“A man is a saint not by what he does and achieves, but by his acceptance of failure. A saint is one who conforms to Christ, and what Jesus is about was not shown in his successes, his cures and miracles and brilliant parables and preaching, but in his failure, his defeat on the cross when he died deserted by his followers with all his life’s work in ruins.”
Fr Herbert McCabe, O.P.
“Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?“–Met Kallistos Ware concludes his essay with a qualified and somewhat tentative yes. God’s love for mankind is unconditional and absolute, but human freedom precludes us from affirming anything stronger than a paradoxical hope:
If the strongest argument in favor of universal salvation is the appeal to divine love, and if the strongest argument on the opposite side is the appeal to human freedom, then we are brought back to the dilemma with which we started: how are we to bring into concord the two principles “God is love” and “Human beings are free”? For the time being we cannot do more than hold fast with equal firmness to both principles at once, while admitting that the manner of their ultimate harmonization remains a mystery beyond our present comprehension. … Our belief in human freedom means that we have no right to categorically affirm, “All must be saved.” But our faith in God’s love makes us dare to hope that all will be saved. (Kallistos Ware, The Inner Kingdom, pp. 214-215)
But there are different kinds and degrees of hope, aren’t there? There is the hope that tomorrow will be a bright and sunny day when the weatherman has predicted a 10% chance of rain. We might call this a confident hope. And there is the hope of the Texas Holdem poker player that he will hit his four-outer on the river to fill his full house and make the winning hand, only an 8% chance. We might call this a desperate hope. Our hopes range the gamut of probabilities.
What kind of hope is the hope for universal salvation? As formulated by Ware, clearly it is impossible for us to assign a probability to universal salvation and thus impossible for us to know whether we may confidently hope, moderately hope, or desperately hope; indeed, “hope” may be the wrong word in this situation. “Faith is hope anticipated,” Richard John Neuhaus explains, “and hope is faith disposed toward the future.” I hope that God will raise me from the dead, because I believe that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead and I have faith in him and his promises. But when we address the question of universal salvation, we face a different situation. The ability of God to save all appears to be limited by human free choice. As Paul Evdokimov writes, “God can do all things but force us to love him.” We thus seem to be at an impasse. We may dare to hope that all will be saved; but that hope appears to be a hope beyond hope. Yes, there are many passages in the Scriptures that suggest, or even promise, the universality of salvation; but the circumscription of human freedom remains—and with it looms the terror of our eternal damnation. Ware posits two principles—divine love and human freedom—that seem irreconcilable and tells us that “the manner of their ultimate harmonization remains a mystery beyond our present comprehension.” But perhaps it may be possible to see a bit further into this mystery.
An analysis of human freedom is necessary at this point, but I am not prepared to engage in it. The philosophical literature is extensive and intimidating. Let’s just say that matters are complex and difficult. Philosophers seem to fall into two camps—the compatibilists and the libertarians. But there are also hard determinists and radical incompatibilists, both of whom deny free will. It’s all very confusing.
It is generally believed that the Orthodox Church is committed to a libertarian understanding of free will. God does not determine or coerce human actions: the human agent determines his actions and he always remains free to do otherwise. Let us assume that the libertarian account is true and faithfully represents what Orthodox Christians should believe. Let’s also assume that some version of the free-will model of hell is true. How might we then understand the possibility, and likelihood, of universal salvation?
Five premises:
1) Human beings are created by God to enjoy eternal fellowship with the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit: God is our supernatural end, fulfillment, supreme good, and true happiness.
This, I take it, is what it means to say that humanity is created in the image of God.
2) To turn away from God is to turn away from our supreme good and thus to turn away from true happiness: it is to create our own hell and to doom ourselves to ever-increasing anguish.
God does not damn; we damn ourselves. God simply allows us to experience the terrible consequences of our disbelief and sin.
3) God will not permit us to irrevocably decide against union with him based on either insufficient information or disordered desire.
In the words of philosopher Thomas Talbott: “If I am ignorant of, or deceived about, the true consequences of my choices, then I am in no position to embrace those consequences freely; and similarly, if I suffer from an illusion that conceals from me the true nature of God, or the true import of union with God, then I am again in no position to reject God freely” (The Inescapable Love of God, p. 187). Similarly, if I am enslaved to my destructive desires and passions, then I am not in a position to make a free decision. Just as addicts are incapable of making free and responsible decisions until they have secured liberation from the drugs that enslave them, so those who are in bondage to their passions are incapable, to the degree they are so bound, of free decisions and actions—they could not have done otherwise.
4) God never gives up on any sinner; he never withdraws his offer of forgiveness.
God has not set a time limit on the offer of salvation, nor has he configured the afterlife to render it impossible for sinners to repent and turn to him. God loves every human being with an infinite and absolute love. He truly wills the good and salvation of all (1 Tim 2:4) and welcomes all who come to him in contrition and faith.
5) When a person surrenders to God in death or in the afterlife, his orientation is definitively stabilized and his eternal bliss confirmed.
After death the redeemed no longer have the freedom to reject God, for their freedom has been fulfilled in God. Theologians advance various arguments to explain this truth, but all agree upon it. In heaven, once saved, always saved.
The first premise is, I think, uncontroversial. The second premise expresses the free-will model of hell that has become dominant in Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and mainline Protestantism. The third premise is rarely considered and therefore probably controversial. The fourth is definitely controversial, as it denies a widely held belief in post-patristic Catholicism, most Protestant denominations, and a large segment of Orthodoxy; yet the possibility of post-mortem salvation has been affirmed by some Eastern Christians throughout the history of the Church and is supported by the Orthodox practice of praying for the departed. The final premise is uncontroversial and enjoys ecumenical assent. The above premises can no doubt be formulated in better ways. I welcome suggestions. Remember: I ain’t no philosopher.
