On the Judgement Day and the Second Coming of Christ (New Martyr Andrei Ukhtomsky)

 

Interpretation of the Gospel Teaching about the Judgment

1. The purpose of earthly life is to learn to love the Lord. About fear

First of all, let us note that the concept of the Judge of the world as punishing, and the concept of the Last Judgment as merely retribution, is erroneous from a dogmatic standpoint . Furthermore, it is also harmful from a moral standpoint, for it forces man to treat God with fear. This is not the fear that is the beginning of wisdom, nor the one that brings salvation , but the kind that makes demons tremble and which can never transform into love for God, which is what the Christian religion demands of its followers, since only those who love God can glorify Him and be blessed in this praise. Concerning this goal of man's earthly life—learning to love and praise the Lord—Saint Gregory of Nyssa speaks thus: "The purpose of creation is that in all creation, through the spiritual nature, the supreme Power may be glorified, when the heavenly and the earthly are united by the same action—I mean turning one's gaze to God—toward the same goal." This action—the turning of one's gaze toward heaven—is nothing other than the life proper to and consistent with spiritual nature. For just as bodies, being earthly, are sustained by earthly food, and in them we observe a certain kind of bodily life, equally accomplished in irrational and rational creatures, so too must we suppose that there is also a life, comprehensible to the mind, by which nature is preserved in existence. If carnal food, being something that flows in and out, by its very passage imparts a certain vital force to those in whom it is found, then does not the participation of that which truly exists, which always abides and eternally unchangeable, far more preserve in existence those who partake? "Therefore (if the life proper and fitting to spiritual nature consists in partaking of God), no partaking will occur between opposites unless that which desires partaking is in some way akin to that which is being partaken of. For just as the eye delights in light because it has within itself the natural light for the perception of what is like it, and... no other member of the body produces sight, because in no other member is natural light prepared; so, in order to become a partaker of God, it is absolutely necessary in the nature of the partaker to be something akin to that which he is partaking of... The true life of the soul is produced by partaking of what is good, but in ignorance, which hinders the knowledge of God, the soul, not being a partaker of God, is deprived of life" (Vol. 4, p. 340).

Furthermore, "since Scripture says that the communion of God is the life of the soul, and communion, according to its capacity, is knowledge, ignorance is not the realization of anything, but, on the contrary, the withdrawal of the activity of knowledge, and as soon as the communion of God was no longer accomplished, alienation from life necessarily followed - this was the extreme of evils - then, as a result of this, the Creator of all good produces in us a cure for evil (for healing is good) ... Therefore, as has been proven, it is bad to be alienated from God, Who is life: then the cure for such an ailment is assimilation to God and re-entry into life. And since this life belongs to human nature in hope, it cannot be said in the proper sense that the communion of life is a reward for previous good deeds and, conversely, a punishment for bad ones .

On the contrary, what is being asserted is similar to what is said in the example of the eyes. For we are not saying that the understanding of what is visible serves as some kind of reward or distinction for someone with pure vision, or, conversely, that the deprivation of visual activity serves as a punishment and a punitive consequence for someone with impaired vision.

On the contrary, just as one in whom everything is naturally arranged must necessarily see, and one who is taken out of his natural position by illness, his vision must remain inactive; so, in a similar way, a blessed life is akin to and characteristic of those who have pure senses of the soul , but for someone whose illness of ignorance, like some kind of pus, serves as an obstacle to the participation of the true light, for him the necessary consequence is not to have a part in that, the participation of which we call life for the one who partakes ” (Ibid., p. 343).

Thus, human bliss can begin on Earth if one makes the "sensory organs of the soul" so pure that they resemble the pure life of the all-blessed Divinity. This same state of the soul, having loved the Lord during earthly life and forgotten its temporary earthly life, must obviously be preserved during its transition to the afterlife, which will be a full and comprehensive manifestation of its, so to speak, unearthly life on Earth.

To command bliss, to impose bliss by force, is impossible—that would be to add unnecessary torment to a person. Bliss consists in a spiritual state, free and freely developing; it consists in a person's love for God and a free striving toward Him, in the assimilation of the loving human soul to the all-blissful love of God.

2. The torment of sinners is the natural state of their own souls

Let us now attempt to prove that the torments of sinners are not at all the result of any outside influence on them, but are merely the state of their own souls. Thus, our task is to prove that the last judgment, as the judgment of a rationally free creature, is its self-condemnation , and that this idea is contained both in the Apocalypse and in Holy Scripture in general.

The entire history of the world is, in its essence, the history of God's providence for the triumph of good over evil in the human race. But if this latter had not appeared among people, as among God's creation in general, then God's holy will would have been the common law for all, and God would always, in all, and unchangeably exist ( 1 Cor. 15:28 ).

This state of created nature, corresponding to God’s predestination concerning it, is the object of expectation for its best representatives and the object of horror for its sinful sons.

The former lovingly and ceaselessly strive toward God and the fulfillment of His holy will, while for the latter, the laws of this will are a source of torment and suffering. For the righteous, the Lord appears as a loving Father, and they yearn for the Father's embrace, while for sinners, the Lord appears only as a punishing and avenging all-powerful Almighty.

3. The Last Judgment is the full manifestation and approach of the Creator to His creation.

But these ideas of the creature about the Creator and its relationship to God are, of course, of no importance in judging the actual existence of the Creator and His holy will, which is absolutely not subject to change and incomprehensible to human powers. So, then, what is called the Judgment (and the Last Judgment) is only the complete manifestation and approach of God to the creature? - Yes! Saint Gregory the Great, with complete philosophical certainty, reasons about this thus: "What is called the day of God, if not His very eternity? On the other hand, eternity is sometimes designated in Holy Scripture by one day, as it is written: "One day in Thy courts is better than a thousand" ( Psalm 84:11 )... We revolve in time due to our created nature; God, as the Creator of all, contains our times in His eternity... But it is worthy of wonder why in Holy Scripture (Job) we find the words: "those who know Him do not see His days" ( Job 24:1 ). For He Himself is nothing other than His day, for God is what He has; He has eternity, but He Himself is eternity; He has light, love, and He Himself is light and love... Therefore, to say: those who know Him do not see His days , is it not to say that those who know Him, at the same time, do not know Him? Indeed, even those who believe in Him have (properly speaking) no concept of Him; He is eternity, in which we unwaveringly believe, without, however, knowing what this eternity of His is.

Concerning what we hear about the power of the Deity, we usually form an idea from what we know from experience; therefore, everything that begins and ends naturally has a beginning and an end; but if there is still some interval before the end, then we begin to speak of time; and, obviously, everyone in this interval (between the beginning and the end) glances back, thanks to memory, and rushes forward with expectation, as if straining his mental gaze through the interval of time. Therefore, when someone hears about the eternity of God, then, according to the human mind, he even presupposes years of life, by which he calculates what was before, since it is contained in memory, and what will be in the future, since this is the object of expectation. But to the extent that we attribute all this to eternity, we do not understand it; “Indeed, where nothing has either beginning or end, there is no expectation of the future, nor the destruction of what usually becomes the property of memory, but there is that which always exists” (Commentary on Job 24:1 ).

“The dreadful day of the Lord,” writes St. Simeon the New Theologian , “is called the Lord’s day not because it is the last day of these days, and not because the Lord is to come on it, as we say of the days of the present time: the day of Easter, the day of Pentecost... And it is not called the day of judgment because judgment is to take place on it. It will not be then that that day will be one thing, and He who is to come on it another. But the Master and God of all, our Lord Jesus Christ , will then shine with the radiance of the Divinity, and the radiance of the Lord will cover this sensory sun, so that it will not be visible at all, the stars will darken, and everything visible will roll up like a scroll, that is, will move away, making room for His Creator. And He will be one—both the day and God” (Homily 57:1).

Thus, human, sensory, that is, generally limited by space and time, ideas, carried over into the idea of ​​eternity, give reason to look at the day of Christ's coming both as a day, that is, a certain period or amount of time, and as the end of world history, whereas this will be only a continuation of the eternal revelations of the Deity about Himself, an eternal, necessarily acting in the world revelation of the law of God's truth, the unchanging love of God for creation, in a word, it will be the manifestation of God Himself.

The goal of human moral perfection is to live, if possible, in eternity (meaning, to live for God), to renounce the concept of time, remembering one's soul, which already lives in eternity, to renounce spatial existence, considering everything as nothing — that is, to see behind this semblance of the world the eternal hand of God, holding everything within itself. For those who have attained such a conception of the world and trained their souls in this direction, the transition from bodily to spiritual existence is natural and will appear to them as a simple continuation of their present life, and the day of God's coming will appear to them as Saints Gregory and Simeon write .

So, when imagining the Last Judgment, we must renounce all conventional ideas, for this Judgment is a revelation of the unconditional existence of God, His all-perfect love.

When this love, desired by the saints, appears, then Christ will take care of His faithful sons; they from all nations and tribes, and peoples and languages ​​will be blessed before the Lamb ( Rev. 7:9 ), Who will wipe away every tear from their eyes ( Rev. 7:17 ), and there will be no more death, nor crying, nor sickness, nor crying will be anymore ( Rev. 21:4 ).

4. The cause of suffering is the consequence of the spontaneous renunciation of Divine love

How then, with such an attitude of Christ towards His chosen ones (which all people can become) will it be possible to reject Christ’s Divine love and be subjected to suffering as a consequence of a spontaneous renunciation of it, a renunciation of this eternal love and eternal bliss?

As we have just said, man's entry, or rather his introduction, into eternity begins during his earthly life, when he looks upon his earthly existence as a certain insignificant moment given to him to prepare himself for eternity, so to speak, a moment of eternity; from this it follows that the judgment which will fully and obviously separate good and evil begins and has the basis for this division in man's earthly life.

This explains the words of the Savior about the general judgment, that the judgment began from the moment when light came into the world; but people loved darkness more than light, because their deeds were evil ( John 3:19 ).

This is the essence of God's judgment of people: man's evil will itself bears God's condemnation, since it resists God, that is, it hates the truth, the light, and is tormented by this impotent, unsatisfied hatred and malice. God is completely innocent of its sufferings, as well as of the sin that caused them, granting to all only one blessedness through Jesus Christ. " God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes through Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe has been condemned already " ( John 3:17-18 ); further Christ says: " He who rejects Me and does not receive My words has one who judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same will judge him at the last day " ( John 12:48 ).

