Can the Devil Be Saved?

Theological Letters

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Can the devil be saved?

Such a question might be a bit shocking, maybe even scandalous. An instinctive response might be to dismiss the query as prime facie absurd. However, when we look at this question in the light of the Eastern Church fathers, we find some interesting answers.

Well known is the fact that the Eastern Fathers present, on the one hand, established orthodoxies—that is, right doctrine that a person must affirm if they wish to adhere to the faith once given over to the saints (Jude 1:3). And on the other hand, they also condemn heresies, which means the choosing of a wrong or false doctrine. Yet, they also offer a third category that sits between these two, namely, theological opinion.

Theological opinion sits in that middle space—something that is neither mandated by the orthodoxies of the faith, nor is it condemned as a heresy. And when it comes to such topics, those things that sit in that area of theological opinion, we find a spectrum of answers among the Eastern Church fathers. Surprising though it may seem, the question of demonic salvation belongs to this intermediary realm of theologoumenon (θεολογούμενον).

What we find is that the majority of the Eastern Church fathers definitely side with, “No, it is not possible for the devil to be saved.” And yet we do find some who wish to say, “Yes, it is possible,” and some who even say it will happen.

Now, what I find particularly interesting is that this divide does not simply create a fork in the road between a yes and a no. Instead, if we look at the “why” behind the yes and no, we find five positions on this topic. What I want to look at today are those five positions and the underlying rationale behind those answers.

The value I see in looking at this is twofold: First, it not only addresses a rather interesting topic, but teaches us something about how to think along with the Church fathers. Second, what we find in these fathers tells us something very important about how these fathers understand God. So, with this prelude, let’s turn to the affirmative and negative positions.

I. The “No” Position: Three Arguments for Impossibility

I’m going to begin with the no because, as I mentioned, this is the majority position. One of the explanations for the “no, the devil cannot be saved” comes to us through a couple of interesting stories about contemporary Orthodox saints, one being Saint Paisios and the other being Saint Evmenios. Saint Paisios of the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos, is a contemporary saint. A twentieth-century figure, Paisios was canonized shortly after his repose due to the widespread recognition of his sanctity. There’s a story about Saint Paisios where he, filled with the love of God, decides that he’s going to fast and pray for the devil—I believe it was for two weeks—and at the close of those two weeks of praying for the devil’s salvation, the devil appeared to him in the form of the head of a dead dog, wagging its tongue at him, mocking him.¹

How Saint Paisios interpreted this is that it’s not that God is unwilling to save the devil; it’s that the devil is unwilling to be saved. And we find a very similar conclusion in Saint Evmenios, another very recent Orthodox saint. Saint Evmenios was blind, and it was interesting because many of the monks didn’t know he was blind, because he would read liturgical texts. And when they finally took him to a physician who said, “This man is blind. Why are you bringing him to me? I can’t help a blind man,” they were shocked. “What do you mean he’s blind? He’s been reading liturgical texts for years.” And they looked at him and they said, “How have you been reading these texts?” And he said, “Oh, I use my other pair of eyes,” referring to the eyes of his soul.

The more relevant story, for our purposes, concerns his prayers for the salvation of all. Saint Evmenios, when he was standing before the altar, would pray for the salvation of different peoples. And so he’d pray, “God, save the Orthodox Christians,” and he would hear, “God is pleased.” And then he would pray, “God, save the Roman Catholics,” and God was pleased. “God, save the Protestants,” and God was pleased. And he said, “God, save the Jews,” and God was pleased. And he would pray, “God, save the Muslims,” and God was pleased, and “God, save the atheists,” and God was pleased. And then finally, when he prayed, “God, please save Judas and the devil,” God was displeased. And he asked, “Why is God displeased with my prayer?” And the answer was, “They do not want to be saved.”²

So, on the one hand, the claim is that the devil or the demons could, in principle, be saved if they were willing, but they’re not willing. And this goes to something that we find precedent for in a couple of different figures. We find it in John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407 AD) as well as in Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580–662 AD).

