Texts in Conversation
In the Apocalypse of Peter, children await angel care in a place of delight. In the Prophetical Extracts, Clement expands that care into growth after death, adding knowledge and a better dwelling.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Apocalypse of Peter 1:29
Revelation of Peter
Early Christian
28 Near this flame is a pit, great and very deep, and into it flows from above every kind of torment, foulness, and discharge. Women are swallowed up in it to their necks and tormented with great pain. These are those who have caused their children to be born prematurely, and have corrupted the work of God that created them. Across from them is another place where their children sit alive, and they cry out to God. Flashes of lightning go forth from those children and pierce the eyes of those who, for the sake of sexual immorality, caused their destruction. 29 Other men and women will stand above them, naked; and their children stand across from them in a place of delight, sighing and crying out to God because of their parents, saying: These are the ones who have despised and cursed and transgressed your commandments and delivered us to death. They cursed the angel that formed us, hung us up, and begrudged us the light which you have given to all creatures. The milk of their mothers flowing from their breasts will congeal, and from it will come flesh-devouring beasts, which will come forth and turn and torment them forever with their husbands, because they forsook the commandments of God and slew their children. As for their children, they will be delivered to the angel Temlakos. And those who slew them will be tormented eternally, for God wills it so. 30 Ezrael the angel of wrath will bring men and women, half of their bodies burning, and cast them into a place of darkness — the hell of men. A spirit of wrath will chastise them with every kind of torment, and a worm that does not sleep will devour their entrails. These are the persecutors and betrayers of my righteous ones.
Apocalypse of Peter 2:2
Revelation of Peter
Early Christian
2 From the same source: The providence of God does not fall only on those who are in the flesh. For example, Peter in the Apocalypse says that the children born prematurely, who would have been saved if they had lived — these are delivered to a care-taking angel, that they may share in knowledge and obtain the better dwelling, having suffered what they would have suffered if they had been in the body. But the others, those who would not have been saved had they lived, will only obtain salvation as beings who have been injured and had mercy shown to them, and will continue without torment, receiving that as a reward. But the milk of the mothers, flowing from their breasts and congealing, says Peter in the Apocalypse, will produce small flesh-devouring beasts, and these running upon them devour them: teaching that the torments come about because of the sins.
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Notes and References
“... Another element in the Apocalypse of Peter that is relevant to the formation of the doctrine of apokatastasis is the notion of the possibility of a spiritual growth and improvement even after death. This is especially the case with babies who died and will be reared by angels in the other world (ap. Clement Ecl. proph. 41 and 48). This testifies to a dynamic conception of the otherworldly condition, which returns in Clement, Origen, and Gregory Nyssen. ...”
Ramelli, Ilaria L. E.
The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena
(p. 71) Brill, 2013
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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