All Creatures, Even the Fallen Angel, Restored

I have given you one instance in which he has stated his own opinion on the universal resurrection without any ambiguity. I will give one more, and with it bring the first book of my Apology to an end. His statements on this point are, in fact, countless. The one I select is on the passage where it is written: “From whom the whole body, fitly framed and knit together through what every joint supplies, according to the working in due measure of each separate part, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” He begins this way: [a]

“At the end of all things, when we have begun to know God face to face, and have come to the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, of whose fullness we have all received, so that Christ will be in us not in part but wholly; and when, leaving behind the first lessons of infants, we have grown into the perfect man, of whom the prophet says, ‘See, the man whose name is the East,’ and whom John the Baptist announces in the words, ‘After me comes a man who has come to be before me, for he was before me’; then, by coming together in a common faith and a common recognition of the Son of God, whom now, because people’s minds differ so, we cannot know and recognize with one and the same faith, the whole body, which before had been broken up and torn into many parts, will be joined and fitted together and brought into one. So there will be only one administration, and one and the same working, and an absolute perfection of the one age, by which the whole body will grow evenly, and all its members, each according to its measure, will receive an increase of age. But this whole process of building up, by which the body of the church is increased in all its members, will be completed by mutual love.

“We can understand the whole mass of rational creatures by the example of a single rational living being; and whatever we say of the single creature, we may be sure will apply to every creature. Let us imagine this creature, then, to have had all its limbs, veins and flesh so torn apart that bone does not cling to bone nor muscle join to muscle: the eyes lie apart in one place, the nose in another, the hands are put here and the feet thrown out there, and the rest of the members are scattered and divided in the same way. “Then let us suppose that a physician arrives on the spot, skilled enough to imitate the deeds of Asclepius told in the stories of the pagans, and to raise up a new form, the new man Virbius. He will have to restore each member to its own place, couple joint to joint, and replace the various parts and glue them together, so as to make the body one again. That is as far as this single comparison takes us.

“But now let us take another example, so that by a similar illustration we may make clear what we want understood. A child is growing up. Moment by moment, though the process is hidden from us, he is moving toward full maturity. His hands grow larger, his feet grow in proportion; the belly fills out, though we cannot see it; the shoulders widen unnoticed by the eyes; and all the members in each part grow according to their measure, but in such a way that they plainly grow not for themselves but for the body.

“So it will be in the time of the restoration of all things, when the true physician, Jesus Christ, comes to restore to health the whole body of the church, which is now scattered and torn. Each one, according to the measure of his faith and of his recognition of the Son of God (it is called recognition because he knew him first and afterward ceased to know him), will receive his proper place and will begin to be what he once had been. “This does not mean, as another opinion holds, which is a heresy, that all will be placed in one condition, that is, all restored to the condition of angels. It means that every member will be perfected according to its measure and office. For instance, the apostate angel will begin to be what he was originally made, and man, who had been cast out of the garden of Eden, will be brought back to cultivate the garden again. “But all these things will be so arranged that they are joined to one another by mutual love, each member rejoicing with its fellow and gladdened by its advancement. And so the church of the firstborn, the body of Christ, will dwell in the heavenly Jerusalem, which the apostle elsewhere calls the mother of the saints.”