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POINT OF FAITH NR. 16 ON THE
NATURE OF HEAVEN
AND HELL ACCORDING
TO THE HOLY FATHERS An excerpt from Archbishop Lazar Puhalo's
Lectures on Eschatology of The
Orthodox Church Given at Westminster
College, Salt Lake City, UT., February, 1995
SYNAXIS PRESS
The Canadian Orthodox
Publishing House 37323
HAWKINS ROAD, DEWDNEY,
B.C., V0M-1H0, Canada.
INTRODUCTION
To
the Point of Faith Version This
volume of the Point of Faith series is an expansion on a lecture given on
several occasions for the former Arena Society. The Arena Society had
been dedicated to countering the mythologies and sectarian notions that have
replaced patristic teaching in the Orthodox Church. The talk was enlarged
for a short series of lectures at Westminster College in Salt Lake City,
Utah, and has been edited for publication. Even before the tragedy of
Ecumenism began infecting Orthodox Christian doctrine, many corruptions antithetical to Patristic
Orthodoxy had clouded the radiant truths of the faith. The plague of
scholasticism which swept into Russia during the "300 year Latin captivity
of Russian theology" was responsible for much of it. The infiltration of
Greece by Augustinianism added much to the catastrophe. In more recent times,
semi-convert priests have brought many sectarian ideas into the Church with
themselves and the neo-Gnostic Seraphim Rose Cult has greatly exacerbated the
problem. However, the basis of the problem has really been the fact that
"popular religion," that blend of peasant superstitions and
Hellenistic mythologies, has been mixed into the Christian revelation. Added to
this, the Platonistic and Gnostic concept of the relationship between body and
soul has infiltrated Christian teaching in general, and Orthodox Christian
"popular belief" so deeply that even many teachers do not know that
it is an error. It is astonishing how many
Orthodox Christians are unaware of the immense difference between the Western
scholastic doctrine of atonement and redemption by satisfaction of
God's justice and the Orthodox Christian revelation of redemption by ransom
and theosis. Indeed, if one began to poll Orthodox teachers and even
priests, it would likely be astonishing how many of them would not have heard
of the "ransom doctrine" of redemption, but believe that the
Latin-Calvinist doctrine of atonement is valid and even Orthodox. Just as astounding is the
fact that so many Orthodox people and clergy are unaware of the teaching of the
holy fathers on the nature of heaven and hell, and of the relationship between
soul and body, and the nature of eschatalogical judgment. We will approach the matter
of ransom and theosis vs. atonement and satisfaction and the
nature of eschatological judgment later, but for now, we wish to clarify the
Orthodox Christian understanding of the nature of heaven and hell, and the
matter of "judgment." The late Dr Alexandre Kalomiros' outstanding
treatise, The River of Fire[1] is also valuable reading to those
who wish to have an Orthodox under- standing, rather than a corrupt sectarian
one. 1 PROLOGUE God is good, without
passions and unchangeable. One who understands that it is sound and true to
affirm that God does not change might very well ask: `how, then, is it possible
to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good, becoming merciful to
those who know Him and, on the other hand, shunning the wicked and being angry
with sinners.' We must reply to this, that God neither rejoices nor grows
angry, because to rejoice and to be angered are passions. Nor is God won over
by gifts from those who know Him, for that would mean that He is moved by
pleasure. It is not possible for the Godhead to have the sensation of pleasure
or displeasure from the condition of humans, God is good, and He bestows only
blessings, and never causes harm, but remains always the same. If we humans,
however, remain good by means of resembling Him, we are united to Him, but if
we become evil by losing our resemblance to God, we are separated from Him. By
living in a holy manner, we unite ourselves to God; by becoming evil, however,
we become at enmity with Him. It is not that He arbitrarily becomes angry with
us, but that our sins prevent God from shining within us, and expose us to the
demons who make us suffer. If through prayer and acts of compassionate love, we
gain freedom from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him change, but rather
that by means of our actions and turning to God, we have been healed of our
wickedness, and returned to the enjoyment of God's goodness. To say that God
turns away from the sinful is like saying that the sun hides itself from the
blind@ (St Antony the Great, Cap. 150). It is one of our tragedies
in the Orthodox Christian world that the sickness of Ecumenism[2] has caused so many of our people, even
among the less educated clergy, to accept a kind of "generic
Christian" understanding of religious and spiritual matters. The dark,
confused understanding of the nature of God common to both the Latin Church and
Protestantism has been accepted as dogma by more and more Orthodox teachers and
faithful. It is this very view of God, however, which bears direct
responsibility for the rise of modern atheism. While sectarians of every stripe
seek to find a scapegoat in so-called "Darwinism," they themselves,
with their perverted teachings about God, about the nature of redemption and
the nature of hell, not to mention the dreary saccharine idea of a heaven of
eternal, mindless "bliss," where everyone gets a set of wings, a harp
and a floating ring around the head,[3] have made atheism inevitable. The tragedy for Orthodoxy is
that, while it possesses the bright, clear revelation of the Holy Spirit, given
to us through the holy fathers and New Testament prophets, our people have
practically abandoned this spring of pure water to drink from the polluted
sloughs of medieval superstitions and Latin/Protestant scholasticism. While it
is true that Ecumenism is the main culprit for the latter illness, the
attachment to medieval and Gnostic superstitions must be laid more directly at
the feet of Orthodox teachers who will not study the holy fathers, but take
their ideas from various catechisms and antiquated text books, from heterodox
philosophers such as Augustine of Hippo, and from supposed lives of saints by
unknown authors, of more than dubious content. When such teachers hear the
clear, pure words of the holy fathers and the actual doctrine of the Orthodox
Christian Church, they are often enraged by it and denounce it. They are much
more attached to their translated school books than to the holy fathers and the
revelation of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and cannot accept the truth. For
so long they have followed the hopeless, deadend path of a "faith"
manipulated by fear, which borders on the pagan, that the living, vital faith
based in the co-suffering love of God is alien to them. Even the matter of our
individual responsibility for the direction of our lives is twisted in such a
manner that God becomes the guilty one for our suffering both in this life and
the next. God becomes, for these scholastic teachers, a dreadful oppressor,
unworthy of our love but demanding our fear; a tyrant who must be feared even
while we offer Hindu-like incantations about love in the hopes of appeasing his
ferocity. Such a god cannot actually be adored, and the worship offered to him
cannot be pure, but rather is tainted by the concept that we are somehow
appeasing his passions with our rituals and slogans of worship and such oft
repeated mantras as "praise the Lord," etc. In this volume of the Point
of Faith series, we will look at the actual Orthodox Christian
doctrine about the nature of hell, and touch upon the nature of that heavenly
kingdom which is spoken of as the reward of the faithful. The intent of this
volume is to free Orthodox people from those ideas of hell which make God
Himself immoral, which attribute to Him the serious sins of vengefulness and
malice. We wish to remind our readers that the responsibility for our tragedy
and the recompense for our free choice to follow Christ, ignore Him or renounce
Him, lies with us, not with God. God never punishes us either in this life or
the one to come. The suffering which awaits the wicked is their own creation,
not God's, their own responsibility, not God's. God is not a half-evil,
half-good monstrosity such as many would present Him to be. Moreover, the
Orthodox faith does not depend on ignorance for its survival as does the
"generic Christianity" into which Ecumenism has led so many of our
people. Let us emphasize one
extremely important point here. We must free ourselves from the heathenish
Western ideas of hell. "Hell" [gehenna] is not an instrument of
punishment created by God. That fire which is spoken of at the Last Judgment
represents the love of God, and we are taught by the holy fathers that it is
the radiance of God's love which both warms and radiates and gives joy to the
faithful, and burns and torments the wicked. Those persons who in this life preferred
"darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil," will, in
the next life, after the resurrection, find no such darkness, and will not be
able to hide from that light which they hated in this life. There, bathed in
the everlasting light of God's love, which they rejected but cannot now escape,
their conscience, which is like a never-dying worm, will torment them, and the
passions they loved and heaped upon themselves in this life will be as serpents
round about them. In other words, they will abide forever in the state they
chose for themselves while still in this life. As the renowned Greek theologian
Dr Alexandre Kalomiros observes: This is a theme which... "needs
to be preached with great insistence [for] not only the West but we Orthodox
have departed [from it] in great numbers, causing men to fall to atheism
because they are revolted against a falsified angry God full of vengeance
toward His creatures....We must urgently understand that God is responsible
only for everlasting life and bliss, and that hell (gehenna) is nothing else
but the rejection of this everlasting life and bliss, the everlasting revolt
against the everlasting love of God. We must urgently remember and preach that
it is not a creation of God but a creation [i.e., product] of our revolted
liberty, that God did not create any punishing instrument that is called hell,
that God never takes vengeance on His revolted creatures, that His justice has
nothing to do with the legalistic `justice' of human society which punishes the
wicked in order to defend itself....That our everlasting spiritual death is not
inflicted on us by God, but is a spiritual suicide, everlasting because our
decision to be friends or enemies of God is a completely free and everlasting
decision of the free spiritual beings created by God, a decision which is
respected by God eternally and absolutely."[4] And, indeed, our Saviour
Himself says: "And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I
judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He
that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the
word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day"
(Jn.12:46-48). Accepting the lead of the
holy and God-bearing fathers, we will conclude, therefore, that the particular
judgment consists in nothing else but the assignment of the soul to the state
proper to itself, by the mercy and goodness of Christ our God, and that this
action takes place in and by the conscience of the soul itself, its conscience
being its accuser and judge. The Last Judgment consists in the resurrection of
the body and its reunion with the soul, at which the person awakens in his own
`state,' and then beholds in full the radiance of the countenance of Christ.
