The writings of St Isaac challenges us I think because of the paradox and incomprehensibility of the astonishing wonder of God's love. Perhaps again we must appeal to an apophatic paradox: God's Love is incomprehensibly beyond what I think love is, yet this love has been encountered and can be touched in and through the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. We partake of Bread and Wine that is Body and Blood. We behold the Man, Who is God in the Flesh.
We are in wonder and ask the Theotokos to pray for us, for how humble is she who in her womb, she embraced Him whom the heavens could not contain? It is this tremendous paradox that humbles us and yet raises us, beyond compare. May we live out our Baptism and glorify God with His Saints.
In regards to the universalism of St Isaac the Syrian, I agree with Fr Aidan that we must tread carefully on the subject, and realize our own sinfulness and readily repent, growing in union with God, growing in union with the infinite depths and mysteries of Divine Love, that one day we may have the humility to love in the Way and Type of Christ.
O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of Goodness and Giver of Life, Come dwell in us, cleanse us of all stain, guard us from the Enemy, teach us to love, repent and pray, free us from delusion and the fallen passions, and save our souls, O Good One.
May our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ the Son of God, Who we Glorify with the Father and the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
ps. I highly recommend Fr Aidan's blog http://afkimel.wordpress.com and have also included the series in one big post below:
St Isaac the Syrian: Preaching the Astonishing Love of God
http://afkimel.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/st-isaac-the-syrian-preaching-the-astonishing-love-of-god/
Who among the Eastern Fathers has written more eloquently, more profoundly about the love of God Almighty than St Isaac the Syrian? “In Isaac’s understanding,” states Met Hilarion Alfeyev, “God is above all immeasurable love. The conviction that God is love dominates Isaac’s thought: it is the source of his theological opinions, ascetical recommendations and mystical thought” (The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, pp. 35-36). Sadly this great doctor of the divine love remains relatively unknown in English-speaking Christendom. Only in recent decades have his discourses become available in translation. Yet despite Isaac’s relative obscurity, I believe that his writings are necessary reading for all Orthodox and Catholic preachers, pastors, and confessors. Why do I say this? Because having heard my fair share of Orthodox and Catholic sermons over the past eight years, I am convinced that most Orthodox and Catholic preachers simply do not understand what it means to speak the good news of Jesus Christ. They do not understand that preaching is, first and foremost, the proclamation of the God who is absolute love and mercy. The homilies I have heard may be characterized as exhortation. I have heard exhortations to good behavior. I have heard exhortations to imitate Christ in his care for the poor. I have heard exhortations to repentance and the acquisition of the virtues. I have heard exhortations to adhere to the dogmas and traditions of the Church. I have heard exhortations to prayer and ascetical discipline. But rarely, oh so rarely, have I heard the kerygmatic announcement of the surprising and unmerited mercy of God. Rarely have I heard the proclamation of the resurrection of Christ and the eschatological existence now freely given to us in the Church by the Spirit. Rarely have I heard of the God who leaves his flock in search for one lost sheep and upon finding it lays it on his shoulders and rejoicing takes it back to the flock. Orthodox and Catholic preachers prefer to exhort, urge, counsel, warn, and admonish their congregations; but this kind of preaching, whether moralistic or ascetical, cannot save. Only the proclamation of love communicates the abundant life that Christ came to bring us. Exhortation alone either drives away sinners or makes them into Pharisees. The prophet Amos declared, “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ declares the Lord God, ‘when I will send a famine on the land—not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD’” (Amos 8:11). In the Church today we are experiencing a famine of the gospel. We are told to act better, to pray better, to be better; but we are not given the only Word that can actually transform us and make us new. St Isaac the Syrian is the antidote to this woeful situation.
Isaac’s reflections on the divine love are scattered throughout his discourses–the First Partand the Second Part. I cannot point to a single homily or two in which Isaac expounds on the love of God at great length (though Homily 38 in the Second Part is a good place to begin). Fortunately Alfeyev has written a fine introduction to Isaac’s mystical thought, The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, and it is readily available from Orthodox bookstores and internet booksellers. Every preacher should read and inwardly digest this book. I wish I had been acquainted with the discourses of St Isaac during my years of active ministry. Perhaps I would have been a better preacher. I know I would have been a better disciple of Jesus Christ.
For Isaac the world is a gift of the divine love. It begins in love and will be consummated in love. This love is unconquerable and irresistible, not because it coerces—God forbid!—but because of its intrinsic beauty, truth, and goodness:
What profundity of richness, what mind and exalted wisdom is God’s! What compassionate kindness and abundant goodness belongs to the Creator! With what purpose and with what love did He create this world and bring it into existence! What a mystery does the coming into being of this creation look towards! To what a state is our common nature invited! What love served to initiate the creation of the world! This same love which initiated the act of creation prepared beforehand by another dispensation the things appropriate to adorn the world’s majesty which sprung forth as a result of the might of His love.In love did He bring the world into existence; in love does He guide it during this its temporal existence; in love is He going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of Him who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised. And since in the New World the Creator’s love rules over all rational nature, the wonder at His mysteries that will be revealed then will captivate to itself the intellect of all rational beings whom He has created so that they might have delight in Him, whether they be evil or whether they be just. (II.38.1-2)
What a magnificent passage. God has created the world in love and for love. Angels and human beings alike have been brought into existence to delight in the divine mercy and to enjoy eternal communion with the God who is love. Everything that God has done, everything that he does in the present and will do in the future is an expression of love. “Among all his actions,” Isaac proclaims, “there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love, and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of his dealings with us” (II. 39.22). Here is the purpose of creation and the Incarnation, “to reveal his boundless love to the world” (quoted in Alfeyev, p. 36).
