Letter 471: Theodore Studite, Letter 471; Greek heading: Γρηγορίῳ τέκνῳ.

What was said, then, in passing in the earlier letter concerning the most holy metropolitan of Chalcedon and our father, will now be set forth more fully. Say to him, in language befitting a father, this: that surely, according to the Apostle's pronouncement [1 Corinthians 3:13-15], the fire will test of what sort each man's work is; if anyone's work which he has built upon remains, he will receive a reward; if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. I inquire, then, whether this "shall be burned up" is a complete annihilation, or not. But if it is admittedly the former, as the Theologian Gregory [Gregory of Nazianzus] also somewhere says, following Paul, then concerning the last fire as well, by which all that is ours is either judged or purified, what is it that troubles the mind of the hearer into thinking that the holy Maximus [Maximus the Confessor] did not speak well in saying that there are three restorations [apokatastaseis; a restoration to an original state] which the Church acknowledges? One, that of each individual according to the principle of virtue, in which a man is restored, having fulfilled the principle of virtue that pertained to him; the second, that of the whole nature in the resurrection, the restoration into incorruption and immortality; and the third, which is the one that he who is among the saints, Gregory of Nyssa, has more especially employed in his own discourses, is this: the restoration of the powers of the soul, which had fallen under sin, back into that for which they were created. For just as the whole nature must, in the resurrection, recover the incorruption of the flesh that is hoped for in time, so too the powers of the soul that have been perverted must be recovered through the extension of the ages; and the soul, having passed through all the ages and finding no place to stand, comes to God, who has no end, and thus, by recognition - not by participation in the good things - recovers its powers and is restored to its original state, so that the Creator is not shown to be the cause of sin. The third restoration, then, is nothing other than this. For concerning the two there is no dispute, or rather it is what has been laid down as doctrine by the Apostle: that the sinful work is burned up and the one who did it is saved, not consumed, yet in such a way that he does not partake of the good things, but recognizes the deprivation of that participation. And it is most fittingly said by the father, "so that the Creator is not shown to be the cause of sin"; for what is from God, namely our nature, as having been brought forth from being itself, is impervious to that fire, whereas what is not from God, that is, sin - which was not produced from God but fashioned by the choice of the one who committed it, as being not anything of the things that are but rather subsisting parasitically - shall pass away, being unranked among the things that are. So then, even though neither Gregory of Nyssa, nor Maximus the father, were to say it, yet the great Apostle has declared that there would be a fiery requital of sin, and the implication is one of restoration, as it was said by the father - not the Origenist kind [the heretical universalism of Origen]; far from it. For there is no communion of light with darkness, nor concord of the saints with heresiarchs [arch-heretics] - against whom, as they appropriate the sacred doctrines of the most divine Gregory for their own malice, stand both the unadulterated [teaching] and the refutation of the thief, but not for the overthrow of the things said above, as it appears to me. But if anything more profound should be discovered by the most holy metropolitan, we shall hear it again; since our most holy patriarch too, having heard the things said by holy Maximus, declared at that time that there was nothing discordant in them.