Beholding the radiance of the glory and love of God, no one will be able to
hide from it, and the conscience of each person, like an open book, will
judge them. The faithful, recounting thus the deeds and sins from which they
were delivered by repentance and faith, according to the love and mercy of God,
will understand at once and for the first time, how great a salvation they have
availed themselves of and how great is the love of God that He accepted and
blotted out such sins and revolts. The wicked will understand
then how great a salvation they rejected, how great a love and mercy they
scorned in life and, for them, this radiant love and glory of God, from which
they can no longer hide, becomes as a river of fire, pouring forth from the
glory, or throne, of Christ, and it sweeps them away, their conscience
receiving it as coals of fire. The righteous receive one and the same
"fire" as complete spiritual illumination and understanding, and are
filled with unspeakable joy and exaltation by it, for this fire shall be to
them the rays of the Sun of Righteousness which shall heal them of all that
they lack, and they shall go forth and grow in perfection and knowledge unto
all eternity, for: Behold the day cometh that
shall burn like an oven, and the...wicked shall be as stubble, and the day
cometh that shall burn them up, sayeth the Lord of Hosts...but unto you that
reverence[5] My name, the Sun of Righteousness shall
arise with healing in His rays, and you shall go forth and grow
up...(Mal.4:1-2). 2 THE NATURE OF HELL (GEHENNA) Many Orthodox Christians
will be surprised, mostly delighted (although some will be angry) at learning
the actual Orthodox Christian understanding of hell and the nature of hell, but
each will receive it according to the Afulness of thier own hearts.@ Most will be so
used to the pagan mythologies that dominate in peasant or "popular"
religion that they will never even have heard the clear theological and
doctrinal statements of the holy fathers on this subject. The paterikons
have been of little help in this matter either. The paterikons
and all of the "ascetic literature" overstate almost all matters
because they are aimed at monastics in the throes of great moral struggles.
Moreover, whether anyone wishes to acknowledge it or not, monasticism has always
been a safety valve for the Gnostic impulses which are constant in
"spirituality." Monasticism provides such a safety valve so that
those deeply inclined to such Gnostic ideas as "the body is the enemy of
the soul," etc., can struggle for their salvation without corrupting the
theology of the Church, which actually teaches otherwise. Since it is helpful
for hermits and desert monks to contemplate hell in the most graphic and
terrifying of images, one finds such images in much of the monastic literature.
However, these images do not at all accord with the clear and direct teachings
of the great theological fathers of the Church on this subject, and it is to
their words that we now turn for a correct, Orthodox Christian understanding. St Ephraim the Syrian says
of the judgment and gehenna (hell[6]): ...the
gehenna [hell] of the wicked consists in what they see, and it is their
very separation that burns them, and their mind acts as the flame. The
hidden judge which is seated in the discerning mind [i.e., the conscience[7] has
spoken, and has become for them the righteous judge, who beats them without mercy
with torments of contrition...it is this which separates them out, sending each
one to the appropriate place; perhaps it is this which grasps the good with its
just right hand, sending them to that right hand of mercy; and it [the conscience]
again which takes the wicked in its upright left hand, casting them into the
place called `the left'...it is this [the conscience] which silently accuses
and quietly pronounces sentence upon them...this inner intelligence has been
made the judge and the law, for it is the embodiment of the shadow of the law,
and it is the shadow of the Lord of the Law.[8] Our holy and God-bearing
father Isaak of Nineveh says also: I also maintain that those
who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. Nay, what is
so bitter and vehement as the torment of love? I mean those who have become
conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment thereby
than by any fearsome punishment which can be conceived. For the sorrow caused
in the heart by sin against love is more piercing than any torment. It would be
improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of
God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly
confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways: it torments
sinners, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it
becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. According to my
understanding this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love
inebriates the souls of the sons of heaven by its delectability. Someone
asked, `when shall a man know that he has received this remission of his
sins?' He answered, `When in his soul he shall be conscious that he has
completely hated them with his whole heart, and when he shall govern himself
in his external actions in a manner opposed to his former way of life.
