www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Can souls be freed from Hell?

I read from Orthodox Christians that they believe that the intercessory prayers of the Church can free souls from Hell who already received their particular judgement (immediately upon death) but are awaiting the Second Coming/Final judgement? Is this position common in Orthodox theology or is this a personal opinion that was passed off as Eastern Theology?

I admit I can see similarities with the Roman concept of Purgatory and don't see these two positions as irreconcilable. To me, it sounds like both are teaching the same thing, just with a different emphasis. As always, thanks in advance for anyone who can help clarify this.

Christ is in our midst!!

I'm not sure about the source, but there is a condemnation of that idea by the undivided Church centuries ago. A theologian by the name of Origen had his theory and he himself condemned. It was called apocatestasis. (Ck my spelling)

Bob

Could it be reconciled with nuance? If it were to teach that a soul could be saved from the eternal destination of Hell, that would certainly be against the Apostolic faith. But for the Orthodox, not believing in the Roman understanding of Purgatory, I could see this as a means of explaining the same reality after death. That we are judged and our souls go to wherever they go while awaiting bodily resurrection and the final judgement. And during this time (Romans would consider it purgatory for those whose path leads to Heaven but aren't in a perfect state of grace free from the debt owed to sins committed in life),the intercessory prayers of the Church could purify souls in Hell (many Roman theologians think of Purgatory as being in Hell but with a different form of suffering knowing it is for a finite time) and in time could lead those souls out of Hell into Heaven?

I suppose I am only speculating as I don't know the "exact" teaching that was shared with me, so it's hard for me to articulate what I don't fully know.

There is a narrative (actually more than one) regarding the martyr St. Varus and him praying the soul of Cleopatra's (not the Egyptian Cleopatra, but another) son out of hell by his intercession. I don't wish to discuss this, but rather would like to respond to Bob's erroneous statement regarding the condemnation of Apokatastasis (Universal Restoration).

First - there is no idea nor acceptance of the Roman Catholic idea of a separate place called "hell." In Orthodox eschatology, we see from Scripture that Christ has reconciled all men to God. (Romans 5: 18) All have been declared in right standing with God, hence, all souls go to be with Christ at the moment of death.

Secondly - not all souls will enjoy being with Christ/God. Those who have participated in wickedness and not repented shall find His presence to be torment. Think of the pillar that went forth with the children of Israel as they left Egypt. To the Israelites, it was warmth and light, but to the Egyptians, it was darkness and terror. This is the experience of God's love. Orthodoxy teaches that the experience of hell (not a place but a state of being) is God's love experienced as torment. There is no such place as hell, and you cannot find it in the Bible anywhere. Honest translations and not Western mistranslations, deal with four places: Gehenna (the garbage dump of Jerusalem), Hades (the place of the dead) Sheol (the place of the dead) and Tartarus (where the disobedient angels are held). No such idea of hell as promoted by Western eschatology is found in Scripture.

Thirdly - Let's look at some of the proof texts of Universal Salvation:

1. Romans 5:18 "Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people." One wonders what part of "all people" was so confusing to the people who developed this idea of eternal hell for 95% of all human beings (according to St. Lawrence of Port Maurice). All are justified. What a statement of God's abundant grace and mercy through Jesus Christ our Lord.

2. As if that weren't enough by itself, we have 1Timothy 2:4 "Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." God WILLS that all be saved. He doesn't hope, He doesn't wish. He doesn't sit in heaven wringing his hands hoping that people will get saved. In Christ He entered the strong man's house and plundered it. Death is conquered by His death and defeated. Can anything or anyone defeat the sovereign will of the all-powerful God? Be careful how you answer that, for if the puny will of created man could do such a thing, then we have no assurance that Satan cannot find a way to defeat God and impose his evil will on Creation! God will find a way to restore all things to Himself.

3. 1 Corinthians 15: 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death. The teaching of eternal hell means that God actually keeps souls in a state of death forever. Death is not conquered, it in fact wins, since God can find no way to being souls out of death and into life. Scripture says that Christ reigns until all enemies are put under His feet. But the idea of eternal hell means that this enemy is not vanquished.

4. St. Isaac the Syrian has stated that hell is the restorative scourging of God on the souls of the wicked. That is, the suffering has a purpose - fulfilling of justice and restoration of the wicked. Eternal hell serves no purpose at all, especially not justice. The idea of justice has always been the payment of a debt owed and the correction and restoration of the offender. In addition, God Himself has given us the boundaries of justice - LEX TALIONIS - which is that the punishment is equal to the offense. There is no offense of sin which is equal to unending torment.

5. Finally (and there is so much more I could post here) the idea of eternal unending torment in hell is a smear on the very ontological character of God. Love does not behave in such a manner. Love always seeks to heal and restore. Eternal hell is a theory of pure vengeance, taken from the paganism that surrounded Rome. It is entirely out of character with the God who revealed Himself in Christ.