St. John Chrysostom : "Lest the Jews become more negligent upon learning that if a believer receives salvation, then an unbeliever is not subject to punishment—see how Christ also sets before them the Last Judgment, adding the words: " He who rejects Me has one who judges him " ( John 12:48 ). But if the Father does not judge anyone, and Christ says: " If anyone does not listen to Me, I do not judge him " ( John 12:47 ), then who will judge him? " The word that I have spoken , that will judge him on the last day " ( John 12:48 ). Since they said that He was not from God, He spoke thus, showing that it would not be possible for them to say this then, but the words which I have spoken now will stand in place of an accusation, will convict them, and will take away from them all justification... And by the words: I do not judge ( John 8:15 ), He shows that He is not at all guilty of their destruction. By this Christ, as it were, testifies, intending to leave them and no longer address them: "When I spoke to you, I spoke nothing of My own accord, but all from the Father"... Therefore Christ says: " I am the light of the world " ( John 12:46 ). Since the Father is everywhere called light, both in the Old and New Testaments, He also applies this name to Himself... Here He shows His great relationship with the Father and does not put any difference between Him and Himself, because faith in Him does not refer to Him, but passes to the Father” (St. John Chrysostom. Commentary on the Gospel of John, homily 69).

Thus, man is condemned by the truth itself, and the more fierce the resistance to it, the greater the internal suffering of the resister; this is his "condemnation." In this sense, the Lord said that His very appearance in the world already condemned the latter, that those who do not see the truth but seek it have seen it and found the object of their hopes, while those who see it have become blind—that is, those who call themselves wise and intelligent, in their pride, have rejected the truth and closed their eyes to it ( John 9:39 ).

So, Christ judges the world because He spoke the truth, and because people hated the word of truth, and the greatest condemnation for the world is that it [the world] saw the truth and hated both it and its great Herald ( John 15:24 ).

Since Christ restored freedom to man, the captive of sin, destroyed the power of the devil over man and gave him balance in his spiritual life, which was what is called the return of man to his primordial state, it is obvious that after this, evil and every sin became an arbitrary consequence exclusively of his evil will and, in this sense, ceased to have any excuse: “ If I ,” says the Lord, “ had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin” ( John 15:22 ). This liberation of man by Jesus Christ from the power of the devil, this crushing of the devil’s power, increased the degree of self-condemnation of man and the suffering of his conscience, since man became fully responsible for his actions. This is how Bishop Theophan speaks about this: “Through sin and passions, demons cling to the soul, and while it is in sin, it is blinded by them and appears as if clothed in them. "It was this garment, sewn from demons, that the Lord removed from our nature. How? By the very fact that the sin living in us was cut off and we were granted new life, the demons' points of contact with us were removed" (Bishop Theophan, Commentary on Colossians 2:15 ).

5. What is the purpose of Christ's descent into hell?

“The deified soul (of Christ) descends into hell ( 1 Pet. 3:19 ) so that, just as the Sun of Righteousness shone for those on earth, so too light might shine for those under the earth in darkness and the shadow of death; so that, just as the Lord preached peace to those on earth, forgiveness to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, and became the Author of eternal salvation for those who believed, and a denouncer of unbelief for unbelievers; so also He preached to those in hell: ‘ That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth’ ( Phil. 2:10 ). And thus, having loosed those who were bound by demons, He brought them back from death to life, paving the way for us to the resurrection’ (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book 3:29).

It follows that the purpose of Christ's descent into hell was to preach truth and light, and, in this sense, to liberate the prisoners of sin and proclaim to them salvation and resurrection. On this basis, the Holy Fathers of the Church consistently taught that Christ was truly man and died a true death to be an example of life for ordinary people, and that He descended into hell with His human soul to be the firstfruits of those who slept ( 1 Pet. 2:21–25 ; 1 Cor. 15:20 ).

This means that “in the resurrection of Christ the beginning and foundation of the resurrection of all is laid, that its power is so great that life will come from it for all, or that this resurrection is already in possibility the resurrection of all” (Bishop Theophan, commentary on 1 Cor. 15:20 ).

But if we consider that even before the Savior's coming to earth, people were prepared by the Lord to accept God the Word through the gradual revelation of the truth, which Christ fully revealed to them, then, obviously, people condemned themselves even before Christ's appearance on earth, since the truth was revealed to every person to the extent that they were able to accept it. This knowledge of the truth, although incomplete, this gradual revelation, beginning with the First Gospel itself, this gradual revelation of Christ to the world not as a historical phenomenon but as an idea, as the moral renewal of a sinful soul through knowledge of the truth, condemned humanity.

Sin, obviously, even then was a direct opposition to the truth - it made man completely guilty before it and before Christ, Who even then revealed Himself to man, descended, as it were, into the hell of the sinful conscience of man, cleansing it.

This is how St. Irenaeus of Lyons sees the descent into hell , reasoning on this matter as follows: “The Lord descended into the lower parts of the earth, announcing here also His coming and declaring the remission of sins to those who believed in Him. And all who trusted in Him believed in Him; that is, the righteous , prophets, and patriarchs who foretold His coming and served His purposes, whose sins He remitted just as He did to us... All fall short of the glory of God ( Rom. 2:23 ); those who strive for His light are justified not by themselves, but by the coming of the Lord . And for our instruction the actions of those ancient people are described, so that we may know that one God is ours and theirs, and sins are not pleasing to Him (Against Heresies, Book 4:27).”

Thus, Christ's descent into hell is, in general, the preparation of humanity for the truth and the revelation of the truth that called man to the light; after the Fall, man was doomed only to the final destruction he himself deserved; but Christ immediately, after this terrible fall, begins to reveal Himself to the world, promises salvation to man, appears in promise, and prepares man for God-likeness; thus, from the very Fall, God the Word is man's guide to heaven and the center of world history.

6. What is hell?

But what then is hell? Clearly, the underworld—hell, and consequently heaven—are figurative concepts and cannot provide any spatial representation; likewise, Christ's victory over hell is a figurative expression of the liberation of the human soul from death and sin, granting it complete freedom and the possibility of salvation.

It follows that hell is, in fact, the devil's domain. Every descendant of Adam is under this dominion of the devil and sin. Christ came to destroy this dominion, that is, to free every person from this hell, proclaiming the truth to every human soul. Saint Macarius writes about this: "When you hear that the Lord in that time delivered souls from hell and darkness, that He descended into hell and accomplished a glorious deed, do not think that all this is far from your soul. Man easily accommodates and accepts evil, because death will overtake the souls of Adam, and the thoughts of the soul are locked in darkness. And when you hear about tombs, imagine not only visible tombs, for your heart is a tomb and a grave." "When the prince of evil and his angels nest there, when they pave paths and roads there, is it not hell, a tomb, a grave? Are you not dead before God? Therefore, the Lord comes into the souls that seek Him, into the depths of the heart's hell... and He crushes the heavy stones on the soul, opens the tombs, resurrects the truly dead, brings the imprisoned soul out of the dark prison" (Homily 2:11).

7. What makes a person free and who are the “sons of disobedience”?

Man's freedom from the power of the devil and his liberation from sin and hell, ever since the Savior's promise to Adam , have made him completely unaccountable before the moral law and his Creator. To the extent that Christ revealed the truth to man, to the extent that this truth made man free and showed him access to heaven, to that extent this knowledge of the truth serves to condemn man in his voluntary, free resistance to it; that sin, which should by nature be natural and inevitable for man, has now become for him a matter of his free will ; all the children of Adam are not so much by nature children of wrath ( Eph. 2:3 ), that is, subject to the hatred of God, as by their own will ( Rom. 2:8 ) they deserve their sufferings, which are the consequence of their renunciation of the source of life.

“The truth of God, calling us to faith and virtue, restrains the impulses of our vanity and our vicious desires. He who stands in the truth, loves it with all his heart, he himself resists the impulses, but he who has succumbed to them and followed them, he resists the truth, breaks out of its hands, says to it: go away, I do not want to know your ways ... Truth can mean any truth - both that which defines faith, and that which commands a good life; ... and justice also means every truth - both that which is required of the mind, and that which is required of the heart ... When the apostle says: resist the truth, he makes it clear that they (people) know the truth as the truth, and consciously resist it. And when he says: obey unrighteousness, he makes it clear that they know unrighteousness as unrighteousness, and consciously obey it. (Bishop Theophan, commentary on Romans 2:8 ).

Holy Scripture calls such people sons of disobedience ( Eph. 5:6 ; Gal. 3:6 ):

"These are the disobedient sons, the sons of no conviction, the kind of people who cannot be convinced by anything, no matter what you say—they do not believe God Himself, they do not believe and resist—stubborn unbelievers. Such were those who lived in Noah's time. How many times did he insist on behalf of God that they repent? They did not listen" (Commentary on Ephesians 5:6 ).

“There is no truth in them, and the truth is not accepted by them, it does not fit in with them, finding nothing akin to itself in them. The truth of God walks the earth and has reliable testimonies about itself. He who sincerely desires it will always find it. If there are those who do not find it, it is because they do not seek; and they do not seek because they are not of the truth. But there is nothing fatal in this: everything is a matter of free will” (Commentary on Colossians 3:6 ).

Based on this, we can accept as absolute truth the opinion of St. Chrysostom that there is not a single sin that actually stems from necessity, but that all depend on a corrupt will (Commentary on Eph. 1:14 ). Tertullian develops this idea beautifully as follows: “Since God is the supreme good,” he writes, “it is obvious that only evil can be unfavorable to Him, since it has a nature contrary to Him... And from the fact that body and spirit are two different beings, one should not conclude that carnal and spiritual sins differ in essence. One should not seek to determine which sin is greater or lesser—carnal or spiritual. Flesh and spirit equally belong to the Lord; when they sin, both equally offend God. Why distinguish between sin according to the flesh and sin according to the spirit, when flesh and spirit are inseparable from each other in life, death, and resurrection? "Will is the source of all our evil deeds. Some of them can be attributed to chance, suddenness, or ignorance, but all others arise from the will. The root of evil is in the spirit... Will alone constitutes crime " (Creation. His translation. Karneev. 1847. Part 2, p. 84).

So, every sin is opposition to the truth, expressed only in different ways.

8. What is called blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?

Every human condition—whether good or evil—is not something final, incapable of fluctuation or change, even to the point of opposition: a person can always pass from one state to another, from an opponent of truth to its servant. However, there is a limitation to this state—a limitation pointed out by Christ when He said, " Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men" ( Matthew 12:31 ).

But here, as the Holy Church teaches , the issue is not God's mercy, not its absence, but the hardening of sinners who do not accept it, who consciously reject the truth, or as the apostle puts it, "who hold the truth in unrighteousness" ( Rom. 1:18 )...

