Two Briefly Stated Arguments in Favor of Universal Salvation

I was recently invited to discuss universal salvation for a documentary on the topic, including speakers on both sides of the topic. Against my better judgment I said yes. If you have seen my previous interviews, you know why. I simply do not do well in an impromptu or extemporaneous interview format. I stumble and ramble and meander all over the map. It doesn’t matter how well I prepare, I always end up talking excessively. I checked the thesaurus, and there are some fun words that describe my condition: logorrhea, garrulity, prolixity, loquacity, pleonasm, prattling, maundering, wordage. Perhaps you can think of other words to add to the list.

It’s all very embarrassing. My wife thinks I’m being too hard on myself. Maybe she’s right, but . . . once a neurotic, always a neurotic.

This time I wrote down responses to the expected questions. I knew I could not read my responses or even glance at them during the interview, but I hoped that the sentences would magically flow from the lips. NOT! Different preparation, same result.

But there is a silver lining. I have some material to share with my readers. Without further ado, here is my “impromptu” response to the question: What are the most decisive theological arguments in favor of universal salvation?

Of the many arguments that may be advanced in favor of universal salvation, two, in my judgment, are decisive.

First, God is absolute and unconditional love. We know this by divine revelation. “God is love,” the Apostle John tells us in his first epistle. In saying this, he is summarizing the story of Jesus, culminating in his atoning death on the cross and his triumph over death and evil in his resurrection.

To declare that God is love is to say something both radical and profound about the coinherent communion between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is love not because love is one attribute alongside many other divine attributes. God is love because his very being is constituted by the reciprocal self-giving of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the words of Met Kallistos Ware: “God is an unceasing movement of mutual love.”

And therefore to say that God is love is also to say something crucially important about God’s relationship with us. To love someone is to will their good. It is to commit ourselves to their flourishing and happiness. Yet our love is always imperfect, limited not only by our inherited selfishness and greed but also by our finitude and inadequate resources. I may promise to love and cherish my bride for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health—but the vow is always conditioned by my death. Precisely at that point my self-gifting fails and my beloved will be alone once again.

Yet God’s love for humanity never fails, can never fail. He not only wills our happiness and good, but he wills himself as our Good. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not, of course, need humanity for their happiness and bliss, yet they have nonetheless determined to include each of us within their mutual love. By death and resurrection, the Father has adopted us as sons within his beloved Son and wholeheartedly committed himself to the fulfillment of our happiness and bliss.

Consider Jesus’ three parables in Luke 15: the parable of the good shepherd, the parable of the woman and the lost coin, and the parable of the prodigal son. As my former parishioners wilI confirm, I loved to preach on these parables when I was a full-time pastor. Together they reveal the infinite depths of God’s unconditional love for sinners.

• The good shepherd abandons his flock to find the one lost sheep and does not return to his flock until he finds it.
• The woman turns her house upside down to find her one lost coin.
• The father eagerly awaits the return of his beloved son, day after day, and when he finally does return, he runs down the road to greet and embrace him and throws a great feast in celebration.

God is love and his love never fails. He never ceases to will our eschatological and final good. He never gives up on us and will move heaven and earth to accomplish his good will for us and in us. His love, we might say, is omnipotent. It accomplishes what it promises and never returns to him empty.

If what I have just presented is true—and with all my heart I believe it to be so—then how does this truth inform our thinking about the traditional doctrine—or more accurately, doctrines, because at least two doctrines have been taught in both Eastern and Western Christianity over the past two millennia—of hell and eternal damnation? Every doctrine of hell posits the failure of God’s love to accomplish its good purposes, either in time or beyond time. All Christians believe that God offers forgiveness to all who repent of their sins and embrace his love. But eventually there will come a point of final judgment when God rewards the faithful with heavenly blessedness and condemns the wicked to everlasting perdition. At this point the offer of forgiveness ceases to obtain, either because God has withdrawn the offer or because the wicked have reached a state of irreformable obduracy that even God cannot pierce. In both cases, God ceases to will the eternal happiness of his children; in both, his love has failed.

Yet does this make sense given our confession of God’s absolute and unconditional love? Does it make sense given Jesus’s parables of the good shepherd, the lost coin, and the prodigal son? The good shepherd goes out to search for the one lost sheep, but eventually returns to his flock, his head bowed in resignation and disappointment. The women turns her house upside down to find her treasured lost coin, but never finds it. The father waits for the return of his son, but the son never returns and the father dies from his grief. Does this sound like the gospel we are called to preach? Does this sound like the victory of Pascha? Christ is risen, we triumphantly sing (but under our breaths we whisper, but many are damned).

Universalists refuse to accept this long-accepted ending of the gospel story. Love never abandons the beloved, nor is it impotent before our sin and free will.