Assume, for the moment, that all five premises are true. How confident may we be that God will bring all humanity to salvation? The quick, too quick, answer: we don’t know. Every human possesses free will and is thus free to make the ultimate Luciferian decision: “Evil, be thou my good.” But why would any rational being make such a decision, with full and immediate knowledge that only God is his true good and happiness and that rejection of the divine offer of salvation will bring only an ever-increasing misery? Perhaps a person might delude themselves about this truth for a while, but as the agony and despair intensifies, how long can he hold out until the truth crashes down upon him? How long before his finite resources are exhausted and he hits bottom? How long before absolute reality shatters all illusions? Can we seriously entertain the possibility that this person, any person, might everlastingly persist in his hopeless rebellion? What is the gain? What is the rational motive? Is it even possible for an individual to deliberately choose evil? Herbert McCabe thinks not:
When we sin it is entirely our choice of something instead of God’s friendship. To come to God’s friendship in Christ is to choose a good, the greatest good and the greatest good for us; and the creative and gracious power of God is in us as we freely make this choice. It is both our free work and God’s work. To do good is to choose the highest good; but to fail to do this, to sin, is not to choose evil. Nobody chooses evil, it cannot be done. When we sin what we do is to choose some trivial good at the expense of choosing God’s friendship. Sin is sin not because of the thing we positively choose: the human satisfaction, the pleasure or the power. It is sin because of what we fail to choose, what we sacrifice for the sake of a minor good. Sin is sin because we have opted not to grow up to our flourishing, our happiness which is life in God’s love and friendship. (God Still Matters, p. 185)
Talbott also maintains that the notion that a free rational agent might decisively and definitively reject his supreme good is incoherent: “For no one rational enough to qualify as a free moral agent could possibly prefer an objective horror—the outer darkness, for example—to eternal bliss, nor could any such person both experience the horror of separation from God and continue to regard it as a desirable state” (“Towards a Better Understanding of Universalism,” in Universal Salvation?, p. 5).
But Satan and his demons rejected God, knowing full well the eternal consequences, we reply. But how do we know that to be true? We know nothing about angels and their fall into sin. We have only a few hints from Scripture. I suggest we put angels to the side for the moment (there’s no point invoking the unknown to explain the less known) and focus exclusively on humanity.
Perhaps the libertarian construal of freedom requires the option of choosing alienation from the Creator and the absolute misery it brings. Perhaps, despite the revelation given in the afterlife, a person can still hang on to the delusion that he can bear the ever-increasing torment. Perhaps, for no good reason at all, a person can still choose a destiny that contradicts his intrinsic good and happiness. “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven!” we cry. As irrational and self-destructive as such a decision might be, perhaps we cannot declare it impossible. And let us further stipulate that God will honor the individual’s refusal to convert and will allow that person to endure all the natural consequences of his decision. If this is so, can we still entertain a reasonable and confident hope of universal salvation? Philosopher Eric Reitan believes that we can.
The Reitan Maneuver
In his essay “Human Freedom and the Impossibility of Eternal Damnation,” Reitan analyzes the free-will model of hell. Like Talbott, Reitan is skeptical of the proposal that a rational agent might voluntarily choose a destiny of utter misery. Can we, he asks, imagine someone freely choosing an infernal state of being “knowing that doing so will doom them to eternal alienation from everything of value?” (Universal Salvation?, p. 133). Moreover, can we imagine this person enduring the ever-increasing loneliness, despair, and torment for all eternity, never once wondering whether he has chosen wisely, never once questioning his decision, despite the anguish it has brought him? Perhaps he chose perdition under the illusion that it wouldn’t be so bad, that he could find some measure of happiness independent of God. But this is a false belief. There is no happiness divorced from deifying union with God. Is it really possible, Reitan asks, to cling to a false belief forever when it produces only ever-increasing misery? Is it not more likely that the punishments of hell will eventually shatter all illusions and bring one to that point where one can only desperately cry out, “Jesus, help me”?
The doors of hell are locked only from the inside; but according to the libertarian, the damned inexplicably never turn the key. Reitan states the matter this way:
On the progressive view of DH [the doctrine of hell], the doors of hell are locked from the inside—that is, God never withdraws the offer of salvation. Hence, if any are damned eternally it is because they eternally reject God’s offer. It’s not enough to turn God down once. It must be done forever.
We are assuming that, to have libertarian freedom on the matter of our eternal destiny, we must be able to reject God’s offer of salvation even when we know what we are doing and are not in bondage to sin. But this means that it must be possible for us to make a choice that we have no motive to make, and every motive not to make. To say that this is possible is not to say that it is likely. In fact, it seems clear that, however possible it may be for us to act against all our interests, it is very unlikely at any moment that we would actually do so. But in order for someone to be eternally damned, the person must not only make this unlikely choice once. The person must unwaveringly choose to reject God at every moment for the rest of eternity, even though the person sees absolutely no good reason for doing so, has every reason not to do so, and has absolutely no compelling desire to do so. Is that really possible? (p. 136)
But if we hold to a libertarian understanding of human freedom, then it must indeed be possible for a person to reject God for no good reason whatsoever when he has every compelling reason to surrender to God and experience the absolute good that is his authentic fulfillment. Yet the state of alienation is infinitely inferior to the state of salvation: if the agent goes ahead and chooses it anyway, this must mean either that his decision is grounded on delusion or pathology or that it is purely random and arbitrary.
Reitan advances two responses to this formulation of damnation. First, is libertarian freedom as valuable as it is often claimed?
Libertarian freedom as described does not seem worth having. In fact, as described, I sincerely hope that I lack it. The capacity to eternally act against all of my motives would introduce into my life a potential for profound irrationality that I would rather do without. And if I exercise my libertarian freedom as described above, dooming myself to the outer darkness without reason, I sincerely hope that God would act to stop me—just as I hope a friend would stop me if I decided to leap from a rooftop for no reason. I would not regard the actions of that friend as a violation of any valuable freedom, but would see it as a welcome antidote to arbitrary stupidity. (p. 137)
Yet even if extreme libertarian freedom obtains, Reitan believes that we may still have a guarantee, or at least mathematical certainty, of universal salvation. He proposes this thought experiment:
Imagine a box of pennies, spread out heads-side up. Suppose that the heads-side of each penny is covered with a thin film of superglue, such that if the penny were to flip over in the box it would stick to the bottom and remain heads-side down from thereon out. Imagine that this box is rattled every few seconds. For the sake of argument, let us suppose that there is no chance of the pennies getting stuck to the walls of the box or anything like that. Let us suppose, furthermore, that for any penny that is heads-side up at the same time that the box is rattled, there is exactly a fifty percent chance that after the box is rattled the penny will land heads-side up, and a fifty percent chance that it will land heads-side down. Once a penny lands heads-side down, however, it sticks to the bottom of the box and remains that way, regardless of how much the box is subsequently rattled. Let us imagine, furthermore, that the box is rattled every five seconds indefinitely, stopping only once all the pennies have landed heads-side down and become stuck that way.
In this situation, we would expect that eventually the rattling would stop, because eventually every single penny in the box would become stuck heads-side down. We expect this outcome even though every penny started out heads-side up, and even though at any given time a heads-side-up penny has a fifty percent chance of staying heads-side up. If the rattling continued forever, we would be inclined to say that this outcome is inevitable. (p. 138)
Reitan argues that the question of libertarian freedom and universal salvation is analogous to the box of pennies. If we assume that God never withdraws the offer of his forgiveness, and if we assume that those who have chosen perdition remain free at any point to choose otherwise, then “there must be some possible world in which the person does accept the offer. Thus, the person who has yet to accept the offer of salvation is like the bad penny: While the person has not yet chosen to be saved, at every moment there is some probability that the person will so choose” (p. 140). Recall, the damned have every good reason to change their minds and no good reason not to: the fundamental happiness that they desire for themselves is ultimately identical to the happiness that God wills for them.
