www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Hades or straight to Heaven?

Mikey,

He said it to me because 1) He didn't really like what was requested of him. 2) He want to let me know not to ask him any question regarding such.

Who ordered him? I can't be certain but I suspect one of the guys that run things. I rather not get back into this whole thing again - but obedience and suffering was the paramount theme. Minus the ever sacredness of soccer (which I actually learned to love).

Justin

Maximus
well, that is disappointing, that they would not provide you with any more information.

I guess we'll find out all the answers when we get there -- assuming we get there.
denise

Thank you for welcoming me to this excellent forum. May God be grant you all many blessings.

Let me encourage this exciting discussion to root itself in the scriptures and how they inform the topic at hand. My studies in this area were conducted at a leading Orthodox Catholic theological seminary in the USA.

If we look in the original canonical language (koine Greek for both Old [septuagint] and New Testaments, we find that the following equation holds true: a body (sarkos) plus a breath/spirit (pnevma) equals a soul (psychi). A soul is a life. Look carefully and you see both "soul" and "life" used in English translations of the word "psychi." This is correct, but also confusing.

Psychology is the study of one's life. For this reason, the psychologist asks detailed questions regarding one's upbringing from the earliest of years. He is analyzing one's life.

Perhaps less than 50 years ago, if a ship went down or a train crashed, someone would announce the bad news that "16 souls perished in the disaster." They were making no commentary on the status of these people after death, but only that their lives were no more. Soul equals life.
By definition, when one is dead, the soul/life is no more. As more than one theologian has said, "You don't have a soul. You are a soul."

The psalms repeat the lament "and my life/soul goes down to sheol ("hades" or "the pit"). Everyone goes to sheol. This does not mean that we are forgotton by the Lord. The Lord himself went to sheol and freed us from its permanence. A curse in the psalms against one's enemy is that the enemy be remembered no more. The psalmist rhetorically refers to the resurrection, "do the shades (shadows of souls that were) rise up to praise you?"

Also the word "pnevma" [in Hebrew "ru'ah"] is translated into English using "breath," "wind" and "spirit." All are correct, but the use of three words does cause confusion as with "psychi" and "life/soul" above. The opening verses of Genesis shows this best wherein we read about the "wind/breath" and the "spirit" involved in creation. All are being translated from the word "pnevma."

In the valley of the bones in Ezekiel we hear that the bones gathered flesh (became a body) but were not alive. The lifegiving element is the breath/spirit (pnevma). Separate the body from the breath/spirit and the person is dead. Combine the body and the breath/spirit and there is a soul/life, as it is written there in Ezekiel, a prophecy of the resurrection. On this point the Pharisees and the Saduccees debated endlessly. We as Christians literally place our lives on it. As Paul said, if there is no resurrection, then we (believers) are to be pitied more than all others. In other words, if there is no resurrection, then we should just go out and do whatever we want, live for the moment, etc. Thank God, we know better.

There is but one resurrection and ICXC is the first fruits of that resurrection, as it is written. There are resucitations in the scriptures such as Lazaras, the saints who came from the tombs at the crucifiction and walked about, and the daughter of Jairus, but these all died again. The scripture clearly points to a final resurrection unto judgement.

Hell or "Gehenna" was the rotting and smoldering garbage heap just outside the walls of Jerusalem. The torment of the judgement lies for those who will not accept God's mercy and love. They are blaspheming the Holy Spirit who is working in their lives and denying His attempts to reconcile them to His love. They cannot be forgiven their sins because they refuse to recognize Him as the forgiver. To be one as such must be true hell.

Please forgive this lengthy correspondence, but I think that it touches on many of the themes discussed so far.

Dear Andrew,

Yes, welcome to the Forum!

And thank you for clearing all that up!

Alex

So is sheol like a finite Hell? When does one leave, at the Second Coming or before then?

ChristTeen287

Being from a Latin background, I would think that Sheol is Purgatory. Definitely not Hell, but not Heaven either.

One of those "third" states that drives Protestants crazy.

Dear ChristTeen287,

Really, this is a difficult topic because the scriptures are not so specific as to explain everything. However, this past Sunday's Gospel reading (on some of the Byzantine calendars) was the parable of the rich man and Lazarus [Gospel of Luke 6]. Keeping in mind that scripture is a lesson book, not a history book or a geography book, we can infer from the parable the following lesson:

Sheol is the grave or the pit. Sheol can be a torment (for the rich man who lived extravagantly all of his life and apparantly ignored the beggar beneath his table). Sheol can also be a rest or comfort in the bosom of Abraham (for the beggar Lazarus who received mostly bad things during his lifetime).

This should be understood concurrently with the above: that the resurrection at the end of created time (kronos) is for all of those in sheol. And it is a resurrection unto judgement. The judgement is a final judgement. After judgement begins the "xeiron" or appointed time with the Lord. In the context of this xeiron we have theologians who promote their theologumena (opinions) that the presence of God is an all-consuming love that brings great joy and illumination (theosis in his kingdom-heaven) for those who would accept it, bear the confrontation with their own sinfulness, and repent of them in humiliation; but that it also brings great torment to those who would reject his love and mercy, persevering in their own egotism and willfulness (everlasting hell).