Such a man, as having already hated his sin, is confident that he has received
remission of his sins by reason of the (good) witness of his conscience
which he has acquired, after the saying of the Apostle, `A conscience uncondemned
is a witness of itself'... [cp. Rm.2:15][9] And our holy father Basil
the Great likewise says: I
believe that the fire prepared in punishment of the devil and his angels
is divided by the voice of the Lord. Thus, since there are two capacities
in fire, one of burning and the other of illuminating, the fierce and scourging
property of the fire may await those who deserve to burn, while its illuminating
and radiant warmth may be reserved for the enjoyment of those who are rejoicing.[10] Thus "hell" is, as
we shall see more clearly when we follow the words of the holy fathers below,
not at all a "place," but rather a state of being separated from
Christ our God. Moreover, this condition of separation results, not from God's
desire or need to punish us, but rather from our own free choices which God simply
respects for all eternity. We choose to be separated from the source of love
and light, and so we are; but we must then spend all eternity having our choice
respected, because God loves us and respect is a mark of love. The horrible
darkness and alienation that is experienced by those who are separated from God
was chosen for themselves. This is hell: everlasting separation from the
beloved, everlasting separation from love, from light and from life itself: it
is a living death, where we find out the true nature of that worldly happiness
we sought for in our earthly life, and discover that it was really bondage to
the passions that we were seeking, and now we have it, for all eternity,
devouring us like a worm that never ceases to gnaw and never manages to devour. 3 THE NATURE OF HEAVEN
Tere,
too, we are accustomed to falling into error because of the problem of visualizing
that which it is not possible to visualize. In the Bogomil Gnostic myth of Elder
Basil the New, for example, we see one delusion and plani (prelest)
following another as the so obviously Gnostic author of the novel presents
visualizations of practically everything "beyond the grave."[11] Nevertheless,
the holy fathers have given a sound and direct response to such mythologies
and delusions. St Mark of Ephesus, speaking
with the voice of the Holy Church, says: We reply that Heaven is not
a physical place where the angels dwell like as we, but it is a noetic place surpassing
sense perception, if indeed this should be called a place at all; but more
properly, it must be called the "place of God." For John the
Damascene says in his thirteenth Theological Chapter entitled "On The
Place of God": "The place of God is said to be that which [or, he
who] has a greater share in His energy and grace. For this reason the heaven is
His throne, for in it are the angels who do His will;" and again, "A
noetic place is where the noetic and bodiless natures both function noetically
and exist, both are present and active." We say, then, that such a place,
supercelestial and supermundane, noetic and bodiless, contains both the angels
and the saints, and we are accustomed to call it Heaven. 4 NEITHER
"HEAVEN" NOR "HELL" EXIST AT
PRESENT; AND NO ONE IS IN EITHER
"HEAVEN" OR "HELL" YET Despite such delusions and
mythologies as the "aerial toll house" myth and the Gnostic novel
called The Tale of Elder Basil the New, demons cannot "drag a soul
down to hell." How could they when hell does not even exist at present.
Hear the words of our holy and God-bearing father, St Mark of Ephesus as he
testifies to the clear and unequivocal teaching of Orthodox Christianity: In his refutations of the
Roman Catholic delusions, Saint Mark of Ephesus says: But if, as was said, no one
has entered either the Kingdom or Gehenna, how is it that we hear concerning
the rich man and Lazarus that the former was in fire and torment and spoke with
Abraham? The Lord said everything about Lazarus in the manner of a parable,
even as He spoke of the ten virgins and in the rest of the parables. The
parable of Lazarus has not come to pass in actuality, because the sinners
in Gehenna shall not see the righteous who are with Abraham in the Kingdom, nor
will any of them know his neighbour, being in that darkness. Accepting this opinion our
Church thus is minded and preaches, and She is most ready and well prepared to
defend it. Firstly, the Lord in the Gospel according to Matthew describes beforehand
the judgment to come, saying, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit..." __
it is evident that they have not yet inherited __ "the kingdom
prepared for you;" "prepared" He says, not "already
given." But to sinners He says, "Depart ye cursed" __
evidently they have not yet departed __ into everlasting fire
"prepared" not for you but "for the devil and his angels."
Here again He says "prepared," since [that fire] has not yet received
the condemned demons. And how could this be, when the demons even till now and
until that very day roam about everywhere in the air and work their deeds in
those who obey them? This very thing they cry out to the Lord in another place,
as it is recorded in the same Gospel, "Art Thou come hither to torment us
before the time?" So it is clear that they do not endure torment yet,
since the time has not yet come. If, therefore, the wicked demons, the first to
work evil, for whom hell has especially been prepared and stored up, if they
have not yet paid the debt of their fitting condemnation and freely wander
about wherever they wish, what reasoning could persuade us that souls which
amidst sins have departed from hence are straightaway given over to fire and to
those torments which are prepared for others [i.e., the demons]? Nay, but then what need is
there of the judgment, or even of the resurrection of the bodies of these [souls],
and of the Judge's coming [again] to earth and of that fearsome, universal
theatre, if each man has received his due before that day? And how is it that
the Lord in the parable of the virgins says that the virgin souls who went
forth to meet the Bridegroom "slumbered and slept while the Bridegroom
tarried," which means that they died, but that they did not enter the
bridal chamber until the Bridegroom came from Heaven, awakening all the virgins
as it were from sleep, and the one group he led within along with Himself,
while the others He shut out, which thing clearly shall come to pass only on
that day? For He says, "Then shall the Kingdom of the heavens be
likened to ten virgins." And how is it that having travelled into a far
country and delivered unto His servants His goods, He summons all together upon
His return and requires of each one his work, if even before the Master's
return each of the servants has laid bare his work and received his
recompense? But also the divine Apostle
in his second epistle to the Corinthians says, "For we must all appear
before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done
[lit. through] his body, according to that which he hath done, whether it be
good or bad" (2Cor.5:10). Do you see that before [the
time of] that judgment seat and before [the time when] we shall all appear
gathered together, for while we are bereft of our bodies, no one shall receive
according to that which he has done through his body? But also in his second
epistle to Timothy he says that on the one hand the time of his departure is
"at hand," but the crown of righteousness is "laid up," and
therefore is not "at hand," that "which the Lord, the righteous
Judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all them also
that love His appearing" (2Tm.4:6-8). And in the second epistle to the
Thessalonians, "Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense
tribulation to those who trouble you, and to you who are troubled rest with us,
when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels,
taking vengeance on those who know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with the everlasting destruction from
the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power, when He shall come
to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all those who believe
(because our testimony among you was believed) in that day" (2Ths.1:6-10).
And again in the epistle to the Hebrews where he speaks concerning the saints
who have gone before us, "And all these, having obtained a good report
through faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing
for us, that they without us should not be made perfect" (Hb.11:39-40). This we must think
concerning all the faithful and righteous who lived until the Master's coming.
For just as those who have gone before have not been made perfect without the
apostles, so neither are the apostles without the martyrs, nor the martyrs
without those who after them have entered and shall enter into the good
vineyard of the Church. This is indeed taught most lucidly by the parable where
at different times there were different callings for workmen into the vineyard,
but the recompense was given to all at the same time, and those who came first
received nothing more. The great Evangelist, John the Theologian says the same
in Revelations: "And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar
the souls of those who were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony
which they held, and they cried with a loud voice saying, How long, O Lord,
holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on
the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them and it was said
unto them that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow
servants and also their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be
fulfilled" (Rev.6:9-11). From
all these things, therefore, it is evident that neither are the saints
in perfect enjoyment of those good things and of the blessedness to come,
nor have sinners already received condemnation and been sent away to torment.
And, indeed, since they are incomplete and, as it were, cut in half, being
bereft of their bodies[12] which
they wait to receive incorruptible after the resurrection, how could they
attain to those perfect rewards? Hence the Apostle says, "Christ the first
fruits, afterwards those who are Christ's at His coming, then cometh the
end" (1Cor.15:23, 24), then, he
says they shall appear, then they shall be perfected. And the Lord says,
"Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the Kingdom of the
heavens" (cf Mt.13:43). (Ten Arguments Against Purgatory). And again, the saint says: As for now...the righteous
abide in all gladness and rejoicing, already awaiting and only not holding in
their grasp the Kingdom promised to them and those ineffable good things. But
sinners, on the contrary, are in all straitness and inconsolable sorrow, like
criminals awaiting the decision of the judge, and they foresee those torments.