Given that the opportunities for repentance are infinite, the probability that any one person will hold out against God approaches zero. This is not to say that the probability ever reaches zero; it is still possible to say that it remains theoretically possible for someone to reject God forever. “But,” counters Reitan, “the possible world in which this occurs is so remote that there seems to be no good reason to think that it is actual” (p. 140). Thus we have what Reitan calls a “mathematical certainty” that all will freely embrace the salvation of God given in Jesus Christ (see God’s Final Victory by John Kronen and Eric Reitan).
I confess that I am reluctant to speak of a guarantee of universal salvation, as Reitan does; but Talbott’s and Reitan’s arguments should encourage us in a confident and robust hope for the salvation of every human being. God does not need to force anyone to repent of his sins and embrace heaven. Precisely because we are created for him, all he needs to do is to allow us to experience the hell that we think we want. Suffering, divine grace, and the prayers of the Church will do the rest.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the effect of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Then as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous. Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom 5:15-21)
As I had always known
he would come, unannounced,
remarkable merely for the absence
of clamour. So truth must appear
to the thinker; so, at a stage
of the experiment, the answer
must quietly emerge. I looked
at him, not with the eye
only, but with the whole
of my being, overflowing with
him as a chalice would
with the sea. Yet was he
no more there than before,
his area occupied
by the unhaloed presences.
You could put your hand
in him without consciousness
of his wounds. The gamblers
at the foot of the unnoticed
cross went on with
their dicing; yet the invisible
garment for which they played
was no longer at stake, but worn
by him in this risen existence.
R. S. Thomas
If the eschatological vision of St Isaac of Ninevah is to be fulfilled, then it must be possible for those who die outside of Christ Jesus to subsequently repent of their sins and turn to God in faith.
I invite you to bracket your skepticism and to entertain, for the moment, this possibility. What is life in the afterlife? The great Russian Orthodox theologian Fr Sergius Bulgakov thought deeply on this question. He was very much aware that he was treading upon holy ground, yet he also believed that the gospel of resurrection enjoined him to share with the Church his vision of the afterlife and its fresh possibilities.
In death the soul and spirit of the human person is separated from the body, but the soul remains united to the spirit, thus making possible continuing immortal existence. “The human spirit,” Bulgakov explains, “exists as the hypostatic potency of the integral man, who has a body whose energy is the soul. In death, this energy is paralyzed but not annihilated. It remains a quality of the personal spirit” (The Bride of the Lamb, p. 356). Life continues beyond the grave. Originally man was intended by God to simultaneously and eternally participate in the corporeal and spiritual realms; but in the fall, he was exiled from the spiritual world and human consciousness became imprisoned in matter. Death has now imposed a dualism upon man’s experience of himself and reality:
Death divides human life into two halves, as it were: psychic-corporeal being and spiritual-psychic being, before death and after death. The two halves are inseparably linked; they both belong to the life of the same individual, to his unique life that would have been free of this rupture if it had remained apart from this pathological dialectic of life and death, from the schism of the dual-unity. But this is no longer the case: To achieve fullness of humanization, a human being must go to the end of himself, not only in mortal life but also in the afterlife state, in order to attain the ripeness that makes him capable of receiving resurrection to eternal life in the fullness of true humanity. Understood this way, as an essentially necessary part of human life, death is actually an act of continuing life, although life that is affected by “dormition.” (pp. 359-360)
“Death is the sickness of sicknesses, the suffering of sufferings,” Bulgakov writes, and yet “the path of death has been followed to the end by Christ and, after Him, by the Mother of God” (p. 353). Man is made in the image of God. He is not made for death. Yet death pursues him. Death captures him. Death kills him.
What then? What becomes of us? What happens to us?
Truth.
Revelation.
Self-awareness.
Judgment.
“In death and after death,” Bulgakov writes, “an individual sees his past early life as a whole, in its synthesis. The latter is, in itself, already a judgment, for it clarifies the general connection, the content and meaning of the life that has passed. Here, there is a clear vision not only of the synthesis but of the truth itself, in the presence of the spiritual world, free of all carnal partiality, in the light of divine justice. This is the self-evidentness of the divine judgment” (p. 360). The judgment of the after-life is self-knowledge and self-verdict, an immanent judgment of conscience. It is not yet a perfect knowledge. That perfect knowledge will only become available to us at the completion of human history and the final judgment. Bulgakov calls it a “preliminary judgment”—”an afterlife consciousness of self and the existential self-determination that comes from this consciousness” (p. 360). We are brought into a true knowledge of God, the world, and ourselves. “In the afterlife,” he explains, “the false light and shadows of our world have disappeared and all things are illuminated by the sun of justice, fixed in the heavenly heights, with its beams penetrating into the depths of souls and hearts” (p. 361). We will see ourselves as we really are.
Bulgakov rejects the medieval schema of hell-purgatory-heaven and affirms the more primitive view of hell (hades) and paradise. But more importantly, he rejects the doctrine of irrevocable damnation and suggests, rather, that hades be understood as a form of purgatory:
One cannot argue against the general idea of a purgatorial state beyond the grave, but is it necessary to schematize it as a third place, alongside paradise and hell? The basic notion here, which is proper to Catholic rigorism and also contaminates Orthodox thought, is that a person is definitively and irrevocably earmarked for one of the two states of the afterlife, paradise or hell, even before the universal judgment. But this assertion does not have a sufficient basis, at least in Orthodoxy, which recognizes the efficacy of the prayer for the deceased, for which no limits are set (this is expressed with particular force in the third prayer of the Pentecost vespers). According to Orthodox doctrine, the state of sinners in the afterlife is that of a temporary purgatory rather than that of an irrevocable hell. (p. 361)
Personal life does not end with death but continues. Self-consciousness and creative self-determination remain proper to the departed human being. Through death the individual is introduced to a new knowledge of God and of the spiritual world: “This new knowledge consists in communion with the spiritual world of incorporeal beings; first of all, with human souls, communion with whom—in them and through them—is extended to the souls of the whole of humankind (for incorporeal souls cannot be confined in isolation cells); as well as with the angelic world and the demonic world. But the supreme spiritual gift acquired in the afterlife state is a new and different knowledge of God, proper to the world of incorporeal spirits. For such spirits, God’s being is as clearly visible as the sun in the sky is for us” (p. 363).
