—to a continuous stream of gnostic and esoteric thought.

McClymond focuses especially on two claims. First, he argues that there were “purported Christian universalists prior to the time of Origen, including some of the gnostics of the second century.”⁴ He acknowledges that much of the scholarly literature has portrayed gnostics as elitists who taught salvation only for the few, not for all. But he argues that this picture is changing. He cites scholars like Pheme Perkins, Michael Williams, and Elaine Pagels, who have suggested that some gnostics were “either universalists or near universalists.”⁵ He also points to evidence from Irenaeus’s Against Heresies and possibly the Nag Hammadi library as showing that universalist ideas existed before Origen.

Second—and this is the bigger claim—McClymond argues that Origen’s great theological system, laid out in On First Principles (Peri archōn), was essentially an adaptation of gnostic cosmology. He writes that Origen’s “cosmology of the premundane fall of souls, their embodiment, and their final return to God replicated a common pattern in gnostic and especially Valentinian cosmologies.”⁶ In other words, Origen took the gnostic story—souls falling from a divine unity, entering physical bodies, and eventually returning to their origin—and dressed it up in biblical clothing.

To support this claim, McClymond draws on the work of Einar Thomassen and especially Holger Strutwolf, whose book Gnosis als System (1993) argues for continuities between Origen and second-century Valentinian gnosticism.⁷ He points to a passage from Thomassen that summarizes the Valentinian narrative: a single first principle generates a plurality of beings, a crisis leads to a fall into materiality, and a redemptive process eventually restores everything to harmony. The technical term for this final restoration in the Valentinian system is apokatastasis—the same word Origen uses.⁸ McClymond argues that “with the exception of the technical use of the term plērōma, every element in this Valentinian narrative is paralleled in Origen’s Peri archōn.”⁹

McClymond also invokes Hans Jonas, who drew connections between Origen’s worldview and ancient gnostic thought more broadly.¹⁰ And he appeals to M. A. Williams’s Rethinking “Gnosticism” (1996), which challenges the traditional view that all gnostics were strict determinists and elitists. Williams showed that some gnostic texts, like the Apocryphon of John, gave individuals multiple opportunities for salvation—coming “right up to the verge of teaching universalism.”¹¹

The upshot of all this, for McClymond, is that Origen’s universalism was not a fresh insight drawn from Scripture. It was, rather, a theological project of “biblicizing a gnostic theory.”¹² McClymond acknowledges that Origen opposed certain gnostic teachings, like determinism. But he argues that on the big-picture narrative level—the story of souls falling from divine unity and eventually being restored—Origen was walking in gnostic footsteps.

Let me pause here to say something important. McClymond is not making this argument carelessly. He has read widely. He cites real scholars. And the parallels he identifies between Valentinian cosmology and Origen’s system are, at a surface level, real. The problem is not that he is making things up. The problem is that his argument does not actually prove what he thinks it proves. And it gets several crucial facts badly wrong.

B. Identifying Weaknesses

McClymond’s gnostic origins thesis has been responded to in devastating detail by Ilaria Ramelli, one of the world’s leading scholars of patristic theology and the foremost expert on the history of apokatastasis in early Christianity. Her review of The Devil’s Redemption, published in A Larger Hope, vol. 1, Appendix III, is a masterclass in careful historical scholarship. I will draw on her work extensively in what follows, alongside McClymond’s own sources.

Problem #1: The Gnostics Were Not Universalists

This is the most fundamental problem with McClymond’s thesis, and it is remarkable that it does not stop his argument in its tracks. He claims that universalism originated with the gnostics. But the gnostics, by and large, were not universalists. They were, in fact, the opposite. The gnostic systems divided humanity into rigid classes. The pneumatikoi (the “spiritual ones”) were destined for salvation. The psychikoi (the “soul-ish ones”) might or might not be saved, depending on the system. And the sarkikoi (the “fleshly ones”) were excluded from salvation entirely.¹³

This is not a minor detail. It is the very essence of what made gnosticism gnostic. The entire system was built on the idea that different kinds of people have different natures—and that these natures determine their destiny. Salvation was for the spiritual elite, not for everyone. As Ramelli demonstrates, the gnostic texts McClymond himself cites confirm this pattern. The Tripartite Tractate, for instance, does speak of an apokatastasis for the body of the church, but it explicitly excludes a whole class of humans—the “carnal”—from restoration. They will “perish.” Part of the psychikoi are also excluded.¹⁴ That is not universalism by any definition. That is selective salvation based on predetermined nature—which is the exact thing Origen spent his entire career opposing.

Ramelli goes further. She examines the specific gnostic texts McClymond points to and shows that they do not support his thesis. On the Origin of the World 126–27, which McClymond describes as “very optimistic,” actually teaches that the imperfect “will never enter the kingless realm” and that people with different natures will have different destinies.¹⁵ The Wisdom of Jesus Christ teaches that different groups will experience different levels of rest depending on how fully they know the Father. The Apocryphon of John actually teaches both metensomatosis (the transmigration of souls) and eternal punishment for apostates and blasphemers—two doctrines that Origen explicitly rejected.¹⁶

McClymond does acknowledge that the traditional picture of gnostics as strict elitists is being challenged. And yes, Williams has shown that some gnostic texts gave individuals multiple chances at salvation. But coming “right up to the verge” of teaching universalism is not the same as actually teaching it. And even if we grant that one or two gnostic groups (like the Carpocratians) may have taught something close to universal salvation, this is a far cry from proving that universalism as a whole was a gnostic idea that Origen merely borrowed.