(ibid). Having thus established from
these holy fathers what is the true and divinely revealed nature of heaven, of
hell and of the judgment, let us go yet a little further in examining the state
of the souls after death. 5 THE STATE
OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH AND THE
NATURE OF "JUDGMENT" But do not investigate the
state of the soul after its departure from the body, because it is not for you
or for me to know this. For, if we are unable to know the essence of the soul,
how should we understand its repose (St Andrew of Crete)[i] This
injunction of our holy father Andrew of Crete forewarns us that if we hope
to come to any kind of genuine understanding of the soul or condition of
the soul after the repose of the person, we will not be able to attain our
goal.[ii] We
will discover that only so much has been revealed to us as is necessary to
keep us from error and to instil in us a firm Christian hope and awareness
of God's mercy and the nature of the Church. The fathers have always been
reticent to speak on this subject. When, on account of distortions, falsehoods
and heresies which have arisen, created by speculations, vain curiosities
and demonic delusions, they were compelled to speak, they did so in the spirit
of the dictum of St John of the Ladder: It
is dangerous to be inquisitive about the depth of the divine judgment,
because the inquisitive sail in the ship of conceit. Yet because of the
weakness of many, something should be said.[iii] TWO EXTREMES: THE HERESY
OF SOUL SLEEP AND THE HERESY OF DUALISM The
scope of the patristic explanations is necessarily limited. Even where some
great, spiritual and grace‑filled
saint has had a deeper insight and surer comprehension of the subject, he has
been faced with the limitations of sensual human languages and understandings.
Those things yonder simply cannot be truthfully expressed in human languages.
Since many fall into the error of speculation on these matters, two extremes
of opinion have arisen. The first error is that common to many sectarians,
who teach a heresy called "soul sleep," or "soul slumber." This
error is based partly on a misunderstanding of the symbolic use of the word
"sleep" in Scripture and in certain of the holy fathers. This
teaching holds that at death, the soul is either buried with the body or that
it enters a total comatose state and ceases not only its psychophysical
function, but even its spiritual function and growth. The other extreme,
equally heretical, is Gnostic and Neoplatonist. This error teaches that the
soul is imprisoned in the body, and that it has a "subtle body" of
its own, so it does not need the physical body. According to this heresy, the
soul can function better, have bold new experiences and a complete psychophysical
functioning once "liberated" from the body. The first heresy is
called "soul sleep," the second heresy is called "dualism."
We cannot add anything to the words of the holy fathers on this subject, but
we can deal with these two extreme opinions, these two heresies which have been
created by the vain curiosity of human speculation on matters which the holy
fathers have forbidden us to speculate about.[iv] In
this chapter, we will, with God's help, address these two heretical concepts,
born of theological extremism and human arrogance. 1 The Old Testament
awareness of the continued life of the soul; that the soul lives by grace, and not as naturally immortal In
general, we do not expect to find any particular difference between the spiritual
understandings revealed in the Old Testament, and those of the New Testament,
for one and the same Holy Spirit inspired the Scripture of both Testaments.
Yet, there are differences in some things. For, the Old Testament was but
a shadow and type of the New. The New Testament is a fulfilment of the Old,
and the shadow, therefore, has been replaced by the reality. Moreover, the
advent of Christ and His victory over the world, Satan and death, have not
only brought all the prophecies and promises of the Old Testament to fulfilment,
but have changed many things. In the Old Testament, death still possessed
its power, and the state of the reposed was still one of uncertain expectations __ but
for the faithful, it was not at all devoid of hope. When the holy prophet
King David declares,
"His spirit shall go forth and he shall return to his earth,"[v] he
shows clearly that the soul does not die and enter the grave with the body. The
holy prophet Solomon is more direct, saying plainly that the soul, "shall return
to God Who gave it,"[vi] and
he closes his book with the admonition that the person must be prepared for the
judgment on the last day. The Old Testament faithful
also had a sound awareness of the resurrection of the body, as the holy prophet
Job testifies: If
a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will
I wait, till my transformation...and where is my hope now?...I know that
my Redeemer liveth and that He will stand at the latter day upon the earth:
and...in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself.[vii] It is clear, therefore,
that the Old Testament faithful understood that the soul continued to exist,
in hope, by grace, "in God Who gave it," after death, even as our
holy father St Justin Martyr, the Philosopher says: Now
that the soul lives, no one would deny. But if it lives, it lives not as
being life, but as the partaker of life....Now the soul partakes of life
since God wills it to live. Thus, then, it will not even partake if God
does not will it to live. For to live is not its attribute, as it is God's....[viii] 2 Changes wrought by the
coming of Christ; the soul continues and perceives after death by grace, not
by self-contained physical functions or by means of a "subtle body"[ix] The
more negative sounding aspects of the Old Testament understanding of the
state of the soul after death,[x] then,
are not nearly so negative as they seem at first glance. And it must be said
that there is, in fact, a difference between the state of the soul after
death in Old Testament times, and since the victory of Christ. For if the
light had not appeared and been made known to the living __ to
the "person" __ how much less was
the light seen by those who had reposed. Doubtless, the souls of the Old
Testament faithful reposed in hope, but that hope was not made manifest until
the victory of Christ, when the light appeared in the realm of death, and
brought the Old Testament faithful into the light of His glory, and made them
participants in that victory upon which they had hoped. No longer do the
faithful who are departed repose in darkness or in an uncertain hope. For
Christ our God has broken down the power of death and overturned its kingdom.
The faithful departed of all ages past were baptized in the light of His glory
and given to taste of paradise. Truly, "Abraham rejoiced to see His
day,"[xi] and "those
who dwelt in darkness have seen a great light."[xii] Therefore,
the souls of the faithful are liberated from darkness, and abide now in the realm
of light, perceiving the grace of God which sustains them and gives them the
joy of the certain expectation of paradise to which they are already heirs, and
which they will inherit when they are reunited with their bodies. We have seen already that
a person is a psychophysical being, that neither the soul without the body is
the person, nor is the body apart from the soul. Yet, the soul is man's
"intelligent faculty," the "image of God" in man. And it
continues to be alive when the person has fallen asleep, because God wills it
so. It is alive and, therefore, it perceives. It cannot perceive as the person
perceives, for it no longer has use of bodily or carnal senses. Moreover, as we
constantly pray for the peaceful repose of the soul, we understand that both
its perception and, if it has any sort of functions, then its functioning
also, are in a different realm, on a different plane. This realm is the realm
of grace. Exactly what it perceives, we cannot know, but it perceives,
evidently, according to revelation, by grace, and not according to any carnal
sensations. We know that the souls of the departed are aware of our prayers for
them, and are comforted and increased by them. It perceives things which
cannot be expressed or even guessed at by our fallen human minds. And this is a
true miracle, an event which, because God wills it so, takes place contrary to
the "laws of nature." The soul is not the body,[xiii] and the body is not the soul. When the
two are parted, death results, and all psychophysical activity, thought and
perception cease. Indeed, this is the very meaning of the expression,
encountered in some patristic literature, that the soul is "freed from the
body." The body is not disdained or considered to be a "prison of the
soul" (for, as St Maximos the Confessor says, "Man's body is
deified at the same time as his soul"[xiv]) but it means that after death, the
person can no longer sin (or repent). At death, we are "freed from
sin"[xv][15] as the Apostle says, for the soul is
tempted, or tempts itself, through the sensual faculties, and in partnership
with the body, it sins. In the words of St Justin: In
what instance can the flesh possibly sin by itself, if it have not the
soul going before it and inciting it? For as in the case of a yoke of oxen,
if one or the other is loosed from the yoke, neither of them can plough
alone; so neither can soul or body alone effect anything...[xvi] Thus when the soul of the
reposed departs its body, it is taken by God's angels, in the words of St
Isaak, "immediately and suddenly" to the state of its repose,
and St Ephraim the Syrian says the same, adding that the souls of the righteous
are taken to paradise.[xvii] The
souls of the pious remain in a better place, while those of the unjust
and wicked are in a worse place, waiting for the time of judgment (St Justin
Martyr, the Philosopher).[xviii] The
soul does not experience any sort of adventure, such as purgatories or any
other contrivances of man's imagination, about which the Scripture knows
nothing, for, "Nor
indeed is it possible for the soul, once torn from the body, to wander here anymore...