The second argument might be considered the flip side of the first. If God is our Good, if he has created us for eternal communion with him in the Trinitarian life of the Father, Son, and Spirit, then this implies that he has also given us an insatiable desire for communion with him. As the theologians like to say, human beings are naturally ordered to God as their final end. We are teleological beings. Our lives are directed to him as the Good, even when he seems most absent to us, even when we are disobeying him or hating him or fleeing from him. This is what it means (at least partly, I believe) to be created in the image of God. St Augustine beautifully expressed our innate desire for the Infinite in his Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” We are restless, thirsty beings who live in the liminal space between nothingness and Life Abundant. It is this thirst for heaven, Fr Alexander Schmemann tells us, that makes us human. It cannot be eradicated by our wickedness and sin; nor can it be sated by anything less than the living God himself. “I am the bread of life,” Jesus declared to his disciples; “he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

The defenders of hell often tell us that the damned are incapable of altering their orientation to God and therefore incapable of repentance after death. Like the dwarfs in C. S. Lewis’s Narnia chronicle The Last Battle, they have made themselves deaf to the roar of Aslan. Yet why think this is true? If it were true, it would not only call into question the divine omnipotence, but it would mean that the damned have somehow succeeded in altering their God-given nature and had become subhuman or some other species altogether. But that is quite impossible.

Repentance after death, therefore, cannot be excluded—at least not for Orthodox Christians. Two days ago we celebrated the paschal harrowing of hades. When Christ descended into hades and preached to the departed, how many repented of their sins? how many were left behind when Christ left? In his book Christ the Conqueror of Hell, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev shares the testimonies of many of the Eastern Fathers that when Christ descended into hades, all the departed embraced him and ascended with him into heaven. In one of his resurrection kontakia, St Romanos the Melodist personifies hades and puts these words into its mouth:

And now, once a master, I became captive, once a ruler, I turned into a slave. . . . I am entirely naked for he has taken from me all my possessions; he commanded, and suddenly all surrounded him as bees to a honeycomb. And then having bound me tightly, he told them to mock me, and to strike my head and to bend my back, and crush my unyielding heart, exclaiming: “The Lord is risen!”

As the story is told, after shattering the gates of hades and summoning the departed to himself, Christ leaves the underworld and ascends into heaven. But I wonder, is this the best way to think of his victory. St. John Chrysostom writes:

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.

And so I ask, did Christ conquer hades and death only to create an everlasting hell?   

“Suddenly, silence and fear prevailed over the whole Creation, for the Lord of Creation came forth from the tomb”

I adore Thy cross, O Christ, God,
And I shall glorify Thy tomb, O Immortal One,
And in celebrating the festival of Thy resurrection, I cry to Thee:
The Lord is risen.

No one, my Savior, knew clearly Thy road
to Hades, except Hades
For he was able from what he saw and what he suffered to learn of Thy power.
So, I wish first to ask him what happened,
And then, after that, I shall ask the guards at Thy tomb who stole Thy body.
For even though I know exactly how Thou wert resurrected,
O Eternal One, since I learned it from Thy friends
Still, even from those who hate Thee I am eager to secure faith in the words of those who cry:
The Lord is risen.

For the one who loves magnifies the one whom he loves, and the one who hates tells the truth even when he does not wish to.
As it is written: Salvation is from our enemies and from those who hate us.

“Tell me, then, first of all, Hades, eternal enemy of my race,
How did you hold in the tomb the One who loved my race?
Who did you consider He was?
In any event, had you considered Him like all men on earth,
O wretch, forever miserable,
You have lost those whom you did possess, and Him whom you said you would hold,
For truly you did not find Him,
The Lord is risen.”

HADES: “Do you desire to learn from me, O man, how my murderer descended against me?
I have been annihilated, and I do not have the strength to bellow against you, for I am still dumbfounded.
O man, as was customary, I was watching Him at the time,
In that very moment, as I was observing, I saw Him move
His mortal remains as He lay there;
And in a short time, leaping up with vigor, He arises, and the hands which I bound
He places around my throat, and all the people I had swallowed
I disgorge as they cry:
The Lord is risen.

HADES: “But why do I mourn for the dead of whom I am despoiled?
I mourn for myself and the way I am mocked.
The one thing was not enough shame for me; but I must be jeered at.
Those who have escaped me call me greedy and a glutton,
And with such words they irritate me, saying,
‘Why do you open up your large gullet?
Why do you thrust in your mouth any old thing in any old way,
O greedy and insatiable one?
Why do you rush for food, causing distress to your stomach?
For lo, having emptied you,
The Lord is risen.’

HADES: “But if they wish an answer, I am able to reply:
Who would not have been led astray
Seeing Him wrapped in the linen shroud and placed in the tomb?
Who would have been so dumb as not to know that He was dead,
When He was anointed with unguent of myrrh and aloe and brought to me?
Again, who would have said that He was not dead when they saw the stone where He was lying?
Who would have imagined such a thing, or who would ever have hoped to hear them say about Him,
The Lord is risen?

HADES: “None of the things they say about me are against me, for He voluntarily came against me;
At first I suffered; and finally I do not know what I suffered.
The sweet flower became for me euphorbia
And all my throat was irritated by the taste, and I disgorged those whom I had held.
No one had imagined or accomplished such a thing against me as He did; I ruled over kings and was in control of prophets and of those who cry out:
The Lord is risen.

HADES: “Lo, I, the master, am in chains, and I am a slave who ruled a short time ago;
I, the terrible, am caught in terror, and I am a laughingstock to all.
I am entirely naked for He has taken from me all my possessions;
He gave a command and suddenly all surrounded Him, as bees, a honeycomb.
And then, having securely bound me, He told them to mock me, and to strike my head,
And to bend my back, and crush my heart and cry,
The Lord is risen.

