Universal Salvation as an Antidote to Apocalyptic Expectations: Origenism in the Service of Justinian’s Religious Politics

Having established in two previous studies that the 'Questions and Answers' pseudonymously attributed to Caesarius, the brother of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, are in fact the magnum opus of Theodore of Caesarea, nicknamed the Wine-sack (Askidas) - all-powerful courtier of Justinian I and spiritus rector of the sixth-century Origenist movement - in this study I move on to scrutinise what Pseudo-Caesarius teaches about the final end of mankind, and to see whether this corresponds in one manner or another to what we know, from the anti-Origenist sources, about the doctrine of the Isochrist Origenists. For this, a decoding methodology, applying which the hidden meaning of the text can be revealed, is being elaborated. The result is that, indeed, Pseudo-Caesarius taught the final restoration of all the rational beings to their original blessed state (apokatastasis), including the final salvation of Satan. Reading the Pseudo-Caesarean 'Questions and Answers', we are in the privileged position of holding in our hands one of the foundational texts of sixth-century Isochrist Origenism.