Problem #2: Gnostic “Restoration” Excluded the Body

Here is another crucial difference that McClymond glosses over. Gnostic systems that spoke of a return to divine unity generally did not include the restoration of the body. Matter, in the gnostic worldview, was the problem. The physical body was a prison, a cage for the divine spark trapped within. Salvation meant escape from the body, not the renewal of it.¹⁷

Patristic universalism was the exact opposite. Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and the other church fathers who taught apokatastasis emphatically included the resurrection of the body in their vision of final restoration. This was not an incidental feature of their theology. It was central to it. The whole point of restoration, for these fathers, was that God would redeem the whole person—body and soul together. The Carpocratians, by contrast, maintained that only souls would be saved, and they supported metensomatosis—the transmigration of souls into different bodies—which both Origen and Gregory rejected.¹⁸

Think about what this means. McClymond is arguing that Origen borrowed his universalism from gnostic sources. But the gnostic version excluded the body, and Origen’s version included it. The gnostic version saw matter as evil, and Origen saw matter as created good by a good God. These are not minor differences in emphasis. They represent fundamentally opposed understandings of what salvation means, what creation is, and what God is like. If Origen was borrowing from the gnostics, he was borrowing in a way that reversed the most distinctive features of the gnostic system.

Problem #3: Origen Was an Anti-Gnostic Theologian

This is perhaps the most devastating response to McClymond’s thesis, and Ramelli drives the point home relentlessly. Origen did not adopt gnostic theology. He spent his entire career fighting it.

Origen devoted major works to refuting what he identified as gnostic errors. The list of gnostic tenets he opposed is long and specific: predestinationism (the idea that people are saved or lost based on their predetermined nature), the division of humanity into different classes with different spiritual capacities, the separation between a good supreme God and an evil or inferior creator-god (the demiurge), the severing of divine justice from divine goodness, Docetism (the denial that Christ had a real physical body), the mythological system of divine aeons, and the refusal to read the Old Testament spiritually and the New Testament historically.¹⁹

This opposition was not a side project for Origen. It was central to his whole theological program. As Ramelli explains, Origen regarded what we might call “gnostic Platonism” as a bad Platonism. He set out to construct an orthodox Christian Platonism that was built explicitly against the gnostic version—not only against pagan Platonism and against non-Platonic philosophical schools, but specifically against what he saw as the unorthodox Christian Platonism of the gnostics.²⁰

This anti-gnostic orientation is visible across Origen’s entire body of work, from his early writings all the way to his final productions. Even in the recently discovered Munich homilies on the Psalms—among the last things Origen wrote—the anti-gnostic polemic remains front and center.²¹ If Origen was a secret gnostic, he was the most determined and consistent anti-gnostic in the history of the early church while being one. That is not credible.

McClymond is aware that Origen opposed gnostic determinism. He acknowledges this in his discussion. But he argues that if you look at the “narrative arc” of On First Principles—the big story of souls falling from unity and eventually being restored—the parallels with gnostic cosmology become apparent.²² This is where McClymond leans heavily on Strutwolf and Jonas.

But here is the problem: Ramelli points out that she was well aware of Strutwolf’s book and had referenced it in a separate essay more than a decade before McClymond accused her of ignoring it.²³ The fact that Origen and some gnostics shared broadly Platonic ideas applied to Christianity does not prove dependence. It proves that they were all operating in the same intellectual environment of the ancient Mediterranean world. Sharing a philosophical framework is not the same thing as borrowing a theology. We will return to this point below.

Problem #4: Christian Apokatastasis Was an Anti-Gnostic Move

This is the twist that McClymond misses completely, and it is the most important insight in Ramelli’s entire critique. Origen’s doctrine of universal restoration did not come from gnosticism. It came, in large part, from his refutation of gnosticism.

Think about it this way. The gnostics divided humanity into fixed classes with fixed destinies. Origen rejected this determinism root and branch. He insisted that all rational creatures have genuine free will and that no one is locked into a spiritual category by nature. He argued that God created all rational beings equal and that their current differences result from their own choices, not from some predetermined cosmic sorting. And he argued that God’s love, justice, and pedagogical purpose are such that He will ultimately bring all free creatures back to Himself—not by overriding their freedom, but by patiently and persistently working to illuminate and heal them until they freely choose the good.²⁴

In other words, Origen’s universalism was built on the very foundations that made his theology anti-gnostic. The gnostics said: “Some people are spiritual by nature, and only they will be saved.” Origen said: “All people are created by the same good God, all have the same capacity for good, and God will save them all.” His universalism was the logical conclusion of his rejection of gnostic elitism. As Ramelli puts it, “Christian apokatastasis was, in part, an anti-gnostic move.”²⁵

Problem #5: McClymond Misreads Origen on Preexistent Souls

A crucial piece of McClymond’s argument is that Origen taught the preexistence of disembodied souls that fell into bodies—a teaching that mirrors the gnostic myth. But this reading of Origen is itself contested, and Ramelli has argued extensively that it misrepresents Origen’s actual position.