The love of God is indiscriminate, promiscuous, prodigal. It intends every rational creature. As Jesus teaches, the Father who is in heaven “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45). There is no one “who is to the front of or to the back of God’s love. Rather, He has a single equal love which covers the whole extent of rational creation, all things whether visible or invisible: there is no first or last place with Him in this love for any single one of them” (II.38.2). There is no before or after, no greater or lesser. The divine love addresses and upholds all equally. St Isaac firmly rejects the Calvinist thesis that God has predestined some human beings for damnation. Such a thesis is unthinkable, indeed blasphemous. Every being created by God is loved by God. Our disobedience does not change the character of the Father; our sin does not diminish his love for us. “There is no hatred or resentment in His nature,” Isaac explains, “no greater or lesser place in His love, no before or after in His knowledge” (II.38.5). No matter how much disorder we cause in the world, no matter how grievous our sin, no matter how horrific the evil we commit, God’s salvific will for us does not change. He eternally wills our good, and in his wise providence he will accomplish this good. “There exists with Him a single love and compassion which is spread out over all creation, a love which is without alteration, timeless, and everlasting” (II.40.1).
The providence of love encompasses all material and spiritual dimensions:
Let us consider then how rich in its wealth is the ocean of His creative act, and how many created things belong to God, and how in His compassion He carries everything, acting providentially as He guides creation; and how with a love that cannot be measured He arrived at the establishment of the world and the beginning of creation; and how compassionate God is, and how patient; and how He loves creation, and how He carries it, gently enduring its importunity, the various sins and wickednesses, the terrible blasphemies of demons and evil men. Then, once someone has stood amazed, and filled his intellect with the majesty of God, amazed at all these things He has done and is doing, then he wonders in astonishment at His mercifulness, how, after all these things, God has prepared for them another world that has no end, whose glory is not even revealed to the angels, even though they are involved in His activities insofar as is possible in the life of the spirit, in accordance with the gift with which their nature has been endowed. That person wonders too at how excelling is that glory, and how exalted is the manner of existence at that time; and how insignificant is the present life compared to what is reserved for creation in the New Life; and how, in order that the soul’s life will not be deprived of that blessed state because of misusing the freewill it has received, He has devised in His mercifulness a second gift, which is repentance, so that by it the soul’s life might acquire renewal every day and thereby every time be put aright. (II.10.19)
The merciful God has provided a way for sinful creatures to avail themselves of the mercy of God—repentance. Nor is repentance something beyond our capabilities, says Isaac. God understands our weaknesses and limits. Repentance involves the whole person, mind, will, conscience, heart, “so that it might be easy for everyone to acquire benefit from it, both quickly and at any time” (II.10.19).
The infinite love of the Creator is dramatically displayed in the Incarnation of the Son. Why did God become man? Why did Jesus die on the cross? Certainly not to propitiate an angry deity. If God’s sole purpose were to achieve the remission of sins, he could have accomplished this end by another means. The cross is the perfect and compelling revelation of the divine mercy. Isaac understood that sinners would not and could not believe in the possibility of their reconciliation with their Maker without a revelation embodied in the terrible suffering and bloody death of God himself:
If zeal had been appropriate for putting humanity right, why did God the Word clothe himself in the body, using gentleness and humility in order to bring the world back to his Father? And why was he stretched out on the cross for the sake of sinners, handing over his sacred body to suffering on behalf of the world? I myself say that God did all this for no other reason than to make known to the world the love that he has, his aim being that we, as a result of our greater love arising from an awareness of this, might be captivated by his love when he provided the occasion of this manifestation of the kingdom of heaven’s mighty power—which consists in love—by means of the death of his Son. (Quoted in Alfeyev, p. 52)
God must die on the cross. Only thus can human hearts be pierced and turned away from self and sin; only thus can mankind apprehend the true identity and nature of their Creator and be converted to the path of salvation. It is the divine love, manifested in the humility and death of the Son, that transforms sinners and brings them everlasting life.
But the sum of all is that God the Lord surrendered His own Son to death on the Cross for the fervent love of creation. … This was not, however, because He could not have redeemed us in another way, but so that His surpassing love, manifested hereby, might be a teacher unto us. And by the death of His only-begotten Son He made us near to Himself. Yeah, if He had had anything more precious, He would have given it to us, so that by it our race might be His own. (I.71, p. 492)
St Isaac quotes the famous verse from the Gospel of John: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16).
Why do we not hear this message of the astonishing love of God every Sunday, Sunday after Sunday, in our Churches? This is the gospel. There is no other gospel worth preaching. In a world filled with wickedness, suffering, despair, and death, we desperately need to hear the proclamation of the omnipotent power of God’s love and mercy. We need to know that he treasures us, that he has a plan for us, that his good will for us, and for the world, will triumph. Only thus does it become possible for us to cooperate with him in prayer and good works. In the words of the great Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. This is the achievement, the ‘work’ of faith: to recognize this absolute prius, which nothing else can surpass; to believe that there is such a thing as love, absolute love, and that there is nothing higher or greater than it; to believe against all the evidence of experience (‘credere contra fidem‘ like ‘spere contra spem‘), against every ‘rational’ concept of God, which thinks of him in terms of impassibility or, at best, totally pure goodness, but not in terms of this inconceivable and senseless act of love” (Love Alone is Credible, pp. 101-102). Without the preaching of the boundless love of God enfleshed in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, the Church has no reason to exist; indeed it cannot exist, for it is the Word of love that creates the new life that is the Church. Without love, there is no theosis, no repentance, no sanctification, only Pharisaic zeal and deadly dogmatism.
St Isaac the Syrian: The Scandalous Injustice of God
That God is just is a truism of Christian faith. The Old and New Testament texts that speak of divine justice are innumerable. Theologians have unanimously claimed that justice is a relative divine attribute (Western tradition) or a divine energy (Eastern tradition). All have agreed that the God of the Bible is just … all, that is, except one. All have agreed that justice should characterize the Christian life … all, that is, except one.
“Mercy is opposed to justice,” declares St Isaac of Ninevah.