“When do people hold the truth in untruth? When they know the truth but do not fulfill it, when their life does not correspond to their knowledge; they have one thing in their mind and conscience, sometimes even in words, and another in their life and deeds, in the feelings of the heart and the moods of the will. Who knows—and who does not know this?—that they must remember God and thank Him, while whoever does not remember and does not thank Him, holds the truth in untruth... Whoever knows—and who does not know this?—that they must not commit debauchery, but only eat, drink, and be merry, not remembering death, and yet lives this way—he holds the truth in untruth... This untruth increases a hundredfold when someone does something wrong at the very time when their mind and conscience repudiate them and do not allow them to do so. This is what constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, about which the Lord pronounced a terrible definition: unforgiveness neither in this age nor in the next” (Bishop Theophan, commentary on Romans 1:18 ).

Thus, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is defined as intentional and, therefore, fierce resistance to the truth, that is, a sin from which the hardened human soul cannot free itself, and which destroys within it the very striving for moral perfection. In this sense alone is it called unforgivable: it is unforgivable insofar as it is ineradicable in the human soul. St. Chrysostom, in response to the words, "Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven them," writes that "and this guilt was forgiven those who repented. Many of those who blasphemed against the Spirit subsequently believed, and all was forgiven them. So what does it mean to say that this sin is primarily unforgivable? Because... men have already received sufficient knowledge of the Spirit." For whatever the prophets spoke, they spoke by inspiration of the Spirit, and in the Old Testament everyone had a very clear understanding of it. So, the words of Christ have this meaning: “You may be offended by Me because of the flesh in which I have clothed myself; but can you also say about the Spirit that you do not know Him? Why will this blasphemy of yours be unforgivable… because the Holy Spirit is known to you, and you are not ashamed to reject the obvious truth ” (Commentary on Matthew 12:31 ).

Thus, there are no sinners who cannot be forgiven for God, and the so-called unforgivability, or rather, their unforgivability, is a property of their soul and consists in its incorrigibility, that is, in hardening and resistance to the truth.

From this it is clear that resistance to truth is not some random fall or error on the part of man, but rather a stubborn persistence in evil, culminating in man's identification with evil and his hardening in his resistance to the truth. This hardening is the sin against the Holy Spirit; and it can lead a person to complete spiritual embitterment against goodness and truth and a complete loss of understanding of goodness. Therefore, just as a true, normal human life should be one filled with love for goodness, for God, abiding with God, or God's abiding within him, so too, when an evil will is filled with an uncontrollable hatred of God, it will be a constant struggle against goodness.

9. What is God's private judgment? On the existence of the soul after death

Having established the conditions of God's judgment over the soul of man, or, more accurately, his self-condemnation, we move on to depicting the existence of the soul - immediately following his death , that is, we will indicate what can be understood by the so-called private judgment of God.

A private judgment is usually called God's judgment over the soul, which occurs after the death of a person, and retribution is called after this judgment - the state immediately following death.

If, as we have acknowledged above, the afterlife of both the righteous and sinners is a continuation of earthly life, then it is obvious that the private judgment is the most complete moral self-determination of the human soul, the most precise revelation of the moral content of the soul: “It is easy for the Lord on the day of death to repay a man according to his deeds; at the end of a man his deeds are revealed” ( Sir. 11:26,27 ).

Herein lies the significance of the idea that at the end of a person's life, their deeds are known; that is, their consciousness rises and reaches its highest degree of clarity and depth. Psychology proves that every mental impression received by a person during their life cannot fail to leave a trace in their soul and becomes its inalienable property. Even the so-called unconscious represents only a state of a person when their consciousness is extremely diminished under the influence of external conditions. But it is worth removing these conditions, or placing the soul in correspondingly different conditions, and everything that previously seemed to have passed without a trace by a person's consciousness now very clearly becomes their spiritual property. Therefore, the strength of consciousness and feeling depends not so much on the strength of the soul itself, as on the conditions, or the external environment, in which the soul finds itself at a given time and the degree to which these external circumstances influence it.

Thus, if external circumstances, the diversity of feelings and ideas, and other conditions, on the one hand, lead to the fact that one thing seems to be forgotten by a person, while another remains in the soul of a person against his will, unconsciously, then it is natural to think that when the soul is freed from all these external obstacles for a fully conscious life, this consciousness will reach full development, which can be concluded from the fact that when the external environment becomes more monotonous in a person’s life, then the internal mental tension in a person begins to intensify.

From this it is clear that the soul, having left the body and with it the complexity of its earthly feelings (“many cares”), and having passed into the most simple and uncomplicated unearthly life, at the same time enters into a life that is more conscious and therefore intense.

This state of mind, when the soul reproduces in itself all its impressions, everything as if forgotten, but in fact completely indelible from the soul, is noted by the prophet Amos when he says on behalf of God: the Lord sware by the glory of Jacob: truly I will never forget any of their deeds ( Amos 8:7 ).

10. Passing through ordeals as a path to self-knowledge of the soul

The ability of the human soul not to lose anything from its memory and to remember everything forgotten in one situation in another is deeply understood in the church teaching on the ordeals, in the passage of which, according to the figurative expression of this teaching, self-knowledge of the soul lies.

But due to the affinity between the afterlife and earthly existence of man, of course, one must assume the possibility of ordeals on earth, for this name comes from the word “publican,” which in this case generally denotes the dominance of some (evil) force over man: consequently, ordeals are generally figurative expressions of the influence of the devil on the soul of man, and therefore this name can also be applied to his earthly existence.

This is how Father John of Kronstadt writes about this similarity between earthly and afterlife ordeals : “How true, to the last iota, is the entire teaching and tradition of the Church; for example, the teaching about the ordeals. I am still experiencing this truth on Earth. When I serve God, then I feel at times how evil and unclean demons hold back my soul, not allowing it to go to God in thought and word, and making various obstacles to me: sometimes with lustful thoughts, sometimes with passion for food, money, clothing, and so on. So, after a person’s death, they hold back the soul of a sinner” (Thoughts on Divine Services, Vol. 6 of the complete collected works, 1894, p. 19).

Thus, the ordeal of a sinful man consists in the fact that his sinful nature prevents him from achieving what he considers to be due; the soul does not lose the ability to distinguish good from evil, to know about good and evil and their existence, but, having decided on evil, it deprives itself of the opportunity to achieve what it already considers due and necessary.

This sinfulness of the soul deprives the soul of self-control and makes it a servant of the devil, that is, it plunges it into his power; therefore, the Holy Fathers, writing about the sufferings of the afterlife and avoiding abstract reasoning, directly speak of the tollhouses as the torment of the soul under the power of the devil.

We find a truly philosophical perspective on the tollhouses and the afterlife in the following two opinions. One of them belongs to St. Gregory of Nyssa and is as follows: Since every nature is drawn to what is proper to it, humanity, too, in some way related to God, as bearing within itself the likeness of the Archetype, is in all likelihood drawn by the soul to the Divine and its kin. For what is proper to God must be preserved completely and immutably. But if the soul is light and simple, untroubled by any bodily affliction, then approaching what attracts it will become pleasant and convenient.

But if, in connection with the material, it is fastened, as it were, by the nails of passion, as naturally happens with bodies buried by the earth during an earthquake, when their relatives pull them from beneath the rubble, they will certainly be broken, torn, and suffer the most grievous damage from the efforts of those who pull them out, torn by clods of earth and needles. A similar suffering, it seems to me, also befalls the soul when God's power, in love with mankind, extracts its property from beneath the irrational and natural ruins. For it is not out of hatred and revenge for an evil life , as I reason, that God leads sinners into tormenting dispositions— God , who brings and draws to Himself all that has come into being only by His mercy .

And just as He, the Source of all bliss, draws the soul to Himself with the best of intentions, so in the one who is drawn a painful disposition necessarily occurs... And just as if the stickiest mud were to adhere to some rope along its entire length , and then the upper end of the rope were to be pushed through some narrow opening, the rope being drawn would necessarily follow the one who draws it, while the mud that has coated it would remain outside the opening, as the reason why the rope does not freely follow its own path, but suffers a violent tension from the one who draws it; something similar, it seems to me, can be understood about the soul, which, entangled in material and earthly passions, suffers and is in an unpleasant state, when God draws His own to Himself, and what is alien, as if somewhat fused with it, He erases with effort and causes it painful and unbearable suffering.

“Therefore,” says St. Gregory , “God’s judgment, as is evident, does not impose punishment on those who have especially sinned, but, as the word has shown, produces only the separation of good from evil, drawing them into communion in bliss; the rejection of the one who has become attached becomes a torment for the one who has been drawn in” (Creative, vol. 4, pp. 273–274).

Thus, a person who has undergone ordeals can be compared to a person who, after a previous sinful life, received a blessed illumination, when he received the opportunity to relate quite consciously to the world and the impressions he receives from it.

In fact, during the infant state of his soul, man is so completely susceptible to external impressions that they constitute the entire content of his soul, which is unable to fully consciously respond to them, so to speak, to understand them. When grace and the light of truth reach the soul of man to the point that he is capable of establishing a conscious, moral attitude toward the world, then the traces of the impressions he previously received from the sinful world will constitute the present content of his soul, and the consciousness of his own depravity, his moral perversity, will torment him. The light of truth for man's existence after death will be God Himself, and when death tears man from the world, he will find himself in the position of a healed blind man, who has only just fully regained his sight and appreciated everything. Then his tormenting duality between his consciousness and his actual state will be revealed; He will be presented with impressions and pictures of the sinful world that are dear to him, and, on the one hand, he will recognize them as unworthy, disgusting, and, on the other hand, they will hold the soul back from moving forward to good, they will return it to the world it has abandoned, and will qualitatively diminish the good mood of a person drawn to God, as if involuntarily, by the inner strength of the soul, as if through the rope of St. Gregory.

But obviously not everyone is like the one depicted by St. Gregory, who is drawn to the ordeal. He, who endured the ordeal, albeit with difficulty, is rather an exception. How many will be like him? The rest, whose souls prove "unable to endure the ordeal," that is, incapable of understanding the bliss of God's love and attaining it through self-knowledge, will prove to be haters of goodness and love—proud, evil—enemies of God. It is in their enmity that they will find their torment.

11. What do the Savior’s words about the “mansions of the Father” mean?

In the afterlife, everyone receives his due; where his treasures are, there is his heart; as are his treasures, so is the state of his soul.

The usual description of the state of the souls of the righteous is that they dwell in the so-called blessed abodes, in paradise; but these abodes, according to Ephraim the Syrian , cannot be given any spatial representation, just as hell, as we discussed above.

"The Savior calls the many abodes with the Father," writes this holy father, " the measures of understanding of those established in that land. I mean the differences and distinctions with which they enjoy themselves there, according to their understanding. For the Lord named the many abodes not by the diversity of places, but by the degree of their gifts . Just as each enjoys the rays of the sensory sun according to the purity of their visual power and impressions, so in the future age all the righteous will be established inseparably, in a single joy. But each, in his own measure, is illuminated by the one mental Sun and, according to the degree of his worthiness, draws joy and gladness" (Creative Part 3, 3rd ed., p. 29).