So John Chrysostom, when talking about the unpardonable sin—he’s not talking about angels, of course, but talking about the sin that is supposedly unpardonable (Matt 12:31-2)—he points out that Christ never actually says that the sin is per se unpardonable. In other words, there’s nothing so heinous about the sin that can’t, in principle, be forgiven. But instead, what he points out is that Christ says it won’t be forgiven. And Chrysostom’s explanation is that this is referring to the sin of unrepentance—those who commit this unpardonable sin, which is really looking at the work of the Holy Spirit and concluding that it’s demonic, those have become so blind that they will never turn around and they will never repent. So the sin itself is, in principle, pardonable, but it won’t be pardoned because those who commit it never turn away from it.³

So Maximus talks about what’s called the gnomic will (γνωμικὸν θέλημα). Now, this term is rather complicated, precisely because it evolves over the course of Maximus’ writings.⁴ But for our purposes here, let it suffice that what Maximus is identifying is that, in the case of creatures—we being creatures who are in process and are formed over time, specifically by our own free choice—we have the capacity to, on the one hand, choose the good things that are in keeping with our telos (τέλος), proper formation, moving us toward perfection. And yet, on the other hand, we also have this capacity to turn away from the good and do things that are contrary to our own good, things that are corrupting, to become vicious. And this is simply innate to the nature of creatureliness: the very fact that creatures are developmental beings—we have to move into being and have to make choices in order to become virtuous—means that it is also within our capacity to make choices that drag us away from virtue into vice, corruption, and darkness.

And Maximus does entertain the possibility that, at some point, the will can become fixed in that twisted or corrupted state. And so, again, while in principle you could redeem the devil and the demons, ontologically speaking, once the will has become so twisted and turned away from God the way it is in their case, they can no longer turn back. They’re not willing.

So that is one explanation that we find within contemporary saints and have precedent for within the Eastern Church fathers long before them. But this isn’t the only explanation for why the devil might be unsavable or beyond salvation. A second explanation we find in Nemesius of Emesa (ca. 390 AD). Now, Nemesius suggests that the devil and the fallen angels could have repented for a certain period of time, but at some point, that window of opportunity to turn back and repent of their rebellion against God closed.⁵ And so it is no longer possible—not anymore. Now, Nemesius doesn’t really explain this, nor does he tell us where this comes from. One possible explanation is that it’s related in some ways to 1 Enoch. But again, Nemesius doesn’t flesh out the point, nor does he explain where it comes from.

That offers us our third possible “no.” On the one hand, the answer is no: God is willing, but they are unwilling. That was the first explanation. The second possibility is: yes, it was possible for them to repent for a season, but that season has now passed. The third explanation is that it is metaphysically impossible to restore the angels. And this is the explanation that John of Damascus (ca. 676–749 AD) gives in his treatise On the Orthodox Faith, where he’s trying to offer a summary of the consensus of the fathers before him. And we do find this explanation in other earlier figures like Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 296–373 AD).⁶

John of Damascus states rather plainly what the reason is that it’s impossible—metaphysically impossible—to restore the angels. And his explanation is that they are simple creatures. This raises two questions: what does it mean to say that an angel is simple, and why would this mean that they can’t be redeemed?

In order to understand John’s argument, we actually have to contrast it with the redemption of man. So when we look at earlier writers like the Cappadocians—Basil of Caesarea (330–79 AD), Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335–ca. 395 AD), Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 329–90 AD)—and other figures like Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 376–444 AD), we find something rather interesting in their perspective on man being sent back to the dust of the earth after his fall into sin (Gen 3:19). According to the Eastern Fathers, on the one hand, yes, we can speak about death as an enemy to be defeated (1 Cor 15:26); we can anthropomorphize it as Hades, and so on. But they also see death as a mercy. And here, what they have in mind by death is the fact that our bodies will deteriorate and return back to the earth.