HADES: “It was night when I endured these things, but by dawn I beheld something else;
As the fiery assembly rushed in to greet and escort Him,
While fears from without and battles within held me,
I did not have the courage to look one way or the other, since all threatened me.
And so, hiding my face between my knees, I cried out, weeping,
‘Thou who hast broken down my gates and crushed the bars, move on, since I cry,
The Lord is risen.'”

But He, smiling at these words, said to those behind Him, “Follow me,”
And to those in front He said: “Precede me, since it is for this that you have come.”
Suddenly, silence and fear prevailed over the whole Creation,
For the Lord of Creation came forth from the tomb.
Before Him were all the prophets repeating what they had foretold and making known to all
That “This is the One who voluntarily came down to earth, and of His will departs from it.
The Lord is risen.”

In a loud voice Sophronias cried to Adam: “He is here
Whom you awaited up to the day of resurrection, as I prophesied to you.”
After him, Nahum announced the good news to the poor, saying,
“From the earth He has arisen, breathing on your face, He who frees from oppression.”
And Zacharias! with joy cries out, “Thou hast come, our God, with Thy saints.”
And David sang a song of good omen, “How like a mighty one, roused out of sleep
The Lord is risen.”

HADES: “While they slapped my face with prophecies, psalms, and hymns,
Women arose and prophesied, dancing in triumph over me;
And the first of them was the sister of Moses,
Leaping and shaking in her hands a drum which she had just brought;
And coming across my domain like another Red Sea, she joyfully beat the drum:
‘Let us praise our God, for He has been gloriously glorified, having demolished Hades,
The Lord is risen.’

HADES: “Ah, of what evils was that one night the mother, and of what horrors was one dawn the father!
The one produced them, the other outstripped them in putting a name to my suffering.
They call the Resurrection the day of my fall;
They make a high festival of the time of my destruction.
Woe is me, woe is me, what I have suffered!”
These things Hades said to me as he answered me; and he did not persuade me by words;
Because he was revealed by facts—after he was shown as naked and destitute,
The Lord is risen.

After this kind of talk for quite a time, when I found the guards of the tomb,
I was moved to hasten to question them, to finish up what I had said before.
Let no one of my friends consider that I am talking foolishly,
Or saying something out of season; I considered it necessary to do what I ought to do.
“Tell me, then, you most unreasonable soldiers, what was it that happened?
Who rolled away the stone and carried off the dead, and said after that,
The Lord is risen?”

But when they heard this, the men who formerly guarded the tomb of the Immortal
Answered, not conversing loudly with me, but explaining in flight:
“What do you see us doing, man, living in peace or fleeing?
From this, then, know that we were absolutely dumbfounded; it is not that we stole,
For not a one of us allowed drowsiness in his eyes, nor terror in his spirit;
But all were awake; all were constantly on guard, and we do not know how
The Lord is risen.”

Now what you say, guards of the tomb is not acceptable to me;
And I am not persuaded that you were entirely ignorant of the resurrection of Christ;
For you do everything in every way with safety in mind;
How could you not know what happened to the one guarded?
Knowing this, then, explain.
“No one is able to report to you accurately what you wish,” the guards said to me.
“No one of these in the tomb, not even the incorporeal one who said in the tomb:
The Lord is risen.

“Whatever we know, this we reveal to you; for if we were to keep silent now,
The stones would cry out and refute our hardness and our blindness;
For we do not know that very hour of the resurrection;
But we know what we have endured since that hour; just hold on and listen.
As we were watching over the tomb and taking care lest something happen, suddenly we perceive
Fiery hands which take away the stone from the tomb, and a voice cries out this:
The Lord is risen.

“By him the stone was rolled away, and all our force was weakened
And nothing was left for us by way of aid, no word, no thought,
For we were all dead men, we who guarded the dead,
And all our wisdom was consumed suddenly as what we beheld was accomplished.
For the shape like fire of the one who rolled the stone was manifest to us,
And on earth he showed spirit, as though angry at those who did not cry,
The Lord is risen.

“What you wish to learn in order that you may marvel is this: he was approachable by the women,
And to us wretched men he was not approachable, that fiery one.
He conversed with them; he threatened death to us.
Them he strengthened; and humbled us with fear, and overtaking us, he buried us.
To the women he was gay; with us he became as one rather haughty.
And he mortified us, but he nerved them to cry: ‘Fear not,
The Lord is risen.’

“When the women stood still, and wisely looked in the vault,
The incorporeal one spoke to them:
‘The One whom you seek is risen.
But if you do not believe and consider me as a phantom,
Follow me and behold the place where the Lord was lying.’
And when they went within, at that time we fled, and said this:
Fiery hands which take away the stone from the tomb, and a voice cries out this:
The Lord is risen.

If the servant has come and has shaken up the earth? what, then, happens now that
The Lord is risen?
“Do not now, man, enlist yourself among those fools,
And believe us when we falsely say that Christ was stolen away and did not arise;
It is gold which persuaded us to conceal the truth,
Gold which turns all the things they wish as they wish, for those who boast of it.
That is exactly why we were bought off, and taking the profit, we filled everyone full
Of the rumor of the theft, for we were paid not to say that in truth
The Lord is risen.”