whence it is evident that our souls after their departure hence are led away
to some place, having no more power of themselves, but awaiting that awesome
day,"
as St John Chrysostom says.[xix] And
the soul is taken away "immediately
and suddenly" to the state of its repose as St Isaak says[xx] and,
in the words of St Gregory the Theologian, When it [the soul of the faithful]
departs hence, [it] at
once enjoys a sense and perception of the blessings which await it.."[xxi] 3 The meaning of the
scriptural and patristic use of the metaphor "to sleep;" the soul perceives by revelation from God, by grace, not as being the self-contained "person" The faithful, dwelling in
the realm of grace, perceiving whatever God grants them to perceive, by grace,
do not receive the fulness of their reward until they are reunited in the
resurrection and again become a whole person. Neither do the wicked receive any
fulness of their reward. The faithful, having acquired grace in this life
already, and receiving "grace for grace,"[xxii] when they depart this life, repose in
peace, their consciences free by grace, their sins having been remitted them
by grace. The unrighteous repose in darkness, being tormented by their own
consciences, their conscience itself testifying to them of their proper destiny
on the day of the resurrection. And this is just what St Aphraat the Persian
says: But blessed shall be the
faithful and the righteous in that Resurrection, in which they expect to be
awakened and to receive the good promises made to them. But as for the wicked
who are not faithful, in the Resurrection, woe to them, because of that which
is laid up for them! It would be better for them according to the faith which they
possess, were they not to arise. For the servant for whom his lord is
preparing stripes and bonds, while he is sleeping desires not to awake, for he
knows that when the dawn shall come and he shall awake, his lord will scourge
and bind him.... In other words, the
unfaithful and unrighteous are aware that they have been placed on "the
left," that the final "death" awaits them on the day of the
resurrection. Thus, they are already suffering in anticipation of what awaits
them, and their conscience is already tormenting them somehow. The same holy
father continues: But the good servant, to
whom his lord had promised gifts, looks expectantly for the time when dawn
shall come and he shall receive gifts from his lord. And even though he is
soundly sleeping, in his dream he sees something like what his lord is about to
give him, whatsoever he has promised him, and he rejoices in his dream, and is
gladdened. As for the wicked, his sleep is not pleasant to him, for he
imagines that, lo, the dawn has come for him, and his heart is broken in his
dream. But the righteous sleep, and their slumber is pleasant to them, and they
have no perception of all that long night, and like one hour is it accounted in
their eyes. Then in the watch of the dawn they awake with joy. But as for the
wicked, their sleep lies heavy upon them, and they are like a man who is laid
low by a great and deep fever, and tosses on his couch hither and thither, and
he is terrified the whole night long, which lengthens itself out and he fears
the dawn when his lord will condemn him. "But our faith
teaches thus, that when men fall asleep, they sleep this slumber without
knowing good from evil. And the righteous receive not their promises nor do the
wicked receive their sentence of punishment, until the Judge come and separate
those whose place is at His right hand from those whose place is at His
left....[xxiii] In this, the saint
instructs us that the faithful already have a perception of what glory awaits
them, though nothing like a full perception, which is why he uses the metaphor
of "sleep" and "dream." This perception itself is already a
partial fulfilment of that reward, something like what the true ascetic
receives a small taste of already in this life. The unrighteous too, the saint
teaches us, have, by the testimony of their consciences, some anticipation of
their destiny, and this is some portion of their reward. This is exactly what
St Mark of Ephesus says, making use of the same metaphors, and directing our
thoughts to the same things: How is it that the Lord in
the parable of the virgins says that the virgin souls who went forth to meet
the Bridegroom `slumbered and slept while the Bridegroom tarried,' which means
that they died, but that they did not enter the bridal chamber until the
Bridegroom came from Heaven, awakening all the virgins as it were from sleep,
and the ones he led along with Himself, while the others He shut out, which
things clearly shall come to pass only on that day? Do you see therefore
that...while we are bereft of our bodies, no one shall receive according to
that which he has done through his body?...From all these things, therefore, it
is evident that neither are the saints in perfect enjoyment of those good
things and of the blessedness to come, nor have sinners already received
condemnation and been sent to torment. And, indeed, since they are incomplete
and, as it were, cut in half, being bereft of their bodies which they wait to
receive incorrupt after the resurrection, how would they attain those rewards."[xxiv] St Gregory the Theologian
says the same, too,[xxv] as does St John Chrysostom.[xxvi] Thus, both the Old and New
Testament, and all the holy prophets and fathers of both the Old and New Israel
are of one mind and agree together in this: that the soul and the body are
together a single organism; that neither is naturally immortal, but hope on God
for the gift of life, resurrection, reunion and immortality; that when the soul
departs the body, it immediately enters the state proper to itself, wherein it
dwells until the resurrection. The state of the souls of
the faithful is no longer the same, however, as it was in the Old Testament,
before the advent of Christ, before God the Word manifested the glory of His
divinity in the realm of death, "taking captivity captive"[xxvii] and obliterating its dark sway over the
souls of the faithful. The faithful repose now in light, in ineffable peace and
joyous expectation. Why, then, do the fathers
of the Church so consistently use the term "sleep" to refer to the
state of the soul after death, and why do we repeatedly pray for the
"peaceful repose" of the souls of the departed? It is important to have
some understanding of the sense in which the fathers use the metaphors
"sleep" and "dream." The problem facing the fathers was how
to express in some terms comprehensible to the human mind a concept so alien to
the ordinary laws of nature and human thought, namely, that with death the
"person" ceases to be, yet a part of that person is alive by grace,
and by grace cognizant of something which is beyond all human comprehension. From the Orthodox point of
view, the scriptural term "sleep" and also the logical term
"dream" are quite satisfactory metaphors because the Orthodox
faithful have the conceptual framework within which the meaning of these
expressions can be properly apprehended. Let us look at the nature of sleep,
even if only in its common, material sense. When one falls asleep, his general
physical functions cease, and he is no longer functioning in an externally
sensual manner (of course, his vital functions continue because he is still in
this life). Although a person's physical, sensual functions have been
suspended, the mind has not ceased to function. It does not function in the
same way, for it does not now have the use of the sensual faculties. The level
at which the mind is now functioning is commonly called "dreaming."