But, obviously, just as the righteous will enjoy bliss to varying degrees, so too will sinners experience suffering - the former as they approach, and the latter as they move away from God.

"The degrees of bliss and torment in the age to come will vary," writes Father John of Kronstadt . "This is proven by the present state of souls in different people, or in the same person at different times, in different situations. The simpler, kinder, more sociable a person is, the more blessed he is internally; the more cunning, evil, and selfish he is, the more unhappy he is; the stronger his faith and love, the more blessed he is; the weaker, the worse" (My Life in Christ. M. T. I-th, p. 139).

These observations of the movements of the human soul also underlie the Church's teaching on the impossibility of moral indifference for man; in fact, he can only be either good or evil. St. Ephraim writes: "Besides the two ranks, there is no other intermediary rank—I mean one rank of heaven, the other of the earth... What is more foolish or senseless than to say: 'It is enough for me to avoid Gehenna, but I don't care about entering the Kingdom.' To avoid Gehenna means to enter the Kingdom, just as to lose the Kingdom means to go to Gehenna" (Ibid., p. 30).

12. The Church's teaching on the power of prayers for the dead

Thus, a person, just as he is born with the ability to self-determination, that is, with the ability to create his entire spiritual state, continues to exist even after death, during the first period of his afterlife—even after God's "private" judgment upon him. The Holy Church expresses this in its teaching on the possibility of a person achieving bliss beyond the grave through the prayers of living members of the Church, who, with their kind sympathy and love, help the soul to pass through the ordeals and to be cleansed of sin.

In the well-known account of the journey through the tollhouses of St. Theodora, a disciple of St. Basil the New, the soul's fate beyond the grave is presented in images. Being free from sin in some ways—that is, having hated them on earth—the soul successfully passes through the tollhouses named for these sins; while it passed through other tollhouses through the prayers of its teacher.

Thus, the soul appears to be striving for good, for the throne of love and grace, but burdened with evil, powerless in the hands of the devil. The soul, therefore, is found to have the capacity for freely choosing between good and evil, but with a capacity severely broken by the evil principle that has settled in the soul of man. At this time, man already makes the choice between good and evil with difficulty and torment; but this final choice between good and evil is helped to be made by the gracious prayers of the Holy Church.

Thus, the grace that lives in the Church, this great gift of God’s love that unites those living on earth and those living in Heaven, can touch even the soul that has left the earth but has not ceased to live in the Church.

13. For whom does the Holy Church forbid us to pray?

However, the Holy Church forbids prayer for unrepentant sinners, stating that salvation is no longer possible for them, that is, in other words, speaking of a complete, as if complete, state of hardness in their souls—when prayers for them can no longer act salvifically, having no ability to graft onto their souls, which can no longer help but reject them, since it itself does not love them; forced bliss is impossible.

From this teaching of the Church it follows that the prayers of the Church for the souls of the departed are not something that necessarily entails the bliss of the souls for which the prayer is offered , but they can be either freely accepted or rejected by the soul and can become for it only saving incentives for improvement in goodness; improvement itself for the soul remains a matter of free will .

We will not dwell in detail on the Church's teaching on the significance of prayer for the dead, which is based on the doctrine of the Church as the Body of Christ, in which not a single member is superfluous or inactive, and whose spiritual life is essential to the life of all as long as they are in the Church. We need only note the idea on which this teaching is based: that after the particular judgment, man still retains free will and can either correct himself through the Church's saving prayers or reject them, and that he himself freely remains the ultimate cause of his moral worth, and, consequently, of bliss or suffering. In these sufferings until the Last Judgment, after which, according to the teaching of the Church, any possibility for man to change his present spiritual state is destroyed, God obviously remains as innocent, just as He is innocent of all human suffering in general.

14. On the Last Judgment and the fate of man after the Second Coming of Christ

We now turn to the depiction of Christ's final judgment and the fate of man after Christ's Second Coming to earth. We will not focus on the external natural phenomena accompanying His coming, as described in the Gospel ( Matthew 24:29-51; 25:31-46 ; Mark 13:24-29 ); rather, we will examine the striking picture depicted in the Apocalypse, which can be clarified by ancient prophecies about the Second Coming, which clarify the spiritual states of those subject to the judgment of the Son of Man.

a) The “Book of Life” of the Apocalypse as predestination, that is, God’s foreknowledge

The Last Judgment, according to the Apocalypse, is depicted as follows: St. John the Apostle saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne (that is, God) a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals ( Rev. 5:1 ); this book could only be read by the Lamb, who came and took the book from the hands of Him who sat on the throne ( Rev. 6:7 ).

According to the interpretation of St. Andrew of Caesarea , this book should be understood as the all-wise memory of God, in which all people are listed, and the depth of Divine Judgments, that is, in general, what is called the predestination of God , by virtue of which God already knows about every person what place he will occupy in the future world; for whom God foreknew, he also determined to be conformed to the image of his Son... and whom he predestined, he also glorified ( Rom. 8:30 ).

Thus, the Judgment, in its essence, seems to be superfluous; but its apocalyptic revelation is important for determining the meaning of human freedom in the afterlife.

"Those in whom God foreknew a firm purpose, He ordained from the beginning; and having ordained them , He then, having called, justified them by baptism; and having justified them, He glorified them , naming them sons and granting them the grace of the All-Holy Spirit. But let no one claim," Blessed Theodoret insists , "that foreknowledge is the cause of this, for it was not foreknowledge that made them such, but God, as God , foresaw the future from afar . For if I, looking at a zealous horse that has bitten the bit and thrown its rider, say that, approaching a rapid, it will rush into it, and then, according to my word, this will come to pass, then it was not I who plunged the horse into the abyss, but I foretold that this would happen, using the horse's daring courage as a sign. “For the God of all things foresees everything from afar, as God; and He does not reduce one to the necessity of succeeding in virtue, and another to do evil” (Commentary on Romans 8:30 ).

It follows from this that God’s predestination is called God’s omniscience, since it does not violate human freedom.

"We must know that God knows everything in advance," writes St. John of Damascus , "but He does not predetermine everything. For He knows in advance what is in our power, but does not predetermine it: for He does not desire vice to occur, but does not compel virtue by force" (Exact ed., Book 2, 30).

Thus, predestination is the same as God's foreknowledge . This is the symbolic book of the Apocalypse , in which all the names of the righteous and sinners are written before their earthly lives. The transfer of the book to the Lamb symbolically signifies the equality of the Father with the Son, that is, what the Lord said in the words: " All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him " ( Matthew 11:27 ). In a word, this book signifies the perfection of divine knowledge, which through the coming of the Son of God became known to people when many began to read it and increase their knowledge ( Dan. 12:4 ).

But this knowledge is relative, conjectural ( 1 Cor. 13:12 ), and will be replaced by complete knowledge when all who have believed in Christ will cry out to the Lamb who took the book: “ You are worthy to take the book..., for You were slain and redeemed us for God with Your blood... and You have made us kings and priests to our God, and we will reign on the Earth ” ( Rev. 5:9-10 ).

But besides these righteous ones, who, according to the interpretation of St. Andrew of Caesarea , are depicted in the Apocalypse under the guise of four living creatures and twenty-four elders ( Rev. 5:8 ), Apostle John says that he " saw and heard the voice of many angels around the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and their number was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, saying with loud voices, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.' And every creature which is on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, said, 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever '" ( Rev. 5:11-13 ).

These words indicate that the world recognizes (and cannot help but recognize) the Lamb's great moral superiority over itself, that is, that in the soul of every rationally free being the Lamb will appear as one common and highest example and ideal of moral life for all.

This is what is meant by the innateness and complete inviolability of the image of God - in all rational creatures - and the devil recognizes the Lamb's dignity, but this knowledge will make him tremble ( James 2:19 ), and will deliver torment corresponding to the latter, for in fear there is torment ( 1 John 4:18 ); so sinners, by virtue of their innate feeling of good, as a feeling of duty and, consequently, necessity, themselves and completely freely recognize all His dignity in the Lamb and, as follows from the connection of the apocalyptic narrative, will freely reject Him .

Indeed, while " the four living creatures said, Amen: and the twenty-four elders fell down and worshiped Him who lives forever " ( Rev. 5:14 ), that is, after the righteous worshiped the Lamb and received blessedness, the other part, obviously sinners: " the kings of the earth, and the nobles, and the rich, and the captains, and the mighty, and every slave, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb " ( Rev. 6:15-16 ). This is the first (in place) mention of the wrath of the Lamb, but only the wicked speak of His wrath, whose lot is torment before the Lamb; Here, therefore, the sinners’ own idea and impression of the Lamb and His seemingly angry mood towards them is already obvious, while the actual attitude of the Lord – the Lamb – towards them is depicted in the Holy Scripture as filled with the same Divine and unchanging love, expressed in the words addressed to the entire human race: “ Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” He says: “if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me ” ( Rev. 3:20 ).

While the righteous fulfill this will of His and worship God and become truly the kingdom of Christ ( Rev. 11:15 ), sinners - in response to this call - respond with " ferocity " ( Rev. 11:18 ) and, having worshiped the beast and his image, suffer torment in fire and brimstone before the holy Angels and the Lamb ( Rev. 14:10 ) and blaspheme the God of Heaven from their sufferings and their sores; and do not repent of their deeds ( Rev. 16:11 ); That is why the day of the Lord, the day of light, is called by the prophets a day of darkness for the inhabitants of the earth (that is, for sinners): " Let all the inhabitants of the earth tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming... a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness" ( Joel 2:1-2 ), which is " darkness and there is no brightness in it " ( Amos 5:20 ). - What follows from this narrative, if not the complete dependence of the torment of sinners on their own spiritual state?

b) The torment of sinners as their free resistance to the truth

Let us, however, examine in more detail the conditions of torment for sinners.

First of all, the Apocalypse's narrative of the free recognition by all creation of the Lamb as Judge, the Almighty, and the free worship of some and the falling away from Him of others, is striking. This is the idea of ​​the self-condemnation of creation. In fact, isn't bringing a soul to judgment against its will really killing it in the truest sense of the word, that is, depriving it of the inalienable gift of freedom?

Thus, people themselves will come to the Lamb and will then receive either bliss or torment—it will not be the Lamb who judges them, but the truth, of which the Lamb alone is the embodiment. Basil the Great expresses this thought thus: "In examining life, the Lord Himself subjects Himself to the judgment of everyone and contrasts His commandments with the deeds of sinners, justifying Himself by citing evidence that He has done everything required of Him for the salvation of those being judged, so that sinners, convinced of how guilty they are of sin and accepting God's judgment, will not voluntarily endure the punishment imposed upon them " (Commentary on Psalm 7:9 ).