So Hades first said these things to me, and such are the words the guards
Added besides, as a seal to those words which the insatiable one had babbled.
But I from the two reaped the harvest which I desired,
From the couple of liars I reaped the truth; and for this indeed I rejoiced.
It is what Samson said as a riddle for such times; I now understand:
From Hades who eats, and from the strong army has come forth a sweet pronouncement:
The Lord is risen.

Thou art without beginning and without end,
Creator, and God of truth,
Who hast caused death to Death and hast made man
immortal,
In the last hour, when Thou dost come to resurrect me,
For Thou wilt come, my Savior, not as now from the tomb, but from the firmament:
Then, seeing Thee, I rise up, O Lover of men, for loving Thee, I possess Thee.
Do not then condemn me, I pray, so that I may say,
“Not for my punishment, but to redeem me
The Lord is risen.”

St Romanos the Melodist

“On the third day, the whale disgorged Jonas. Now I disgorge Christ and all of those who are Christ’s”

“By Thy Passion, our Savior, we are set free from passions.”
Adam cried out to Thee, and Hades was overwhelmed
Because of the Resurrection.

As the earth gladly accepts the rain from Heaven,
Just so, Adam who was held captive in Hades, awaited
The Savior of the world, and Giver of life,
And said to Hades: “Why are you conceited?
Wait for me; wait a short time, and you will soon see
Your power destroyed and mine exalted;
Now you hold in bondage me and my race,
After a while you will see that I am freed from you,
For Christ will come for me, and you will tremble;
And He will bring to an end your tyranny
Through the Resurrection.”

“No one has ever possessed such abundance of power of this sort;
For I am king of all,” said Hades to Adam.
“For what other person will control me and rise superior to me?
Who will take my kingdom from me?
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph,
And all the prophets I hold in my power;
And you I first possessed as chief of all of them.
How, then, can you say that someone will come and trample on me?
Would this person, then, be superior to all these others,
So that He will deliver you, as you say,
Through the Resurrection?”

Adam heard Hades boasting in this way,
And at once, the first created of mortals said to him:
“Hear my words, and do not in vain exalt yourself,
For I whom you possess you cannot dominate;
I was thrown out from the joy of Paradise because of you,
Treacherous one, and I was sent down to you a short time ago;
You are my guard; but you do not have the power to destroy me;
For I have a King who will wipe out your power;
I serve under Him
So that He may raise me up to Heaven
Through the Resurrection.”

HADES: “No one is going to come forward to tear up your sentence;
The One whom you call your ally, I rule over as king,
For I shall seize Him as I do all men;
For there is no one anywhere greater than I am.
Do not, then, make a mistake, Adam; why do you struggle in vain?
I hold you in the tomb, and I rule over your race.
The One whom you think you have as protector
You will now see crucified and swallowed down by me.
How, then, can you say that He will free you from me?
I have been given orders to hold your race in my power
Because of the Resurrection.”

ADAM: “Just as He will be made a second Adam, and my Savior because of me,
He would not for my sake beg off from wounds.
He will undergo my punishment for me,
Since he wears flesh, like me.
They will pierce the side of Him whom the Cherubim do not behold,
And water will gush forth and quench my burning heat.
You think that you will hold Him as a man;
You will devour Him as a mortal; but you will disgorge Him as God
After three days; for you will not be able to endure
The torture which He will inflict on you
Through the Resurrection.”

Let us learn, then, my brothers, what the Lord does.
For when He had tasted the vinegar and gall on the cross,
He said: “This is the end of my sufferings,”
And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.
The sun and moon and stars of Heaven
Were not able to endure this gross insult and hid their brilliance.
Little hills and mountains took thought of flight,
And even the veil of the temple was torn in twain;
But the first-created man cried out from the abyss,
‘“O my God, deliver me from Hades
Through the Resurrection.”

But Christ, Life, came to reveal death as sleep;
Hades received Christ like each of the earth-born.
He devoured the heavenly bread like bait,
He was wounded by the hook of divinity.
And Hades, lamenting, cried out:
“I am pierced in the stomach; I do not digest the One whom I devoured;
What I have devoured gave me strange eating!
Not one of those whom I have eaten hitherto has troubled me.
Perhaps He is the One whom Adam had announced to me
Saying, ‘When He comes, He will chastise you
Through the Resurrection.’”

“Now you will recall my words, which I said to you a long time ago,
‘My King is stronger than you.’
But you considered these words a dream.
Experience will teach you His force.
For it is not only I, but all my descendants,
And all men that you will lose; you will be deprived of all.
The Christ whom you saw hanging on the cross,
He will himself enchain you, and joyfully I shall reply:
‘Where, O Death is your victory, and where your power?
God has destroyed your strength
Through the Resurrection.’”

