Orthodox View of Heaven and Hell

[Vouthon]

Sister TrueLight

Hi again!

You might be interested in my post (and others) in this short thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=689033

And in my posts scattered throughout this thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=664014

You know me with my “quotes”

 

[newlywed8]

This is not something that I think can be reconciled with Catholic teaching.

Thanks!

Your welcome.

Also, I believe it can be reconciled when one considers that neither church proclaims officially that anyone is in Hell or that everyone is in heaven. I think that this is honestly the biggest challenge for the East and West to reconcile: Rome has this habbit of dogmatizing this, that, and oh yeah, that other thing which sometimes results in digging holes and over-legalizing. The East tries to keep it simple. We know Christ conquered death. We know we are made in his image. We know we are moving closer to Christ through our life and through the sacraments. We know there is hope for eternal life. Whether that means that we will all end up in heaven at the end of time? No one knows. I believe even Latin Catholics are allowed to hope for the salvation of all as long as they don’t assume that is what will happen.
But I think I am going to bow out. I have a tendancy to get ahead of myself and I am no theologian. I am nothing but a simple mother just trying to be Orthodox.
I hope you find the book helpful, and there are far more knowledgable posters on here who can help. Perhaps I might even suggest speaking with a knowledgable Orthodox or Eastern Catholic monk? A holy monk is the true theologian.

 

[TrueLight]

Sister TrueLight

Hi again!

You might be interested in my post (and others) in this short thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=689033

And in my posts scattered throughout this thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=664014

Hi Vouthon,

Those are some excellent quotes, especially from Blessed John Newman.

What do you make of Matthew 7:23?

And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work inquity.

 

[Nine_Two]

No. The Orthodox do not believe in the Apokatastasis.

As far as I know it isn’t explicitly rejected - though elements of some views on it (such as reincarnation) are.

That said it is generally quite rare, in my opinion it stands contrary to what is taught in scripture.

 

[Vouthon]

Hi Vouthon,

Those are some excellent quotes, especially from Blessed John Newman.

What do you make of Matthew 7:23?

My dear sister TrueLight

That’s an interesting passage. Let me answer it first by quoting another passage from scripture. Do you know the one about “fire and brimstone”? Usually this conjures up the traditional, cultural idea of hell as a place separate from God filled with hellish literal torments. Ironically this passage is one of the strongest proof texts for the view that all come into the presence of God and that depending on our self-willed decisions we experience God as our heaven or as our hell.

Scripture tells us:

“…If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and ***he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence ***of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb…”

(Revelation 14:10)

So given that the damned will be tormented “in the presence” of Jesus (the Lamb) I think it very unlikely that one should read this passage as suggesting that Jesus is casting people away from Him. God calls all people to union with Himself - he longs to unite, even if the other person has chosen to resist and God respects this choice and the person’s free-will, which I think is part of the whole torment.

I view that phrase “depart from me” as Jesus simply honouring the person’s self-will - to be separate from him in heart, soul and mind. I don’t see it as Jesus suggesting that the person is going to be ontologically separate ie in a different place.

Orthodox Christians do not take Matthew 7:23 to mean that Jesus ever sends anyone to hell.

A good description of this from an Orthodox writer online (lay):

**"…So what does it, mean, “Depart from Me”, if they are to be tormented in His presence? It means that God, in His infinite mercy, will allow you, if you find His very Presence a torture, to remove yourself a little distance (so to speak) and to crawl into your own, solitary, dark hole of regret and self-recrimination and sorrow and inability to accept the loss of all the sins for which you had lived. And that, to you, will seem preferable to joining the saints and angels in their never-ending, galling, intolerable hymns of praise to the One Who created you and allowed you the freedom to come even to this point.

Both verses mean that in the Last Day, you get what your heart (as revealed by your deeds) most wants and in whatever degree your heart is capable of receiving it – unless what you want most is your sins, or some temporal pleasure that passes away…" **

So I don’t think that this passage in any way negates the fact that hell is a state of being and not a place nor that hell is not the absence or ontological separation from God.

Rather hell is to be in the Presence of God but to experience him as agony because one has freely chosen to reject God’s love and separate oneself from him in heart, soul and mind.

Its all on our end, not God’s.

Thus Angelus Silesius, a delightful Catholic mystic, explained in the 17th century (as I quoted in that thread):

*"…All Heaven is within thee, Man,
And all of Hell within thy heart:
What thou dost choose and will to have,
That hast thou wheresoe’er thou art.

The vengeful God
of wrath and punishment
is a mere fairytale.
It simply is the Me
that makes me fail.