Thus, man will be judged by himself, by his inalienable, innate ability to know the truth, that is, by the unchanging essence of the image of God imbued in his nature. St. John Chrysostom says that "freedom in man is more important than essence—the former is more man than the latter. It is not essence that casts one into Gehenna, nor does it lead one into the Kingdom of God, but freedom alone" (Commentary on Colossians 3:9 ).

A similar opinion regarding the complete freedom and complete self-condemnation of man is found in St. Irenaeus, who writes: "If you do not believe in Christ and flee from His hands, then the cause of your imperfection will be in you, who disobeyed, and not in Him who called you. For He sent servants to call to the wedding feast, but those who did not obey deprived themselves of the royal banquet. The light does not fade for those who blind themselves, but while it remains as it is, they themselves, blinded through their own fault, are in darkness. For the light does not enslave anyone by force, and God does not compel anyone who does not want to accept His goodness. Therefore, those who have fallen away from the Father's light and transgressed the law of freedom have fallen away through their own fault , since they were created free and self-governing " (Against Heresies, Book 4:39).

Thus, only truth itself judges man, and only resistance to it, man's resistance to his destiny, brings torment. In a word, this will be torment from the split in man between his consciousness and his will, his reason and his desires—in a word, the recognition of his guilt before the Savior Jesus Christ, the awareness of his betrayal of the Lord, his bitterness against the love of God, and the impossibility of correction.

The Lord expressed this thought in the words: “ He who rejects Me and does not receive My words has one that judges him: the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day ” ( John 12:48 ).

c) The judgment of each person will be different according to the extent of his knowledge of good and truth.

But not all people hear the truth to the same degree, and most importantly, they do not fulfill the requirements of God's commandments or understand the word of truth they have heard to the same degree. Obviously, each of them will be judged, since they knew God's will and did not fulfill it. Then the words of the Savior will be literally fulfilled: " With what judgment you judge (others, that is, you know good and truth), you will be judged " ( Matthew 7:2 ).

This idea is especially clearly developed in the writings of St. Basil the Great . The latter, in his commentary on the words of the Gospel: " The Queen of the South will rise up in judgment... and condemn this generation " ( Matthew 12:42 ), writes the following: "The Lord says of those who turn away from Divine teaching, neglect the purity of morals, and have completely rejected the enlightening teachings of wisdom, that they, in comparison and comparison with their contemporaries who have shown excellent zeal for good, will bear the heaviest punishment for what they have failed to fulfill. But I think that not all clothed in this earthly body will be judged equally by the righteous Judge , because the very different external circumstances that confront each of us will make the judgment over each one different ." " He who has been brought up from the very beginning in the law of God, which condemns sin and instills its opposite, if he falls into idolatry, will have no such excuse as one who received an education from parents who did not know the law, from pagans, who were taught idolatry from childhood... The Scythians are a nomadic people; they are brought up in brutal and inhuman customs, accustomed to robbery and mutual violence..., and if they show one another any kindness and leniency, then with their services they will prepare for us the most severe punishment " (Commentary on Psalm 7:9 ).

Such condemnation for unrepentant sinners will be the same for every righteous person or sinner who has repented under the same conditions of life.

d) Self-condemnation as the only possible type of Judgment over a person

St. Simeon writes: “Thus will fathers be judged by fathers, slaves and freemen by slaves and freemen, rich and poor by rich and poor, married by married, unmarried by unmarried, and, to put it simply, every sinner on that terrible Day of Judgment will see someone like himself opposite him in eternal life and in that ineffable light and will be judged by him; so to speak, every sinner will see someone like himself opposite him, that is, a king will see a king, a boss will see a boss, an unrepentant fornicator will see a repentant fornicator, a poor man will see a poor man, a slave will remember that he, too, was a man, and that he had a soul and a body and everything else, just as the other had in this life; ...and he will shut his mouth, having nothing to say in his own defense” (St. Simeon the New Theologian, word 66.5. Translated by Bishop Theophan. Moscow, 1890).

With these words, St. Simeon points to self-condemnation as the only possible form of judgment for a person . This same idea is contained in the Savior's words to the apostles: " In the regeneration you also will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel " ( Matthew 19:28 ). St. John Chrysostom says: “The apostles will not sit as judges, but in the same sense in which the Lord said of the Queen of the South that she would condemn that generation, and of the Ninevites that they would condemn them, He also speaks of the apostles... Therefore, when they (the tribes of Israel) say in their own defense that we could not believe in Christ because the law forbade us to accept His commandments, then the Lord, having pointed them to the apostles, who had the same law and nevertheless believed, will condemn them all, as He already said: “ for this reason they also will be your judges ” ( Matthew 12:27 ). (Commentary on Matthew 19:28 ).

15. Saints as judges of the Universe

“The saints must be recognized as judges of the Universe,” writes St. Hilary of Poitiers , “their life and faith will be a sentence for the infidels and sinners...”

Therefore, the apostle clearly calls the saints the judges of the universe : “ Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? ” ( 1 Cor. 6:2 ). But the latter will appear as judges of the world to the extent of their resemblance to the universal human image of holiness - the righteous Jesus Christ, Who therefore turns out to be the only Judge of the world, having received His authority from the Father ( John 5:22 ). He, as a man who was subjected to temptations and conquered them, is the only One who can pronounce a true judgment on the strength of temptations ( Heb. 2:18 ), as knowing their severity; He will also be the Judge of people, as He Himself was a man, - for only the judgment of an equal can be a true judgment; as a result of this, the salvation of fallen man through Jesus Christ, predetermined by God from the ages, is at the same time the eternal condemnation of sin by God. Christ judges people not as God, but as a man who brought the truth, accepted by some and rejected by others, according to the saying - for He is the Son of Man ( John 5:27 ); He is also the source of torment for the latter.

The words of the Lord: “ I do not judge you ” – in the explanation of St. Ambrose of Milan , mean precisely this; St. Ambrose seems to impart the following words to Jesus Christ: “I am the common redemption, I am the salvation of sinners, I do not judge you, because you have not accepted Me. I do not judge, because I suffer according to My own will, I do not judge, because I deliver sinners by My own Blood ( Isaiah 43:25 ). I do not judge, because I blot out sins and do not remember them, I do not judge, I desire the life, and not the death of the sinner ( Ezekiel 18:23 ). I do not judge, because I do not condemn, but forgive those who repent. Moses judges you; he will convict you of whom you believe” (Migne; t. 16, epist cl 2. ep. 77.13).

Thus, truth alone, no matter in whose mouth it may be, brings torment to sin when it comes into contact with it. Thus we read in the Gospel that the scribes and Pharisees, entering into conversation with Christ, but feeling and acknowledging His immeasurable superiority over themselves, and convicted by their conscience, withdrew ( John 8:9 ). So he who practices evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed ( John 3:30 ). In this case, that is, to indicate His innocence in the sufferings of sinners, Christ calls Himself only a stumbling block for them. In general, "the Promised One is called a stone in Holy Scripture because through Him and on Him the Kingdom of God was founded, the Kingdom of righteousness and holiness, the Kingdom of the sons of God. He was called a stone of stumbling and temptation not because He was intentionally placed there to cause stumbling and temptation: He Himself is a stone of refuge and strength, but because many did not understand what He was, were tempted by Him, did not believe, and thus stumbled over Him.” (Bishop Theophan. Commentary on Romans 9:33 ).

In a word, the tormentor of sinners will be none other than their own moral nature.

16. Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus

In some contradiction to all of the above, there seems to be a biblical account of the Judgment of Christ and the lives of sinners, as depicted in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In this parable, the rich sinner is depicted as striving for Lazarus's abode, that is, for goodness, but between them there is a gulf that prevents their life together. Further, in the prediction of His Second Coming, Jesus Christ says that He will separate sinners from the righteous, and while He will bring the latter closer to Himself, He will remove the former from Himself: they will go away into eternal torment ( Matthew 25:46 ), having heard the sentence that Christ will say to them, " I do not know you " ( Matthew 25:12 ).

But ignorance of God signifies only the Lord God's disapproval of what, in one or another biblical narrative, is described as, as it were, unknown to God. Furthermore, in the narrative of the Last Judgment, the right and left sides, and the separation from God, as if His rejection of those who find themselves on the left side, naturally signify only that the latter were evil, having rejected bliss and fallen into torment.

St. Hilary , in his commentary on Psalm 120:5 : “ The Lord is your shadow on your right hand ” ( Psalm 120:5 ), says that here the right hand refers to the whole life of a person, and that common sense cannot accept any other interpretation that is contrary to this, a literal one, and that under such bodily images one must see and know the spiritual, since only our limitations cannot speak of the invisible in any other way than by comparing it with the visible.

But further, writes St. Hilary, Holy Scripture always understands the right side to be the better, more favorable side, and the Gospel, by dividing people into the right and left sides, only indicates the difference in understanding of the one and the other ( Matt. 25:33 ).

Thus, the separation of the good from the bad is nothing more than a determination of their spiritual and moral character; of course, this occurs in the human soul, and only there. God, as the eternal source of all bliss, even here imparts only bliss to souls, but some use this divine goodness for their own benefit, while others use it for their own suffering—that is, they stand on the right side or the left.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the former's mood turns out to be different from his earthly fate—he is depicted as tormented in flames, yet simultaneously caring for his brethren and yearning for Abraham's bosom. Meanwhile, the God-wise interpreters of this parable, the Holy Fathers, focus their attention in this narrative not on the description of the rich man's condition, but on nothing other than Abraham's words that a great gulf has been fixed between sinners and the righteous ( Luke 16:26 ).

In such an interpretation, this parable will not in the least contradict everything we have said above, since, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, this impassable abyss is an image of such a mood of a sinner when he is not able to repent, that is, when the transition from an evil state to a good one is already an impassable abyss.

The same Saint Hilary writes that hope for God's everlasting mercy is possible, but its manifestation is not always possible; "indeed, the repentance of a sinner exists only in this present life, as long as everyone is governed by their own will and therefore has the opportunity to repent. Those who depart this world are simultaneously deprived of the power of self-government—then a sentence has already been passed, in accordance with the past direction of the will, which determines (the further development of souls) of the dead in a state of either bliss or punishment."

The prophet depicts the will at this time no longer in a state of freedom, but deprived of it; he says, “there is no favor in my (that is, God’s) favor in those days” (this is probably a quote from Mal. 1:10 , with the replacement of the word “to us” with the words: “in those days”) – this means that with the loss of free will, the possibility of accepting a different manifestation of it than it was (previously) is also destroyed.