HADES: “Just so, on the third day, the whale disgorged Jonas.
Now I disgorge Christ and all of those who are Christ’s;
Because of the race of Adam I am being chastised.”
Uttering these laments, Hades cried out with groans.
“I did not believe Adam when he told me these things in advance;
But I boasted and loudly proclaimed: “No one rules over me.’
For formerly I was lord of all;
But now I have lost all men, and taunting me, they say:
“Where O Death is your victory, or where is your power?
God has destroyed your strength
Through the Resurrection.’”

ADAM: “In His coming, Christ has humbled your proud strength;
In assuming my whole natural form, He has put you to flight.
I am now bought by His precious blood;
He who knows no corruption has freed me from corruption.
Wherever you may turn, you see on all sides
Tombs which are emptied, and you, shameless one, naked.
Where are your bolts and bars, strong one?
My Jesus has come down and shivered to atoms all your possessions.
Where, O Death is your victory, or where is your power?
God has destroyed your strength
Through the Resurrection.

ADAM: “He has lifted me to the Heavens; you He has put to flight;
For the rest of time I share the throne, I am no longer subject to you.
He took my body that He might make it new;
He will make it immortal and cause it to share His throne.
I shall reign with Him, for I have been resurrected with Him.

No longer are you my master; but I rule over you.
My pledge of surety is now on high,
But you are trampled on below by those who cry,
‘Where, O Death, is your victory, or where your strength?
God has destroyed your strength
Through the Resurrection.’”

St Romanos the Melodist

“Rise up, all, and trample on Hades”

Let those of us united with Christ through baptism
And risen with Him sing praises and cry out:
“Where, O Death, is thy victory, and Hades, where is thy sting?
For the Lord is risen,
The Life and Resurrection.”

As we hear the parable of Christ
which Luke narrates in his Gospels,
Let us not consider it of secondary importance;
but let us examine it in faith.
The woman and the drachma: Who are they,
and what is the nature of the coin she lost?
She sought for it diligently, lighting a lamp and sweeping
Her whole house; and when she had found it,
she called in her neighbors, saying:
“Come, rejoice with me, for I have found what I lost.”
Now we long for Christ, saying,
“Lord, illumine our spirits
So that light is established,
The Life and Resurrection.”

The number of the coins is clear to all, for there were ten—
Ten in all which the Lord who made the universe possessed.
The woman is, they say, the virtue and wisdom of the Creator,
Or she is Christ, the wisdom and power of God.
There are ten coins, prime causes, resources, powers, and thrones,
And dominions, angels, archangels,
Cherubim and Seraphim,
And the first created man whom He destroyed and sought for,
And whom He found when fallen, He—
The Life and Resurrection.

Overcome by love, He came into the world to seek His creature who had wandered.
Without beginning, and Ineffable, Son of God and our God,
Wisely and with divine providence, as a God, He makes the search.
He is made flesh from His mother whom He cleansed (as though swept clean) and sanctified;
And He offers His body as a lamp to the fire and oil
Of His divinity which illumines all.
For fire and clay always make light.
Thus from His divinity and Incarnation, Christ
Shed the light of the Lamp—
The Life and Resurrection.

Then He ascended the cross, as a lamp in a lampstand,
and from there He saw Adam, the first created man sitting in gloom and darkness;
And He who is inseparable from His home, hastens to journey far in the flesh to Adam,
He who was not separated from the bosom of His Father,
still brings to pass all events.
He took with Him the gall and the vinegar,
the nails and the spear
In order that, with the spear and the nails, He might
immediately overcome Death
And Hades, when Hades came in contact with the bitter gall
And vinegar which He has drunk, He,
The Life and Resurrection.

After the crucifixion, when the King first arrived below in Hades
His light shone in the darkness and illumined it below,
For the darkness was not able to check Christ;
He had ample strength in darkness.
For, just as Jonah was in the belly of his tomb,
So He was carried into the tomb and yet in the grave He was alive,
For His divinity was not separated from the flesh.
Thus, Hades on beholding His awesome miracle,
Cried out, “Come, Death, let us behold
What sort of light He has kindled, He,
The Life and Resurrection.

HADES: “Quickly,” he said, “let us take courage,
for this is the body of a man carried in the tomb;
Let us guard with bolts the one who comes,
and let us give him over to putrefaction.”
And immediately as he said this, he ran quickly
and laid hold on the body;
But Jesus Christ, as though arising from sleep,
Enchains him and forcibly puts him down as
He cries out to those in Hades:

CHRIST: “Rise up, all, and trample on Hades.
Adam and Eve come into my presence;
Do not be afraid as though liable for past debts,
For I have delivered all, I,
The Life and Resurrection.

CHRIST: “Shamelessly strike the face of Hades, ye mortals,
and trample on his neck;
Come to them crying: ‘Hades and Death are destroyed.’
For you I have come, for I am the life and resurrection of all
So, all with joy recite psalms and songs:
‘Where is thy victory, O dishonored Hades?
Where, O Death is thy sting?’
You lie powerless, Death, condemned to death,
And you, Hades, skillfully bound down,
You who were ruling have been enslaved as you behold
That He is at hand,
The Life and Resurrection.”