The ugliness of the idea that anyone could ultimately resist the love of God led Origen to his error of universal salvation (achieved over "time" during the Xeiron). His idea was condemned because the Lord clearly teaches otherwise in the scriptures.

Also, we see that certain of the incorporeal angels have already been judged/condemned to hell's fire in that their decision on whether or not to accept God's all-consuming love and their own position as inferior to man was made at the creation of man. Lucifer, the brilliant one, most beautiful of the angels, is to have rebelled at the thought of being servant to man.

I believe that the idea that the rich man might be in torment in hades, but not yet judged to hells' eternal fire, helped contribute to the idea of a purgatory in Western theologumena. Of course Abraham tells the rich man that there is a great chasm between Lazarus and the rich man over which no one may pass, but perhaps (in a model including purgatory) the "passing" would occur at the judgement itself. The Russian Orthodox theologian Bulgakov, in the 1930s, went so far as to speak and write of "purgation" as a process but not "purgatory" as a place. His opinion remains highly controversial.

I hope that this is helpful. Warm regards.

Dear Andrew,

Your final sentence hits on an important central "impulse" in Orthodoxy with respect to the afterlife.

And that is that the Orthodox never developed neat categories or places for the reposed, before the Second Coming that is. St Mark Eugenikos and the Greeks were rather shocked, to say the least, at Florence when the Latins told them, in no uncertain terms about heaven, hell, purgatory and limbo . . .

That there is a cleansing following death is something that seems to be assumed by the Orthodox emphasis on prayer for the dead.

That such prayer can bring people closer to God - that is also affirmed, as Meyendorff stated.

In fact, the only real difference between Orthodox and Catholicism on this score is the idea of an actual "place" and of "fire" being the medium by which such cleansing is conducted.

A Catholic theologian, Ladislas Boros, once wrote about his understanding of "purgatory."

He said that the soul after death sees Christ in all His loving beauty and holiness and, at once, feels ashamed at not giving Him its all during life, ashamed of its sinfulness etc.

And this shame is what "burns" away the remaining impurities and lack to total self-giving and focus on God that remains in us.

Alex

Thanks Andrew. Basically what I can deduce is that we are unclear about what these states encompass, that they almost overlap, and are different for each individual soul.

ChristTeen287

Dear ChristTeen,

Ultimately, it is less important to understand how we get into Heaven than to make use of the plentiful means our Lord and His Church make available to us to actually get there!

Alex

Alex,

Good advice. I've been trying to tell myself something similar, like, "Don't obsess about the post-mortem existence levels, just worry about getting into Heaven!" Sometimes my curiosity takes over because I'm sure I won't go straight to Heaven anyway!

ChristTeen287

Andrew:

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Why are you so confident that apokatastasis is heresy? Isn't it true that this doctrine was not actually condemned by the 2nd Council at Constantinople (5th Oecumenical) but at a "home synod" under the Patriarch Mennas and at the behest of the Emperor Justinian?

I agree that there are significant scriptural obstacles to holding this opinion. See, e.g., Matthew 7:13�14, 21�23; 8:12�13; 13:41�42; 22:13�14, 49�50; 25:31�46; Luke 13:23�28,in which Jesus says that few will be saved, describes the punishment of the reprobate, and portrays Himself as personally rejecting them.

Are there not other passages, however, that speak directly to the possibility of universal restoration and reconciliation � e.g., 1 Cor. 15.28 (that God will ultimately be "all in all"), Eph. 1.23, and the Johanine affirmation that "God is love" (1 Jn. 4.8). Isn't the word apokatastasis itself used in Acts 3.21 ("the restitution of all things")?

Likewise, in addition to Origen, is not apokatastasis at least implied in the works of Nyssa, Didymus the Blind, and Chrysostom?

Just curious, since it would seem to me that universal restoration � more as a hope than a dogma, but at least as a theologoumenon � is fully consistent with Orthodoxy and its educative rather than punitive/penal understanding of Divine Justice.

In Christ,
Theophilos

Dear Theophilos,

When a student caught in an error in class said to my dogmatics professor, "Oh no, I'm a heretic because of what I've just said!" the dognatics professor replied, "Don't worry, you are not important enough to be an heretic!"

I was taught that to be properly labeled an heretic, one must do a lot of damage which is why Origen's doctrine was condemned, more than Origen himself. His followers led the schism. To be an heretic requires that one teach a serious doctrinal error. That one be clearly corrected and admonished by the Church. And finally, that one lead or cause a schism as a result of this doctrinal error.

The fact is that for some people having God as "all in all" would indeed be unpleasant or hell. These are the people that can't bear to be near a poor or needy person (Lazarus). The Ebeneezer Scrooges of the world (the rich man in the same parable).

I agree that we should hope and pray and act so that that no one fails to accept God, but we have been warned that some certainly will.

In Christ, Andrew