There is no official eschatological position in Orthodoxy, unlike Western eschatology which has developed ideas of eternal retribution which are in line with the Roman Empire's courtroom justice instead of the East's understanding of Christ as the Great Physician who heals all. The culture of the Roman Empire invaded the theological thinking of the united Church, beginning in earnest wtih Augustine's anthropological and soteriological errors and being fueled by Justinian's Roman Law codification which sought to revive and consolidate the Roman Empire through force and fear. (Amazing what you learn when you stop listening to people and do a little historic research!!)

A good book to get a further grasp on this would be David Bentley Hart's new book THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVED. So far, no one has stepped forward to offer a significant rebuttal of the book and the four meditations which are contained in it.

Because this is a very inflammatory subject, you might wish to PM me with any further questions. I do have answers and am writing my own book for laymen to understand this issue. The bottom line is that God is love....period. Unfortunately, many of those who preceded us in the faith seem to either not have understood this, or had highly political motives for instilling the fear of hell into their subjects.

The source that most people refer to are the 15 Anathemas of Emperor Justinian against Origen. Modern scholarship has brought forth the fact that these are considered a forgery. So bad they are that the Catholic Encyclopedia online, when discussing the canons of Constantinople II, refuses to list them and states that they are highly suspect. In the original and uncontested canons of Constantinople II, there is no condemnation of Apokatastasis by name. The only thing condemned is Origen, and that for some of his wild-eyed theologumenon regarding the pre-existence of souls and how the restoration of souls will take place. Constantinople II was called by Emperor Justinian in an attempt to bring out language which would both condemn The Three Chapters and at the same time no anger the Monophysites who rejected the Council of Chalcedon. At the time of his being emperor, the empire was fractured, with heated arguments and even riots in the streets over this issue. There is a sense in which this all makes for fascinating historical study, but as for condemning Apokatastasis, no! Constantinople II is far, FAR from being the neatly packaged, unified council that some people present it as being.

So no one need fear hell because they are already guaranteed eternity with God in Heaven? If that is true, then why should anyone care about being Catholic or Orthodox? Or living a moral and sacramental life? Couldn't we just live our entire lives never giving God a second thought, and appease every appetite that comes to our souls and flesh? When we die we may experience torment for a time (however it looks) but since eternal punishment is against the nature of a loving God, in time we will all get the same reward of the Beatific vision as those who died to themselves and carried their crosses to the moment of their death. Respectfully, there is no logic in such a position. Universal salvation negates the necessity of faith at all.

You must have cruised right by this:

Secondly - not all souls will enjoy being with Christ/God. Those who have participated in wickedness and not repented shall find His presence to be torment. Think of the pillar that went forth with the children of Israel as they left Egypt. To the Israelites, it was warmth and light, but to the Egyptians, it was darkness and terror. This is the experience of God's love. Orthodoxy teaches that the experience of hell (not a place but a state of being) is God's love experienced as torment. There is no such place as hell, and you cannot find it in the Bible anywhere. Honest translations and not Western mistranslations, deal with four places: Gehenna (the garbage dump of Jerusalem), Hades (the place of the dead) Sheol (the place of the dead) and Tartarus (where the disobedient angels are held). No such idea of hell as promoted by Western eschatology is found in Scripture.

There is so much to lose by not turning to Christ in repentance.

1. Rewards in the next life. Do you honestly think that someone who has lived a wretched life of evil will have the same reward in the next life as St. Paisios of Athos? Do you expect the same honors and glory as someone who achieved the martyrs crown? I certainly don't, and this is only just of God. I do not expect it to last, but I think that upon death, the soul will realize all that it has given up by pursuing the vain fantasy of evil and that will add to the torment. I think the lukewarm and indifferent Christian will also experience a momentary regret at this deep loss. No, we do NOT all get the same reward. Eternal life is not a "reward". Eternal life is Christ, but within that relationship, there are various levels of intimacy.

2. Do you honestly think that someone who has lived a vile life and died right now is comforting himself in the midst of the torments of God's justice by thinking to himself "Well,this will soon be over and then everything will be just fine." Not on your life! I doubt that you or I can imagine the utter horror of what they are going through right now, and quite frankly, I don't thnk enough Orthodox and/or Catholic pulpits are preaching enough warning about this. I had a moment of interior illumination 12 years ago in which the Lord showed me the reality of some sins that I had committed and I cannot begin to tell you how utterly frightening, horrific, and despairing that small taste of illumination was. Just this small taste of truth felt like a burning in my very being and I spent the night weeping and begging God's forgiveness. I can imagine that the full knowledge would have killed me with terror and grief. You vastly underplay what souls are going through right now.