McClymond mentions metensomatosis—the transmigration of souls into bodies—as an “alleged core doctrine of patristic universalism, deriving from Gnosticism.”²⁶ But as Ramelli demonstrates, the preexistence of bodiless souls was a notion that both Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, the two strongest patristic supporters of apokatastasis, actually rejected.²⁷ Origen explicitly called the doctrine of transmigration a “false doctrine” (pseudodoxia).²⁸ McClymond is connecting Origen to a teaching that Origen himself condemned.

This is not a small mistake. The supposed parallel between Origen and the gnostics depends heavily on the claim that they shared a common narrative: preexistent souls fall from divine unity into bodies and must eventually return. If Origen did not actually teach what McClymond says he taught about disembodied preexistence and transmigration, then the parallel is far less compelling than McClymond makes it seem.

It is true that Origen’s thought about the origin of rational creatures is complex, and scholars have debated exactly what he meant. But the simplistic version that McClymond uses—Origen taught gnostic-style disembodied soul preexistence—is the reading of Origen’s later critics (especially Jerome), not the reading that best fits Origen’s own texts as understood by modern Origen scholarship.²⁹

Problem #6: The Direction of Influence May Be Reversed

There is one more problem with McClymond’s argument that deserves mention, and it is almost ironic. Some scholars have argued that where parallels exist between Origen and gnostic texts like those in the Nag Hammadi library, the direction of influence may actually run from Origen to the gnostics, not the other way around. Hugo Lundhaug, for instance, has suggested that Origen’s ideas may have contributed to the development of gnostic thought in third-, fourth-, and fifth-century Egypt, rather than the reverse.³⁰ Even Thomassen’s dating of the Tripartite Tractate to the late third century supports this possibility—which would place it after Origen’s On First Principles, not before it.³¹

I am not claiming this is certainly the case. The question of influence between Origen and various gnostic texts is genuinely complex. But the very possibility that the influence ran in the other direction shows how shaky McClymond’s confident claim of gnostic-to-Origen dependence really is.

To sum up this section: McClymond’s gnostic origins thesis fails at virtually every point. The gnostics were not universalists. Their notion of restoration excluded the body. Origen spent his career fighting gnostic theology. His universalism arose from his anti-gnostic commitments, not from gnostic borrowing. He rejected the specific doctrines (disembodied preexistence, metensomatosis) that McClymond says connect him to gnosticism. And the direction of influence may even be the reverse of what McClymond claims. This is not a strong foundation for a thesis that occupies such a central place in McClymond’s entire project.

C. The Universalist Response: Where Apokatastasis Actually Came From

If patristic universalism did not come from gnosticism, where did it come from? This is the positive case we need to build, and it is a strong one. The origins of the early Christian hope for universal restoration are not mysterious or hidden. They are found in the Bible, in Jewish and Christian theological traditions, in the Petrine tradition of the earliest church, and in a careful philosophical framework that Origen and others developed explicitly against gnostic distortions of Christianity.

The Biblical Roots of Apokatastasis

The word apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις) simply means “restoration” or “reconstitution.” It indicates a return to an original condition. The word itself appears in the New Testament, in Acts 3:21, where Peter speaks of the coming “restoration of all things” (apokatastaseōs pantōn) that God has promised through His holy prophets.³² This is not a gnostic text. It is a sermon preached by the apostle Peter in Jerusalem, recorded by Luke, and found in the canonical Scriptures that every orthodox Christian affirms.

Origen himself knew he was drawing on an existing tradition when he spoke of apokatastasis. He refers to “the so-called apokatastasis”—a phrase that signals he is pointing to a tradition already known to his audience, not inventing something new.³³ And the tradition he pointed to was rooted in Scripture. Ramelli has demonstrated in detail that Origen grounded his doctrine of universal restoration in specific biblical texts, including 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 (“God will be all in all”), 1 Timothy 2:4 (“God wants all human beings to be saved”), and Philippians 2:10–11 (“every knee shall bow”), among many others.³⁴

This is a crucial point. Origen did not read gnostic texts and then go looking for biblical proof texts to dress up a gnostic idea. He was, first and foremost, a biblical exegete—arguably the greatest the church has ever produced. He read the Bible in its original languages with extraordinary care and depth. And when he found text after text in which Paul proclaimed that God’s purpose was the reconciliation and restoration of all things, he took those texts seriously. His universalism was the product of his exegesis, not of gnostic borrowing.

Consider 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 in particular. Paul writes that Christ must reign “until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” And the final state is that “God may be all in all.” Origen interpreted the subjection of all enemies and the destruction of death as pointing toward a universal restoration in which every rational creature would be brought back to God. He reasoned that if death—the last enemy—is truly destroyed, then the reign of death is not eternal. As Origen wrote in his Commentary on Romans: “I do not think that the reign of death is eternal as that of Life and Justice is, especially as I hear from the Apostle that the last enemy, death, must be destroyed.”³⁵

That reasoning is not gnostic. It is Pauline. It is a straightforward engagement with Paul’s own eschatological logic.

