Father, is it true that there was an Ecumenical Council which condemned Universalism or am I mistaken?
You are not being told the whole story. You know, the Internet has become a wonderful research tool. It's just a shame that A.) it didn't exist when I was a deceived Fundamentalist Bible-thumper type and B.) that I wasn't doing my due diligence with what was available when I was a Fundamentalist.
Modern scholarship has come to the agreement that the Fifth Ecumenical Council was interfered with by Emperor Justinian. It was his desire that certain condemnations of Apokatastasis be inserted into the Canons of the Council, and if I remember correctly, this was done after the conclusion of the council. There were nine specific condemnations which were added by Justinian. I find this stunning on several levels.
First of all, the promise of being led into all truth, given to the Apostles in the Gospel of John, was to the office of the bishops of the Church and not a meddlesome lay person with a bad temper and a history of killing those who disagreed with him. Indeed, in his push for power and authority over the council, he had Pope Virgilius arrested and detained. The whole behavioral pattern of the emperor suggests that he felt that as the head of the earthly power in Constantinople, he had a right to interject his beliefs into the council.
It is further known that Emperor Justinian's desire for the eastern lands within the Roman Empire was the consolidation of power and the unity of the empire under him. All his actions were geared to this end, whether it be killing troublesome enemies or making his own theological ideals to become dogma. Indeed, we find in Justinian the following writing which exposes what his goal was in opposing Apokatastasis:
It will render men slothful, and discourage them from keeping the commandments of God. It will encourage them to depart from the narrow way, leading them by deception into ways that are wide and easy.
Apparently, loving Jesus Christ for the beauty of his love and His sacrifice on the Cross wouldn't work in Justinian's opinion.
The Sixth Council was called for a specific reason: to oppose the Three Chapters as given by Theodore of Mopsuestia and to condemn the strange ideas of Origen regarding the pre-existence of souls. Apokatastasis was linked to this in a manner which makes people think that the council condemned it in its original canons.
As for the Sixth Council upholding the condemnation of Apokatastasis, note the following extract from the writings of that Council:
But neither do we stop here. We take the pious utterances of the one hundred and sixty-five God-bearing Fathers who assembled upon the ground of this Imperial City in the reign of Justinian, who became our Emperor and who passed away at the termination of his pious career, and, recognizing them to have been inspired and uttered by the (Holy) Spirit, we teach them outright to our posterity; which Fathers indeed as a Council anathematized and consigned to abomination Theodore of Mopsuestia, the teacher of Nestorius, and in addition Origen and Didymus and Evagrius, who joined hands in refashioning the Greek myths and recounting to us periods and mutations of certain bodies and souls, prompted by raptures and hallucinations of the mind, and in drunken revelry impiously exulting over the resurrection of the dead; as well as what had been written by Theodoret against the right faith and correct belief and against the twelves heads (or chapters) of blissful Cyril; and also the so-called letter of Ibas.
Not a word against Apokatastasis. Not one. And no condemnation of either St. Isaac the Syrian or St. Gregory of Nyssa. This alone should make it abundantly clear that Apokatastasis was not the horrible heresy that the modern Church has come to make it out to be.
We should continue this in the debate room. This is not the place for this.
One thing I am finding out more and more and more is that hierarchs of the Church - both East and West - have been less than Simon pure when it comes to handling the Word of God and the Gospel, often bending Scripture and doing things more from an agenda they had rather than the purity of truth. And I find that appalling.
