A Seer & an Angel Debate the Final Judgment

Q&R: Does 4 Ezra (2 Esdras) Refute Apokatastasis? And so what?

Dear Readers

The following Q&R concerns a debate over ultimate redemption and eternal damnation between Ezra and the angel Uriel, recorded in the Jewish apocryphal work 2 Esdras (aka 4 Ezra). Most scholars believe that section was composed after AD70 (the destruction of Jerusalem). Chapters 1–2 and 15–16 are separate Christian works attached to 4 Ezra later.

The dialogue in question is found in:

2 Esdras 7 and 2 Esdras 8 in the NRSVUE.
4 Ezra is printed as chapters 3–14 of 2 Esdras in this edition.

For the exchange, see 7:102–115, where Ezra asks why the righteous cannot intercede for others after judgment. Then see 7:116–8:3 and 8:20–36, where Ezra’s grief and appeal for mercy continue.

Question

For the past twelve months, since reading 4 Ezra (2 Esdras), I have been unable to reconcile the terrifying content of that book with the larger hope, or, indeed, a loving God at all. It has led me to despair and perhaps even the loss of my faith.

For example:

· “Compassion will end”

· “No-one will be able to pity anyone”

· “The number of the saved will be as a drop is to the whole ocean”

· The idea that the saved will be happier watching the torments of the damned.

[Bradley’s note: this last point is an overstatement. 2 Esdras 7:93 says the righteous see the punishment awaiting the ungodly; in 7:96, they rejoice that they themselves have escaped death. The text does not say they take pleasure in others’ torment].

Such ideas are monstrous to contemplate. The thing that really bothers me is that Ezra seems to argue along the same lines as many Universalists. He appeals to God’s love and mercy, and how it would not be fitting for Adam’s sin to eternally mar creation by leading most people to eternal torment.

But the response Ezra gets from the angel is basically a thorough refutation of all of these arguments, reasserting that most people will be in eternal torment. All he offers Ezra is not to worry about it because he will be saved. That’s particularly disturbing to me as it seems like ‘god’ doesn’t understand why humans would feel empathy for the damned and he fully discounts Ezra’s feelings of horror.

Another thing that terrifies me is the way it presents this life as a sort of test to reveal who is spiritually strong enough—a sort of spiritual ‘survival of the fittest’ that makes a disturbing kind of sense in light of the way this world is laid out (e.g. survival of the fittest, random suffering). It also casts a disturbing light on the parables of the Sower and the cursing of the fig tree. What if the reason for all the suffering in this life is a kind of filter to separate the spiritually weak from the spiritually strong, and discard the weak? Some kind of soul Darwinism? Such a worldview deeply disturbs me but makes a perverse amount of sense.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much written about 4 Ezra (at least in English) due to its dubious canonical status amongst much of the Christian world, but I also don’t see a reason to discount the book, as it is canonical in some churches.

It leaves no possible way to reconcile with any kind of loving god or hopeful eschatology.

Response

Thanks for your intriguing and troubling question! I think your first instinct is right. These chapters of 4 Ezra do present one of the starkest ancient arguments against universal salvation. The angel Uriel says that “the world to come” is intended for the very few, and most will perish. Uriel claims God will rejoice over the saved but “will not grieve over the multitude of those who perish” (4 Ezra 7:47–61; 8:1–3). So, I can’t and won’t pretend the passage secretly teaches ultimate redemption.

But I would respond to your worries with five counterpoints of assurance:

1. Let’s establish which canon governs the discussion

For Roman Catholics, Protestants, and most Orthodox Christians, 4 Ezra does not bear canonical authority in any doctrinal sense.

• The RC Council of Trent’s canonical list excludes it.

• It appears in the Slavonic Bible as an appendix, which is not equivalent to full canonical authority.

• Anglican Bibles traditionally include it as 2 Esdras with the Apocrypha. But article VI of the Anglican “Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion” says such books may be read “for example of life and instruction of manners,” but not used “to establish any doctrine.”

• It is canonical in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo traditions, titled there Ezra Sutu’el.

So, unless one belongs to a tradition that received these chapters into their canon, 4 Ezra should not function as a doctrinal trump card against universal reconciliation.

I would say it this way: 4 Ezra stands as an important witness to one stream of late Second Temple Jewish eschatology—which Jesus himself did not assume—but has no decisive Christian authority.

2. Even canonical texts must be read in canonical context

That said, suppose an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian raises the objection. Our answer cannot simply be, “That book isn’t canonical.” But even canonicity does not mean every statement in every book is the Bible’s final word on a subject.

Scripture contains many real theological tensions:

• I track two opposing narrators in Joshua, one lauding the conquest and the other questioning it, while the author plays out the tension to critique religious violence.

• Proverbs and Job offer very different accounts of suffering.

• Ezra-Nehemiah demands separation from foreign wives, while Ruth celebrates a Moabite woman as David’s ancestor.

• Ecclesiastes and Wisdom (both attributed to Solomon) speak with different accents about death.

• Some psalms are tribalistic and call down destruction, while others (and Jesus later) call for universal inclusion and mercy for our enemies.

• Prophets like Jeremiah say God wants for mercy rather than sacrifice (see esp. chapter 7).

