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The Orthodox belief in the state of the soul after death is vague and less developed than the Catholic teaching.

Listen to the balanced teaching of the Church, with these three quotes from widely differing centuries (5th, 17th and 20th) which show the same unanimous teaching on life after death... The simplicity is breathtaking.

It speaks not only of affliction and suffering for the wicked, but it also speaks of rest, blessedness, bliss, and joy.

The teaching of Saint Augustine of Hippo:


"During the time, moreover, which intervenes between a man's death and the final resurrection, the soul dwells in a hidden retreat, where it enjoys rest or suffers affliction just in proportion to the merit it has earned by the life which it led on earth."
Augustine, Enchiridion, 1099 (A.D. 421).


The 1980 Resolution of the ROCA Synod of bishops on the toll house belief...

"Taking all of the foregoing into consideration, the Synod of Bishops resolve:

In the deliberations on life after death one must in general keep in mind that it has not pleased the Lord to reveal to us very much aside from the fact that the degree of a soul's blessedness depends on how much a man's life on the earth has been truly Christian, and the degree of a man's posthumous suffering depends upon the degree of sinfulness. To add conjectures to the little that the Lord has been pleased to reveal to us is not beneficial to our salvation..."

Interestingly enough, this is almost a word for word repetition of what Saint Augustine said 1500 years earlier!



The Synod of Constantinople of 1672:

"We believe that the souls of the departed are in either repose or torment as each one has wrought, for immediately after the separation from the body they are pronounced either in bliss or in suffering and sorrows, yet we confess that neither their joy nor their condemnation are yet complete. After the general resurrection, when the soul is reunited with the body, each one will receive the full measure of joy or condemnation due to him for the way in which he conducted himself, whether well or ill."

-oOo-

So we see neither Purgatory nor toll houses in sober orthodoxy theology.

When we go beyond our limited theology we enter into the speculative world of the human mind. You will find authors and catechisms who affirm, as if it were dogma, that there can be no repentance after death. But the majority belief is the opposite – that there can be repentance, divine forgiveness and salvation after death. We also find some authors writing of purification after death by torments. Again, I would not see that as a majority belief.

Bless Father!

I do indeed see Purgatory in all that you quoted here!

Purgatory and its "exact" nature has not been defined by Rome above and beyond what you have given here.

Ladislas Boros, a Catholic theologian, said this about Purgatory:

"After death we will see Christ as He truly is, and how loving He is - and we will suffer within ourselves feeling our own ingratitude in not having lived for Him throughout our lives. That suffering will be a cleansing one."

Alex

Father, being thrown off CAF is something you should consider to be a badge of honor.

The purpose of Purgatory is the expiation of the temporal punishment due to sin. This is no part of Orthodox belief.

This is sloppy nonsense in Catholic theology. Purgatory is needed to be able, in the future when the time in Purgatory is finished, to behold the Beatific Vision

I had 15,000 messages on CAF. Some were chitchat, but many were lengthy messages in which I had invested time and research. The CAF staff gave me no chance to retrieve these messages but simply annihilated them <sob>

Bless Father,

Wow....so that's how it happened! I was one of those 36. I had no idea that I never stood a chance against such an atomic blessing!

Yes, Father.

But Orthodoxy, in the Creed of Dositheus especially, affirms that it is necessary to perform works of repentance and unless those are done, the soul cannot get into heaven etc.

RC theology does give its own, albeit Latin, development on the matter re: temporal punishment and purgatory.

This surely cannot justify the separation of the Churches on this point of eschatology.

My reference to Boros was simply to show that there are differing views within Roman Catholicism on what purgatory might be. Boros' view differs sharply from that of the medieval RC theologians.

The question then is, if the Mystery of Confession completely forgives all sin and "remits" eternal punishment with no room for a notion of "temporal punishment - why then the need for works of repentance and why, when someone dies without having performed them, can they not enter heaven immediately, but must suffer for a time and be a beneficiary of the prayer of the Church etc.?

Clearly, there is a "debt" left after the Mystery of Confession that must be "paid" even in the next life. It is the nature of this "debt" that I wonder about.

Alex

I cannot think of Orthodox who would agree with that. If a serial rapist has repented and made his confession, either to a priest or to his cell door, then should he fall into the concrete mixer after breakfast, he will get into heaven -without even one "work" of repentance.

Works of repentance may be

1. voluntary expressions of sorrow and reparation offered to God and one's victims
2. activities by which the soul strengthens and heals itself.

But they are not, in the thinking of the East, self-inflicted punishment and torment for sin, neither voluntarily imposed on earth, nor involuntarily imposed after death by God's sanctity and justice.

God requires no punishment because Christ fulfilled that function on the Cross.

The idea that there still remains temporal punishment due to sin makes no sense in the context of the orthodox understanding of soteriology, spec., the work of the Cross.

Are you also saying that there is no damage to the soul that needs to be healed?

If memory serves...I thought that Dositheus retracted much of what he said on the subject near the end of his life.

So Christ failed to pay the fullness of the debt? Say more. I'm interested in things when Byzantine Catholic theology differs from Orthodoxy.

Damage to the soul is unlikely to be healed by inflicting as Pope Paul teaches, punishments of torment and fire.

Orthodoxy's view? You could extrapolate it from what I labelled #2 above.

The art of healing souls wounded by sin, and in particular habitual sin, figures very much in the valuable writings we have inherited from the Desert Fathers.

Bless Father,

I used the term "debt" in parentheses. And did not St Paul make reference to "what is lacking" in the sufferings of Christ? How does Orthodoxy understand that?

I'm asking, not saying or telling, what the purpose of "works of repentance" are for Orthodoxy that, if one did not perform them while alive, the soul is not to go to Heaven or the forecourt of Heaven after death.

It SEEMS to me, and I'm not trying to compare Byzantine Catholicism to Orthodoxy here at all, that Orthodox doctrine as affirmed by this Creed does indeed make salvation "dependent" not just on repentance/the Mystery of Confession, but also by the addition of works of repentance.

My focus is entirely on Orthodoxy here to try and understand Orthodoxy's raison d'etre for prayer for the dead especially;

Now our friend Recluse has made a statement that Dositheus repented of what he had to say at the end of his life.

But the creed of Dositheus wasn't his alone. It was an (excellent and definitive) rebuttal of Protestant predilections at the time.

Father, I'm just trying to get at an understanding of Article 18 of that Creed. I agree that suffering, torment and the like do not equal "satisfaction" for works of repentance not done in life (and I find the whole imagery of such suffering and punishment morbid and depressing - have no use for it).

So what role do works of repentance following the repentance itself play in the grand scheme of things? It is obviously a significant one since one is prevented from going to Heaven if one did not fulfill them in life.

Is there an Orthodox answer for any of this?

Alex

Bless Father,

One should also remember that at Florence, the Greeks protested against the whole idea of a purgatorial "fire" and the Latins did not require this of them.

Alex

Bless Father,

Ah, now I see it!

Reparation! How can we understand reparation to God etc.?

What is it and how can I perform such reparation after my sins are forgiven in the Mystery of Confession?

We are getting very close to "satisfaction" (for me) on this score.

Are works of repentance reparation?

Alex