Hence Bulgakov criticizes the popular construals that reduce human existence in the afterlife to unchanging passivity. Such suggestions violate the nature of personal being. As spirit and bearer of the divine image, the human person cannot be frozen or immobilized and remain a living person. He may be deprived of his physical senses and his historical involvement in the world; but he is also granted in the afterlife a dynamic experience of the spiritual realm. In death, says Bulgakov, we are given “new sources and a new knowledge” of life that were inaccessible to us in our mortal existence (p. 362).
Bulgakov thus sees our afterlife experience as essential to our preparation for our life of resurrection:
It is also necessary to recognize that this afterlife of an individual in communion with the spiritual world is not less important for his final state than early life and, in every case, is a necessary part of the path that leads to universal resurrection. Every individual must, in his own way, ripen spiritually to this resurrection and determine himself with finality both in good and in evil. One must therefore conclude that, even though in resurrection an individual remains identical to himself in everything he has acquired in earthly life, nevertheless, in the afterlife, he becomes other than he was even in relation to the state in which he found himself at the moment of death. The afterlife is not only “reward” and “punishment,” and not only a “purgatory,” but also a spiritual school, a new experience of life, which does not remain without consequence but enriches and changes each individual’s spiritual image. We know nothing about the degree or manner of this process. But it is important to establish that, even in the afterlife, human souls experience and acquire something new, each in its own way, in its freedom. (p. 363)
May the sinner repent of his sins in the afterlife? Absolutely, answers Bulgakov. The departed soul does not lose his freedom and creative energy. He has acquired a new kind of existence that involves an expansion and deepening of spiritual knowledge. Repentance in the afterlife must be different from repentance in our earthly life. The departed soul no longer acts in the world as he once did. Hence he no longer has available to him the kind of penitence made possible by historical existence. But still the person may repent and change his orientation toward God:
Of course, here too, the fullness of the life of the living is different from that of the dead, and the measure of their repentance is not the same. Clearly, the repentance of the deceased, as a complex inner process of awakening to spiritual life, differs from what takes place in the living. Earthly life is a foundation for the future life, but it is not the only foundation. Earthly life and the afterlife are connected as different aspects of the one life of one and the same spirit. One usually prefers to conceive the afterlife state of “sinners” (but who is free of sin and therefore does not need to repent?) in the juridical and penitentiary form of a sentence served in an afterlife prison, without possibility of pardon or parole. However, it is completely impossible to allow that the spirit could be in a state so static, so frozen in an unchanging spasm or so immersed in passive contemplation of its past actions and deprived of the capacity for future life. … From all this we conclude that the afterlife state is not death, and not even a stupor of the spirit, but a continuation of the life of the spirit begun on earth. Thus, despite the reduced condition for this life which passes outside the body and despite a certain passivity resulting from this, the afterlife state cannot be considered as given once and for all and unchanging, with the total absence of creative freedom. Rather, it is a continuation of spiritual life, which does not end on the other side of death’s threshold. The afterlife state is a stage of the path leading to resurrection. (pp. 365-366)
Bulgakov acknowledges that the school theologians “consider death to be the limit that represents the end of the time of deeds and the beginning of the time of retribution, so that, after death, one can neither repent nor correct one’s life. Such is the dominant opinion of theologians, which is passed off as the doctrine of the Church” (p. 368). But this passive, retributive understanding of the afterlife violates life, states Bulgakov. Life cannot be bottled up and controlled. It cannot be captured by our scholastic formulae. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the God of the living, not the dead. Hence we need to understand the afterlife as an active, creative, and essential dimension of the ascent of the human being into the divine life of God. The afterlife brings its own kind of asceticism.
The holy Orthodox Church prays for all the departed, in the confident hope that the God who wills the salvation of every human being will complete his work of salvation in the lives of all. The practice presupposes the synergistic cooperation of the departed with these prayers:
One of the dogmatic presuppositions of the doctrine of eternal torments understood as unchangeable and infinite is the assertion that repentance is impossible in the afterlife as well as after the Last Judgment. But this impossibility is clearly contradicted by the efficacy of prayers for the deceased; nor does it have a biblical justification. For the reception of the assistance of prayer presupposes that the souls of the deceased actively receive this prayer in accordance with the general reality of the energy of the spirit, which is characterized by an uninterrupted continuation of life and new self-determinations that rise thence.
It is true that, in the afterlife, human beings lose the capacity for actions of the earthly type, which includes the participation of the soul and the body (opera meritoria, according to the Catholic doctrine) and direct participation in the making of history. But the disincarnation in death does not suppress the activity of the spirit. This is clear from the fact that saints participate with their prayers in the life of the world and in human history, as revelation shows (Rev. 7:9-17; 8:1-4; 14:1-4; 15:1-4; 20:4-6) and the Church believes. This activity of the spirit can also be concentrated upon repentance in the afterlife, which is facilitated by the prayers of the Church without the possibility of being concretely realized in earthly life. Nevertheless, the afterlife is a continuation of earthly life. (p. 500).
God does not cease to will the eternal salvation of departed souls, nor does he cease in the afterlife to pursue the wicked and summon them to himself in mercy and love. God has so ordered reality that the prayers of the Church, in and by the Spirit, gain a powerful salvific efficacy for the inhabitants of hades. “The boundary between paradise and hell,” Bulgakov writes, “is by no means absolute, for it can be overcome by the prayers of the Church” (p. 367). Nor may we entertain the possibility that God does not hear the prayers of the deceased, thus rendering their repentance ineffectual. “To whom is it given,” Bulgakov asks, “to measure the depth of the mercy of God, who ‘have concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all’ (Rom. 11:32)?” (p. 364).
But as long as the departed soul continues in his rebellion and alienation, his torment continues. He carries his earthly life into his afterlife. His sins follow him. “Although the terms retribution and reward are found in Scripture and are even uttered by the Lord Himself,” elaborates Bulgakov, “we must understand them not as an external juridical law (which would be contrary to the spirit of Christ’s gospel) but as an ontological connection, an internal necessity, according to which an individual suffers to the end all that is inappropriate to his vocation but was committed by him in earthly life: ‘he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire’ (1 Cor. 3:15)” (p. 368).