Therefore, the rich man, striving for Abraham, could not reach him, due to the abyss that separated them ( Luke 16:26 ), although earlier, using his free will, he could lie on Abraham’s bosom; free will does not exist for the dead, for there is no repentance for them, which is why the prophet said: “ in hell who will confess to You? ” ( Psalm 6:6 ).

Thus, the tormented sinner had no repentance and could not have it, and yet it is the only means to attain bliss; the purpose of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, therefore, is not to show the essence of the relationship between God and man, but only to point out to man that there is no repentance beyond the grave, and to show the immutability and horror of the afterlife torments of sinners.

St. Gregory of Nyssa interprets this parable in exactly the same way , prefacing the interpretation itself with the following words: "What eyes does the rich man lift up in hell, leaving his fleshly eyes in the tomb? How does the incorporeal feel the flame? What tongue desires to cool with a drop, when it has no fleshly tongue? What finger gives it a drop? What is the womb of rest? For when the bodies are in tombs, and the soul is neither in the body nor composed of parts, it will be difficult to reconcile the narrative, understood in its literal sense, with the truth, unless one accepts all the particulars in a spiritual sense, so that even the abyss that hinders the communion of the incompatible is not considered an earthly distance. For what effort is it for the incorporeal and spiritual to fly over an abyss, even the widest one, because the spiritual by nature, wherever it wishes to be, appears there without wasting time on it” (M. 1882. Vol. IV, p. 258).

St. Gregory further concludes that "this abyss, which is not formed by the earth opening up, is produced by a judgment divided in life into opposing wills. For one who has once chosen what is pleasant in this life and has not healed his folly with repentance, thereafter makes the realm of good things inaccessible to himself, digging this inescapable necessity before himself like some yawning and impassable abyss" (p. 260).

Apparently, according to St. Gregory, the abyss separating Abraham and the rich man consisted of the difference in their spiritual states—a difference that is not erased beyond the grave and that began during the earthly lives of both, who were divided by opposing wills. Thus, "concerning the aforementioned hell," continues St. Gregory of Nyssa , "one must think that it is not just any place so named, but a certain invisible and incorporeal state of the soul, in which, as Holy Scripture teaches us, the soul abides" (p. 263).

Thus, in hell there is neither space nor investigation of the time of life ( Sir. 41:7 ); and the rich man's hell consisted in his evil disposition. St. Gregory notes that the sinner's aspirations towards Abraham, spoken of in the parable, denote only the strength of his torment; in fact, all the sinner's aspirations and thoughts were tied to the Earth; "while the soul of Lazarus is occupied with the present and does not turn to anything left behind, the rich man, even after death, is, as it were, welded by some joint to the carnal life, which even after his death he has not completely put off; on the contrary, the object of his care is flesh and blood, for from the fact that he asks for deliverance from evils for those in a family union with him, it is clear that he has not yet freed himself from carnal passion; ...so it is impossible for carnal people, after the transition to the invisible and most subtle life, not to attract with them some kind of carnal stench, from which the torment becomes even more severe for them, because the soul from this circumstance becomes more grossly materialized” (p. 264).

Thus, hell is a figurative representation of the internal torments of a sinner, both in the afterlife and in earthly life; according to St. John Chrysostom , this rich man from the Gospel, in contrast to Lazarus, was already on earth in the terrible torments of hellfire.

“Do not tell me,” writes St. Chrysostom, “that this man (the rich man) enjoys a luxurious table, is surrounded by crowds of servants and proudly walks through the marketplace; but open his conscience, and you will see within a great rebellion of sins, a continuous fear, as if of rebellion - you will see that the mind (the “ruler of the mind,” that is, the innate knowledge of good), as if at a judgment seat, has ascended the royal throne of conscience and sits like a judge, arranging thoughts around, like executioners, torments the soul and tears at it for sins and cries out loudly against it ... Indeed, he who lives fornication and on bed, and at table, and in the marketplace ... sees images of his sin, spends the life of Cain, groaning and shaking on the ground ( Gen. 4:12 ) ... has a fire within himself, always kindled” (First Sermon on Lazarus).

17. When is correction impossible?

Remorse is, after all, a sign of a person’s ability to improve, so if there is this repentance in the afterlife, then the torment will then have a cleansing, atoning character, as if forcing people to repent.

The point is, however, that the human soul cannot be indifferent to good and evil; it will be only good or only evil – it can either love or hate the truth; there can be no middle ground.

Thus, alongside remorse, the soul will constantly abide in hatred of goodness, in self-love, and herein lies the positive impossibility of its correction. The more a person strives to be self-originated, in opposition to the one Origin, the more he begins to suffer as a result of the dissatisfaction of his aspirations. While the blessedness of the righteous will consist in the complete and closest coexistence of the soul with God, when human freedom, not tolerating the slightest coercion, becomes a good necessity for them, voluntarily submits to God and in this finds its bliss, the state of torment will consist in the impotent hatred of the wicked for God and for truth, which only increases with time .

“If peace is preached and praised as the ultimate good,” writes Blessed Augustine, “then, on the contrary, what kind of war and what kind of war can be supposed to be the ultimate suffering? What war can be imagined more difficult and terrible than that in which the will is hostile to passion, and passion to the will, so that no victory on their part can subdue the enmity; or when the power of suffering enters into conflict with the very nature of the body, so that neither of them yields to the other? There, suffering will remain to torment, and nature will continue to exist to feel suffering” (Blessed Augustine. On the Count of God, Book 21, 3)

Thus, only the constant hostility and hatred of sinners toward truth and goodness determines their eternal torment . 1 This is the basis for the impossibility of conversion for evil spirits—the more they feel goodness toward themselves, the more they see love, the more they become hardened against it (therefore, there is some reason to believe that the opinion that prayers for suicides, as unrepentant sinners, not only fail to achieve their goal, but, on the contrary, embitter them, has grounds for being accepted). This is what St. Isaac the Syrian expressed with his characteristic depth of thought and certainty.

“Those tormented in Gehenna,” says this holy father, “are struck by the scourge of love. And how bitter and cruel is this torment of love ! For those who have sensed that they have sinned against love endure a torment greater than any terrifying torment: the sorrow that strikes the heart for sinning against people is more terrible than any possible punishment. It is inappropriate for man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God . Love is the product of the knowledge of the truth, which (as everyone agrees) is given to all in general. But love’s power acts in two ways: it torments sinners, as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend, and it rejoices those who have fulfilled their duty. And so, in my opinion, such is the torment of Gehenna—it is repentance” (Homily 18).

But this is one side of the torments of hell; the second will be a positive and constant struggle with all good, as Blessed Augustine says above. “For where love is lacking, hatred inevitably takes its place. And if, as the Apostle John teaches, God is love ( 1 John 4:16 ), then, of all necessity, hatred is the devil . Therefore, just as he who has love has God within him, so he who has hatred within himself nourishes the devil within himself” (St. Basil the Great on Asceticism; Word 3, p. 73).

This hatred of good and love of all that is evil cannot be removed from the human soul by any suffering: the latter not only fails to soften the embittered human soul, but, on the contrary, intensifies its bitterness against God. There are frequent examples of pride condemning itself to all manner of suffering and deprivation, just to avoid becoming dependent, to "humble itself." This hatred and pride, with the full awareness of one's own powerlessness compared to the omnipotence of God, will only intensify, finding no outlet.

18. What is hellfire (an explanation of some difficult-to-understand passages of the Holy Scriptures)

But having explained, as far as possible, where the cause is, and what is the essence of the torment of sinners, we must explain, on the basis of our conclusions, those sayings of Holy Scripture concerning the Last Judgment that are incomprehensible, in their literal understanding.

According to biblical teaching, the distinguishing feature of the torments of the afterlife will be torment from the undying worm and unquenchable fire ( Mark 9:44 ) or simply from eternal fire ( Matthew 25:41 ; Luke 16:24 ). Holy Scripture does not at all define the essence of this type of torment, but it is possible, on the basis of Holy Scripture, to recognize them as merely figurative expressions of the torments of hell, especially since the Holy Fathers are almost completely silent about the undying worm, and on the basis of their teaching on eternal flame, it is absolutely impossible to draw any other conclusion than that made by St. John of Damascus .

The latter says that "both the devil and his demons, and his man, that is, the Antichrist, and the wicked and sinners will be consigned to eternal fire, not a material fire, such as the fire we have, but one known only to God" (Exact Explanation of the Rule of Faith; Book 4:27). More cannot be said about hellfire based on the writings of the Holy Fathers, for everyone generally disagrees on the definition of the nature of fire.

One can only note that the Holy Fathers speak of hellfire to intimidate sinners, to turn them away from vice, even if only through threats (this is especially noticeable in Chrysostom's commentary on 2 Thessalonians 1:8 ). Similarly, the Holy Fathers' promise of seemingly external rewards and awards merely signifies a desire to console the righteous in their meager earthly life. In essence, both fire and retribution beyond the grave are expressions of the Holy Fathers' faith in personal immortality, blessed for some and torturous for others. Therefore, they do not clarify the nature of hellfire itself—the Holy Fathers merely note its inevitability.

To clarify this question about the afterlife fire, as a symbol of all suffering, we need to pay attention to the fact that the Holy Scripture , although unclear and fragmentary, calls God Himself: “ a consuming fire ” ( Deut. 4:24 ) and relates the manifestation of this property of God for the most part to the Day of the Last Judgment.

In this case, it is very clear that the presence of God will be a consuming fire only for sinners, that is, it will express the latter's inner state. This will be entirely consistent with the above-stated teaching about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, as the full revelation of God and God's love for the world. Blessed Jerome writes of fire in this sense as follows:

“The hand of the Lord, which will be known to His servants and those who fear Him, itself threatens unbelievers or His enemies that if they do not bring repentance, they will undergo the following: For behold, says the prophet, the Lord will come in fire, and His chariot like a whirlwind and a tempest... Not in the sense that God is fire, but in the sense that He seems to be fire to those who are subjected to punishment. And although Moses said: “ God is a consuming fire ” ( Deut. 4:24 ); and the same is confirmed by the apostle ( Heb. 12:29 ); nevertheless, the Savior, expressing the essence of the Deity, says: “ The Spirit is God ” ( John 4:24 ). And between spirit and fire, according to the literal understanding, there is much difference. But if He is fire or spirit, then why is He called Having eyes, and ears, and hands, and feet, and belly, and other parts of the body, while the spirit does not have them? Therefore, God is called a destroying fire because He destroys every vice in us... The Lord also speaks of this fire in the Gospel: " I came to cast fire on the earth " ( Luke 12:49 ) and: " lawlessness will burn like fire " ( Isaiah 9:18 ). He also destroys all the tares that the enemy of man sowed while the owner of the household slept ( Matthew 13 ). About this it is written in the Epistle of James: " How much a small fire burns up great things " ( James 3:5 )!.. I believe that this fire appeared in the tongues of the apostles and of all believers, when they spoke in different languages ​​and drove away the darkness of error and enlightened the hearts of those who received the word of the Lord ( Acts 2 )" (Blessed Jerome. Commentary on Isaiah 66:15 ).