Mercy and justice in one soul is like a man who worships God and the idols in one house. Mercy is opposed to justice. Justice is the equality of the even scale, for it gives to each as he deserves; and when it makes recompense, it does not incline to one side or show respect of persons. Mercy, on the other hand, is a sorrow and pity stirred up by goodness, and it compassionately inclines a man in the direction of all; it does not requite a man who is deserving of evil, and to him who is deserving of good it gives a double portion. If, therefore, it is evident that mercy belongs to the portion of righteousness, then justice belongs to the portion of wickedness. As grass and fire cannot co-exist in one place, so justice and mercy cannot abide in one soul. As a grain of sand cannot counterbalance a great quantity of gold, so in comparison God’s use of justice cannot counterbalance His mercy. (I.51, p. 379)
A little later in the same homily, Isaac provocatively states, “Justice does not belong to the Christian way of life, and there is no mention of it in Christ’s teaching” (I.51, p. 382). The disciple of Christ seeks to emulate in his life the mercy of God, for it this mercy that God has so graciously showered upon us. Hence the holy mystic instructs his readers, “Do not hate the sinner; for we are all laden with guilt. … Why do you hate him? Hate his sins and pray for him, that you may imitate Christ Who was not wroth with sinners, but interceded for them. Do you not see how he wept over Jerusalem” (I.51, p. 387). What do we know of the justice of God, when all we know is his unmerited grace and forgiveness? The disciples of Jesus seek to become like their Lord and thus to become like God. As a counselor of souls, Isaac knows that when a person turns his heart toward justice, he inevitably becomes consumed with vengeance and the desire for requital. But this is not who God is.
St Isaac then makes his famous pronouncement: “Do not call God just, for His justice is not manifest in the things concerning you” (I.51, p. 387). Surely this must be one of the most revolutionary statements in all of patristic literature. Are you tempted to dismiss it as hyperbole? Know that you are not alone. Moral theologians and philosophers will immediately begin their disquisitions on the virtues and the significance of justice in the good life. Biblical scholars will immediately begin to compile all the texts in Scripture that speak of the justice of God, perhaps with reference to the atoning death of Christ and the Pauline doctrine of justification. Parish pastors and preachers will feel uncomfortable. But virtually everyone will agree that Isaac has crossed over into rhetorical excess. But it is precisely at this point of excess, Isaac would tell us, that the gospel begins:
How can you call God just when you come across the Scriptural passage on the wage given to the workers? “Friend, I do thee no wrong: I choose to give unto this last even as unto thee. Or is thine eye evil because I am good?” How can a man call God just when he comes across the passage on the prodigal son who wasted his wealth with riotous living, how for the compunction alone which he showed the father ran and fell upon his neck and gave him authority over his wealth? None other but His very Son said these things concerning Him, lest we doubt it, and thus bore witness concerning Him. Where, then, is God’s justice?—for while we are sinners Christ died for us! But if here He is merciful, we may believe that He will not change. (I.51, p. 387)
If you hear in these words echoes of Martin Luther, you would not be wrong; but St Isaac the Syrian is no sola fide Protestant. Luther would find the way that Isaac combines his understanding of the unconditionality of the divine love with a rigorous asceticism quite unacceptable—and he would be the poorer for that. Yet I think Luther would rejoice in this powerful proclamation of the gospel that triumphs over every legalism, every justice.
A special word to preachers: Do not be reluctant to proclaim the gospel of God’s love in its full radicality. Yes, I know all the conundrums it poses. I have wrestled with them the past 35 years. But be assured that it is precisely the scandal of grace that opens the hearts of our people to faith and repentance.
St Isaac the Syrian: Love and the Punishment of Evil
But surely God punishes the wicked! Surely there is divine retribution for sin and evil, if not in this life at least in hell! As the angels spoke of Sodom: “For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it” (Gen 19:13). As the prophet Isaiah declared: “And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity” (Is 13:11). And the prophet Jeremiah: “But I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, saith the LORD: and I will kindle a fire in the forest thereof, and it shall devour all things round about it” (Jer 21:44). And the Apostle Paul: “There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek” (Rom 2:9). And perhaps most terrifyingly, Christ himself: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt 25:41).
Yet St Isaac the Syrian rejects all notions of requital as unworthy of the living God:
A sign of compassion is forgiveness of every debt; a sign of an evil mind is offensive speech to one who has fallen. The man who administers chastisement with a view to healing, chastises with love; but he who seeks vengeance is devoid of love. God chastises with love, not for the sake of revenge—far be it!—but seeking to make whole His image. And he does not harbor wrath until a time when correction is no longer possible, for He does not seek vengeance for Himself. This is the aim of love. Love’s chastisement is for correction, and it does not aim at retribution. A righteous man that is wise is like unto God, for he never chastises a man to requite and avenge his wickedness, but to correct him, or so that others might fear. That, however, which does not resemble this is not chastisement. Now hereby the Spirit depicts, as in an image, the mind that God has had everlastingly. But the man who chooses to consider God an avenger, presuming that in this manner he bears witness to His justice, the same accuses Him of being devoid of goodness. Far be it, that vengeance could ever be found in that Fountain of love and Ocean brimming with goodness! The purpose of His mind is the correction of men; and if it were not that we should be stripped of the honor of our free will, perhaps He would not even heal us by reproof. (I.48, p. 364)
Isaac is emphatic: the punishment of evil does not belong to the divine nature. Whether we call it retribution or requital or penalty or vengeance … or justice … does not matter. God does not inflict punishment for the sake of inflicting punishment. This is not the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ. Retribution may have a place in our judicial and penal systems—I do not know what Isaac would say about that—but it certainly does not have a place in the Christian life or in the Christian understanding of the Deity. God is love. Isaac is so horrified by the notion of the divine infliction of pain and suffering that he even momentarily entertains the suggestion that God might forcibly heal us, if only it were possible to do so without violating human freedom.