To "dream" simply refers to the level or mode in which the mind
functions when it does not have the full cooperation of the body, when it does
not have the use of the sensual faculties. At death, as we have
already observed, one also ceases to function in a psychophysical manner, and
indeed the soul does not function relative to anything the carnal mind can
conceive. The "intelligent faculty," the soul, the "image of
God" in man continues to be alive because God wills it so, and it
perceives in a different dimension, on a different plane and level; thus, we
see the metaphor of "sleeping" and "dreaming," as the holy
confessor Athenagoras of Athens says, "Some call sleep the brother of
death... because those who are dead and those who sleep are subject to similar
states...."[xxviii] The primary reason for the
use of the term "sleep" to describe the person's state after death is
to teach the resurrection, for a person who is sleeping will awaken and rise
up, and resume his functions once more. Further, the terms
"sleep" and "repose" were used precisely to counteract
certain heretical teachings of Origen, the Gnostics and Platonists, regarding
"subtle bodies" and the "liberation of the soul." To
understand this further, however, let us look at saint Gregory of Nyssa's words
from his commentary on Song of Songs: `I sleep and my heart watcheth' (Song of Songs, 5:2) The notion of sleep is
admirably suited to express the experience of ecstasy...[xxix] From this point of view the spiritual
life is seen as an awakening, a watching, that withdraws the soul from the
illusory dreams of sensual pleasures. Thus, after the banquet the bride, too,
is overcome with sleep. But this is indeed a strange sleep and foreign to
nature's custom. In natural sleep the sleeper is not wide awake, and he who is
wide awake is not sleeping. Sleeping and waking are contraries, and they
succeed and follow one another. But in this case there is a strange and
contradictory fusion of opposites in the same state. For `I sleep,' she says,
`and my heart watches.' "What meaning ought
we to take from these words? Sleep is the image of death. All the body's
sensory perception is suspended: in sleep, sight, hearing, smell, taste and
touch do not perform their functions.... "When all of [the
senses] have been lulled into inactivity by a kind of sleep, the heart's
functioning becomes pure, the reason looks up to heaven, unshaken and unperturbed
by the motion of the senses....Thus, the soul, enjoying alone the contemplation
of being, will not awake for anything that arouses pleasure. After lulling to
sleep every bodily motion, it receives in a divine wakefulness with pure and
naked intuition. May we make ourselves worthy of this vision, achieving by this
sleep the awakening of the soul.[xxx] This is why, without at
all contradicting the other Church Fathers, St John Chrysostom can say: The man who sleeps shall
certainly rise up, and death is nothing else save protracted sleep. Do not say
to me, `He who has died does not hear, does not speak, does not see, does not
feel,' since neither does a man who sleeps. If it is necessary to say something
wondrous, the soul of a sleeping man somehow sleeps, but not so with him who
has died, for [his soul] has awakened.[xxxi] Indeed, it is interesting
to compare the words of the fathers in this respect. At first reading, and when
read separately, they often seem not to be in perfect accord with one another.
Set side by side, however, and read with an eye toward the spirit of the words,
one arrives at quite another conclusion. Look, for instance, at the words of St
Gregory the Theologian, already cited, and the similar words of St Aphraat: But
the good servant, to whom his Lord has promised gifts, looks expectantly
for the time when dawn shall come and he shall receive gifts from his Lord.
And even though he is soundly sleeping, in his dream, he sees something
like what his Lord is about to give him, whatsoever He has promised him,
and he rejoices in his dream and exults and is gladdened.[xxxii] St Gregory the Theologian
says precisely the same thing, though in slightly different words: ...every fair and
God-beloved soul, when...it departs hence, at once enjoys a sense and
perception of the blessing which awaits it...and feels a wondrous pleasure and
exultation.[xxxiii] If we look carefully at
the words of the fathers on this matter, we will find such an accord
throughout. It is beyond the scope of
this work to discuss the doctrine of theosis __ the teaching that,
because of Christ, man can become divine by grace __ but in order
for us to understand the dramatic difference between the state of departed
souls before Christ, and after His victory, we must touch upon it.[xxxiv] Our whole life of prayer,
fasting and struggle is carried out for no other reason than that we might
acquire the Holy Spirit within us and become, through grace, participants in
God. We enter the Heavenly Kingdom not by virtue of good works or our own
"goodness," and certainly not by having become "sinless,"
but in no other way than by having acquired the Holy Spirit and become
participants in divine grace already in this life. The soul of the faithful
goes forth from the body already possessed of the Holy Spirit and of grace. The
faithful are already "gods by grace" when they depart this life.[xxxv] It is therefore inconceivable that they
would not enter "at once," "immediately," as the fathers
say, into the light of God's love, rejoicing and exalting in the realization of
their destiny. 4 "Theosis" and
the experience of the soul after death; that the experience of the soul is in the realm of grace, and not in any physical manner Moreover, as we discussed in our previous book, The Soul,
The Body and Death, (Chapter 6, "Things Done For the Reposed,")
the souls of the righteous not only perceive in the realm of grace, but do not
cease to increase both in peace and spiritual advancement, being increased by
the prayers of the Church on their behalf. Indeed theosis is the blessed
transfiguration and transformation of the whole human person, within whom the
Holy Spirit dwells. This person, so transformed, bears a truly filial
relationship to the Father as an icon of Christ. A consideration of this
process brings a critical question to mind. What is the final telos of theosis? At what point, one asks, can
one say that the process is complete for a given transfigured human
person? Careful contemplation is
necessary to arrive at an appropriate answer to this question. It arises, in
the first place, from the fact that the basis of mankind's existential
experience has been largely limited to the mutability of earthly life,
circumscribed as it is by limitations
of time and space, and the corruptibility of fallen human nature. Through the
gifts of the Holy Spirit and the synergy which such inspiration
engenders, Divine light penetrates into the closed world which we inhabit;
these are little flashes at first, bringing fleeting glimpses of a grandeur
beyond human comprehension. Then, as we begin to live the life revealed to us
in Christ, taking His proffered hand tremblingly in our own, the glimpses are
gradually, perceptibly coalesced, broadening into a continual revelation of
glorious understanding, illuminating all things as the rising sun fills a
darkened world with golden radiance. Little by little, the shadows retreat and
the limitations of the world melt away. The being, filled with Divine
illumination, radiates this illumination into the surrounding world. The
transformation proceeds and grows. Biological death, in the
context of such metamorphosis, becomes not an end but a beginning the arch
of eternal life. Surely, following the General Resurrection, such a person
shall ascend, as did Christ, to the Kingdom. But, is the process then
complete? Entering a timeless existence
unbound by mundane physical and temporal restriction, does the human hypostasis
then remain in a static, immutable condition, frozen as it were into a
celestial stagnation, improved to the limit possible, with no further progress
possible? Such a concept of Heaven
appears forbidding, unchallenging, and even seems to threaten eternal monotony.
Again, such a conclusion concerning the after-life harkens back to the
lingering tendency to contemplate even "eternity" in earthly and
temporal terms. Through the infinite mercy of God, we are rescued from such a
fate! The progression which
began in earthly life, with the beginnings of theosis, proceeds unabated and
continues throughout eternity. St. Nicholas Kavsilas[xxxvi] indicates this clearly in his
magnificent portrayal of the Christian life, "The Life in Christ is
rooted in time, but is preferred in the future." At the "third
birth," that is, the General Resurrection, one can visualize mankind
transformed a joyous multitude, a race renewed, luminous
with divine light. The radiance rises toward the descending Christ, the Sun of
Righteousness, more radiant than a thousand stars, Who will now make a new
Heaven and a new Earth. Intimate
union with the Divine Energies leads to the perfecting of human nature. In
each transmuted person, the Image of God is now fully ablaze with brilliant
splendour. But, in this case, the act of perfecting is not a static reality.