Elsewhere he writes: "The Lord addresses the prophet (Jeremiah 5:14) and says: I will make My words in your mouth such that they will have the power of fire, and I will turn the (sinful) people into firewood, so that by your word and prophecy the unbelievers will be burned. Thus God is called a consuming fire, to consume the wood, hay, and stubble in us, if we have not spoken this on the foundation of Christ ( 1 Corinthians 3:12 )" (Commentary on Jeremiah 5:14 ).

Blessed Jerome's opinion that fire is the word of the Lord, enlightening some and burning away the sins of others, is confirmed by direct evidence from Holy Scripture. However, it should be noted that the word of God is the expression of God's will, the law of God revealed to the world, and the expresser and sole herald of God's will on earth was Christ. Therefore, He says that He came into the world as the light of the world ( John 9:5 and the entire Gospel of John); but, at the same time, He came to bring fire to the earth ( Luke 12:49 ).

"Christ is called light, as the brightness of souls purified in mind and life. For if ignorance and sin are darkness, then knowledge and divine life are light" ( St. Gregory the Theologian ).

Thus, Christ appears as the herald of knowledge, truth, life, in contrast to sinful life, darkness, that is: just as material light makes it possible to see things, so the light of the world revealed the moral life of the latter and gave the true path of life, liberation from the darkness of life.

In this regard, God's providence and will for man is called the sanctifying fire that imparts blessedness ( Isaiah 5:30; 58:10 ; Jeremiah 50:16 )—that is, simply Divine love or grace, because, by its very nature, only love is the source of all blessedness. St. Simeon the New Theologian calls this love of God and the grace it imparts both judgment and the day of Divine light and fire, depending on how the person himself relates to it and, consequently, depending on the effect it produces on him. He writes: "For those who show worthy repentance and begin to fulfill the commandments of Christ with faith... it is revealed and becomes visible and of itself produces judgment in them, invariably such as it is to be, or, better to say, it becomes for them the day of divine judgment. "He who is always shining and sanctified by this grace truly sees himself—what he is and in what a wretched state he finds himself—he sees subtly all his deeds, which he committed with his body and which were then active in his soul. At the same time, he is judged and condemned by the Divine fire; as a result of which, having been watered with the water of tears, his whole body is moistened and little by little he is baptized entirely—in soul and body—by that divine fire, and by the Spirit he becomes entirely pure... Therefore, such a one will no longer be judged at the future judgment, since he has already been judged before, nor will he be convicted by that light, because he was illuminated by it here before, and he will not fall into that fire to be subjected to eternal torment, because he entered into it here before and was judged, and he will not think that only then did the day of the Lord appear, because it has long since become a bright day" (Homily 57:2).

Thus, the will of God is a consuming fire on the one hand, in the sense that it destroys sins in the soul. The other aspect of the action of God's will—the immutability of His law—is called a consuming fire in Holy Scripture because it brings suffering to sinners who bring evil upon themselves ( Isaiah 3:9 ). This quality of the Divine will is best illustrated by the bush revealed by God to Moses. St. Chrysostom writes that the angel who appeared to Moses in the bush was the Great Angel of Counsel ( Isaiah 9:6 ), that is, Christ (Commentary on Acts 7:30 ). This vision foretold to humanity that the true relationship between man and God is one of complete communion and unity, a mutual love that does not destroy created nature with its Divine power, provided it does not resist God.

Such is the will of God, who exercises mercy, judgment, and righteousness on earth ( Jer. 9:24 ), whose word can be only for the joy and gladness of the righteous man's heart ( Jer. 15:16 ). The prophet Isaiah speaks of the effect of God's word on sinners: " The light of Israel will be a fire to them, and his Holy One a flame, which will burn and devour their thorns" ( Is. 10:17 ; cf. Jer. 5:14 ). The Lord is bliss for some: He walks with ten thousand saints, but torment for others: at His right hand is the fire of the law ( Deut. 33:2 ).

Through what faculty of the human soul does the word of God act so painfully on man? Through the moral sense of conscience , answers Holy Scripture; for sinners are already found to have their conscience seared with a hot iron ( 1 Tim. 4:2 ). “ Each man’s work will be made manifest,” says the apostle, “for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test each man’s work of what kind it is… If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss, yet he himself will be saved, yet so as by fire ” ( 1 Cor. 3:13,15 ) .

Here, fire refers to the testing of a person's conscience; a reproving conscience causes suffering; this suffering is salvific for a righteous person: it produces a purification of the soul and leads to the knowledge of God. Concerning this, the Lord, through the mouth of the prophet, speaks: " I will bring this third (people) through the fire and refine them as silver is refined, and I will purify them as gold is purified. They will call on My name, and I will test them " ( Zechariah 13:9 ), that is, those who, according to the apostle, "suffered loss," but were saved—that is, they suffered, but will be saved as through fire.

Therefore, St. Gregory the Great directly calls the blessedness of the righteous a fire beneficial for people, and calls the torment of sinners a harmful fire; "in his opinion, the name of fire in Holy Scripture denotes the Holy Spirit, and sometimes the corruption of the soul. Of the beneficial (for people) fire it is written: I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish that it were already kindled ( Luke 12:49 ). In fact, fire is sent down to earth when, aroused by the inspiration (per adorem) of the Holy Spirit, the earthly soul is cleansed of its carnal desires. Of the harmful (for man) fire it is said: the fury of fire, ready to devour the adversaries ( Hebrews 10:27 ), because the evil heart decays in its vice. However, as much as the fire of love (that is, God’s) restores the soul, so much the fire of malice (that is, of man) darkens, because the Holy Spirit elevates (only) the heart in which He dwells, but the passion of vice always casts it down to hell” (Hom. In Eztch., lib. I, hom. 2; 12).

This means that the effect of the word of God on sinners is completely different: while the people walking in darkness saw a great light, heard the word of God, lawlessness, under its influence, like a fire flares up, devours thorns and thorny bushes, that is, sinners ( Is. 9:2, 8, 18 ). Therefore, as conscience, which in itself is the “voice of God” and calls a person to correction, convicts him of his sins and thus causes suffering, so in general the words of the Lord, arousing the conscience, bring suffering to a person, since he is sinful, reminding him of his duty to eternally die to sin, to eternally struggle with his passions, with his sinful nature: about this the Lord, addressing the wicked, says: “ I will make My words in the mouth (of the prophet) fire, and this people wood, and this fire will devour them ” ( Jer. 5:14). ).

Therefore, if the Lord God Himself is the truth, then the earth , filled with iniquities, trembles from His anger, and the nations cannot endure His indignation ( Jer. 10:10 ); and although a person has all that is dark hidden in his soul, it will devour him, like a fire that no one fans ( Job 20:26 ), that is, everyone will suffer from his conscience.

From all that has been said above, it is clear why the Lord Himself is called a refiner's fire and fullers' liquor ( Mal. 3:2 ), for He, on the one hand, will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and will purify the sons of Levi (the righteous of the land) and refine them like gold and like silver, so that they (purified from sins) may bring an offering to the Lord in righteousness ( Mal. 3:3 ), and they shall be Mine, says the Lord of hosts ( Mal. 3:17 ); but, on the other hand, the coming of the Lord for judgment will expose sorcerers and adulterers, that is, He will, as it were, purify them from good, so that the distinction between the righteous and the wicked may be clear ( Mal. 3:5,18 ), and then all the proud and those who live wickedly will be like stubble, and the coming day will burn them up ( Mal. 4:1 ); Thus, the abundant righteousness of God will destroy people who do not serve it ( Is. 10:22 ).

Thus, "our God is a consuming fire, not in the sense that God, who is spirit, is by nature fire, but in that He enlightens the righteous, while appearing as fire to those who are being punished. He is a fire that consumes not the bodily organism, but the conscience of the sinner" (St. Ambrose Mediol. De Trinitate, cap. 21).

Having thus explained what property of God is expressed by His name of consuming fire, we see that the merciful Lord turns out to be the culprit of human suffering not by His own will, which remains invariably all-good, but by the will of sinners - an evil will and therefore suffering.

19. What does the eternity of hellfire mean?

It now remains to explain the eternity of hellfire. We indicated above that sinners, finding themselves, according to the Apocalypse, before the Lamb in torment, and therefore in fire and brimstone, seem to strive to escape the Lamb's wrath, although not a word is said about the Lamb's disposition in the entire Apocalypse. Communion with God, abiding in God's dwelling place and His holy mountain, is the object of the world's most cherished aspirations ( Psalm 14:3; 23:3 ). This Upper Zion will, according to Isaiah 33:15 , also be the possession of sinners; that is, they too will feel the presence of God in the same sense as is stated in the Apocalypse, that the sight of the Lamb seated on the throne, abiding with Him, is the source of all torment for them...

“ Now I will arise,” says the Lord, “you are pregnant with chaff, you will bring forth stubble; your breath is a fire that will devour you… The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has taken hold of the wicked: “Who of us can dwell with the devouring fire? Who of us can dwell with the everlasting burning? ” ( Isaiah 33:10,11,14 ).

This means that the very presence of God and the Lamb will be for sinners their own fire , arrows heated by themselves ( Isaiah 50:11 ). In this regard , Blessed Jerome compares the torments of sinners to the pains of a woman in labor, whose suffering is ultimately caused solely by herself.

"When the warriors of the Lord come (from a distant land), and all hands are weakened and the heart is in terror and contrition, then a pain in the belly will seize their sinners, like the pains of a woman in childbirth. Through this it is shown (by the prophet) that they are tormented by their own conscience, their faces scorched by the fire that they themselves have kindled within themselves" (Commentary on Isaiah 13:8 ).

So, God - unchanging love - appears to man as Judge, Lawgiver and Savior ( Isa. 33:22 ) of those who walk in righteousness and speak the truth ( Isa. 33:15 ); and who, therefore, will come to Zion with a joyful shout ( Isa. 35:10 ), but in Zion is also the fire of the Lord, that is, the Lord is a fire for sinners, and in Jerusalem (the upper) is His furnace ( Isa. 31:9 ).

From all this it follows that the fire of hell, like the wrath of God, which we saw above, are figurative designations of the internal torment of a sinner in the presence and feeling of the Supreme Truth; the afterlife fire of sinners is their constant condemnation before God and the Lamb: “thus, those who flee the eternal light of God, which contains all blessings, themselves are the cause of the fact that they will live in darkness, deprived of all blessings, because they themselves have become the cause of such a dwelling... And this is said by the prophet: “ I am a jealous God, I give peace and send disasters ” ( Isaiah 45:7 ); giving peace and friendship to those who repent and turn to Him and entering into unity with them, but for the unrepentant and fleeing His light He prepares eternal fire and eternal darkness of disaster for those subjected to them” (St. Irenaeus. Against Heresies; book 4, 39, 40).