St Isaac has, of course, read his Bible. He is acquainted with the many stories, prophesies, parables, and sayings that speak of God’s wrath and anger. These texts must not be read literally, he says. Christ himself is our hermeneutic. We must burrow through the literal meaning of Scripture and penetrate to its theological truth:
That we should imagine that anger, wrath, jealousy or the such like have anything to do with the divine Nature is utterly abhorrent for us: no one in their right mind, no one who has any understanding at all can possibly come to such madness as to think anything of the sort against God. Nor again can we possibly say that He acts thus out of retribution, even though the Scriptures may on the outer surface posit this. Even to think this of God and to suppose that retribution for evil acts is to be found with Him is abominable. By implying that He makes use of such a great and difficult thing out of retribution we are attributing a weakness to the divine Nature. We cannot even believe such a thing can be found in those human beings who live a virtuous and upright life and whose thoughts are entirely in accord with the divine will—let alone believe it of God, that He has done something out of retribution for anticipated evil acts in connection with those whose nature He had brought into being with honour and great love. Knowing them and all their conduct, the flow of His grace did not dry up from them: not even after they started living amid many evil deeds did He withhold His care for them, even for a moment. … For it would be most odious and utterly blasphemous to think that hate or resentment exists with God, even against demonic beings; or to imagine any other weakness, or passibility, or whatever else might be involved in the course of retribution of good or bad as applying, in a retributive way, to that glorious divine Nature. (II.39.2-3)
We need to be prepared, in other words, to interpret the Scriptures metaphorically and spiritually, especially when the plain sense violates God’s self-disclosure in Christ. God is not the angry, punitive deity that we sometimes see depicted in the Bible. These images must be corrected by the revelation of absolute love and boundless mercy. If we do not engage in this correction of the literal meaning, not only will we be guilty of an “infantile way of thinking” but we will find ourselves imagining God in “unspeakably blasphemous” ways (II.39.1). Isaac invokes the historically progressive character of divine revelation, our understanding of which will only be fulfilled at the Eschaton:
Just because the terms wrath, anger, hatred, and the rest are used of the Creator, we should not imagine that He actually does anything in anger or hatred or zeal. Many figurative terms are employed in the Scriptures of God, terms which are far removed from His true nature. And just as our rational nature has already become gradually more illumined and wise in a holy understanding of the mysteries which are hidden in Scripture’s discourse about God—that we should not understand everything literally as it is written, but rather that we should see, concealed inside the bodily exterior of the narratives, the hidden providence and eternal knowledge which guides all—so too we shall in the future come to know and be aware of many things for which our present understanding will be seen as contrary to what it will be then; and the whole ordering of things yonder will undo any precise opinion we possess now in our supposition about Truth. For there are many, indeed endless, things which do not even enter our minds here, not even as promises of any kind. (II.39.19)
Yet even after having purified his theological reflection of inappropriate anthropomorphic imagery, Isaac does speak of God directly punishing humanity for its sin and disobedience. He knows both the Scriptures and the human condition too well not to do so. Hilarion Alfeyev notes that it is rare for Isaac to speak of the wrath of God, but he does do so on occasion. In one of his homilies, for example, the saint speaks to monks who approach God with laxity and contempt: “You have not yet experienced the sternness of the Lord, when he changes from his right hand, full of kindness, to his left hand, exacting his due to those who abuse him—how angry he burns, and how filled He is with zeal at the time when this has been aroused! … He burns like a furnace in his anger” (II.31.10). But this language of wrath ultimately expresses, not requital, but the intensity of God’s love and desire to save. As we have seen in the above quotations, God punishes solely in order to heal and convert. “God chastises with love,” Isaac writes, “not for the sake of revenge—far be it!—but seeking to make whole His image.” The Father inflicts suffering and trials for one purpose alone—to draw us away from our sinful attachments and to himself in faith, repentance, and love.
Isaac stands in a long tradition of theologians and spiritual teachers who insist that divine punishment for sin is always pedagogical, medicinal, therapeutic, reparative, remedial, restorative. As Clement of Alexandria writes, “But God does not punish, for punishment is retaliation for evil. He chastises, however, for good to those who are chastised, collectively and individually” (Strom VII.16). Our heavenly Father chastises for our good; otherwise he would not be a true Father. He does not punish to exact retribution. He does not injure his creatures for the sake of balancing the scales of justice. He does not practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He does not give us the evil that we deserve. “God is not one who requites evil,” the holy monk exclaims, “but He sets evil aright” (II.39.15).
If God is indeed the punitive, retributive Deity that our imaginations have created, how can we love him, how can we worship and adore him? Such a God can only be feared. But St Isaac of Ninevah exhorts, “Fear God because of His love and not because of the reputation of austerity that has been attributed to Him” (I.51, p. 388).