The Petrine Tradition

Beyond Paul, Origen also drew on what Ramelli calls the “Petrine tradition.” The Acts 3:21 reference to the “restoration of all things” is one part of this. But there is also the tradition reflected in 1 Peter 3:18–20 and 4:6, where Christ is said to have preached to the “spirits in prison” and the gospel is said to have been “preached even to the dead.” These texts point to a postmortem proclamation of the gospel—a theme that became central to the early Christian hope that God’s saving work extends beyond the boundary of physical death.³⁶

We should pause here to notice something important about these Petrine texts. They are not obscure passages tucked away in forgotten corners of the Bible. They are part of the canonical New Testament. They were read in churches across the Roman world. They shaped the faith of ordinary Christians long before anyone worried about whether universalism was “gnostic.” And they teach, in straightforward language, that Christ’s saving work reaches people who have already died. You do not need gnostic secret knowledge to see what these texts are saying. You just need to read them.

The Petrine tradition also connects to the Descensus clause in the Apostles’ Creed: “He descended to the dead.” The early church took seriously the idea that Christ’s victory extended to all realms—including the realm of the dead. This is not esoteric speculation. It is creedal Christianity. Every time a congregation recites the Apostles’ Creed, they confess that Christ went to the dead. The universalist simply takes this confession seriously and asks: if Christ descended to the dead, was that descent a failure or a success? Did He go to proclaim defeat or victory? Did He go to seal the fate of the lost, or to open a door for them? The early church, by and large, believed He went to save. And that belief provided a natural theological foundation for the hope that God’s saving purpose would eventually reach every person, even those who had died without hearing the gospel.

Bardaisan and Clement: Pre-Origen Christian Witnesses

McClymond claims that the first universalists were gnostics. But the historical evidence shows that there were Christian universalists before Origen who were emphatically not gnostic.

Bardaisan of Edessa (154–222) was a Syriac Christian philosopher who was himself inaccurately labeled as a “gnostic” by some ancient heresiologists, a label that modern scholarship has largely corrected.³⁷ At his school in Edessa, Greek philosophy was studied alongside Christian theology. And in the final section of the Book of the Laws of Countries—his defense of human free will against determinism—Bardaisan proclaimed the eventual universal restoration of all creation. He wrote that God allows all natures to govern themselves by their own will, but that “there will come a time when even this capacity for harm that remains in them will be brought to an end by the instruction that will obtain in a different arrangement of things.”³⁸

Notice what is happening here. Bardaisan’s universalism is grounded in his defense of free will against determinism—exactly the same theological move that Origen would later make. And it is grounded in his trust that God’s goodness and pedagogical purpose will ultimately overcome all evil. This is not gnostic. It is the opposite of gnostic. The gnostics taught that people have fixed natures that determine their destiny. Bardaisan taught that people have free will, and that God’s patient instruction will eventually bring all to the good.

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215), Origen’s older contemporary and predecessor at the famous catechetical school in Alexandria, also entertained a notion of apokatastasis that was open to universal salvation.³⁹ Like Bardaisan and later Origen, Clement was a strong defender of human free will against determinism. He emphasized God’s mercy, which forgives even voluntary sins, and he used therapeutic metaphors: God’s aim is to heal the sinner.⁴⁰

Clement also made a crucial distinction that Origen would develop further: the distinction between timōria (retributive punishment) and kolasis (therapeutic or corrective punishment). Clement explicitly stated that God kolazei (corrects therapeutically) but never timōreitai (punishes retributively).⁴¹ God’s punishments are always aimed at healing, never at mere revenge. This distinction is foundational to the entire patristic universalist tradition, and it has nothing to do with gnosticism. It has everything to do with how these early Christian thinkers understood the character of God as revealed in Scripture.

Eusebius of Caesarea, the great early church historian, noticed the connection between Bardaisan and Origen. In his Preparation for the Gospel, he cites both Bardaisan’s arguments against determinism and Origen’s similar arguments side by side, clearly recognizing that they were making the same case.⁴² This is significant because it shows that the early church itself understood these thinkers as working in the same theological tradition—a tradition rooted in free will, divine goodness, and the hope of universal restoration. Not a gnostic tradition.

And the supporters of apokatastasis in the early church were not fringe figures or marginalized heretics. They included some of the most important theologians in Christian history. Didymus the Blind (c. 313–398), another faithful Origenian and a supporter of universal salvation, appreciated Bardaisan and presented him in the best light.⁵⁷ Gregory of Nyssa—one of the three Cappadocian Fathers who helped define Trinitarian orthodoxy at the Council of Constantinople—was an unambiguous universalist. His brother Basil of Caesarea and his close friend Gregory of Nazianzus both showed sympathies in the same direction. These men were the pillars of orthodox Christianity. They wrote the theology that shaped the Nicene Creed. And they hoped for the restoration of all things. If universalism is a gnostic heresy, then the very architects of Trinitarian orthodoxy were gnostic heretics. That is an absurd conclusion.

This brings us to an important observation that McClymond never adequately addresses. If universalism were truly a gnostic import, we would expect the early church’s most vigorous anti-gnostic voices to have rejected it. But the opposite is the case. The fathers who fought hardest against gnostic distortions—Origen, the Cappadocians, Maximus the Confessor—were precisely the ones who embraced universal restoration. They did not see any tension between opposing gnosticism and hoping for the salvation of all. That is because there was no tension. Their universalism grew out of the same theological soil as their anti-gnostic commitments: a belief in one good Creator God, the equal dignity of all rational creatures, the reality of free will, and the ultimate triumph of divine love over every form of evil and resistance.