20. What does the wrath of God mean?

Thus, the only person responsible for suffering in the afterlife is the human will, which has come to hate the bliss of divine love. Human suffering, therefore, is a consequence of his hatred, his personal bitterness against God. The apostle expressed all these thoughts in the following beautiful words addressed to sinful man: " According to your stubbornness and impenitent heart, you are treasuring up for yourself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God " ( Rom. 2:5 ).

We have a wonderful interpretation of this passage from the Most Reverend Theophan, whose opinion is based on the views of the Holy Fathers. St. Theophan writes the following: “What does the sinner do? He stores up wrath. Anger is God’s righteous retribution for every evil deed, word, and thought. It is called wrath because of the sinner’s feeling, recognizing the Judge’s determination, and not because of the Judge’s state. “See what appropriate expressions the apostle uses, pointing out that the cause of wrath is not the Judge but the accused ; you yourself, not God , store up wrath for yourself. He has done everything that was necessary, equipped you with the ability to discern good from evil, demonstrated longsuffering, called you to repentance. If you are unyielding, then you yourself store up wrath for the day of wrath” (St. John Chrysostom)... But what is wrath? Evil deeds, for which severe punishment will follow, reflected in the sinner's heart as the wrath of God . That it is a day of wrath is explained by the following words: "and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God." On that day, God's righteous judgment will be carried out, but since sinners, having lost all moral sense, will represent this truth as wrath, it will be a day of wrath for them. God's mercy will even then devise ways to justify the sinner and will betray him to the truth after there is no longer any justification for him. But despite this, for sinners it will still be a day of wrath, penetrating their entire being. The Apostle uses two expressions: what that day will be for sinners, and what it is in itself : for sinners, a day of wrath, and in itself, a day of God's righteous judgment. "Lest, hearing of anger, you should consider it an act of passion, the Apostle adds the righteous judgment of God" (St. Chrysostom) (Commentary on Romans 2:5 ). From all this it is clear why the children of disobedience are simultaneously called both the children of perdition ( John 17:12 ) and the children of wrath ( Eph. 2:3 ). The last two expressions are thus univocal; St. Chrysostom, in his commentary on the words of the Evangelist John: " Whoever does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him " ( John 3:36 ), directly contrasts the concept of life (ξωή) with the concept of wrath (ὀργή), as punishment. He writes that "if knowledge and faith are not followed by deeds of a good life, then great punishment will follow." And John did not say: wrath awaits him , but abides on him , showing by this that wrath never departs from him. So that you would not attribute the words: “he will not see life” to temporary death, but believed that the punishment would be endless, he used an expression (wrath) that denotes the constant torment of believers ” (Commentary on John 3:36 ). God does not have wrath, but there is a righteous retribution, whichseems like anger to the one who is subjected to it (Commentary on Rom. 12:19 ).

St. John Cassian the Roman also writes: "When we read about God's wrath or anger, we must understand this not in a human-like manner, that is, by inferring about God from man - a changeable nature, but in a manner worthy of God, who is alien to all change; indeed, with the help of these concepts, we can know God as the Judge and avenger of all injustices that appear in this world, and let us, terrified by these concepts, which mean that God is a terrible retributor for our deeds, begin to fear doing anything contrary to His will."

In fact, human nature usually fears those whom it knows to be indignant and fears to offend them; thus, those who are tormented by their own conscience as a result of some crime usually fear anger and torment, and attribute them to the most benevolent judges, but this does not mean that such mental indignation occurs in those who intend only to judge fairly, ... and no matter with what meekness and leniency the sentence was pronounced, it is considered strong rage and the most cruel anger in those who must deservedly bear punishment.

So, the expression “ the wrath of God ” is a means for our admonition, reminding us of the sufferings of sinners, but does not speak of wrath as a state of God himself.

Blessed Theodoret gives this concept a somewhat different connotation : he writes that people are called by the Apostle "by nature children of wrath" because if, in the place of the unchangingly all-good God, there were a being who changes his spiritual moods, then it would have the right to be angry with man (Commentary on Eph. 2:3 ).

Likewise, according to St. Basil the Great , one can be a child of wrath because one has made oneself worthy of wrath. For those who are worthy of the Lord and are called the sons of light and day ( 1 Thessalonians 5:5 ) should also be understood in the words: "behom... children of wrath " ( Eph. 2:3 ), that is, as St. Ambrose says, "when evil will becomes nature, then the nature of wrath appears , that is, one that must be punished, and therefore becomes such not as a result of a change in its essence (substantia), but as a result of evil will" (Commentary on Eph. 2:3 ). However, one must know that " the son of disobedience is the same as the children of wrath ," as St. Basil the Great says .

Thus, the wrath of God is called the suffering of man from sin; and since man is sinful by nature, since evil has been in his thoughts from eternity ( Gen. 8:21 ), then man is precisely by nature a child of wrath; but Christ brought humanity out of this state and granted it bliss.

Clearly, the work of human redemption can be described as the deliverance of man from the suffering and torment wrought within him by sin. Thus, Jesus Christ delivers us from the wrath to come ( 1 Thessalonians 1:10 ), that is, from the eternal torments of hell, which reside within the soul of the sinner, as a result of the inner torment of conscience. "The Lord delivers believers from the wrath to come, that is, from condemnation at the Last Judgment. This act of righteousness is called wrath because of the severity of the judgment and the immutability of the decision, and even more so because of the feeling with which those who will be subjected to it will receive the condemnation. The horror that will befall them will, as is the custom of the guilty, see the judge angry and the one meekly pronouncing the determination of eternal righteousness."

The Lord Jesus Christ delivers those who believe in him from this judgment. In Christ Jesus, the judgment of the world has already been accomplished ( John 12:31 ). Only those who abandon the world and cling to Christ by faith are removed from the realm afflicted by this judgment and withdraw under the shadow of the cross, through which the blows of God's wrath will not penetrate when the judgment pronounced upon the world is carried out (Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 1:10 ).

21. On the Resurrection of Bodies

It now remains to speak of the significance of the resurrection of the body and its torment after Christ's final judgment. Having accepted hellfire, on the basis of Holy Scripture, as the fire of conscience, located in the soul of every person, the significance of the resurrection of the body, both in terms of bliss and suffering, is not particularly clear. It can be said that we can only judge this conjecturally ( 1 Cor. 13:2 ), which we have every right to do, for the nature of the body itself, which a person will be clothed in after the resurrection, is unknown.

According to the teaching of the Church, this body will be like the body of the Lord after the resurrection; Saint John of Damascus writes: “ a natural body is sown , that is, both gross and mortal – a spiritual body will rise ( 1 Cor. 15:44 ), which was the body of the Lord after the resurrection, passing through locked doors, not getting tired and not needing food, sleep and drink” (Exact Exposition of the Law of Faith, book 4, chapter 27).

Thus, the body of resurrected humanity will be deprived of the main properties of earthly bodies: impenetrability, stretchability, etc., although it will have flesh and bones ( Luke 24:39 ).

The end of the history of the world, therefore, can only be expressed in this way: the Son will subject all things to God the Father ( 1 Cor. 15:28 ), that is, that life of the world, broken by sin, will finally come again, when between man and God there will be nothing separating and there will be only a gradual development of the powers of the soul, as it approaches God in those who desire it; those who have departed from the true life will, through their own fault, abide in torment, in eternal fire, "the second death" ( Rev. 20:14 ), that is, dying, in the words of Blessed Augustine. But this is completely contrary to the will of God and the purpose of His creation of the world, " For I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies, says the Lord God: but turn ye and live! Turn ye from your transgressions, that ungodliness be not your stumbling block " ( Ezek. 18:30,32 ).

Conclusion

In concluding our thoughts on how the Last Judgment of Christ will essentially be a time of full revelation of God's love for humanity, we cite the words of Saints Anthony the Great and Isaac the Syrian . The former writes:

“God is good, impassible, and unchangeable. If anyone, recognizing it as blessed and true that God does not change, nevertheless wonders how He, being such—rejoicing over the good, turning away from the wicked—is angry with sinners, and when they repent, is merciful to them; then it must be said that God neither rejoices nor is angry, for joy and anger are passions. It is absurd to think that the Deity feels good or bad because of human deeds. God is good and does only good, and harms no one, remaining always the same; and we, when we are good, enter into communion with God, through our likeness to Him, and when we become evil, we separate from God, through our dissimilarity to Him. Living virtuously, we become God’s, and becoming evil, we become rejected from Him. This does not mean that He is angry with us, but that sins prevent God from shining in us, and unite us with demons and tormentors. If we then, through prayers and good deeds, obtain absolution from our sins, this does not mean that we have pleased God and changed Him, but that through such actions and our turning to God, having healed the evil within us, we again become capable of tasting God's goodness, so that to say: God turns away from the wicked is the same as to say: The sun hides from those deprived of sight (Philokalia, Bishop Theophan, Vol. 1; St. Anthony, Instructions, 150).

This last thought about God's unfailingly benevolent attitude toward man, even a sinner, based on the very immutability of God, Who is love ( 1 John 4:16 ), is developed by St. Isaac the Syrian , who writes: "He who admonishes with the goal of making someone healthy, admonishes with love; but he who seeks revenge has no love in him. God admonishes with love, and does not take revenge (may this never happen!); on the contrary, He intends for His image to be healed, and does not keep anger for a time. This method of love is a consequence of righteousness and does not deviate into the passion of revenge" (From "Ascetic Words," 85th).

Thus, God is unchanging love; and if we forget this, the world will cease to be understandable to us and will seem like a sea of ​​aimless suffering and meaningless causes, of which man will be a pitiful plaything. If we forget that in heaven, in our afterlife, the arms of the love of our heavenly Father are open to us, then this life will seem to us full of horror and fear. But if the Lord instills in us this gracious thought about the eternal abodes of the love of God our Father beyond the grave, then, dying, we will perhaps be without fear, only in filial submission and love to God, crying out with the holy Apostle Paul: I have a desire to depart and be with Christ ( Phil. 1:23 ). And there will be no fear then, but only perfect love, which casts out fear ( 1 John 4:18 ); then God will be all in all ( 1 Cor. 15:28 ). “ Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him ” ( 1 Cor. 2:9 ).

Hey, come, Lord Jesus!

Source:https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Andrej_Uhtomskij/o-lyubvi-bozhiej-na-strashnom-sude-hristovom/