Human persons, in mystical union with the Uncreated Energies, have now become
partakers of Divinity; that is, the finite and temporal progress increasingly
toward the infinite and eternal. A person therefore begins to ascend, rising
from glory to a greater glory, and thence yet a greater glory, and so progresses
endlessly and forever.[xxxvii] As
we ascend the ladder of spiritual enlightenment, we embark upon an upward
movement that is endless, for the infinitude of God has no bounds and the
splendours of God are ineffable. St. Gregory of Nyssa, in his inimitable
manner, makes the point aptly, recognizing only one limit to the process of
perfection that, indeed,
it has no limit! Of course the soul apart
from the body does not receive the fulness of all this, but it is hardly
logical to conceive that all progress ceases at death. It is not a series of
purgatories, aerial toll houses or neoplatonic pscychophysical activities which
the soul experiences after its departure from the body, but a continued
existence within the Church, in which a consistent development in the process
of theosis is certainly possible, in the realm of grace and with the
help of the prayers of the faithful. Thus, the souls of the
faithful perceive and rejoice in this state of "peaceful repose,"
according to the degree in which they have acquired the Holy Spirit and become
participants in grace in this life, as St Anastasios of Sinai says: As for the souls which
have acquired the Holy Spirit and have become as it were one body and organism
with Him, it seems to me that through His illumination they rejoice even after
death, and noetically glorify God the Word and intercede for others, as we
learn from the Scriptures.[xxxviii] Here is a great revelation
concerning the mystery of holiness. For, the saints, having "become as it
were, one body and organism with Him," having been "deified by
grace" and participating in God to the greatest possible degree, have
become, in a manner, higher than the angels. In a wondrous way, they know what
the Holy Spirit knows, for they are filled with the Holy Spirit. No, let us
grow bolder still and say that in some degree, they know what God knows,
because by grace, they have become participants in God. Thus, whatever may be
said of the "place of the saints," the saints are freed from the
human conception of "place." God is everywhere and sees all things,
and the saints, as possessing theosis, as "participants in God" are,
to the greatest degree possible, omniscient and omnipresent, by the miracle of
theosis and the indwelling Holy Spirit and the awesome mystery of divine grace.
Thus, St Mark of Ephesus says of the saints that they are: ...in heaven with the
angels before God Himself, and already as if in the paradise from which Adam
fell...and often visit us in those temples where they are venerated, and hear
those who call on them and pray for them to God, having received from Him this
surpassing gift, and through their relics perform miracles, and take delight in
the vision of God and the illumination sent from Him more perfectly and purely
than before....[xxxix] We have discussed this
subject somewhat more this subject in The Soul, The Body and Death,
in the chapter on the judgment and prayers for the reposed. It is sufficient
now for us to recall that Christ has conquered the dominion of death already,
and that hope which before was known only as a shadow of the future is now a
present reality. Christ has risen, He has filled His Church with the joy and
hope of certainty, and the Church is itself a manifestation of divine love. It
unites the living and the dead together, and this bond of divine love cannot be
severed by any means __ certainly not by that death which Christ
Himself has already conquered. Thus, the faithful, whether living, and still
struggling, or reposed, and enjoying already a noetic awareness of the kingdom
to which they are heirs, continue in a life of mutual love and prayer,
exemplified by the saints. This is a mark of the victory of Christ, a seal of
the "age of grace," a testimony of the grace-bearing life of the Holy
Church and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. ____________________ ENDNOTES: 6 ROOTS OF THE CORRUPTION Then the West fell away
from Orthodox Christianity and created the Latin Church, which we know as the
"Roman Catholic Church," and later Protestantism, these bodies were
cut off from the direct stream of the Holy Spirit. Instead of the revelation
that God had given us, they began to create their own, humanised and
rationalistic version of God. Since all Roman Catholic
and Protestant thought was tied directly to the pagan philosophers Plato and
Aristotle, their concepts of God and of spiritual matters in general, were also
bound by these pagan philosophical sources. While the pagan Greeks were
outstanding at philosophy, Rome had a special genius for law and legalism.
Drawing from the pagan Greeks, Western religious leaders turned theology into a
philosophy, and so deprived it of its vital force as a living experience rather
than a system of human thought. The Holy Scripture, God Himself and every
aspect of the spiritual life, became philosophised, almost exclusively upon the
basis of the pagan Greeks. The Latins added their love for legal forms to this
philosophy, and so developed the legalistic, rationalistic philosophy which
almost completely replaced living theology in Western Europe. Along with other elements
of pagan philosophy, Latins and Protestants borrowed their concept of hell, as
well as of heaven, from the concepts of the pagan world. They applied the
metaphors and similitudes of Greek mythology to these concepts, although the
ideas themselves might have been found in the Vedic writings of India,
Zoroastrianism or the idolatry of Babylon and Egypt. In the thought of the
post-schismatic West, God Himself became "visualizable," and could be
quantified and qualified. It was natural, then, that hell and heaven could
become the "hades" of the ancient Greek hades and could be just as physical and visual as
the pagan hades cult centre at Acheron in Western Greece. Since God had become
"humanized" in Western thought, word games notwithstanding, the
Western Christian god began to behave more and more like a capricious human C much as did
the old Hellenic deities. Since the humans of the era could not imagine someone
powerful enough to demand and obtain vengeance, and punish his enemies without
remorse, they naturally ascribed an infinite vengefulness and desire to punish
to their god, who was, after all, infinitely powerful. In such surroundings, the
teachings of the Orthodox Christian holy fathers were replaced in a
surprisingly short time with pagan mythologies and the writings of such
corrupted philosophers as Augustine of Hippo and others. God became a
passion-filled giant human who pretended to be merciful and forgiving, but
actually harboured an insatiable desire to do something horrible to his poor
created slaves if they irritated or aggravated him. This god established a
death penalty for even minor infractions, not having an understanding and mercy
equal even to pagan Greek legislators. Man's relationship with this deity
became one of fear, and the idea of his love was more an incantation or charm
with which man hoped to turn away his wrath and malice. Such a malevolent deity
could, and in their thought, did, create a violent cauldron of everlasting
physical fire and burning pitch so that he (this deity) could rejoice himself
in watching his creatures suffer indescribable physical pain for all eternity.
It is a small wonder that such concepts resulted in an atheism based not in
disbelief but in hatred of this god. Adding to the confusion,
the idea of the soul was based on Plato's Phaedros and Timaeus
rather than on the writings of the holy fathers. The notion that the soul is
naturally immortal and that it constitutes the "complete person" was
reinforced by Gnosticism, which so heavily influenced the fomation of
Protestantism, and infiltrated the rest of Christianity, Orthodox "popular
belief" not excluded.
[1][1]. Available from St Nectarios Press, 10300
Ashworth Av. N., Seattle, Wa. 98163.
[2][2]. One must distinguish between the sincere
"Ecumenical witness of the faith" and Ecumenism. Ecumenists are
already teaching that every religious path leads to the heavenly kingdom C a kind of henotheistic apokatastasis. They
absorb doctrines and religious concepts from the heretical Christianity that
they join in prayer with, and gradually lose (sometimes intentionally) the
ability to distinguish between Orthodoxy and the heresies around them.
Thousands of Orthodox lay people have been led to accept Protestant doctrines
and teachings in place of Orthodoxy in the mistaken Ecumenistic belief that
"it is all the same."
[3][3]. Because Protestantism is essentially
Gnostic, you will see in art and in cartoons, the departed, whether believers
or not, whether moral or immoral, depicted as angels in full bodily form, with
wings, western style "merit" halos, robes and harps. This is
something radically different from icons of saints who have become glorified in
this life already. They are not depicted as "angels," as if the
resurrection was not going to take place, rather they are shown as complete,
transfigured persons and their bodies are shown transfigured. They appear as
they will in that age to come and reveal to us the promise of the
transfiguration of the whole person, body and soul together. On the other hand,
depicting the departed, regardless of condition, as angels follows the Gnostic
notion that the soul, being "liberated from the body," has its own
complete, identifiable form has taken deep root in all Protestant countries. In
the "popular" religion of these countries, everyone who
departs this life has such a complete body, and becomes an angel.
