Apocatastasis (Universal Restoration)

The teaching that in the end all rational creatures, including the demons, will be restored and punishment will come to an end. It is associated above all with Origen, and in that form it was condemned: the anathemas issued at Constantinople under Justinian and carried into the Fifth Ecumenical Council name the pre-existence of souls and the restoration together, because in Origen they belong together. The complication the Church has never hidden is that St Gregory of Nyssa uses language of universal restoration and is a saint and a Father of the Second Council. The Orthodox way through is neither to edit him nor to follow him here: what is condemned is the Origenist system, and the Church prays for all while refusing to promise what it has not been told.