In answer to this, the hated Hades, along with Death,
and bound with him,
Even as he lay there cried out; and as master he gave
order to his men:

HADES: “Run now, since you see that I suffer injustice,
Do you quickly close the bronze gates and guard them.
Put up the iron bars on the gates and permit no one
Of those assembled to come forth from the tomb,
For I wish to contend with the one
Who comes against me. Make fast and secure
Those who cry out: ‘He has come,
The Life and Resurrection.’

HADES: “What kind of injustice am I undergoing,
since until now I have been king of men?
Tell me then, O man, who you are, and how you have come here?
For it is clear that you are a man; I see a human body;
But everyone descended from the race of Adam is my possession.
Why, then, do you, who come from all men overpower me
as though you came on behalf of all men?
For every man is subject to me whether he lived
A long or short time on earth.
How, then, have you become more than human
And a redeemer of men,
The Life and Resurrection?

HADES: “Let me who have been treated unjustly state a case against you, for I see that the son of man
Has accomplished the deeds of God and not of man, though he appears human.

I see the wound in your side and the prints of nails;
But I see your power and the undefiled light flashing forth;
If, then, you are man, you are subject to Death and Hades;
But if, becoming man—a thing to be seen,
You have become God—a thing to be discerned in you,
Then now interpret for me that we may see how, if you appear as man,
You have become
The Life and Resurrection.”

Now when Christ heard him shouting these things,
at once He spoke to him:

CHRIST: “I plead my case and am judged; for I do not wish
to do you wrong in any way.
For even if you are unjust and shameless and worthy of condemnation,
I have indeed become man, as you see; but I am
Faultless, the Word of God, and Creator of all men
and God, the Ruler of all.
But even if I am God, I do not judge as a despot,
But, along with you, I shall plead my case as far as Adam is concerned.
I was born of his nature, and I shall conquer you
and overthrow you
From the kingdom which you possess. I am
The Life and Resurrection.

CHRIST: “Adam had the complete joy of eternal life;
but he was especially deceived.
I, the Creator of all things, am become life which really exists;
But you, Hades, did not exist in the beginning, nor did the
reality of Death.
The suffering of terrible sin engendered him and you.
And so Adam, through a trick of the Deceiver, became enslaved to sin,
And he became subject to you and a prisoner
For you and bitter Death.
For this reason you are without any actual existence
and easily captured.
How, then, will you prevail over
The Life and Resurrection?

CHRIST: “Exalted by folly, you control the descendants of Adam
as partners in sin,
And you imprison them as though they still owe an ancestral debt.
But every descendant of Adam, born in sin, was liable to me.
He was born of corruption, and of union with husband, and
intercourse;
But I am free from all that, from sin, and from intercourse,
For even if I became man, as I willed it,
A virgin womb brought me forth blameless;
And, for the sake of all men, I have given my blood
To the One who engendered me,
The Life and Resurrection.

CHRIST: “Examine me, readily do I allow it, and see that you will find no unjust word or deed.
For I have not done wrong in any action, nor have I uttered
anything deceitful in word.
Therefore I speak. ‘Who of you will accuse me of sin?’
For among all the dead now I am shown to be free in every respect,
And of all sensual mortals I am the one who is
unacquainted with sin.
How, then, Hades, did you dare
To restrain the faultless as guitar ?
Examine me carefully,
For I wish to know the truth, that I have even now
Refuted you justly, I,
The Life and Resurrection.

CHRIST: “And so you are shamelessly angry, for it is a just trial and you will have been completely thrown out,
You lawless leaders of the realm of darkness,
for transgressing what is just;
For if you have found in me any remnant of sin,
Then use against me, O unjust one, all of your punishments;
But if you have found nothing, restore quickly whatever
record you keep.
Since, in this case, you happen to have been exerting all your strength
Against the faultless Christ,
Make ready for restitution of those whom you seized in advance,
Those whom I have raised up, I,
The Life and Resurrection.

CHRIST: “Only in order that you may not be ignorant about what you are facing, Hades:
not only will you give back
Those whom you took, but also I have raised up those
whom I take with me as I leave here,
For indeed, as you know, if for the rest of time,
men are conveyed to you, they will arise,
Since at the sound of the trumpet I shall raise them
up all together
Because you have had the daring to lay hold on the blameless
Son of the King.”
As Christ said this, Hades was overcome.
The gatekeepers threw away their keys
And fled as they saw Christ
Crush and break their bolts, He,
The Life and Resurrection.

Suddenly the bodies of the dead became animated;
they were resurrected, and they trampled on Hades,
Crying out, “O unjust one, where is thy victory
and Death, where is thy sting?”
Suddenly all of the tombs were opened of themselves
And all of the dead were released from them and formed a chorus;
And an angel coming down rolled the stone from the tomb
of the Savior.
“O Lord, Master, Thou hast opened the tombs
At a command, not needing anyone.
How is it then that Thou hast need of someone
To roll away the stone from Thy tomb? Thou,
The Life and Resurrection.”

CHRIST: “Now in order that no one may be led astray, I shall answer you and explain the question set by you.
The stone was not wholly a hindrance to my way out of the tomb,
Since everything obeys and is subject to me as God,
For even if I become flesh, I am still Lord and Creator of all,
And at my command not long ago sea and land came forth;
The Jordan was turned back;
Springs of water gushed from the rocks
For people in the desert; and the sun withdrew
When they crucified me,
The Life and Resurrection.”

