This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon. 

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There doesn’t appear to be any scriptural support for a reversal of fortune in hell. Once there, Satan, demons, and the unrepentant wicked spend eternity without a chance for redemption. Nevertheless, some in the early church took a different view. 

Clement of Alexandria, for example, thought there was hope for the devil based on God’s limitless mercy. Clement’s pupil, Origen, took it a step further. He argued for apocatastasis, or the idea that all things made by God return to him. He once wrote, “We believe that the goodness of God through Christ will restore his entire creation to one end, even his enemies being conquered and subdued.” 

In Origen’s view, everyone – including Satan, evil spirits, and the most wicked humans – ultimately submit to God’s sovereignty and are saved. Thus, Satan ceases to be evil, and his angelic nature is restored. 

Origen’s view never gained much traction. Jerome and Augustine countered it. And the Council of Constantinople II in A.D. 553 anathematized the idea that the demonic could revert to the angelic in nature. In Against the Darkness, Graham Cole summarizes, “The darkness won’t extinguish the light. The destiny of the darkness is its destruction. Fallen angels will experience the eternal fire. The devil may be the prince of this world. Be that as it may, in the next he has no kingdom.” 

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