St Isaac the Syrian: Hell and the Scourge of Divine Love
God has created humanity for eternal communion with himself. By love he has created us for love to share in the eternal Paradise of love. Hear the words of St Isaac of Ninevah:
Paradise is the love of God, wherein is the enjoyment of all blessedness, and there the blessed Paul partook of supernatural nourishment. When he tasted there of the tree of life, he cried out, saying “Eye hath not see, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Adam was barred from this tree through the devil’s counsel.The tree of life is the love of God from which Adam fell away, and thereafter he saw joy no longer, and he toiled and labored in the land of thorns. Even though they make their way in righteousness, those who are bereft of the love of God eat in their work the bread of sweat, which the first-created man was commanded to eat after his fall. … But when we find love, we partake of heavenly bread, and are made strong without labor and toil. The heavenly bread is Christ, Who came down from Heaven and gave life to the world. This is the nourishment of the angels. The man who has found love eats and drinks Christ every day and hour and hereby is made immortal. “He that eateth of this bread,” He says, “which I will give him, shall not see death unto eternity.” Blessed is he who eats the bread of love, which is Jesus! He who eats of love eats Christ, the God over all, as John bears witness, saying, “God is love.”Wherefore, the man who lives in love reaps life from God, and while yet in this world, he even now breathes the air of the resurrection; in this air the righteous will delight in the resurrection. Love is the Kingdom, whereof the Lord mystically promised His disciples to eat in His Kingdom. For when we hear Him say, “Ye shall eat and drink at the table of my Kingdom,” what do we suppose we shall eat, if not love? Love is sufficient to nourish a man instead of food and drink. (I.46, pp. 357-358)
We are created for Paradise and are destined for Paradise, yet at the moment of death not all are ready for Paradise. At death God effects the great separation of which Jesus speaks: “When the Son of man shall come in His glory, He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left” (Matt 25:31-33). As far as I can tell, Isaac does not advance a hard-and-fast schema of judgment and eschatological life, as one might find, for example, in Met Hierotheos’ book Life After Death. Isaac’s terminology and vision are fluid. Upon repose one enters immediately into either the Kingdom/Paradise or Gehenna. There is no intermediate realm between them, though within each “there are varying degrees of recompenses” (I.6, p. 173). The general resurrection does remain future for Isaac; but he does not seem to make a clear distinction between Hades and Gehenna, as is typically done in Byzantine circles.
In the Kingdom the Blessed will together adore and delight in the Holy Trinity, each person deriving “a unique benefit from this visible sun through a single enjoyment of it common to all, each according to the clarity of his eyesight and the ability of his pupils to contain the sun’s constant effusion of light” (I.6, p. 172). Yet while the vision of the uncreated light is distinct and particular to each, no one will notice differences of rank and noetic abilities, lest it become “a cause of sadness and mental anguish” (I.6, p. 172). Everyone will experience the love of God in fullness and perfection, to the degree enabled by his spiritual condition. No one will feel jealous or envious. All will rejoice. All will know and glory in love.
But what of those who do not love God and do not desire his eternal company? What of the damned? How and why are they punished? How do they suffer? Here we enter into the most controversial dimension of St Isaac’s mystical knowledge. We begin with one of the most frequently quoted passages from his homilies:
I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. For what is so bitter and vehement as the punishment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is sharper than any torment that can be. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways: it torments those who have played the fool, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability. (I.28, p. 266)
God’s love for his creatures does not stop at the borders of hell. The creator does not cease to love the damned because they have renounced him so definitively. His mercy does not suddenly turn into wrath. Though we may speak of the damned as separated from God, we must not think that God has separated himself from them. Those in hell are not deprived of the divine love. They remain the objects of the Father’s mercy and compassion. And that is their torment! They hate God because they despise his forgiveness. They hate God because they have begun to understand the glory and happiness they have lost through their pride and foolishness. They hate God because they cannot escape his presence. They are “scourged by the scourge of love.”
Long before I became acquainted with St Isaac the Syrian, the above represented my understanding of hell. I think I learned it first from C. S. Lewis. From Lewis I learned that hell is always locked from the inside. The damned freely choose their perdition. Obstinately, and eternally, they refuse to make even the smallest step toward the Good. They have reached the point where they are completely and irredeemably defined by their preference for self and autonomy. The reprobate “has his wish,” writes Lewis—”to live wholly in the self and to make the best of what he finds there. And what he finds there is Hell” (The Problem of Pain, p. 123). This view isn’t quite identical to St Isaac’s, but close enough. Lewis’s disciple, Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft, draws even closer to Isaac:
In reality, the damned are in the same place as the saved—in reality! But they hate it; it is their Hell. The saved love it, and it is their Heaven. It is like two people sitting side by side at an opera or a rock concert: the very thing that is Heaven to one is Hell to the other. Dostoyevski says, “We are all in paradise, but we won’t see it. … Hell is not literally the “wrath of God.” The love of God is an objective fact; the “wrath of God” is a human projection of our own wrath upon God, as the Lady Julian saw—a disastrous misinterpretation of God’s love as wrath. God really says to all His creatures, “I know you and I love you,” but they hear Him saying, “I never knew you; depart from me.” It is like angry children misinterpreting their loving parents’ affectionate advances as threats. They project their own hate onto their parents’ love and experience love as an enemy—which it is: an enemy to their egotistic defenses against joy. …Since God is love, since love is the essence of the divine life, the consequence of loss of this life is loss of love. … Though the damned do not love God, God loves them, and this is their torture. The very fires of Hell are made of the love of God! Love received by one who only wants to hate and fight thwarts his deepest want and is therefore torture. If God could stop loving the damned, Hell would cease to be pure torture. If the sun could stop shining, lovers of the dark would no longer be tortured by it. But the sun could sooner cease to shine than God cease to be God. … The lovelessness of the damned blinds them to the light of glory in which they stand, the glory of God’s fire. God is in the fire that to them is Hell. God is in Hell (“If I make my bed in Hell, Thou art there” [Ps 139:8]) but the damned do not know Him. (Every Thing You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven, pp. 230, 233-235)
This is the construal of hell and its sufferings that I preached for most, if not all, of my active ministry. I think it is fair to say that it represents what might rightly be called the ecumenical doctrine, as presently taught in 21st century Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and mainline Protestantism. No doubt retributivists can still be found in all Christian traditions, but the Lewisian construal of hell as self-exclusion from joy has most certainly established itself as the normative position. As Pope John Paul II explains, “Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.” Various differences can be discerned in these accounts of hell; but they are united in the judgment that it is from love, and not out of a concern to punish, that God respects the eschatological finality of creaturely decision. Jonathan Kvanvig classifies this as the issuant conception of hell (see The Problem of Hell).