• Paul says death will be abolished and God will become “all in all,” yet other texts seem to describe a final exclusion and destruction of “the wicked.”

These tensions mean Christian theology is not constructed by allowing one passage—universalist or anti-universalist—to silence every other passage. It asks how each text serves the whole arc of redemption in the drama of Scripture, where the interpretive centre and fulfilment in unveiled in Christ.

3. 4 Ezra itself is a dramatic debate, not a flat doctrinal manual

The harsh claims of judgment and damnation occur within an extended dialogue between Ezra and Uriel. Ezra is horrified to hear that nearly the whole human race should perish:

“The world to come will bring delight to few, but torments to many” (7:47).

Ezra protests that the “evil heart” has led “almost all who have been created” away from life (7:48), and he later suggests that if most end up damned, it might have been better had Adam never existed (7:116).

Uriel repeatedly defends the retributive justice of God, but Ezra’s objections are not frivolous or simply rebuked. They express the Jews’ profound struggle with divine justice after Jerusalem’s destruction. How could this happen? Why would this happen? Where is Gods’s mercy?

The hermeneutical question for us is whether the author’s voice and convictions lie with Uriel, with Ezra, or in the unresolved tension between them.

We don’t need to erase Uriel’s exclusivism. It’s better to say,

4 Ezra contains a powerful anti-universalist answer,
but it also preserves Ezra’s mercy-inspired protest against that answer.

Personally, I lean into Ezra’s moral intuition, especially because it is closely aligned with the revelations of Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Paul, and finally Christ. He cannot reconcile the God he knows to the loss of the many—and neither can I.

4. The book is without reference to Christ, who changes the question

Even calling 4 Ezra “Old Testament” is not precise historically, given the probably dating, many decades after Christ. Further, in its central composition, 4 Ezra is Jewish, not Christian. That is, it does not interpret final judgment through Christ’s incarnation, his descent into death, his resurrection, or his cosmic reconciliation.

Certainly Uriel does not bow to the New Testament claims that:

• Christ draws all people to himself (John 12:32);

• every knee bows and every tongue confesses Jesus Christ as Lord (Phil. 2:10–11);

• all things are reconciled through the blood of his cross (Col. 1:19–20);

• as all die in Adam, all will be made alive in Christ (1 Cor. 15:22);

• the final enemy, death, is abolished, so that God may be all in all (1 Cor. 15:26–28).

From a Christian perspective, these samples are more than proof texts to place alongside 4 Ezra. They are a gospel proclamation that in Christ, we have witnessed the sunrise of a new eschatological horizon.

5. Let’s not claim that 4 Ezra supports universal reconciliation

It’s true, 4 Ezra appears to reject universal salvation. Even if we allow Uriel’s condemnation to outweigh Ezra’s compassion, all that shows is that universalism was not the only Jewish eschatological perspective in the first century. But it certainly does not establish eternal conscious torment as Christian dogma.

In most Christian traditions, the book is not canonical; in the traditions that receive it, it must still be interpreted within the whole canon and, above all, it must bow to the revelation of the living God when he came in the flesh.

In other words, this book (and others) may be a genuine witness to Israel’s wrestling with judgment but it does not supply the final Christian answer. The decisive question is not, “Can we find an ancient text that expects most people to perish?” Of course we can.

The decisive question is, “Does that expectation survive unchanged after God’s purpose for humanity is unveiled and accomplished in the crucified and risen Christ?”

Summary

So to compress my counterarguments for Christian hope into a statement:

4 Ezra is important evidence that some late Second Temple Jews expected only a few to be saved. It is not, however, canonical for most Christians, and even where it is canonical, one voice within a dialogical apocalypse cannot override the Christian canon’s climactic revelation in Christ.

Most importantly, Ezra himself protests the loss of the many. Christian universal hope contends that Ezra’s protest finds its answer not in Uriel’s arithmetic of the saved and lost but in Christ’s victory over sin and death, through whom God purposes to reconcile all things and become all in all.

Does it matter? Are we just nerding out on a book no one reads?

It mattered to this reader, whose discovery of these passages triggered severe anxiety, despair, and a deep faith crisis—probably rooted in the religious trauma that many fundamentalist Christians have experienced. I hope that my response helps that person, but also provides a model for when we stumble into problematic texts, even in our New Testament texts.

For a thorough study on this, please refer to my book, Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell and the New Jerusalem.

P.S. Apocalypse of Peter

Just for fun, check out this surprising summary of Uriel’s appearances in other ancient Jewish and Christian literature, “The Archangel Gabriel: the Untold Truth.”

Here is a paragraph from that article that refers to the apocryphal (but popular) Christian book known as the Apocalypse of Peter:

… the Apostle Peter receives incredibly messed up visions of Heaven and Hell, including babies that shoot eye lasers and monsters made of breast milk. In this work, Uriel is an angel of repentance, whose job is to set punishments upon sinners for their misdeeds in life. He is specifically described as setting idolaters in everlasting fire and placing those who are judged to be unrighteous into a flowing river of flame. And perhaps in the most metal moment of all, Uriel’s job at the Day of Judgment is to smash down the bronze gates of the grave and resurrect the giants killed in Noah’s flood so they can stand trial for their transgressions.

For a more formal source, see the entry on Uriel in the Jewish Encyclopedia.