Why would this be a mercy? The answer is illustrated by figures like Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa: Imagine that a potter is making a pot out of two different types of substance, and at some point during the pottery making, something goes awry and the substances mingle in a way that the potter does not intend. It’s been corrupted. Should the potter at that point fire the pot? The answer is no, because if he does that, the imperfection or the corruption will become permanent. What’s important is to separate the two substances and begin again. In other words, in order to fix the corruption, he must unmake the pot in order to remake it anew and properly, free from the corruption.⁷

That analogy is introduced in order to explain the corruption and fall of man: that man consists of a body and a soul. We have a higher and lower nature. Our spiritual nature is one that bears the image of God (Gen 1:26-7) and that is made to commune with God, participate in God, partake of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), and attain immortality, incorruption, and so on. But we also have a lower animal nature, and the relationship between those is supposed to be ordered in a certain way. Just like if you have a rational man riding atop a horse, it’s suitable that the man, having wisdom and reason, should direct the horse rather than vice versa. So in the same way, the higher nature of man is made to order and care for the lower nature of man.

We can see this in a question that emerges based on the book of Genesis (Gen). In Genesis, the realm of the earth is the realm of mortal things that come from the earth and return to the earth, whereas the celestial realm—the things of heaven—are the things that are immortal and incorruptible. And in the case of man, what you have is a merger of the two: man is taken from the dust of the earth, and God breathes into him from heaven, and he becomes a living soul (Gen 2:7).

This raises the question—initially amongst Alexandrian Jews, and subsequently writers such as Nemesius of Emesa. The question was basically this: If man is a merger of the mortal things of creation with the immortal things of creation, which one is he? Is he mortal or is he immortal?

And the answer that you find first in Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BCE–ca. 50 CE), and then echoed in Theophilus and Nemesius, is that he is created as neither.⁸ He is potentially mortal and potentially immortal, his will functioning like the fulcrum of a balance scale, deciding which of his natures—the higher or the lower—will be in charge. And so when man chooses to turn away from God, what happens is he chooses the mortal life of beasts, and that lower nature, which should be subordinate and ordered and tended to by the higher nature, takes control. And, as a result, man’s nature is inverted, where the animal passions have an unnatural sway over our higher nature, and they end up distorted in many ways, so that we suddenly have unnatural passions setting in, becoming tyrannical overlords over our higher rational nature.

This is the sort of thing that Saint Paul describes when he talks about the war between the spirit and the flesh (Gal 5:17)—your higher nature and your animal nature—where you recognize the things that you should do and then you don’t do them, and the things that you hate, you end up doing (Rom 7:15-24). And you say, “O wretched man that I am!” That is the predicament of fallen man: our lower nature ruling over our higher nature, impelling us toward vice.

That right there is the very corruption that the analogy mentioned earlier is meant to illustrate: two substances that have mingled together in a way contrary to the intent of the potter. And so when asking, “Well, what if the potter were to fire the vessel?” the answer is that would be detrimental because it would make the corruption permanent. So in the same way, this is what they see within the narrative: man is cut off from partaking of the Tree of Life (Gen 3:22-4). Why? Because heaven forbid that we continue living forever in a corrupted state! In other words, heaven forbid that God fire the vessel. And so returning us to dust was seen exactly as that—unmaking man, but unmaking man for a purpose, so that in the resurrection from the dead, we might be remade anew, the two substances in a harmonious relationship that is in keeping with the intent of the potter.

When you see that background, the claim that says “angels are simple and so they cannot be unmade and remade” makes sense. Angels are pure spirits; they are not souls inhabiting bodies. You and I are complex beings: we have a soul and we have a body, and your body consists of all sorts of different parts—bone, muscle, tissue, and organs. That makes it complex, meaning it’s composed of a great many things. But angels, as pure spirits that don’t have bodies, are not complex. They are simple beings.⁹

And this is what someone like John of Damascus has in mind. Because they are simple, there is no way to unmake them and remake them the way you can with man. And for that reason, if they go wrong and become twisted, the corruption is itself permanent and cannot be fixed. So that’s what sits there within that argument in John of Damascus or in Athanasius.

Those are your three explanations for “no”: the idea that it is possible to redeem angels, but they’re unwilling—that’s one explanation; it was possible for a season, but that season has now closed; or it’s simply not possible, not even for God. And why? Because creatures are innately simple beings, and so if they go wrong, they cannot be put right.