Other Early Witnesses: The Apocalypse of Peter and the Sibylline Oracles

Beyond Bardaisan and Clement, there are other early Christian texts that testify to universalist hope before Origen, and none of them are gnostic. The Apocalypse of Peter, a second-century Christian text that was widely read in the early church and was even considered canonical by some communities, contains a striking passage—preserved in the Rainer Fragment—in which the blessed in heaven intercede for those in hell, and their intercession is ultimately effective. The saved pray for the lost, and God answers their prayers.⁵⁸ This is not gnostic theology. This is early Christian piety expressing a hope rooted in the character of God and the power of prayer.

Portions of the Sibylline Oracles, a collection of Jewish and Christian prophetic writings, also contain universalist themes. These texts come from a variety of periods and contexts, but the universalist passages within them reflect a strand of Jewish and early Christian eschatological hope that predates any possible gnostic influence.⁵⁹

The cumulative picture is clear. Before Origen ever put pen to papyrus, there was already a tradition of universalist hope in the Christian church. It was rooted in Scripture, expressed in the Petrine proclamation, developed by Bardaisan and Clement, and reflected in popular Christian texts like the Apocalypse of Peter. This tradition was not gnostic. It was not esoteric. It was Christian to the core.

Origen’s Christian Platonism Against Gnostic Platonism

McClymond makes much of the Platonic influence on Origen, and he is not wrong that Plato’s philosophy shaped Origen’s thinking in significant ways. Origen was, as Porphyry noted, “always reading Plato.”⁴³ Platonic concepts are woven throughout his theology.

But here is what McClymond gets wrong: Origen was not the only thinker in the ancient world influenced by Plato. Virtually every educated philosopher, theologian, and intellectual in the ancient Mediterranean drew on Platonic ideas. The gnostics did. Origen did. Origen’s contemporary Plotinus did. The later church fathers did. To say that Origen and the gnostics both used Platonic categories is about as surprising as saying that modern American economists and modern American sociologists both use statistics. It tells you about the shared intellectual environment, not about dependence.

What actually matters is how Origen used Platonic ideas—and the answer is that he used them in a way that was systematically opposed to the way the gnostics used them. As Ramelli explains, Origen regarded gnostic Platonism as a “bad Platonism” and set out to construct an orthodox Christian Platonism in explicit opposition to it.⁴⁴ Interestingly, Origen’s contemporary Plotinus—who was not a Christian at all—was engaged in a very similar project, criticizing the gnostics who attended his own philosophical school for their distortions of Platonic teaching.⁴⁵

One specific Platonic idea that shaped Origen’s universalism was the ontological non-subsistence of evil—the idea that evil has no real, independent existence of its own, but is simply the absence or privation of good. This was a Platonic philosophical concept, but it also resonated deeply with the biblical teaching that God created all things good and that evil is a corruption or turning away from God’s good creation. Origen used this principle to argue that because evil has no independent reality, it cannot be eternal. Only the good is eternal, because only God is eternal. Therefore, evil will eventually be overcome, and all things will be restored to their original goodness.⁴⁶

This is a powerful theological argument, and it is rooted in a combination of biblical theology and Platonic philosophy. It is not gnostic. The gnostics, far from teaching that evil is non-subsistent, typically taught that evil was embodied in a real, independent entity—the demiurge, the evil creator-god who made the material world. Origen rejected the demiurge entirely. He insisted that the one true God is both Creator and Redeemer, and that the material world is His good creation, not the product of an evil or inferior deity.⁴⁷

The Biblical Narrative Is Not Gnostic

McClymond argues that the pattern of fall-and-restoration in Origen mirrors the gnostic pattern. But let me ask you something. What is the basic story of the Bible? God creates a good world. His creatures fall into sin. God acts to redeem and restore His creation. The story ends with all things made new.

Creation. Fall. Redemption. Restoration.

That is the grand narrative of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation. It is the story every Christian tells, whether they are Calvinist, Arminian, Catholic, Orthodox, or universalist. And yes, the gnostics told a somewhat similar story—because the gnostics were, after all, working with Christian raw materials, even as they distorted them.

The fact that two systems share a general narrative pattern does not mean one depends on the other. Every story of rescue has the same basic shape: something is lost, someone goes after it, and the lost thing is found. We do not say that the parable of the lost sheep is derived from gnosticism because gnostics also told stories about things being lost and found. The pattern is universal because it reflects something real about the human condition and about the character of God.

McClymond’s argument, stripped down to its essence, is this: “The gnostics told a story about fall and restoration. Origen told a story about fall and restoration. Therefore, Origen got his story from the gnostics.” But the Bible also tells a story about fall and restoration. By McClymond’s logic, the Bible itself would be “gnostic.” That conclusion is absurd, and it shows that the logic is flawed.

Origen’s Apokatastasis as Theodicy

There is one more dimension to the origins of Origen’s universalism that McClymond underestimates, and it is deeply important. Origen’s doctrine of restoration was developed as part of his theodicy—his defense of God’s goodness and justice in the face of evil and suffering.