Naturally, the idea of the general resurrection has grown dim in the face of
such ideas, because it has been rendered not only unnecessary, but even
undesirable. Moreover, such a concept disregards all moral struggle and even an
active faith in Jesus Christ.
[4][4]. Letter reviewing my article on ikons of the
Last Judgment.
[5][5]. "iyare'" in Hebrew,
which can only mean reverence, the type of fear which is reverence. Fear as terror
is aratz, while general fear, such as a phobia, is pakhad
in Hebrew. The use of "iyare'" in this verse already moves
toward the New Testament and the idea that the beginning of salvation is to
"believe on the name of the Lord," more properly, to "have a
reverential belief on the name of the Lord."
[6][6]. Not to be confused with "hades,"
which signifies something quite different.
[7][7]. See, eg. St Cyril of Jerusalem, Cathchetical
Lecture 18:14-15. Compare Rm.2:14-16.
[8][8]. Letter to Publios, para.21-23.
cp. St John Chrysostom, Homily 76 on Matthew, "But He brings
it [the sign of the Son of Man] that their sin may be self-condemned...the
morning shall be that they may bring forth their sentence from within and
condemn themselves."
[9][9]. Homily 84.
[10][10]. Homily on Psalms, 28:6.
[11][11]. The author is billed as AGregory of Thrace.@
The tale of Basil the New was written at a time when Thrace was occupied by
Paulician and Bogomil Gnostics. If there were any Orthodox Christians in the
province at that time, they were few indeed. This author presents us with such
a collection of outrageous spiritual deluson that one must question his sanity.
[12][12]. This is extremely important. The heretical
teaching that the soul alone constitutes the Person is so pervasive, and
knowledge of the holy fathers so scant that even the hierarchs of the Russian
Orthodox Church Outside Russia synodically endorsed the heresy. Nevertheless,
this heresy is refuted by a host of the holy fathers.
[i][1]. Homily on Human
Life and Those Fallen Asleep.
[ii][2]. Despite such
abject prelest as the book Eternal Mysteries Beyond the Grave,
which presents a combination of Latin delusions and pagan folk tales, and
claims that this poisonous mixture constitutes Orthodox Christian doctrine.
[iii][3]. The Ladder of
Divine Ascent, 26:30.
[iv][4]. The errors and
heresies that have arisen on this subject are always due to the pride of some
writer who wishes to exceed the understanding of the holy fathers. The
seriously erroneous treatise on The Soul After Death by Bishop Ignatii
Brianchaninov is a prime example. St Theophan the Recluse condemned this work
in the very strongest of terms, and, I. Matveevski ("Strannik," 1863,
#9) criticising the same work in, pointedly observed "No eschatology or the
work of theology that deals with the end of the world and man, has attempted to
deal with the subject as thoroughly as the author. [Orthodox] Theology never
undertook to solve the questions the author tries to solve, because it regarded
as indecent the attempts of human curiosity to go beyond the limits that are
given to or knowledge of these subjects. Our theology taught about the soul,
Paradise, Hell, and evil spirits only according to the Scriptures and the
teaching of the Church." Like St Theophan the Recluse, Matveevski
correctly criticised Bishop Ignatii Brianchaninov on the following points 1) a
theory that souls and angels are material, 2) about Paradise being sensual, 3)
about Hell being inside the Earth 4). The heretical work of the neo-Gnostic
philosopher Fr Seraphim Rose, also titled The Soul After Death, resulted
from the same lack of cautiousness and the same desire to exceed the boundaries
set by the holy fathers.
[v][5]. Ps.145:4 (and the
hope of the resurrection follows, see vs.5, etc.).
[vi][6]. Eccl.12:7.
[vii][7]. Job 14:14; 17:13;
19:25-26.
[viii][8]. Dialogue With Tryphon, Ch.6. [ix][9]. This is not to say
that the human soul is pure spirit as God is pure spirit. The soul is created
by God, and thus is part of the material world. Certain of the holy fathers,
emphasizing the "wholly otherness of God," have made this point, and
it is important for us to make it also. St Justin and St Irenae of Lyons were
among those who, while refuting the "dualism" between soul and body,
and the idea of a "subtle body" of the soul, also made it clear that
the human soul is a created thing, and thus in the realm of the material
universe. Nevertheless, they, like the other great fathers, asserted the
immateriality of the soul and of angels. This is not a contradiction, but only
a matter of aspects. The soul is not a body and is not independent of its human
body. Nevertheless, the soul is not a spirit in the same manner that God is a
spirit, for God is completely other than what man is. The confusion of those
who offer the erroneous teaching that the soul is or has a "subtle
body" of its own, which gives it operation and psychophysical life
independently of the body, arises from the fact that they have not considered
the aspect of theology being examined by the holy fathers in regard to this
question. The immateriality of the soul is a consistent doctrine of the holy
fathers, but they did not fail to mention the distinction between this nature
and the nature of God as a pure spirit.
[x][10]. Eccl.9:5-6, 10,
for example.
[xi][11]. Jn.8:56.
[xii][12]. Mt.4:16.
[xiii][13]. For a more
complete discussion of this subject, see under the heading, "On Subtle
Bodies," in appendix 2 of this work.
[xiv][14]. Centuries on
Knowledge, 11, 88.
[xv][15]. Rm.6:7.
[xvi][16]. On The
Resurrection, Ch.8.
[xvii][17]. St Isaak the
Syrian, Homily 35; St Ephraim the Syrian, Hymn 8, On Paradise.
See chapter 5 of this work.
[xviii][18]. Dialogue
With Tryphon, Ch.5.
[xix][19]. Homily 27,
on Matthew's Gospel.
[xx][20]. Homily 35.
[xxi][21]. Panegyric
for Caesarios.
[xxii][22]. Jn.1:16.
[xxiii][23]. Select
Demonstrations, 19.
[xxiv][24]. Orations
Against Purgatory. See complete text in Appendix 1.
[xxv][25]. Panegyric
for Caesarios, 7:21.
[xxvi][26]. Homily 27,
on Matthew's Gospel.
[xxviii][28]. The
Resurrection of the Dead, para.16.
[xxix][29]. See Appendix 2, The Soul, The Body and
Death, Synaxis Press, 1995.
[xxx][30]. Commentary
on Song of Songs, 5:2.
[xxxi][31]. Homily on Lazarus and the Rich Man.
[xxxii][32]. Select
Demonstrations, 19.
[xxxiii][33]. Panegyric for Caesarios, ibid.
[xxxiv][34]. Concerning the doctrine of Theosis, see,
e.g., Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, Ch.11, esp. p.236 ff
("Partakers of the Divine Nature.")
[xxxv][35]. We are not saved by having more "good
points" than "bad points," and we certainly do not enter the
Heavenly Kingdom by becoming "sinless" (since then, no one, not even
the saints, would enter). We enter the Heavenly Kingdom in no other way than by
having struggled in this life to acquire the Holy Spirit and become
participants in divine grace. In other words, we enter God's Kingdom by
becoming participants in God. Repentance is a struggle, a part of a process of
transforming one's mind and heart and soul into a fit temple for the Holy
Spirit, of growing in humility and purity toward participating in divine grace.
This is why our passions are not simply "removed" from us, and why
God allows us to fall and repent without simply removing all temptation from
us. It is our struggle against temptations and passions, in order to acquire
the Holy Spirit, which saves us. By this, we become participants in Christ's
righteousness, which He has fulfilled for us.
[xxxvi][36]. The Life in
Christ, 1:1.
[xxxvii][37]. St John of the
Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Epilogue.
[xxxviii][38]. Answer 89. [xxxix][39]. Orations Against Purgatory.
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