Where is my dwelling place? Where I can never stand.
Where is my final goal, toward which I should ascend?
It is beyond all place. What should my quest then be?
I must, transcending God, into the desert flee…"*

God didn’t create a place called hell. It would surely be easier to think that he did, the truth is far more harrowing:

We create hell and carry it about within us. If we die in this state we simply go to God with blinded, darkened eyes that behold his brightness as a torment.

Its our fault.

 

[Vouthon]

Pope Benedict XVI also spoke about heaven recently in its proper context (ie as explained by the Catholic mystics, Blessed John Henry Newman and yes the Eastern saints as well).

As ever Benedict just hits the nail on the head. What’s the point in me yabbling on? Read this:

“…Heaven is not a place and cannot be found on a map; rather it is where God’s will is done…Raise your gaze toward heaven, not a heaven of abstract ideas nor an imaginary heaven created in art, but the true reality of heaven which is God himself. God is heaven. He is our destination, the destination and the eternal dwelling place from which we come and for which we are striving…It is not a location in the cosmos, but a place within God where those who believe in him will enjoy his love. We are all children of God the father, brothers and sisters of Jesus…We all aspire to happiness. And the happiness to which we all aspire is God, so we are all journeying on toward this happiness we call Heaven which in reality is God. every moment of our life is a step forward on this exodus, on this journey toward God…Make the reality of heaven, God’s greatness, also present in the life of our world. Is this not basically the paschal dynamism of the human being, of every person who wants to become heavenly, perfectly happy, by virtue of Christ’s Resurrection? And might this not be the beginning and anticipation of a movement that involves every human being and the entire cosmos?..Even though our daily life may be marked by trials and difficulties, it flows like a river to the divine ocean, to the fullness of joy and peace…Jesus tells us that it is only in conforming one’s own will to the divine will that the human being attains his true greatness, that he becomes ‘divine’; it is only by going out of himself — only in his ‘yes’ to God — that the desire of our forefathers and of us all is fulfilled — that of being completely free. This is what Jesus accomplishes in Gethsemane: by placing the human will within the divine will the true man is born, and we are redeemed…Dear brothers and sisters, every day in the prayer of the Our Father we ask the Lord: “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10). In other words we recognize that there is a will of God with us and for us, a will of God for our life that must become every day, increasingly, the reference of our willing and of our being; we recognize moreover that “heaven” is where God’s will is done and where the “earth” becomes “heaven”, a place where love, goodness, truth and divine beauty are present, only if, on earth, God’s will is done. In Jesus’ prayer to the Father on that terrible and marvellous night in Gethsemane, the “earth” became “heaven”; the “earth” of his human will, shaken by fear and anguish, was taken up by his divine will in such a way that God’s will was done on earth…”

- Pope Benedict XVI, SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION

So the language of “place” could be used if one means a place “in” God but not as referring to an actual spatial place because Heaven and Hell are both simply experiences of God, beyond all earthly place and time.

 

[Vouthon]

I also read purgatory mentioned earlier on.

Well Pope Benedict XVI also explained in an address, in 2011, using the theology of Saint Catherine of Genoa that purgatory is also a state and not a place:

vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20110112_en.html

A relevant excerpt:

**"…Catherine’s thought on purgatory, for which she is particularly well known, is summed up in the last two parts of the book mentioned above: The Treatise on purgatory and the Dialogues between the body and the soul. It is important to note that Catherine, in her mystical experience, never received specific revelations on purgatory or on the souls being purified there. Yet, in the writings inspired by our Saint, purgatory is a central element and the description of it has characteristics that were original in her time.

The first original passage concerns the “place” of the purification of souls. In her day it was depicted mainly using images linked to space: a certain space was conceived of in which purgatory was supposed to be located.

Catherine, however, did not see purgatory as a scene in the bowels of the earth: for her it is not an exterior but rather an interior fire. This is purgatory: an inner fire.

The Saint speaks of the Soul’s journey of purification on the way to full communion with God, starting from her own experience of profound sorrow for the sins committed, in comparison with God’s infinite love (cf. Vita Mirabile, 171v).

We heard of the moment of conversion when Catherine suddenly became aware of God’s goodness, of the infinite distance of her own life from this goodness and of a burning fire within her. And this is the fire that purifies, the interior fire of purgatory. Here too is an original feature in comparison with the thought of her time.

In fact, she does not start with the afterlife in order to recount the torments of purgatory — as was the custom in her time and perhaps still is today — and then to point out the way to purification or conversion. Rather our Saint begins with the inner experience of her own life on the way to Eternity.