Ramelli explains this connection in detail. Origen’s doctrine of rational creatures and their ultimate restoration was elaborated specifically in the context of his defense of divine goodness. He was trying to answer the same question that every thoughtful believer asks: If God is all-powerful and all-good, why is there evil and suffering in the world? Origen’s answer was that God created all rational beings with free will, that their misuse of that freedom is the source of evil, and that God’s patient, pedagogical purpose will eventually bring all of them back to the good. Universal restoration was the final piece of the puzzle that made the whole theodicy work.⁴⁸

As the Latin church father Rufinus understood, “the supporters of universal salvation, i.e., Origen, intended to defend God’s justice and respond to those who claim that all things are moved either by Fate or by chance.”⁴⁹ Fate and chance—those were the alternatives Origen was fighting. The gnostics said fate determined everything. The Stoics said cyclical necessity ruled. Origen said no: free will is real, evil is temporary, and the good God who made all things will restore all things. His universalism was not borrowed from the systems he opposed. It was the answer to them.

Origen also set his Christian version of apokatastasis explicitly against the Stoic version, which taught endless, determined cycles of destruction and renewal with no final resolution. The Stoic apokatastasis denied both free will and any ultimate restoration. Origen’s Christian apokatastasis affirmed both free will and a genuine, final restoration. And he set it against the gnostic versions, which excluded whole classes of humans and denied the resurrection of the body.⁵⁰ Origen’s apokatastasis was universal (all rational creatures), holistic (body and soul), and free (based on genuine choice illuminated by divine love). The gnostic versions were none of these things.

The Contemporary Universalist Case Does Not Depend on Origen’s Cosmology

There is one final point that needs to be made in this section, because McClymond’s gnostic origins thesis is not just an argument about ancient history. It is meant to discredit the modern universalist case as well. The implication is clear: if universalism has gnostic roots, then every modern universalist is drinking from a poisoned well.

But here is the thing: even if McClymond were right about Origen (and he is not), it would not matter for the contemporary universalist case. Modern conservative universalists like Thomas Talbott, Robin Parry, David Bentley Hart, and Ilaria Ramelli do not build their arguments on Origen’s cosmology of preexistent souls. They do not appeal to the plēroma or the Valentinian myth. They build their arguments on Scripture.⁵¹

Talbott builds his case on Paul’s letters—especially Romans 5, Romans 11, and 1 Corinthians 15. His argument is rigorously exegetical, tracing Paul’s logic about Adam and Christ, about the scope of condemnation and the scope of salvation, about what it means for God to be “all in all.” There is not a whiff of gnosticism in Talbott’s work. There is only careful, sustained engagement with the biblical text. Parry builds on a comprehensive biblical-theological reading of the entire canon, tracing the theme of restoration from Genesis through Revelation. Hart builds on philosophical theology and the Greek church fathers. Ramelli builds on the patristic historical evidence. None of them appeal to gnostic sources. None of them need to.

This matters enormously for the reader of McClymond’s book. If you have picked up The Devil’s Redemption and been persuaded by the gnostic origins argument, you need to ask yourself: does this argument actually address the case being made by today’s universalist scholars? Or does it attack a version of universalism that no serious modern defender actually holds? The answer is the latter. Talbott’s argument from Romans 5 is not weakened one bit by anything McClymond says about Valentinian cosmology. Parry’s reading of the Book of Revelation is not undermined by a connection between ancient gnostics and ancient Origenists. Hart’s philosophical case from creatio ex nihilo has nothing whatever to do with the plēroma myth. The gnostic origins thesis is a detour. It takes the reader on a fascinating historical journey, but when the journey ends, the contemporary universalist case is still standing exactly where it was, untouched by anything the journey discovered.

There is an analogy here that might help. Imagine someone arguing that modern democracy is discredited because ancient Athenian democracy was built on slavery and excluded women. The historical connection is real. But does it follow that the modern case for democratic government is invalidated? Obviously not. Modern democracy is defended on its own grounds—human rights, popular sovereignty, the consent of the governed—none of which depend on the specific institutions of fifth-century Athens. In the same way, modern universalism is defended on its own grounds—the biblical texts, the character of God, the nature of divine love, the logic of the atonement—none of which depend on Origen’s cosmology, let alone on anything the gnostics taught.

This is why McClymond’s gnostic origins thesis, even if it were historically correct (and again, it is not), would still be committing the genetic fallacy. The truth or falsehood of an idea does not depend on who first held it or where it first appeared. It depends on the evidence for and against it. And the evidence for universal restoration comes from Scripture and sound theological reasoning, not from gnostic mythology.

D. Counter-Objections

The argument we have laid out is strong. But it would be irresponsible not to deal with the strongest objections someone might raise. Let me take the most important ones in turn.

Objection 1: “Even if Origen refuted some gnostic tenets, his overall cosmology still mirrors gnostic patterns.”

This is probably the best objection McClymond has, and it deserves a careful answer. It is true that if you squint at Origen’s system from a certain distance, the narrative shape looks a bit like a Valentinian narrative: a primordial unity, a fall into diversity and materiality, and a final restoration to unity. McClymond argues that this big-picture resemblance is more significant than the specific differences.