3. Theosis. Why live the Sacramental life? To change!! That is what we were created for, to become beings of divine love, even here on earth. Look around you right now. Look at the demon-possessed fanatics burning buildings in Portland an attacking innocent people elsewhere. Is this what you want? Well, that is the fullness of life without the Sacraments. The Sacraments are the only means by which we can have real life on earth and the full reward in the next life. We are made for God. Life without Him is proving to be hell here on earth, isn't it? Is this really what you want? Is this really what God wants for us?

4. Love of God. Is fear of God really the proper means by which we are to obey? That is a crass and base way to get someone to obey, and it certainly does not lend itself to the love which God calls us to.One of the things I have come to realize is that for so many years, I kept all the rules and regulations of the Church, not out of love, but out of self-serving fear. In other words, I obeyed because I was afraid of hell. But guess what? It also screwed up my vision of God. To this day, because of the way that so many have presented Him, I have trouble seeing Him as anything other than ever-offended and ready to smack me if I step even an inch out of line. Is that a real relationship of love? Is that obedience out of love? Is that the kind of relationship that God wishes to have with His creatures, based on groveling fear rather than the love of a son or daughter? That is a sick relationship and in the depths of the soul, it truly is joyless.

For the first 500 years of the Christian faith, Universal Salvation was widely taught and believed in. Of the five theological schools that existed before Justinian shut them down, three of them taught Universal Salvation. Yet the Church grew by leaps and bounds, and to me that is understandable. Who would not wish to have a relationship with such a loving and wonderful God? At the same time, in history we see strong writing against sin and lax living. The interesting part about all this is that all three beliefs (Universal Salvation, Eternal Conscious Torment, and Annihilationism) were taught side by side and there was no council called in 500 years because someone in the Church suspected that heresy was being taught. I find this very telling.

One last thing: I think that you and I, and all the Church, needs to be constantly warning people in love that both Christ and St. Paul said that we would be rewarded according to our deeds here on earth. In other words, we need to warn the wicked that there is going to be a day of God's justice which they will find most distasteful and they will wish they had never entertained sin. I know I don't do that enough (Lord have mercy).

If you run an internet search for the "The Antiquity of Hell Whole Counsel of God Blog", it will turn up an article on a blog on Ancient Faith Radio (a ministry of the American Antiochian Church ) by Fr. Stephen De Young who is a bible scholar and comments from a second temple Judaism perspective.

I would also note his December 2, 2019 at 7:24 am response in the comment section.

To summarize his thesis in a nutshell: when a soul departs, he/she appears before the judgment of seat of Christ for a preliminary judgment where one is sent to Hades or Paradise. Prior to the Final Judgment/Resurrection of the dead, the prayers of those on earth and in paradise can aide those in Hades to help them repent. Once the Resurrection occurs, the judgment is final those who left in Hades and they remain there forever.

The Catholic Church explicitly rejects this position of post mortem conversion in several post schism ecumenical councils. I suppose one could get around this by 1) first hoping like Van Balthasar that none dies in a state of mortal sin 2) so Hades is a de facto purgatory where some level of conversion happens, just not from mortal sin.

There is a blog called "Eclectic Orthodoxy" by an Orthodox Priest, Fr. Alvin Kimel. He is an Anglican to Catholic to Orthodox convert and I find some of his articles fascinating. Irish Ruthenian may already have encountered this blog. The blog has an amazing reading list with links for PDF downloads and amazon. The actual blog itself includes many guest post from various author. Many of the topics discuss universalism which Fr. Kimel is but there is a wide range of other topics. Some catholic contributors have been:


Fr. Christiaan Kappes from St. Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic seminary
Fr. James Siemens a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest in Wales
Dr. Richard Bernier, professor in philosophy and religious studies at Concordia, and at McGill University. He is a member of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church.

I confess I am tempted by the idea of the form of universalism espoused by St. Isaac of Syria and I ever were to convert to Orthodoxy, I suspect it would be due to having more freedom in this regard. That said, the position by David Hart Bentley, Irish Ruthenian, and Fr. Alvin Kimmel is definitely a minority opinion in Orthodoxy and many of their compatriots within Orthodoxy would consider them heretics (at least potentially).

Another good book is "A Larger Hope" by Ilaria Ramelli.

If there were people teaching universal salvation in the first 500 years of the Church, this would be error and explain why it was never made a dogma through any Ecumenical Council or dogmatic pronouncement by any Bishop of Rome. All kinds of wonky beliefs were being taught throughout the history of the Church. In the end Truth prevails, as well all know.

Thank you for your input. I will check it out! I listen to Ancient Faith Radio sometimes. I wish the Byzantine Catholic Church could put out content the way Orthodoxy can. We need a Byzantine equivalent of Patrick Madrid on the radio/internet for daytime listening.