The life of the afterlife is different from earthly life in one other crucial way. The departed no longer fear death, for death is behind them. As an object of hope and fear death is replaced by the final judgment:
The face of earthly life is turned toward death. Death is an object of horror, about which people try to forget; terrible is the hour of death and the “preliminary judgment.” But despite this and above this, death is a joyous hour of initiation or new revelation, of the fulfillment of the “desire to be delivered and to be with Christ,” of communion with the spiritual world. In practical terms, death, as what awaits us on the immediate horizon, blocks for us what is more distant: the resurrection to come, which seems abstract compared with the immediate concreteness of death. But in the afterlife, all this has changed, for the prospect of death and its revelation no longer menaces us: Death has come and its revelation has been accomplished. The place of death is taken by universal resurrection, which naturally becomes an object of fear and trembling for some and of joyous hope for others, while for many, if not for the majority, it becomes an object of fear and hope at the same time. In any case, in contrast to the world on this side, the spiritual sky in the afterlife shines with the hope of resurrection, and the prayer “even so, come” (Rev. 22:20) has an unfathomable power for us there. (pp. 375-376)
Bulgakov’s understanding of the self-determining possibilities for departed souls has been recently reiterated by Met Hilarion Alfeyev:
Is it at all possible that the fate of a person can be changed after his death? Is death that border beyond which some unchangeable static existence comes? Does the development of the human person not stop after death? It is impossible for one to actively repent in hell; it is impossible to rectify the evil deeds one committed by appropriate good works. It may, however, be possible for one to repent through a “change of heart,” a review of one’s values. One of the testimonies to this is the rich man of the Gospel. He realized the gravity of his situation as soon as [he] found himself in hell. Indeed, in his lifetime he was focused on earthly pursuits and forgot God, but once in hell he realized that God was his only hope for salvation. Besides, according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, the fate of a person after death can be changed through the prayer of the church. Thus existence after death has its own dynamics. On the basis of what has been said above, it may be said that after death the development of the human person does not cease, for existence after death is not a transfer from a dynamic into a static being, but rather a continuation on a new level of that road which a person followed in his or her lifetime. (Christ the Conqueror of Hell, pp. 216-217)
“O Christ our God … who, also, on this all-perfect and saving Feast, art graciously pleased to accept propitiatory prayers for those who are imprisoned in Hell, promising unto us who are held in bondage great hope of release from the vileness that doth hinder us and did hinder them; and that thou wilt send down thy consolation. Hear us, thy humble ones, who make our supplications unto thee, and give rest to the souls of thy servants who have fallen asleep, in a place of light, a place of verdure, a place of refreshment whence all sickness, sorrow and sighing have fled away: And speedily establish thou their souls in the mansions of the Just; and graciously vouchsafe unto them peace and pardon; for the dead shall not praise thee, neither shall they who are in Hell make bold to offer unto thee confession. But we who are living will bless thee, and will pray, and offer unto thee propitiatory prayers and sacrifices for their souls” (Third Kneeling Prayer at Pentecost).
Domine Jesu Christe, Rex gloriae, libera animas omnium fidelium defunctorum de poenis inferni et de profundo lacu. Libera eas de ore leonis, ne absorbeat eas tartarus, ne cadant in obscurum.
If the eschatological vision of St Isaac of Ninevah is to be fulfilled, then it must be possible for those who die outside of Christ Jesus to subsequently repent of their sins and turn to God in faith. But how might we think this through? St Isaac proclaims the mystery of the emptying of Gehenna and the unification of creation when God will be all in all, but how can this be possible? So many die without faith in Christ and his mercy. So many die in sin and iniquity. So many die with hearts possessed by hatred, greed, pride, and lust. Surely our present life is the time, the only time, for repentance. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment,” the Scripture tells us (Heb 9:27).
Multiple Church authorities, Eastern and Western, tell us that repentance is impossible after death. There is no penance after death. Our eternal destinies are irrevocably fixed. There is only the waiting for the final judgment and the resurrection of the dead. Some have speculated that once the soul has been separated from the body, it loses its capacity for new self-determinations. If in this life we were on a trajectory toward the light and love of God, so it will be for all eternity; but if we were on a trajectory toward darkness and self-absorption, so it will be …
One of the most terrifying scenes in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia occurs at the end of the The Last Battle. Aslan returns to re-create Narnia. But there is a group of dwarfs who seem to be trapped in their own little world:
“Aslan,” said Lucy through her tears, “could you—will you—do something for these poor Dwarfs?”
“Dearest,” said Aslan, “I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.” He came close to the Dwarfs and gave a low growl: low, but it set all the air shaking. But the Dwarfs said to one another, “Hear that? That’s the gang at the other end of the stable. Trying to frighten us. They do it with a machine of some kind. Don’t take any notice. They won’t take us in again!”
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised the golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of trough that a donkey’s been at! Never thought we’d come to this.”
But soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at least they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding nose, they all said:
“Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
“You see,” said Aslan. “They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”
The omnipotence of Aslan has reached its limit. His roar cannot pierce the self-generated deafness of the dwarfs. They have built a wall around themselves through which not even the divine Other can make his love known.
This is a powerful story in which, I believe, we can all find ourselves. We know the possibility of hell within our souls. We know how easy it is to live in delusion and bitterness and hatred. We know the power of the darkness. And yet … should we allow the story of the dwarfs to be the final word? Do we really have the power to so cordon off ourselves that not even the omnipotent Creator can roar his word and summon us to himself? Is divine Love really so impotent? Is the crucified and risen Christ so easily defeated?
Scripture itself provides the crucial hint that matters might be otherwise:
For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 3:18-21)
After his death the eternal Son in his human soul invades hades and preaches the good news of salvation, not just to the righteous but to impenitent sinners. The Latin Church has traditionally restricted the rescue mission to the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, but not so Orthodoxy (see Hilarion Alfeyev, “Christ the Conqueror of Hell“; also see his book Christ the Conqueror of Hell). After the Lord destroys the gates of hades, he preaches the gospel to all the departed—none are excluded—and extends to all the gift of his victory over death. Thus the Orthodox Church sings:
Our horrible death has been slain by your resurrection from the dead, for you appeared to those in hell, O Christ, and granted them life. (Sun.1. Mat. Can.O.9 [BB])
Hell was emptied and made helpless by the death of one man. (Sun.2. Mat. Can. O.6 [BB])
… who rose from the dead and emptied hell, wealthy before with many people (Sun.4 Mat. Sessional Hymn [EL])
Who now is not amazed, O Master, as they see death destroyed through suffering, corruption taking flight through the Cross, and hell emptied of its wealth through death. (Sun.8 Mat. Can. O.4 [EL-BB])
Going down to those in hell, Christ proclaimed the good tidings, saying: “Be of good courage, now I have conquered! I am the Resurrection; I will bring you up, abolishing the gates of death.” (St.3 GT Fes. StichLC [EC])
At present all is filled with light, heaven and earth and the netherworld.; let every creature celebrate the resurrection of Christ. (Paschal canon, third ode, first troparion)
Those who are held by the bonds of hell, in seeing your bounty, go towards the light, O Christ, on joyous feet, praising the eternal Pascha. (Paschal canon, fifth ode, first troparion)
Death gave up the dead it had swallowed, while hell’s reign, which brought corruption, was destroyed when you rose from the tomb, O Lord. (Sun.3 Mat. Can. O.4 [EL-BB])
Strange is your crucifixion and your descent into Hades, O Lover of mankind; for having despoiled it and gloriously raised with yourself as God those who were prisoners, you opened Paradise and bade it welcome them. (Sat.5 Gt. Ves. StichAp. [EL-BB])
Western Christianity does not grasp the radical significance of the Harrowing of Hell. During 25 years of preaching as an Episcopal priest, I do not think I preached on our Lord’s descent into hades even once. And then several years ago I read Met Hilarion’s book Christ the Conqueror of Hell, and Holy Saturday took on a very different meaning for me. Christ’s entrance into hades was not a one-time event, with no significance for anyone else. The gates of death have been broken, and hades is now filled with the presence of the glorified Son. In the words of St John Chrysostom: “This place of Hades, dark and joyless, had been eternally deprived of light; this is why the gates are called dark and invisible. They were truly dark until the Sun of righteousness descended, illumined it and made Hades Heaven. For where Christ is, there also is Heaven” (Homily on the Cemetary and the Cross; quoted in Alfeyev, p. 64).