The one critical difference we find among the various ecclesial traditions relates to the question of the irreversibility of the state of perdition. For Catholicism and most forms of Protestantism, once an individual finds himself in the condition of damnation, he is frozen in this condition eternally. He is incapable of repentance, incapable of altering his fundamental decision to reject the mercy of God. He can only suffer the destruction and misery he has chosen. Pope Benedict XVI well represents this position:
With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. (Spe salvi 45)
Many Orthodox would agree with this. St John of Damascus, for example, writes that the “fall is to the angels just what death is to men. For, just as there is no repentance of men after their death, so is there none for the angels after their fall” (De Fide Orthodoxa 2.4). Others, however, point to the Orthodox practice of praying for the departed. They believe that some, though perhaps not the most incorrigibly impenitent, may be saved through the prayers of the Church and the divine mercy. This appears to have been the position of St Mark of Ephesus. This, I take, is the majority opinion within Orthodoxy today. But there are also some Eastern theologians, for example, Met Kallistos Ware, who believe that we may genuinely hope that all may, but not necessarily will, be saved. Ware’s position strongly resembles the hopeful universalism articulated by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book Dare We Hope “That All Men be Saved?” In any case, virtually all Orthodox agree that those who are condemned to Gehenna at the Final Judgment are beyond hope—for them there is only eternal, unrelenting torment and agony, for they cannot but experience God as their hell. Greek theologian George Metallinos states the dominant Orthodox position:
Paradise and hell are the same reality. This is what is depicted in the portrayal of the Second Coming. From Christ, a river of fire flows forth. It is radiant like a golden light at the upper end of it, where the saints are. At its lower end, the same river is fiery, and it is in that part of the river that the demons and the unrepentant (“the never repentant” according to a hymn) are depicted. This is why in Luke 2:34 we read that Christ stands “as the fall and the resurrection of many.” Christ becomes the resurrection into eternal life for those who accepted Him and who followed the means given for the healing the heart. To those who rejected Him, however, He becomes their separation and their hell. … Consequently, paradise and hell are not a reward or a punishment (condemnation), but the way that we individually experience the sight of Christ, depending on the condition of our heart. God doesn’t punish in essence, although, for educative purposes, the Scripture does mention punishment. The more spiritual that one becomes, the better he can comprehend the language of the Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Man’s condition (clean-unclean, repentant-unrepentant) is the factor that determines the acceptance of the Light as “paradise” or “hell.” … The damned—those who are hardened at heart, like the Pharisees (Mark 3:5: “in the callousness of their hearts”)—eternally perceive the pyre of hell as their salvation! It is because their condition is not susceptible to any other form of salvation. They too are “finalized”—they reach the end of their road—but only the righteous [sincerely pious] reach the end as redeemed persons. The others finish in a state of condemnation. “Salvation” to them is hell, since in their lifetime, they pursued only pleasure.
The Orthodox understanding of hell is often portrayed, particularly in polemical contexts, as morally superior to the Catholic and Protestant conceptions of hell. This certainly holds if we are comparing it to traditional models; but as we have seen, mainline Catholicism and Protestantism appear to have adopted non-retributive views very similar to the Orthodox. But what I want to ask now is, What would St Isaac think about the contemporary understanding of hell within Orthodoxy? His statement that the damned are “scourged by the scourge of love” is often quoted by Eastern writers. That the damned suffer eternally is not seen as a moral problem. After all, they have chosen this destiny. They have voluntarily accepted the consequences of their rejection of God’s love and mercy. They have freely embraced their doom. That they suffer is therefore meet and right. It is often not noted, however, that the cause of the suffering of the reprobate is precisely God himself. Consider this explanation offered by Peter Chopelas:
Experiencing God’s presence and His in-filling transforming Energies in glory or in torment, as Paradise or as Punishment, is the heaven and hell of the Bible. Not something God did to us, but rather something we did to ourselves. God unconditionally pours out His love on all, WHETHER WE WANT IT OR NOT, whether we are ready for it or not, when we enter the afterlife.
Here we have the loving God imposing himself upon those who have rejected him to their eternal torment and agony. Given that the damned are incapable of repentance, given that they are incapable of responding to the divine love with anything other than hatred, given that they cannot escape from what, for them, is an intolerable situation, how is this not punishment of the worst imaginable kind? This is not chastisement, for the damned are beyond education and reform. This is torture.
With the final condemnation of the impenitent to Gehenna, has not the God of love in fact become the God of retributive, punitory justice? The time for mercy is over; now is the time for punishment, “the punishment of love.” Precisely at the point when humanity loses its freedom to accept God’s offer of mercy and forgiveness, and thus becomes subject toeverlasting anguish, we have no choice but to appeal to divine justice. Only justice–the damned deserve to suffer–could morally justify the horror of hell. In the words of St Gregory Palamas: “For then it is a time of revelation and punishment, not compassion and mercy; then is a time of revelation of the wrath, the anger, and the just retribution of God. … Woe to him who falls into the hands of the living God.”
What then has become of the God of love? Is the Final Judgment the end of mercy? How can hell be the good that the heavenly Father wills for the damned?
But the “scourge of love” is not St Isaac’s last word on Gehenna.
St Isaac the Syrian: The Triumph of the Kingdom over Gehenna
http://afkimel.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/st-isaac-the-syrian-the-triumph-of-the-kingdom-over-gehenna/
“Those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love”—these words by St Isaac the Syrian have profoundly influenced the Orthodox understanding of hell and damnation. My suspicion is that most readers of St Isaac’s writings have long assumed that this mystical insight represents the apex of his reflections on hell. But in 1983 Sebastian Brock discovered in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the complete text of a group of discourses that were virtually unknown in the Byzantine and Latin Churches. Unlike the well known homilies belonging to the First Part, translated into English under the title The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, these other discourses had never been translated into Greek nor into any other language (except perhaps Arabic). That they existed was known to scholars, but the one extant text in Iran was lost in 1918. And then Brock made his remarkable discovery, and in 1995 he published an English translation of the text under the riveting title The Second Part. In this volume we find three homilies specifically devoted to the Last Things. These three eschatological homilies, chapters 39, 40, and 41, reveal an Isaac of Ninevah whose understanding of hell was far more original and daring than previously suspected outside the Syriac Christian world: the damned may be “scourged by the scourge of love,” but the scourging is not forever!