But this objection fails for two reasons.

First, as we have already shown, the pattern of creation, fall, and restoration is not uniquely gnostic. It is the biblical narrative itself. It is the story that every branch of Christianity tells. The fact that the gnostics also told a version of this story does not make the story gnostic any more than the fact that a counterfeit currency resembles real currency makes the real currency counterfeit. The gnostics were imitating and distorting the biblical pattern, not the other way around.

Second, the specific differences between Origen and the gnostics are not minor details that can be waved away. They are fundamental, system-defining differences. Origen affirmed that the material world was created good by the one true God. The gnostics said matter was evil, produced by an inferior deity. Origen affirmed the resurrection of the body. The gnostics denied it. Origen insisted that all rational creatures are equal and free. The gnostics divided humanity into fixed classes. Origen affirmed the unity of the Old and New Testaments. Many gnostics rejected the Old Testament entirely. These are not surface variations on a shared theme. They represent radically different visions of reality. To focus on the broad narrative shape while ignoring these differences is like saying a house and a prison are basically the same thing because they both have walls, floors, and a roof.

Objection 2: “McClymond cites real scholars (Strutwolf, Jonas, Williams) who see genuine connections between Origen and gnosticism. Isn’t Ramelli just one voice against many?”

It is true that McClymond cites real scholars, and the question of Origen’s relationship to gnosticism is a legitimate area of academic debate. But we need to be careful about what these scholars actually argue.

Strutwolf’s Gnosis als System does argue for continuities between Origen and Valentinianism. But “continuity” is not the same as “dependence” or “derivation.” Origen and the Valentinians were working in the same intellectual world. They were both wrestling with the same questions about creation, evil, and salvation. That they sometimes reached similar-sounding conclusions does not mean one derived from the other—especially when the specific content of their answers diverges so dramatically.

Jonas draws connections between Origen’s worldview and ancient gnostic thought. But Jonas was writing decades before the current state of Origen scholarship, and his approach has been nuanced and in some cases corrected by more recent work. M. J. Edwards, for instance, wrote a book titled Origen against Plato, arguing precisely that Origen’s relationship to Platonic (and by extension gnostic-Platonic) thought was far more adversarial than figures like Jonas recognized.⁵²

As for Williams, his argument actually cuts both ways for McClymond. Williams showed that some gnostic texts were less deterministic than traditionally thought. But he did not demonstrate that they were universalist. Coming close to universalism is not the same as being universalist. And the very fact that scholars have to work this hard to find universalist tendencies in gnostic texts should give us pause about claiming that universalism originated in gnosticism.

Ramelli is not just “one voice.” She is arguably the world’s leading authority on the history of apokatastasis. Her massive work The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (Brill, 2013) is the most comprehensive scholarly treatment of the subject ever produced, running to nearly 900 pages and covering every relevant author from the New Testament to Eriugena. When she says that McClymond’s gnostic origins thesis does not hold up under scrutiny, she is speaking from a depth of knowledge about the primary sources that few scholars in the world can match.⁵³

Objection 3: “If universalism appeared in esoteric strands of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, doesn’t that suggest an esoteric origin?”

McClymond makes much of the fact that universalist ideas appear in the mystical or esoteric traditions of all three major monotheistic faiths. He sees this as evidence for a common gnostic-kabbalistic-esoteric thread running through all three. And he argues that this pattern demonstrates that universalism is fundamentally associated “with esotericism rather than with Christianity as such.”⁵⁴

But there is a much simpler explanation for this pattern, and it does not require any appeal to hidden esoteric traditions. All three Abrahamic faiths worship a God who is described as loving, merciful, and just. All three affirm that God is the creator of all people. All three teach that God desires the good of His creatures. Given these shared theological commitments, it would be surprising if the hope for universal salvation did not emerge in all three traditions. The fact that it does is not evidence of a shadowy esoteric conspiracy. It is evidence that thoughtful monotheists, reflecting on the character of the God they worship, naturally arrive at the hope that such a God will ultimately save all the people He has made.

To put it more bluntly: the hope that a loving God will save everyone is not an esoteric idea. It is one of the most natural conclusions that serious monotheism can produce. You do not need secret knowledge or hidden traditions to get there. You just need to take the love and power of God seriously.

Objection 4: “Doesn’t Origen’s own phrase ‘so-called apokatastasis’ suggest he was drawing on a non-biblical tradition?”

Someone might note that when Origen refers to “the so-called apokatastasis,” he seems to be pointing to a tradition that already existed before him. Could this tradition be the gnostic one?

No. The tradition Origen was pointing to was Scripture itself. As Ramelli has shown, Origen’s phrase “the so-called apokatastasis” most naturally refers to texts that already used both the concept and the word: the writings of Clement of Alexandria and, most importantly, Acts 3:21, where the word apokatastasis appears in Peter’s proclamation about the coming “restoration of all things.”⁵⁵ Origen knew Clement’s work. He certainly knew Acts. These were the traditions behind his use of the term—not gnostic texts.