Christ preached to the sinners of hades. Death was neither a barrier to their hearing the gospel nor to their repentance. We have no reason to believe that some, perhaps all, of the impious did not respond to our Lord in conversion and faith. How therefore can we dogmatically teach that there is no repentance after death? How therefore do we dare to declare the impotence of omnipotent Love?
If the eschatological vision of St Isaac of Ninevah is to be fulfilled, then it must be possible for those who die outside of Christ Jesus to subsequently repent of their sins and turn to God in faith.
Roman Catholic theology has traditionally held that all who die in mortal sin are eternally condemned and beyond repentance. Thus the Catholic Catechism: “To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell’” (CCC 1033). The irreversibility of the personal orientation of the departed is affirmed in the Latin dogma of the particular judgment. Hence if we knew that a particular person had in fact died in mortal sin—and we cannot know this, apart from special revelation—it would be improper, and futile, for us to pray for the salvation of that person. The Catholic Church prays for those who exist in a purgatorial state, but it does not pray for those in hell (see “Prayers for the Dead“). The eternal destiny of the damned has already been decided; the judgment of God is irreversible. Hence when Catholics entertain the hope of universal salvation, they focus their attention on those few moments immediately before death. In the words of the Irish proverb: Bíonn grásta Dé idir an diallait agus an talamh (“The grace of God is found between the saddle and the ground”). Who knows what prayers the deceased may have offered to God in those final seconds and micro-seconds. Yet for precisely the same reason, universal salvation has been judged doubtful by most Christians. Too many wicked people die without evidencing any remorse or repentance. Surely Judas, Arius, Lenin, Hitler, and Pol Pot must be damned. Indeed, many theologians have opined that the majority of human beings will be lost (see Avery Cardinal Dulles, “The Population of Hell“).
The Orthodox Church, however, has never dogmatized the particular judgment nor the irreversibility of orientation established at death. Some Eastern theologians have doubted the possibility of post-mortem repentance. The great 7th century theologian St John of Damascus insisted that alteration of personal orientation is impossible after death: “For, just as there is no repentance for men after their death, so is there none for the angels after their fall” (On the Orthodox Faith II.5). Greek Orthodox theologian John Karmiris reiterates the Damascene’s view:
Death terminates the moral development of man; any further evolution is rendered impossible, and retribution begins. … After death, men are judged partially in a primary judgment conducted by God. This judgment has as its basis the faith of the individual, his appropriation of the Savior’s redemption, and his moral life as well. The soul, separated from its body, goes immediately, if good, into rest and blessedness; if bad, into affliction and grief in the so-called “middle situation.” In this situation, the soul experiences a foreview, a foretaste, and a foreknowledge of the full and complete retribution it yet awaits; be it enjoyment or damnation, blessedness or misfortune, prepared for them after the Last Judgment, only a relative blessedness or affliction being experienced in this middle situation. This applies as well to the saints and righteous, who “only perceive the blessings which await them,” according to Gregory of Nazianzus.
The souls in the middle situation possess full awareness and self-consciousness, but they remain “unchangeable” (unable to improve their condition), inasmuch as only during this present life, while we have access to grace through repentance, that we can be reconciled to God through Christ. After death, “there is no more opportunity for repentance” [John Damascene]. Thus it is that “this is the time of repentance; that will be the time of judgment” [John Damascene]. (A Synopsis of the Dogmatic Theology of the Orthodox Catholic Church, pp. 113-114)
Speaking for the Orthodox Church of the 15th century, St Mark of Ephesus taught that serious sinners cannot be saved after death, presumably because of their incorrigibility. Lesser sinners, however (i.e., those who died in faith with unconfessed venial sins on their soul or those who who died before demonstrating the fruits of repentance for their confessed sins), can be saved through the prayers of the Church (see Seraphim Rose, The Soul After Death, pp. 196-210). This appears to have been a widespread belief in the patristic Church, both East and West (see Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church). The revered Elder Cleopa Ilie of Romania taught a similar understanding in the late 20th century. On the one hand, the impenitent wicked are damned forever:
Truly, God is forgiving and long-suffering towards those who fall into sin in this life, for the time of our correction is now, in this life, and the acquisition of His forgiveness depends on our own repentance. In the life on the other side of the grave, however, we no longer are able to repent, to change our minds, given that there God does not judge us according to His omnipotence and goodness, but in accord with His impartiality and righteousness, rewarding each according to his deeds. If God were to forgive all the sins of men without justice or fairness, what would be the point of continually alarming us with the terror of the eternal torments if, in fact, they didn’t exist? How is it possible for God to tell us lies instead of the truth? … God offers eternal joy to the righteous, who struggled for a time to carry out good works here on earth, but as a just and righteous God, He also chastises eternally the ungodly that transgressed in this temporal life. Why is it so? Because the wounds incurred from sin that are not healed in this life through the appropriate repentance will remain infected eternally in the presence of God. … It must be clear that he who dies in grave and disastrous sins is separated from God forever and in particular will not be able, in the next life, to be amended. In the life beyond the grave his sins will remain with him eternally and thus the torments will also continue to exist forever. (The Truth of our Faith, pp. 215-217)
On the other hand, prayer for the departed is efficacious for those who have not “sinned unto death”:
It is indeed possible for someone to be redeemed from perdition, but not through the purgatorial fire as the Roman Catholics contend (their offering of expiation presented for the living and the dead notwithstanding). The Lord, as ruler of the heavens, the earth and the infernal regions has the power to remove a soul from Hades, as Scripture testifies: ‘The Lord killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up.’