To avoid bogging us down in a lengthy aside about divine omnipotence, I’ll simply point readers to a lengthier treatment of this topic.¹⁰ Suffice it to say for our purposes here: omnipotence, classically defined, is not that God can do anything that you might utter; instead, it is that God can do anything that’s possible. And so when we utter nonsense like God creating a second God, or a free creature that isn’t free, or a metaphysically simple being that can be unmade and remade, we’re not actually offering something possible for God to do. So yes, that is John of Damascus’s position.

II. The “Yes” Position: Two Paths Toward Demonic Redemption

As I mentioned, not everyone amongst the Eastern Church fathers says “no” to this question. There are some that say “yes.” Here I would divide these into two camps, or perhaps even three, depending on how we’re counting. The first camp really isn’t dogmatic about the answer, but it does seem to leave the door open to the redemption of angels. And this is where I place Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. 5th–6th cent. AD). Pseudo-Dionysius offers an interesting argument on why corruption can never be permanent.

What’s the argument? What he argues is that stability or stasis (στάσις)—a state of rest—is only arrived at when something has a telos, it has a target, it’s reached its end or its purpose. So, for example, we can talk about an eye moving toward health and wholeness, and then it reaches that point of stasis. Or alternatively, if we thought geometrically, if we had a bunch of points on a circle that wasn’t really great—it was a corrupted circle—but we’re going to adjust those points until they’re all an equal distance from the common center, we could talk about reaching a point of stasis or rest: they’ve arrived at perfect circularity. But one of the things that Pseudo-Dionysius points out is that corruption doesn’t move toward anything; it moves away from things. So when we talk about sickness, we’re talking about a movement away from health, not toward anything. If we talk about a perfect circle that we somehow corrupt and we move away from perfect circularity, we’re not moving toward imperfect circularity; we’re moving away from perfect circularity.

And for this reason, Pseudo-Dionysius suggests that corruption, being a divergence that has no target, has no end or purpose. It inevitably is unstable. It can never reach a point of rest where you can say, “I’ve reached my goal.” And for that reason, Pseudo-Dionysius thinks there can never be any sort of stability or permanence to corruption.¹¹

Now, the context of this in Pseudo-Dionysius, in my assessment, does open the door to the possibility of demonic restoration. In other words, the fallen angels didn’t fall toward anything; they fell away. They turned away from God, from perfection. And for that reason, there can never be any sort of stasis, as if they’ve reached the perfection of devilry or something like that. So that instability, that lack of permanence, opens the door to the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they could turn around and return. So that’s one possibility.

Now, that’s not a dogmatic “yes.” It’s just something that creates an ontological openness to the possibility that maybe they could.

Now, the alternative “yes”es affirm, “Yes, the devil can be saved, and the devil will be saved.” There is a heretical form of this, and there are non-heretical forms of this. The most well-known heretical form of this is found in Origen (ca. 185–ca. 253 AD) and Origenism. Origen of Alexandria taught a doctrine known as apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις). This term is sometimes associated with universal salvation, and that’s true in the context of Origen: that is what it means. It does refer to something like that. But the word itself really just means “restoration” or “cycles.” And so we can find it in a medical context where an organ leaves a state of health, moves into a state of sickness, and then returns to a state of health—that’s a cyclical movement, apokatastasis. Or alternatively, the cycle of planets that move around an orbit and then arrive at the same place—a kind of apokatastasis. Or a diaspora—people who are dispelled from their homeland and then return to it—apokatastasis. And yes, it’s also used in reference to the fall and the restoration of man.

In the case of Origen, he has a rather peculiar cosmology, one that would ultimately be condemned as heretical at Constantinople II (553 AD), which is one of the seven ecumenical councils, specifically Council Number Five.¹² Origen’s peculiar teaching here is that he believes that all things are originally created spiritually: God generates a series of souls, and then those souls have a choice whether or not to cling to God or retreat from God. And if they choose to retreat from God, they begin to fall away. And what do they fall into? Well, they fall into matter, descending into corporeal matter. Consequently, the cosmic hierarchy—spanning from the ethereal to the dense and material—is the result of this gradual departure from God. And for that reason, Origen also had the very peculiar view that demons were sick and gross and fleshly.

