Can the Devil Be Forgiven? Origen’s Dangerous Hope
A Boy Who Wanted to Be a Martyr
One day in the year 202, in the bustling Egyptian city of Alexandria, a seventeen-year-old named Origen faced a terrible test. Roman soldiers had arrested his father, Leontius, for being a Christian. Origen burned with a fierce desire to join his father in prison—and even to die as a martyr (someone killed for their faith). His mother, desperate to save him, did something both clever and embarrassing: she hid all his clothes. Too ashamed to leave the house, Origen was forced to stay home and live. That twist of fate allowed him to become one of the most daring thinkers in Christian history.
After his father’s death, Origen threw himself into studying and teaching. He learned Hebrew from a Jewish convert, devoured Greek philosophy, and became head of a famous Christian school in Alexandria. He dictated books to teams of stenographers—sometimes seven at once—producing commentaries on nearly every book of the Bible, a massive six-columned edition called the Hexapla, and a systematic work titled On First Principles. Later, driven out of Alexandria, he settled in Caesarea (in modern Israel), where he continued teaching. He was so devoted that he endured torture during a persecution, and he died around the year 254, when he was nearly seventy.
But Origen did not just repeat old teachings. He asked hard questions—and his answers still puzzle and inspire people today.
Why Read the Bible Like a Treasure Map?
Origen noticed something odd. The Bible tells not one, but two creation stories. In Genesis 1, God makes the world in six days and calls it good. In Genesis 2, God forms a man from dust, plants a garden, and fashions a woman from his rib. Also, the Bible often says God has hands, eyes, or a fiery anger—but God is invisible. Origen argued that these stories must carry a deeper, hidden meaning. He believed the sacred text has three levels, like a person made of body, soul, and spirit.
The first level is the literal meaning: what the words say at face value. That is the “body” of scripture. Some parts are clearly history or laws. The second level, the “soul,” offers moral lessons for the Christian community—guides for behavior. The deepest level, the “spirit,” speaks of Christ and the soul’s journey back to God. It uses symbols and mysteries that only a faithful, patient reader can uncover. Origen called this method allegory—reading a story where every detail stands for a higher truth.
For instance, he thought the garden of Eden was not a place you could visit on a map, but a state of the soul in perfect harmony with God. The trees were not ordinary plants, but spiritual qualities. This way of reading let Origen find Christian meaning in every verse of the Old Testament, even the ones that seemed harsh or random.
He even paired the three books of Solomon—Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs—with the three levels. Proverbs teaches ethics (the body), Ecclesiastes explains the natural world (the soul), and the Song of Songs reveals the loving union between the soul and God (the spirit). It was a bold, creative system, and it influenced how Christians read the Bible for centuries.
The Maddening Question: If God Is Good, Why Do We Suffer?
If one perfect God created everything, why is life so full of pain? Some believers in Origen’s time, the Gnostics, answered by saying the material world was made by a lower, clumsy god, not the true, good God. Origen rejected that. He insisted that one utterly good, invisible, and powerful God made both the spiritual and physical worlds. But then he had to explain evil.
His solution was tied to free will. Origen argued that every rational being—angels, humans, demons—chooses its own path. God knows the future, but does not force it. Evil is like a sickness we bring on ourselves. Even the stars and planets do not control our destiny. He borrowed a joke from the philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE): if you believe everything is fated, then your belief in fate is also fated, so why should anyone trust it? Since we can clearly see that we make choices, predestination makes no sense.
But what about the unequal suffering at birth? Why was one baby born into a loving family and another into slavery? Origen wrestled with this. He suggested that our souls might have existed before this life and made choices that shaped our present circumstances. This idea, called the pre-existence of the soul, helped explain why God could be just: we suffer now because of past sins, and our hardships are not random cruelty but lessons or cures. He never said this was a proven fact—he floated it as a possibility. Some later critics exaggerated it into a wild story about souls growing tired of staring at God and then tumbling down into bodies, but Origen’s own writings are much more cautious.
Thus, for Origen, suffering is never God’s fault. It is the result of our freedom, and God uses it like a surgeon uses pain to heal. It is a defense of God’s goodness, a field philosophers call theodicy.
Can Everyone—Even the Devil—Be Saved?
The most explosive idea associated with Origen is that all souls, including the devil, might one day be forgiven and restored to God. The Greek word for this restoration is apokatastasis. In Paul’s letters, Origen read that “the last enemy, death, will be destroyed” and that God will be “all in all.” He took these verses to mean that at the very end, nothing would remain opposed to God—no sin, no suffering, no rebellion. Even hell’s punishments were, in his view, not everlasting torture but purifying medicine that would eventually bring every creature back to spiritual health.
But did he really believe that Satan himself would be saved? Origen knew this was a dangerous speculation. In a private letter to friends in Alexandria, he reportedly wrote that only a madman would claim the devil would get into heaven. So he stopped short of saying the prince of evil would enjoy divine bliss. Instead, he seems to have thought that evil itself would simply cease to exist, and the beings who once embraced it would either be purified or, if incapable, no longer trouble the blessed.
Even this cautious hope was too much for some bishops. After Origen’s death, his teachings were fiercely debated. Many church leaders accused him of inventing pagan ideas and undermining the fear of hell. Around the year 553, a church council condemned certain “Origenist” doctrines. His books were banned, and many were destroyed. But his ideas did not die. Copies survived in libraries and translations, and the question of universal salvation has never stopped haunting Christian thought.
Why Origen’s Ideas Still Spark Arguments
What does a thinker from ancient Alexandria have to do with you? Plenty. Origen’s approach to reading—the idea that a text can have hidden layers—still shapes how we study literature, watch movies, and interpret sacred writings. The argument over whether we should take stories literally or symbolically is as alive as ever. When you and your friends argue about the “true meaning” of a film or a book, you are doing something Origen would recognize.
His wrestling with the problem of evil also remains urgent. Every time we hear of a natural disaster or an innocent person suffering, the old question returns: why does a good God allow this? Origen’s answer—that suffering can be a harsh but healing teacher—may satisfy some and trouble others. His hope that no one is beyond rescue pushes us to think about justice and mercy. If a terrible criminal could genuinely change after a long, long time, would we still insist on endless punishment? What does forgiveness really require?
Finally, Origen’s life is a reminder that asking tough questions can be risky. He was a loyal Christian who used Greek philosophy to illuminate his faith, but his speculations got a mixed reception. Some saw him as a genius; others called him a heretic. His story shows that thinking for yourself—especially about religion—can leave you caught between admiration and condemnation. But it also shows that ideas, once written, can outlast their author’s critics.
Today, historians still debate what Origen really taught. Was he secretly a universalist? Did he believe in reincarnation? Probably not in the way his enemies claimed. The puzzle of Origen has no final answer, which is why he remains so fascinating.
Think about it
- If a sacred text says something that seems impossible (like a talking snake), should we take it literally or search for a hidden meaning? Who gets to decide?
- Origen suggested that our sufferings might come from choices we made before we were born. How would that idea change the way you treat someone who is suffering now?
- If you knew a criminal would truly repent after a million years of purification, would it be fair to punish them forever? Why?