The power and sacrifice of Christ, which is offered to whosoever seeks it, is unlimited and His goodness so great that only He is able to rescind the eternal anguish of man. We know that God asks that we love our fellow man and looks on this love with joy. We we are truly praying for others, there is nothing greater than love. God hears the prayer of the Church very clearly, especially when the prayers of Christians are united with the suppliant voices of angels in the heavens, and that of the Lady Theotokos. …
Between Hades and Paradise there does exist a great chasm indeed, as our Lord has told us. Yet, this chasm does not have the power to impede the mercy of our great God, Who hears our prayers for the reposed. We do not suppose, as do the Roman Catholics, that there exists a purgatorial fire, but we say that only for those who sinned very severely (or mortally) and did not confess their sin is the passage from Hades to Paradise impossible. For those who sinned more lightly this pathway is not definitely closed, given that in the future judgment each one’s place, either in heaven or in hell, will be decided definitively, inasmuch as after this judgment someone whose orientation was Hades can no longer pass over into Paradise. For those who sinned unto death, our prayers are completely futile: “There is a sin unto death. I do not say that he should pray about it” [1 Jn 5:16]. However, the situation for the other souls, for whom we pray, as it is our duty, is not exactly the same. … We do not pray for those who have committed sins against the Holy Spirit, for such sins will not be forgiven, neither in this life, nor in the one to come. Rather, we pray for those who committed lighter sins for which forgiveness–when we pray–is also possible in the other world, inasmuch as we love them to inherit eternal life. (pp. 127-129)
Although it may appear that the positions of St John Damascene (and Karmires) and St Mark Eugenicus (and Elder Cleopa) conflict, I suspect that the conflict is in appearance only. Damascene of course believed in the efficacy of prayers for the departed (see “The Church’s Prayer for the Dead“). He would probably explain that those who are forgiven through these prayers did not need a conversion of will: they were already oriented toward God, however imperfectly. We will call this the classic Orthodox view.
Readers will immediately note the similarities between the Catholic and Orthodox positions, the key difference being the unfortunate dogmatization by the Catholic Church of the three-part schema—hell, purgatory, heaven. Why do I say unfortunate? Because it definitively excludes the possibility of repentance in the after-life for persons guilty of mortal sin. While some Eastern Christians might agree with this exclusion, the Orthodox Church has never dogmatically imposed it. The Church continues to pray for all the departed:
On this universal and salutary feast, deign to accept petitions for those imprisoned in Hades, thus giving us great hope, and relief to the departed from their grievous distress and Your comfort. Hear us, humble and pitiable, as we pray to You, and give rest to the souls of Your Servants who have departed this life, in a place of light, a place of renewed life, a joyous place, shunned alike by pain and sorrow and sighing. And place their spirits where the Righteous dwell, counting them worthy of peace and repose; for the dead do not praise You, Lord, nor do those in Hades dare to offer You glory, but it is we the living who bless and entreat You and offer You propitiatory prayers and sacrifices for their souls. (Pentecost Kneeling Prayers)
If the Church dares to preach for all the departed, dare we limit what God can do in the hearts of even the most wicked?
“Paradise and hell are the same reality,” declares Fr George Metallinos. This is the central thesis of the now dominant understanding of heaven and hell in contemporary Orthodoxy. “From the moment of His Second Coming, through to all eternity,” Metallinos explains, “all people will be seeing Christ in His uncreated light.” In the end, mankind will be divided into two groups: “those who will behold Christ as paradise (the ‘exceeding good, the radiant’) and those who will be looking upon Christ as hell (‘the all-consuming fire’ of Hebrews 12:29).” Some will see Christ as their salvation and supreme good; others will see Christ as hell and reprobation. Hence it is improper, suggests Metallinos, to speak of heaven either as a reward or hell as a punishment. They are simply “the way that we individually experience the sight of Christ, depending on the condition of our heart.”
In “What is Orthodox Hell?” I raised the question whether this position accurately represents the views of the Church Fathers. It most certainly does not represent the views of the Latin Fathers, but what about the Eastern Fathers? As noted in my article, Irenei Steenberg argues that this construal departs from the patristic witness at four key points:
The biblical and patristic assertions that heaven and hell are places, and different places, must be either ignored or rendered wholly allegorical;
The biblical and patristic assertions that God actively sends the sheep to one side, the goats to the other—and not that they simply end up there by their own measure with God as passive observer—must be either ignored or rendered wholly allegorical;
The biblical and patristic assertions that Gehenna is a place in which sins are actively punished by the demons (i.e. not a place where love is simply experienced as want or separation) must be either ignored or rendered wholly allegorical;
The assertion that God’s love and God’s justice are mutually opposed (which is a false assertion, a deeply un-scriptural assertion) must be maintained, allowing for the exercise of ‘justice’ only if it is identical in form to love. It is quite correct to see God’s justice as His love in nature: i.e. God always acts in the same manner toward creation, which is a manifestation of His loving nature. But the form that this love-in-justice takes in response to sin can be radically different than the form love-in-justice takes in response to righteousness—a view strongly maintained in the Fathers, yet which must be largely abandoned to maintain this view on hell as ‘heaven experienced differently’.
I reference Steenberg’s critique, not because I am in full agreement with him (and I suspect that he would strongly disagree with my own advocacy of the universalism of St Isaac the Syrian), but because I believe it is important for Orthodox theology to be accurate in its reading of Scripture and the Fathers (and indeed in everything). If an Orthodox theologian is going to claim that his view faithfully represents the teachings of the Church Fathers, then it is crucial to demonstrate this accord. Yet as I have read through the articles that advance the popular position on hell, I have been struck by the scarcity of patristic citations, and the ones that are cited often cannot bear the theological weight placed upon them. When I mentioned this to one Orthodox priest, I was told that one must first acquire an Orthodox phronema before one can see the truth of the Orthodox position. Now I am quite sure that I have not yet acquired an Orthodox phronema; but I wouldn’t want to be the person to say that to Archimandrite Irenei, who is both a respected patristics scholar and a traditional Orthodox monk. What happens when two Orthodox phronemas collide?
Thesis: Excepting those who hoped for apocatastasis, the Eastern Fathers teach a qualified retributive understanding of the punishments of hell. I cannot presently demonstrate to you that this statement is true. I think it is, given my own limited research; but I’m happy to be proven wrong. One proof text from St John Chrysostom will suffice for the moment: “For now what takes place is for correction; but then for vengeance” (In Rom. Hom. 3.1). I really do think that the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to argue otherwise, because the theological logic demands that the eternal sufferings of the damned be deserved. If they are not, then God is unjust and is certainly not loving and merciful. St Bonaventure well states the maxim: “God cannot permit any misery to exist in us except as a punishment of sin” (Brev. III.5.3). If the eternal sufferings of the damned are not a divinely-appointed form of retributive punishment, then God is guilty of unjustly inflicting—or at least unjustly permitting, sustaining, and preserving—interminable pain and torment.