“The soul”, Catherine says, “presents itself to God still bound to the desires and suffering that derive from sin and this makes it impossible for it to enjoy the beatific vision of God”. Catherine asserts that God is so pure and holy that a soul stained by sin cannot be in the presence of the divine majesty (cf. Vita Mirabile, 177r).

We too feel how distant we are, how full we are of so many things that we cannot see God. The soul is aware of the immense love and perfect justice of God and consequently suffers for having failed to respond in a correct and perfect way to this love; and love for God itself becomes a flame, love itself cleanses it from the residue of sin.

In Catherine we can make out the presence of theological and mystical sources on which it was normal to draw in her time. In particular, we find an image typical of Dionysius the Areopagite: the thread of gold that links the human heart to God himself. When God purified man, he bound him with the finest golden thread, that is, his love, and draws him toward himself with such strong affection that man is as it were “overcome and won over and completely beside himself”.

Thus man’s heart is pervaded by God’s love that becomes the one guide, the one driving force of his life (cf. Vita Mirabile, 246rv). This situation of being uplifted towards God and of surrender to his will, expressed in the image of the thread, is used by Catherine to express the action of divine light on the souls in purgatory, a light that purifies and raises them to the splendour of the shining radiance of God (cf. Vita Mirabile, 179r)…"**

So ya purgatory ain’t a place either

 

[GaryTaylor]

As far as I know it isn’t explicitly rejected - though elements of some views on it (such as reincarnation) are.

That said it is generally quite rare, in my opinion it stands contrary to what is taught in scripture.

Never gave it much thought, it is in Scripture though…“once”.

google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CEcQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FApocatastasis&ei=RuUFUKPmCYe16wGd7-nCCA&usg=AFQjCNEg5p_8mLrTAF13IRMzMIaGC3Sh-Q&sig2=7bkbjTkSLsDxFwIbZgIQdw

 

[TrueLight]

I think it’s important to note that even though we ultimately make the decision to go to hell or not, God is not passive. He is not just sending out rays of light and if you’re a follower, you are in bliss and if you are not, then you are in torment.

Jesus is coming back to judge the living and the dead.

Quite frankly, these days it seems that church teaching is always clarified to be a bit milder.

I’m quoting the following not to show that hell is a place, but to provide balance to the viewpoint that God takes a passive part. God does inflict punishment.

Theophilus of Antioch

For the unbelievers and for the contemptuous and for those who do not submit to the truth but assent to iniquity, when they have been involved in adulteries, and fornications, and homosexualities, and avarice, and in lawless idolatries, there will be wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish; and in the end, such men as these will be detained in everlasting fire (To Autolycus 1:14 [A.D. 181

Second Clement

If we do the will of Christ, we shall obtain rest; but if not, if we neglect his commandments, nothing will rescue us from eternal punishment (Second Clement 5:5 [A.D. 150]).

Cyprian of Carthage

An ever-burning Gehenna and the punishment of being devoured by living flames will consume the condemned; nor will there be any way in which the tormented can ever have respite or be at an end. Souls along with their bodies will be preserved for suffering in unlimited agonies. . . . The grief at punishment will then be without the fruit of repentance; weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late will they believe in eternal punishment, who would not believe in eternal life (To Demetrian 24 [A.D. 252

[/QUOTE]

Justin Martyr

[Jesus] shall come from the heavens in glory with his angelic host, when he shall raise the bodies of all the men who ever lived. Then he will clothe the worthy in immortality; but the wicked, clothed in eternal sensibility, he will commit to the eternal fire, along with the evil demons (ibid. 52).

freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1780301/posts
[/quote]

 

[Vouthon]

Dear sis TrueLight

Lance Goldsberry writes:

God’s wrath is most clearly demonstrated in God’s “giving people over” to their own misguided and distorted desires. Three times in Romans, “the wrath of God is revealed” in that “God gave them over” (Romans 1:18, 24, 26, 28). God’s wrath is not an active hostility toward human beings, but a reluctant and sad “letting go.”

The essence of God’s “wrath” is that He allows people to have what they choose. He does no more than ratify judgments which people have already passed on themselves by the path they have chosen to follow.

St. John explains it this way, And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil (John 3:18)

They pass judgment on themselves when they reject the light that comes to them in Christ, preferring to dwell in darkness. God still loves them but with a love that makes Him sad.

 

[GaryTaylor]

“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”

• G.K. Chesterton

“And the Lord God said, the man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil.” Gen. iii. 22.