Origen may also have been aware of the Stoic philosophical use of apokatastasis, which referred to cosmic cycles of destruction and renewal. But he explicitly rejected the Stoic version, which denied free will and posited an endless repetition of identical worlds. Origen’s Christian apokatastasis was a one-time, final restoration to the good, accomplished by a personal God through love, pedagogy, and the willing response of free creatures.⁵⁶

Objection 5: “Even if the genetic fallacy is technically a fallacy, understanding the origins of a doctrine can still be useful for evaluating it.”

This is true, and I want to be fair about it. Historical context is valuable. Understanding where an idea came from can shed light on what it means and how it functions. Intellectual historians do important work when they trace the development of ideas through time. McClymond has done valuable work in mapping the complex history of universalist thought across the centuries, and I have learned things from his research that I would not have learned elsewhere.

But there is a critical difference between using historical context to understand an idea and using it to dismiss one. McClymond is not simply saying, “Here is some interesting background that helps us understand the context in which universalism developed.” He is saying, “Universalism came from gnosticism, and therefore it is tainted, suspect, and not to be trusted.” That is the genetic fallacy, pure and simple. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. It is the engine driving the entire first half of The Devil’s Redemption.

As we noted in Chapter 3, if McClymond’s method were applied consistently, it would discredit many doctrines he himself affirms. The doctrine of the Trinity uses non-biblical Greek philosophical terminology—homoousios, hypostasis, ousia. Does that make it “Greek” rather than biblical? The substitutionary theory of the atonement has roots in Anselm’s feudal cultural context, where the language of honor and satisfaction was drawn from the social world of medieval lordship. Does that make it merely a product of medieval social structures? The doctrine of original sin was decisively shaped by Augustine, whose own theology bears marks of Manichaean dualism from his pre-conversion years. Does that make the doctrine of original sin “Manichaean”? Of course not. We do not evaluate any of these doctrines by tracing their genealogies and then declaring them guilty by association. We evaluate them on the basis of their biblical and theological merits. Universalism deserves the same treatment.

The question is not, “Where did universalism come from?” The question is, “Is it true?” And that question can only be answered by engaging with the biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments—which is exactly what the rest of this book will do.

Before we move on, let me add one more observation. There is something deeply ironic about McClymond’s use of the genetic fallacy in this context. The gnostics were famous for their obsession with origins—with genealogies and myths about where things came from, with the divine pedigree of the spiritual elite, with tracing the ancestry of ideas back to secret revelations. Orthodox Christianity, by contrast, has always insisted that truth is truth regardless of who says it or where it was first articulated. The church father Augustine put it memorably: “All truth is God’s truth.” When McClymond dismisses universalism primarily on the basis of its alleged genealogy, he is, ironically, adopting a method that is more gnostic than the universalists he is criticizing. The universalists say, “Look at the biblical evidence. Look at the character of God. Evaluate the arguments on their merits.” McClymond says, “Look at the family tree.” We should follow the universalists’ method, not McClymond’s.

Conclusion

McClymond’s gnostic origins thesis is the foundation on which much of The Devil’s Redemption is built. If universalism really does have its roots in gnostic heresy, then every modern universalist is building on a rotten foundation. That is the implication McClymond wants the reader to draw.

But the foundation is not rotten. The evidence shows the opposite of what McClymond claims. The gnostics were not universalists—they were elitists who divided humanity into classes and excluded whole categories of people from salvation. Gnostic “restoration” excluded the body; patristic universalism included it. Origen spent his entire career fighting gnostic theology, and his doctrine of universal restoration arose precisely from his anti-gnostic convictions. The actual sources of patristic apokatastasis were the Bible, the Petrine tradition, earlier Christian thinkers like Bardaisan and Clement, and a Christian Platonism built in explicit opposition to gnostic Platonism.

I want to be clear about something. McClymond is not a careless scholar. He has given us a massive, deeply researched work that represents years of serious labor. I respect that labor, and I have tried to present his arguments as fairly as I know how. But on this particular point—the claim that universalism has gnostic origins—his argument does not hold up under scrutiny. The parallels he identifies are either superficial (the shared narrative of fall and restoration, which is the biblical story itself), or they are contradicted by the details (the gnostics excluded the body and divided humanity into classes, while Origen affirmed bodily resurrection and the equality of all rational creatures). The most important scholars who have worked on these primary sources in recent decades—Ramelli above all, but also Edwards, Lundhaug, and others—have challenged the very connections that McClymond treats as established.

And even if every historical claim McClymond makes were correct, it would still not settle the question that actually matters. The question is not where universalism came from. The question is whether it is true. Whether the Bible teaches it. Whether the character of God demands it. Whether the logic of the gospel leads to it. Those are the questions this book was written to answer, and they cannot be answered by tracing genealogies—however interesting those genealogies might be.

The hope for universal restoration is not a gnostic import smuggled into the church under a biblical disguise. It is the hope of Scripture itself: that the God who created all things in love will one day restore all things through love. That the last enemy will be destroyed. That God will finally, truly be “all in all.”

In the next chapter, we will examine McClymond’s closely related claim about kabbalistic and esoteric roots. But first, let the conclusion of this chapter sink in. The gnostic origins thesis fails. And if it fails, then the entire strategy of discrediting universalism by attacking its family tree collapses with it. The arguments have to be engaged on their own merits. And that, as we will see in the chapters ahead, is precisely where the universalist case is strongest.