As we have seen, underlying Isaac’s reflections on eschatology is his fierce conviction that retributive punishment is utterly incompatible with the God of absolute and infinite love. Our Father wills, always wills, our good. He does not inflict unnecessary pain and suffering. If he chastises, it is always with the aim of our conversion and sanctification:
For it would be most odious and utterly blasphemous to think that hate or resentment exists with God, even against demonic beings; or to imagine any other weakness, or passibility, or whatever else might be involved in the course of retribution of good or bad as applying, in a retributive way, to that glorious divine Nature. Rather, He acts towards us in ways He knows will be advantageous to us, whether by way of things that cause suffering, or by way of things that cause relief, whether they cause joy or grief, whether they are insignificant or glorious: all are directed towards the single eternal good, whether each receives judgement or something of glory from Him—not by way of retribution, far from it!—but with a view to the advantage that is going to come from all these things. …That is how everything works with Him, even though things may seem otherwise to us: with Him it is not a matter of retribution, but He is always looking beyond to the advantage that will come from His dealing with humanity. And one such thing is this matter of Gehenna. (II.39.3,5)
And one such thing is this matter of Gehenna—even perdition is encompassed within God’s salvific plan for humanity. Even hell can be used by God for our good.
“I am of the opinion,” announces St Isaac, “that He is going to manifest some wonderful outcome, a matter of immense and ineffable compassion on the part of the glorious Creator, with respect to the ordering of this difficult matter of Gehenna’s torment: out of it the wealth of His love and power and wisdom will become known all the more—and so will the insistent might of the waves of His goodness” (II.39.6). When I read these words I thought of St Gregory the Theologian, who was given deep understanding of the Scriptures through his contemplative experience. Similarly St Isaac now speaks to us from his own profound mystical experience. He is not content to reiterate the retributive views of theologians before him. He has been given such a transformative knowledge of the divine love that he knows that an eternal inferno is incompatible with this love—he knows this in the depth of his soul. He is not engaging in philosophical speculation. This is why St Isaac’s words possess such persuasive and compelling power. He is speaking to us as a mystagogue and holy ascetic who has been transfigured by union with God the Holy Trinity: the Kingdom of God will triumph over Gehenna.
Isaac is horrified by the teaching of an eternal hell: “It is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out when He created them—and whom nonetheless He created” (II.39.6). Like all of the Church Fathers, Isaac believes in God’s foreknowledge of the future. God created the world knowing full well that humanity would fall from grace, with death, sin, and hell as the consequences. It is not as if God created the world and then had to respond to the surprise of creaturely disobedience. That would reduce the Creator to a creature and would introduce mutability into the divine nature. Rather, in his foreknowledge of angelic and human sin, God in his wisdom included Gehenna within his providential plan to accomplish the final reconciliation of the wicked:
If the Kingdom and Gehenna had not been foreseen in the purpose of our good God as a result of the coming into being of good and evil actions, then God’s thoughts concerning these would not be eternal; but righteousness and sin were known by Him before they revealed themselves. Accordingly the Kingdom and Gehenna are matters belonging to mercy, which were conceived of in their essence by God as a result of His eternal goodness. It was not a matter of requiting, even though He gave them the name of requital.That we should further say or think that the matter is not full of love and mingled with compassion would be an opinion full of blasphemy and insult to our Lord God. By saying that He will even hand us over to burning for the sake of sufferings, torment and all sorts of ills, we are attributing to the divine Nature an enmity towards the very rational being which He created through grace; the same is true if we say that He acts or thinks with spite and with a vengeful purpose, as though He was avenging Himself. (II.39.22)
Now let me admit that I personally find the topic of foreknowledge difficult. I fully affirm, of course, the omniscience of God—God knows everything that can be known—but is what hasn’t happened yet something to be known? At this point we are brought into the unfathomable mystery of the relationship between eternal divinity and temporal reality. The simple fact is we have absolutely no idea what we are talking about. Perhaps some philosophers might want to accuse Isaac of a naive, or unsophisticated, understanding of eternity and time. Well, whatever divine foreknowledge means, it certainly means that God was surprised neither by the sin of Adam nor by the personal sins of human beings that created hell. Yet God created humanity regardless. And that is the essential point. If the omniscient and benevolent Deity created the world knowing, or at least fully anticipating, that mankind was going to rebel against his love and authority, then he must have made provision for this eventuality from before the beginning. He must have. Because Gehenna is that intolerable.
If we do not share St Isaac’s horror of an everlasting hell, then perhaps that says something very important about us. This, I suggest, is St Isaac’s unstated argument. It’s not just a matter of philosophical reasoning or biblical exegesis. Once one has experienced the extraordinary love and mercy of God, as Isaac had, once one has been drawn into the embrace of the Father through the Son in the Spirit, then one knows the truth—and thus one knows how to rightly interpret the Holy Scriptures and one knows how to rightly preach the gospel of Jesus Christ … and one knows the impossibility of eternal perdition.