O Thou who at the mere nod of command opened up all the tombs and released the dead,
And never had need of an angel to roll away Thy stone,
Now, teach me a clever scheme; for I fear that this symbol,
And sign for mortals, the opening up of this stone from the tomb
Will not work in the graves as formerly,
When in this hour, the gates of Hades were pulled up
from their foundations.

Then, there appeared in shining raiment
An angel who sang a paean of victory,
Saying that there has been resurrected
The Life and Resurrection.

In return for these things, O Redeemer, what do we have to offer except a doxology?
Therefore, spare, O Christ, as God,
Those who believe in Thy cross, tomb, and resurrection.
Grant to us forgiveness of sins,
And whenever the awakening common to all comes,
Consider us worthy to see Thy face
And to hear Thy voice with confidence.

CHRIST: “Along with my saints, inherit
My kingdom with joy.”
Then grant to our spirits, O Thou full of mercy,
A spirit of peace that we may glorify
The Life and Resurrection.

St Romanos the Melodist

“For where Christ is, there also is Heaven”

Today our Lord goes around all the places of Hades; today he “broke in pieces the doors of bronze and cut asunder the bars of iron.” Note the exactness of expression. He did not say “opened the gates of bronze,” but “broke in pieces the gates of bronze,” in order that the whole prison become useless. He did not open the bars of iron, but cut them asunder, in order that the guard becomes powerless. Where there is neither door, nor lock, there whoever enters will not be guarded. So, if Christ breaks in pieces, who else can repair it? . . . He broke in pieces the gates of bronze in order to show that death is finite. They are called “of bronze” not because they were made of bronze, but in order to demonstrate the cruelty and mercilessness of death. . . . Do you want to know how harsh, inexorable and unconquerable it was? In so long a time nobody convinced her to release anyone of those it possessed until the Lord of angels himself descended and forced it to do so. He first bound the strong man and then plundered his goods. This is why the prophet adds: “treasures of darkness, which are invisible.” . . . This place of Hades, dark and joyless, had bean 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.

St. John Chrysostom

“Once through death we fell away from life, now it is by life that death is destroyed”

The true Sabbath rest, the one which received God’s benediction, in which the Lord rested from his own works by keeping Sabbath for the world’s salvation in the inactivity of death, has now reached its goal and has displayed its own grace alike to eyes and ears and heart, through all those features of the festival solemnized among us by which we have seen, by which we have heard, by which we have welcomed joy to the heart. The light seen by our eyes was torch-lit for us in the night by the cloud of fire from our candles. The night-long word resounding in our hearing with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, like some flood of happiness pouring into the soul through our ears, has made us full of good hopes. The heart shone brighter as it portrayed the unspeakable blessedness of the things said and seen, hand-led by perceptible things towards the invisible; so that the benefits of this day of rest, relied upon because of their own inexpressible expectation of what lies in store, became a picture of those other benefits “which eye has not seen nor ear heard nor have they entered into the heart of man.”

Since then this night of light, mingling its candle-rays with the dawning beams of the sun, has made one continuous day undivided by intervening darkness, let us consider, brothers, the prophecy which says, “This is the day which the Lord has made.” In it there is no hard or laborious work, but happiness and joy and gladness, as the word puts it, “Let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 116:24). What kind commands! What sweet legislation! Who postpones obedience to such commands? Who does not reckon the slightest delay in the commands as loss? Joy is the task, gladness the injunction, and by these the condemnation for sin is lifted and sorrows are transformed into happiness. That is what the wise saying means, “In the day of gladness ills are not remembered” (Sir. 11:25).

This day brought the forgetting of the previous sentence against us, or rather its annulment, not just forgetting; it destroyed every single trace of our condemnation. Our childbearing once brought pains, our birth is now free from labor. Once we were born as flesh from flesh, now what is born is spirit from spirit. Once we were born sons of men, now as children of God. Once we were dismissed from heaven to earth, now the Heavenly One has made us heavenly. Once death reigned through sin, now justice has taken over power through life. There was one once who opened the way into death, and there is one now through whom life is introduced instead. Once through death we fell away from life, now it is by life that death is destroyed. Once for shame we hid behind the fig-tree, now for glory we approach the tree of life. Once for disobedience we were evicted from the garden, now for faith we come within the garden. Again the fruit of life lies open to our grasp for our enjoyment. Again the garden fountain, dividing fourfold in gospel rivers, waters all the face of the church, so that the furrows of our souls, which the sower of the word cut with the plough of teaching, are cheered with drinking, and the harvest of virtue abounds.

What then remains for such as us to do? What but to imitate prophetic hills and mountains in their leaping? “The mountains,” it says, “leaped like rams, and the hills like young lambs” (Ps. 112:4). So come, let us rejoice in the Lord who destroyed the might of the foe and set up the trophy of the cross for us on the enemy’s corpse. Let us cheer, for cheering is the triumphal shout raised by the victors against the vanquished. Since then the enemy line has collapsed and the very one who had command of the evil army of demons has himself gone, has vanished and has been brought already to nothing, let us say, “The Lord is a great God” and “A great king over all the earth” is he who “has blessed the crown of the year with His goodness” and gathered us into this spiritual choir in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory forever. Amen.