One of the things that comes with this doctrine is Origen’s belief that God is not only restoring all things, but will successfully restore all things, and essentially that all creatures, including the devil himself, will be restored and brought back to God—apokatastasis—that all things that fell will return to their divine source. Well, one of the problems with Origenism is that it didn’t just believe that all things would be restored, but it believed in cosmic cycles. So after the restoration, they can fall again. And this was amongst the many things that was seen as problematic in Origenism. So this was condemned as a heresy at Constantinople II.

Now, the question of universal salvation is a controversial one, and it’s one that really deserves its own treatment. For a fuller treatment of my position on apokatastasis, universal salvation, and Constantinople II, you can see my theological letter on that topic.¹³ Let it suffice for our purposes here that I don’t think the anathemas or the condemnations of Constantinople II—which are clearly aimed at Origen and the Origenists, like Philoxenus (ca. 440–523 AD)—carry the implication that all forms of universal salvation are heretical. And the reason is simply that not everyone who believed in universal salvation believed in cosmic cycles the way Origen did.

And here I would point to two figures, one of whom is Gregory of Nyssa, who was actually referred to as “Father of the Fathers” by Constantinople II. There’s good reason to read Gregory as a universalist, one who believes that God’s efforts to draw all things back to Himself and restore all of them to the good will succeed, and that this will include the author of evil itself, namely, the devil. Another figure who talks this way is Saint Isaac the Syrian (ca. 613–ca. 700 AD).¹⁴ Saint Isaac talks about universal salvation—God’s efforts to restore all things to Himself succeeding not only in the case of man, but even in the case of the demons. And here, Saint Isaac suggests that the demons, having known what it is to experience darkness and to have fallen from the presence of God, will appreciate the light of God more than the angels who never fell.

So clearly in figures like Saint Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Isaac of Syria, you end up having a “yes”—an insistence that says not only is it possible for the fallen angels to be redeemed, but they will, in fact, be redeemed. God will successfully restore all creatures back to Himself, even the author of evil. And we find the same conclusion in other writers who are not deemed saints, but are important early Christian writers, like Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–ca. 215 AD), who says the same.

There you have it: five positions on the question “Can the devil be saved?” On the one side, we have the majority position, which is “no.” And under that “no,” we find three different explanations as to why:

One that says he could, in principle, be saved, but while God is willing, the devil is unwilling. That’s one answer. The second that says there was a season in which the devil could have repented, and yet that season is now closed. And the third, which says it’s metaphysically impossible to restore an angel who has been corrupted.

Those are your three answers on the “no” side, which, as I said, is the majority position. On the “yes” side, we find, on the one hand, a certain ambiguity—something that just simply leaves open the door to it because corruption can never be permanent. That’s one possible answer. And the second possible answer forks into a heretical “yes” and a non-heretical “yes.” The heretical “yes,” as I said, is the Origenist answer, which appeals to cosmic cycles where the devil will be restored, but creatures will fall again because that’s the nature of the cosmos. The second “yes,” however, isn’t heretical, and this is what we find in figures like Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Isaac the Syrian, which suggests that the infinite love of God, which pursues all creatures, will at some point succeed in restoring not only all of humanity back to Himself, but even the fallen angels back to Himself, including the author of evil.

III. What This Spectrum Reveals About the Nature of God

Now, I said that there’s a value in this topic, and I pointed out a twofold value: the one that it tells us something about how to think along with the fathers, and the second which tells us something about the nature of God. Let me start with thinking along with the fathers. It’s interesting that if we look at these various positions, it’d be simple enough to say, “Well, I guess there’s five different positions, and who knows what the answer is?” But there is some amount of continuity across all of these answers—a continuity that is very important. Notice that no one on either side of this discussion—the “yes” or the “no” side—answers, “Yes, it’s possible for the fallen angels to be redeemed, but God is unwilling.” Instead, all of them insist that God is, in fact, willing.