Is Origen of Alexandria the inventor of the eschatological doctrine of apokatastasis— of the eventual return of all creatures to the Good, that is, God, and thus universal salvation? Certainly, he is one of its chief supporters in all of history, and he is, as far as we know, the first to have maintained it in a complete and coherent way, so that all of his philosophy of history, protology, and anthropology is oriented toward this telos.1 There are, however, significant antecedents to his mature and articulate theorization, at least some of which he surely knew very well, and there is even a possible parallel. For this conception did not appear ex nihilo, but in a cultural context rich in suggestions and premises, and in a philosophical framework of lively discussions concerning fate, free will, theodicy, and the eternal destiny of rational creatures.

In recent years scholars from a broad spectrum, including classicists, patristic and biblical scholars, ancient historians, and specialists in ancient Judaism,1 have demonstrated an increasing interest in universalism. There has been very little written, however, on Porphyry's search for universal salvation, and whether Eusebius of Caesarea's understanding of universalism2 —here defined as the universality of a particular cult's soteriology (or even more briefly stated, the belief in universal salvation)—was influenced polemically by Porphyry. Eusebius's great apologetic works, Praeparatio evangelica and Demonstratio evangelica (henceforth P.E. and D.E.), written ca. 313–318 and ca. 318–324 c.e., respectively,3 provide many passages in which he artistically weaves universalist themes into his overall theological argument: P.E. contains 187 such passages, while D.E. has 417, more than twice that number.4 While some of the sub-themes of each work are either identical to one another or very similar in scope and content, the different audiences addressed—P.E. is primarily written to pagans against the charge that Christianity is new and thus lacks the authenticity of an ancient tradition, while D.E. responds to Jewish criticisms and gives pastoral guidance for the bishop's flock—can account for differences in both rhetorical method and theological emphases.

The seminal thirteenth century Geronese kabbalist, Talmudist, and exegete Moses Nahmanides (Moses b. Naḥman, 1194–c.1270) perceived the physical world as a mirror for the internal workings of the divine world. For him the Bible “relates about the lower matters and alludes to the upper,”1 rendering its apparently mundane legal, historical, and ethical dimensions a record of the inner variegated life of God. At the very inception of the world, each and every day of creation transcends its strict temporality, referring “at the inner core of the matter” () to the “sefirot which emanate from above.”2 The world's genesis unfolds along the parallel planes of the material world and the complex intradeical mechanics, the sefirot—a staple of kabbalistic thought and terminology—that are constituent of God himself. However, Nahmanides' exegetical project does not invite the escapist flight from reality that mysticism so often requires. On the contrary, his thoroughgoing kabbalistic ontology divulges a keen appreciation for and preoccupation with empirical reality and temporal history rather than threatening to overwhelm the mundane. His biblical exegesis has been characterized as exceptional within its genre for being “entirely free of the frequent kabbalistic tendency to devalue peshat [the plain sense of the text].”3 As David Novak has argued, Nahmanides, despite his kabbalistic theology, “also finds in the Torah a commitment to the reality of nature and history, even if that level of truth is transcended by the Kabbalah. Kabbalah, the highest truth, does not displace all other truths but puts them in perspective.”4 The argument that ensues in this article will demonstrate, firstly, that a prominent example of this feature of Nahmanidean exegesis pertains to the domain of interhuman relations. Here I will focus particularly on those “truths” his exegesis discloses about the spousal relationship. Secondly, Nahmanides' view of the spousal relationship is offered as paradigmatic of his kabbalistic theology, which not only does not displace its concrete social, psychological, anthropological, and juristic realia, but actually complements them. Thirdly, the case will be made that Nahmanides' narrative exegesis, with its overarching quest for the plain sense of the text, is not intended simply to sate his readers' intellectual and literary curiosity but also practically shapes his normative positions. In this particular context I will explore how his exegetical construct of a primordial composite human being, its gendered bifurcation, the definitive ideal of spousal union, the subsequent relational tensions between man and woman, and their conflict and resolution into a gendered hierarchy, all dramatized by the Garden of Eden narrative, inform his normative framework for the conduct of conjugal duties.

The mysticism of the seventeenth-century French cardinal, Pierre de Bérulle (1575–1629), contains an extended treatment of the relationship of the human and the divine in mystical union. Bérulle explores the nature of mystical union in detail and gives attention to the combination of the apparently incompatible elements of the human and divine and the historical and eternal. He prefers not to begin with the opposition between these elements but instead, by exploring the relationship between them, to use relational language, which brings together unity and difference. For this task, he draws on the tools of late medieval mysticism, which entail especially the metaphors of interior poverty, nuptial mutuality, and neoplatonic emanation. At the same time, he applies the categories of Christology to the problem of mystical relationality and difference. Christology deepens the ways in which to assert and to combine unity and difference between the human and the divine in mystical union. For the reader today, this provides an intriguing perspective on the question of mystical relationality.1 I intend here to set out Bérulle's understanding of mystical relationality and to focus on his christological development of questions of unity and difference.

In his first book, Stride Toward Freedom (1958), Martin Luther King, Jr. reflected on the future struggle of African Americans after their successful Montgomery bus boycott. Among the “forces of good,” King saw the indispensable assistance of the federal government, cautioning critics and sympathizers that though government action was “not the whole answer,” it was an “important partial answer.”1 King was addressing one of the most common criticisms of black activism for civil rights. White conservative Protestants, in the South and North, insisted that race relations would worsen because agitation would only stoke the fears and hatreds of whites and that government action on behalf of blacks was only a form of coercion. King rejected this reasoning by noting that “morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated.” He argued that it was true, for example, that laws could never make employers love their black employees, but they could prevent them from refusing to hire blacks because of their skin color. King conceded that society ultimately must depend on “religion and education to alter the errors of the heart and mind,” but he emphatically argued that “it is an immoral act to compel a man to accept injustice until another man's heart is straight.”2 He added that the law was a form of education in that it instructed citizens about what society regarded as right and appropriate. King asserted that in any case the “habits if not the hearts of people have been and are being altered every day by federal action” and that it would be wrong to undervalue the efficacy and force of law in altering human behavior and social patterns.