St Gregory of Nyssa

“Henceforth Hell belongs to Christ”

That the Redeemer is solidary with the dead, or better, with this death which makes of the dead, for the first time, dead human beings in all reality—this is the final consequence of the redemptive mission he has received from the Father. His being with the dead is an existence at the utmost pitch of obedience, and because the One thus obedient is the dead Christ, it constitutes the “obedience of a corpse” (the phrase is Francis of Assisi’s) of a theologically unique kind. By it Christ takes the existential measure of everything that is sheerly contrary to God, of the entire object of the divine eschatological judgment, which here is grasped in that event in which it is “cast down.” But at the same time, this happening gives the measure of the Father’s mission in all its amplitude: the “exploration” of Hell is an event of the (economic) Trinity. . . .

If the Father must be considered as the Creator of human freedom—with all its foreseeable consequences—then judgment belongs primordially to him, and thereby Hell also; and when he sends the Son into the world to save it instead of judging it, and, to equip him for this function, gives “all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22), then he must also introduce the Son made man into “Hell” (as the supreme entailment of human liberty). But the Son cannot really be introduced into Hell save as a dead man, on Holy Saturday. This introducing is needful since the dead must “hear the voice of the Son of God,” and hearing that voice, “live” (John 5:15). The Son must “take in with his own eyes what in the realm of creation is imperfect, unformed, chaotic” so as to make it pass over into his own domain as the Redeemer. This is what Irenaeus tells us:

Propter quod et descendit ad inferiora terrae, id quod erat inoperatum conditionise visurus oculis.

This vision of chaos by the God-man has become for us the condition of our vision of the Divinity. His exploration of the ultimate depths has transformed what was a prison into a way. And so Gregory the Great can say:

Christ went down into the deepest abysses of the sea, when he went into the Lowest Hell, to fetch forth the souls of the elect. Before the redemption, the depth of the sea was a prison, not a way … But God made of this abyss a road … It is also called “the deepest abyss” on the grounds that, just as the depths of the sea cannot be fathomed by any human gaze, so too the secret of Hell is impenetrable to all human knowledge.

Yet the Lord can cross (deambulare) this deepest Hell, since he is not bound by any of the bonds of sin, but is, rather, “free among the dead.” Gregory now turns, from the depths of Holy Saturday, to consider the spiritual descent of the Redeemer into the lostness of the sinful heart: the very same descensus is repeated each time that the Lord goes down into the depths of the desperata corda. In Gregory’s footsteps, Isidore of Seville too speaks of the via in profundo maris, which opens to the elect the way of heaven. Inasmuch as the Son travels across the chaos in virtue of the mission received from the Father, he is, objectively speaking, whilst in the midst of the darkness of which is contrary to God, in “paradise,” and the image of triumph may well express this.

Today he is, as king, come to the prison; today he has broken down the doors of bronze and has snapped the bolts of iron. He who, a dead man like any other, was swallowed up, has laid Hell waste in God. [Proclus of Constantinople]

In any case, it is, as Thomas Aquinas underlines, a “taking possession.” Henceforth Hell belongs to Christ, and Christ in rising with the knowledge of Hell can communicate that knowledge to us also.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

“Since the symbols of baptism and the eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church”

If we wish to understand the power of Christ’s blood, we should go back to the ancient account of its prefiguration in Egypt. Sacrifice a lamb without blemish, commanded Moses, and sprinkle its blood on your doors. If we were to ask him what he meant, and how the blood of an irrational beast could possibly save men endowed with reason, his answer would be that the saving power lies not in the blood itself but in the fact that it is a sign of the Lord’s blood. In those days, when the destroying angel saw the blood on the doors he did not dare to enter, so much less will the devil approach now when he sees, not that figurative blood on the doors, but the true blood on the lips of believers, the doors of the temple of Christ.

If you desire further proof of the power of this blood, remember where it came from, how it ran down from the cross, flowing from the Master’s side. The gospel records that when Christ was dead, but still hung on the cross, a soldier came and pierced his side with a lance and immediately there poured out water and blood. Now the water was a symbol of baptism and the blood of the holy eucharist. The soldier pierced the Lord’s side, he breached the wall of the sacred temple, and I have found the treasure and made it my own. So also with the lamb: the Jews sacrificed the victim and I have been saved by it.

There flowed from his side water and blood. Beloved, do not pass over this mystery without thought; it has yet another hidden meaning, which I will explain to you. I said that water and blood symbolized baptism and the holy eucharist. From these two sacraments the Church is born: from baptism, the cleansing water that gives rebirth and renewal through the Holy Spirit, and from the holy eucharist. Since the symbols of baptism and the eucharist flowed from his side, it was from his side that Christ fashioned the Church, as he had fashioned Eve from the side of Adam. Moses gives a hint of this when he tells the story of the first man and makes him exclaim: Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh! As God then took a rib from Adam`s side to fashion a woman, so Christ has given us blood and water from his side to fashion the Church. God took the rib when Adam was in a deep sleep, and in the same way Christ gave us the blood and water after his own death.

Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.

St. John Chrysostom