hi everyone i was reading a previous thread from months ago about Heaven and Hell from a catholic wondering about what Orthdodox believe about the afterlife…alot of things were said, some good and some bad, and some just downright stupid…so I thought id offer my 2 cents worth and offer everyone a link to Ancient Faith Radio (which has a podcast expalaining the Orthodox Position much better than what I could ever hope to)
Firstly it must be said that Heaven and Hell in the Bible is not entirely accurate…alot of words domnt translte very well from the original Greek to Latin and of course English…
The biggest problem is “Hell”.
in the Greek Scriptures Hell can mean either one of three things “Hades”, “Tartarus” or “Gehenna”…all of these places are different and are used in different ways…
lets starts with Hades…hades is the abode of the Dead, where all who dide from Adam until Christ rested waiting the Lord Decent to lead them to “Paradise” (not heaven)
Tartarus is a greek word for prision; and accoring to the scriptures thats where the Devil and his Minions are bound by chains of darkness (not Hell)
and last is Gehenna, which is the true hell…which according to the scrpitures is the lake of fire which is opened up ONLY at the Last Judgment and which hades gives up her dead and the wicked (by their own desire) are cast into it
Unfourtunaly the problem is these palces are very specific in The Original Greek…not so in English…and unfourtinaly not even in Latin…before too long Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna were all traslated as one word…HELL.
Now Lets focos on the other end of the Spectrum…Heaven,
the problem is the Word “heaven” is used similarly to the world Hell…In the Original Greek there are 2 words,
- Paradise, this is the place which identifed as an area of hades opened up to all the rightous after during Jesus Decent into hades…Paradise is where the souls of the saint and the rightous await the general reserction on the last day.
- Heaven this is the place where God Dwells (and nobdy is here yet…except for possiblily the Theotokos as she has already expericed a fortast of the general reserection)
…once again Paradise and Heaven are too seperate places in the Original Greek, howver very early on in the Latin West they became interchangable.
Now then weve got the defination of what Hades, Tartarus, and Gehenna , Paradise and Heaven are all about so now we need to put actually put it all togehter…
Once a soul Dies he decends into Hades (the abode of the dead) and there recieves some kind of temperal Judgment in which the soul is either expereinces a fortaste of Gehenna (hell, suffering etc) or a fortaste of the rewards of Heaven (Paradise)…howver neither of these states are fixed…they remain movable until the Last Judgment…hence why Eastern Christian like or Western Brothers pray for the dead, we believe our prays can transfer those who arre experiencing a foretaste of Gehenna to a place of Light, peace and joy (Paradise)
the reson why Western People dont understand the Christian easts understanding of the afterlife is cause they have fused all these diffent words with all there diiffent meanings and fused them into one word i.e Hell
this also led to the development of the Doctine of Purgotory (of which I stongly disagree with)
here is quote from wikipedia (not the most accurate of rescources i know but in this does the job)
*Among the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Catholics, there is no doctrine of Purgatory, and the doctrinal teaching remains as it was in the early church, simply being “prayer for the dead” in hades. Specifically how the prayers of the Church help the departed is not elucidated; Orthodox simply believe that tradition teaches that prayers should be made for the dead.[6]
Saint Basil the Great († 379) writes in his Third Kneeling Prayer at Pentecost
" Christ our God…(who) on this all-perfect and saving Feast, art graciously pleased to accept propitiatory prayers for those who are imprisoned in hades, promising unto us who are held in bondage great hope of release from the vilenes that doth hinder us and did hinder them … send down Thy consolation… and establish their souls in the mansions of the Just; and graciously vouchsafe unto them peace and pardon; for not the dead shall praise thee, O Lord, 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*
well theres my explination…alos if ud like to hear more there are 4 programs on Anceint Faith Radio which deal with his topic far better I could. Here is the link…
ancientfaith.com/podcasts/carlton/P35/
the program u will be wanting are “Hell: a Modest propsal”, “Purgatory” “He shall come again in Glory” and “eternal Memory”
each postcast is about 10 mins long…and im sure ull agree that hes makes more sence than I ever could