Metallinos & Company seem to think that if they can establish that the damned are responsible for their everlasting sufferings because of their spiritual obstinacy and impenitence, then God is off the hook and all is well with the netherworld. But all is not well; all is eternally and most certainly not well.
It really doesn’t matter if one says that God actively punishes the damned for their transgressions or that he passively allows the damned to suffer the consequences of their spiritual condition. God is, after all, God. As Robert W. Jenson notes, “the word ‘God’ marks the point where the metaphysical buck stops.” In his omniscience and foreknowledge, the Creator precisely “knew” that this situation would arise; and not only did he make provision for it, but by his uncreated energies he actively maintains the damned in their torment. If he didn’t, the damned would cease to exist. That is the nettle that must be grasped. All the talk about hell not being a place or hell not being a created reality is simply beside the point (as interesting as these questions are). In the final judgment God ratifies and confirms the eternal condition of spiritual agony. Yes, it is certainly true, in a sense, that “the evils in hell do not have God as their cause, but we cause them” (St Basil of Caesarea, That God is Not the Cause of Evil 3); but this observation hardly begins to adequately address the problem—and it’s hard for me to understand why anyone would think that it does.
The damned suffer, eternally and everlastingly. Their suffering is neither remedial nor educative nor rehabilitative. The damned exist in a condition beyond repentance, beyond alteration or change. Their hearts are irreversibly hardened. They are frozen in their hatred of all things holy. They are constitutionally incapable of responding to the love of their Creator with gratitude and joy. They have lost their freedom to be other than they are. They have no choice but to look at the risen Christ in all of his glory—and suffer. As Metallinos writes:
The damned—those who are hardened at heart, like the Pharisees (Mark 3:5: “in the callousness of their hearts”)—eternally perceive the pyre of hell as their salvation! It is because their condition is not susceptible to any other form of salvation. They too are “finalized”—they reach the end of their road—but only the righteous reach the end as redeemed persons. The others finish in a state of condemnation.
Note the last sentence “The others finish in a state of condemnation.” Condemned by whom? I think we know the answer.
Imagine yourself being tied to the ground. Your head is fixed so that you must always look straight up. Your eyelids are sewn open. As long as the sky is overcast, you are not too terribly uncomfortable. But now imagine the clouds dissipating, and you are exposed to the noonday sun in all of its brilliant brightness. You cannot close or shield your eyes. The light of the sun burns into your consciousness and soul. Under normal circumstances you would quickly go blind, but your eyes are miraculously restored every second. There is no escape, no relief. There is only the burning, consuming, blinding but never blinding rays of the sun. You scream in agony. And this goes on for all eternity.
This, I suggest, is something like the hell proposed by Metallinos. Is this really morally superior to the Latin understanding of the infernal privation of the beatific vision?
Kind-hearted folks may wish to mitigate the suffering of the reprobate. Perhaps, we speculate, they do not really feel pain. Some might even seek refuge in a doctrine of annihilation, which as far as I know has never been seriously promulgated by Eastern writers (though John Zizioulas seems to intimate annihilation when he speaks of the possibility of “metaphysical suicide”)—but surely annihilation is morally preferable to the everlasting torture generated by the vision of the uncreated glory of Christ. Philosopher Jonathan Kvanvig, for example, argues that in irrevocably choosing against communion with God, the damned in fact have chosen a journey into non-being and thus ultimately into annihilation. If the essence of divine love is respecting the choices we have made, would not God grant our request to be relieved of our suffering through extinction? Yet this does not appear to be an Orthodox option. Those who opt for annihilation must find a way to get around the words of Christ: “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 14:41-42).
At this point perhaps someone might be tempted to invoke the famous words of St Isaac the Syrian: “those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love.” Would someone please explain to me what “love” means in this context. Love wills the good of the other. How can inescapable and hopeless anguish be judged as good for anyone? What parent would allow their child, even if he were the most wicked of the wicked, to suffer so? What kind of lover so imposes his presence on his beloved to her unremitting torment and misery? In C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, the damned are at least given the opportunity to escape to the grey town. St Isaac the Syrian would be horrified by the invocation of his words to justify the understanding of hell advanced by Metallinos. When Isaac speaks of the “scourge of love,” he is speaking of a punishment that is reparative and temporary. It is time for Orthodox writers to stop quoting these words if they are unwilling to join Isaac in his universalism.
Love cannot justify the imposition of eternal suffering. Only justice can. If the damned are condemned to look eternally on the glorified Christ and experience only agony, then this can only be justified if they deserve this doom. And this is precisely the position advanced by St John of Damascus:
Now, there are two kinds of abandonment, for there is one by dispensation which is for our instruction and there is another which is absolute rejection. That abandonment is by dispensation and for our instruction which happens for the correction, salvation, and glory of the one who experiences it, or which happens either to give others an object for emulation and imitation, or even for the glory of God. On the other hand, there is absolute abandonment, when God has done everything for a man’s salvation, yet the man of his own accord remains obdurate and uncured, or rather, incorrigible, and is then given over to absolute perdition, like Judas. May God spare and deliver us from this sort of abandonment. …
One should also bear in mind that God antecedently wills all to be saved and to attain to His kingdom. For he did not form us to be chastised, but, because He is good, that we might share in His goodness. Yet, because He is just, He does wish to punish sinners. So, the first is called antecedent will and approval, and it has Him as its cause; the second is called consequent will and permission, and it has ourselves as its cause. This last is twofold: that which is by dispensation and for our instruction and salvation, and that which is abandonment to absolute chastisement, as we have said. These, however, belong to those things which do not depend upon us. As to the things which do depend upon us, the good ones He wills antecedently and approves, whereas the evil, which are essentially bad, He neither wills antecedently nor consequently, but permits them to the free will. (On the Orthodox Faith II.29)
If I am reading him correctly, the Damascene is stating that when God abandons the wicked to eternal torment, he does so not simply out of respect for their free choices but simultaneously to fulfill justice. In the final judgment God rejects incorrigible sinners. He condemns them to absolute perdition. He ceases to will their everlasting salvation. He has done all he can for them–now is the time for retribution and punishment. It’s not that reprobation is an additional punitive measure, a punishment externally imposed upon the sinner, as happens in our criminal justice system. The divine rejection is identical to the divine abandonment. God exacts his just vengeance by refusing to deliver the damned from the spiritual condition they themselves have achieved. Or as St Gregory Palamas writes: “For then it is a time of revelation and punishment, not compassion and mercy; then is a time of revelation of the wrath, the anger, and the just retribution of God. It is a time when ‘the anger of the Lord was kindled against His people, and he stretched out His hand against them and smote them’ (Is. 5,25), as a punishment to the disobedient. Woe to him who falls into the hands of the living God” (quoted in Nikolaos P. Vassiliadis, The Mystery of Death, pp. 509-510).
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