But Isaac also believes that he is speaking from within the Holy Tradition of the Church. He is not presenting his readers with a doctrinal innovation. He is not teaching, he assures us, “things of which our former orthodox Fathers never spoke, as though we were bursting out with an opinion which did not accord with truth” (II.39.7). He invokes two respected Oriental Fathers specifically in support—Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of Tarsus. A quotation from Theodore is of particular interest:
In the world to come, those who have chosen here what is good, will receive the felicity of good things along with praise; whereas the wicked, who all their life have turned aside to evil deeds, once they have been set in order in their minds by punishments and the fear of them, choose the good, having come to learn how much they have sinned, and that they have persevered in doing evil things and not good; by means of all this they receive a knowledge of religion’s excellent teaching, and are educated so as to hold on to it with a good will, and so eventually they are held worthy of the felicity of divine munificence. For Christ would never have said “Until you pay the last farthing” unless it had been possible for us to be freed from our sins once we had recompensed for them through punishments. Nor would He have said “He will be beaten with many stripes” and “He will be beaten with few stripes” if it were not the case that the punishments measured out in correspondence to the sins, were finally going to have an end. (II.39.8)
Clearly Theodore does not understand repentance and purification as being impossible after death. He declares the hope and expectation that the wicked will eventually come to see the gravity of their sin and choose the good—and thus be saved. Divine punishment is educative and of limited duration.
St Isaac presents us with a simple choice—the punishment of Gehenna is either retributive or remedial, punitive or medicinal. If the former, then God, and we, are trapped in the past; if the latter, then God, and we, are open to a future beyond our imaginings:
So then, let us not attribute to God’s actions and His dealings with us any idea of requital. Rather, we should speak of fatherly provision, a wise dispensation, a perfect will which is concerned with our good, and complete love. If it is a case of love, then it is not one of requital; and if it is a case of requital, then it is not one of love. Love, when it operates, is not concerned with the requiting of former things by means of its own good deeds or correction; rather, it looks to what is most advantageous in the future: it examines what is to come, and not things that are past. (II.39.18)
Isaac’s eschatology is soundly biblical and must be distinguished from the Origenist construals that were condemned in the sixth century.
In light of our reading of the eschatological homilies, the oft-quoted famous words of St Isaac of the scourging of the “scourge of love” take on a very different meaning. Read the passage yet once again:
I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. For what is so bitter and vehement as the punishment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is sharper than any torment that can be. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways: it torments those who have played the fool, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability. (I.28, p. 266)
The scourging of the “scourge of love” is nothing less than God’s work of purification in the hearts of the wicked. The chastisement that God imposes in hell is educative, remedial, and reparative. God scourges in order to bring the damned to salvation, to bring them into a knowledge both of his mercy and of their sin and its terrible consequences for themselves and for God’s creation. Even Gehenna falls into God’s redemptive purposes. Its purpose is to eventually create within the hearts of the condemned the stirrings of faith and repentance, thus allowing them to experience God precisely as love and not as torture. Only thus are the sufferings and anguish of the damned, caused by the inescapable presence of Love, morally tolerable.
St Isaac would emphatically reject any suggestion that the damned are beyond redemption. God would never have created a cosmos whose history would conclude, even for a small portion of those he has brought into being, with Gehenna. And it is unthinkable that he would have so constructed the after-life in such a way that the wicked would be incapable of turning their hearts to Christ and appealing to his forgiveness. The Lord’s face is set “all the time towards forgiveness” (II.40.13). His grace is like an ocean that knows no measure.
Here is where philosophy ends and mystery begins. Philosophers tell us that God so values human (libertarian) freedom that an eternal populated hell must remain a possibility, if not a definite certainty. Every human being is given an opportunity to definitively reject God, and God will respect this choice, even if it means their suffering and destruction (see, for example, The Problem of Hell by Jonathan L. Kvanig and Hell: The Logic of Damnation by Jerry L. Walls). This has become the ecumenical justification for everlasting perdition. Freedom ultimately triumphs over Love. But the Syriac mystic refuses to trapped by this philosophical problem, for the God who rose from the dead on Easter morning is not trapped by it:
Accordingly we say that, even in the matter of the afflictions and sentence of Gehenna, there is some hidden mystery, whereby the wise Maker has taken as a starting point for its future outcome the wickedness of our actions and wilfulness, using it as a way of bringing to perfection His dispensation wherein lies the teaching which makes wise, and the advantage beyond description, hidden from both angels and human beings, hidden too from those who are being chastised, whether they be demons or human beings, hidden for as long as the ordained period of time holds sway. (II.39.20)
Gehenna will end. Through his goodness and beauty God will overcome evil. The damned will be saved, not by force or coercion, but by the chastisement of love that will ultimately bring them to the true understanding of the happiness they have always hoped and dreamed for. St Isaac does not speculate further. He simply presents us with the confident hope that the infinitely wise and good God will restore and consummate his creation in Love.
In his essay “Universalism of Salvation: St Isaac the Syrian,” Catholic theologian Waclaw Hryniewicz summarizes St Isaac’s understanding of apocatastasis in these words:
In the sufferings of Gehenna Isaac perceives a hidden mystery. Gehenna has no sense in itself. The wise Creator knew that it would disclose its purpose in the future. Iniquity and willfulness of rational creatures will not remain in them for ever in the state called Gehenna. God is able to carry out His work to the very end. The mystery of Gehenna remains provisionally hidden before humans, angels and demons. …Isaac belongs to those Christian mystics who do not exaggerate the power of evil. In his eyes human sin is infinitely small in comparison with the infinite mercy of God. The torments of Gehenna are caused by self-exclusion from the great feast in the Kingdom of heaven, by a person’s inability to participate in the love of God. Yet they will come to an end, although here on earth we do not know when it will take place. Gehenna is a consequence of sin which also will have its end. If God punishes, He does it out of love, in order to heal a sick freedom of rational creatures. Sinners in Gehenna are not deprived of the compassionate love of God. The purpose of punishment is change for the better, purification and conversion. The punishment ceases when this purpose is achieved. The sinners are not deprived of God’s love even in their infernal state. They can always count on His help. God’s justice and mercy are inseparable. He awaits with love all His creatures at the end of their purification. If evil, sin and Gehenna do not have their origins in God, how can they be eternal? …According to Isaac, Gehenna can only be temporary and provisional, permeated by God’s love and mercy. He would not allow a punishment which would deny His own nature. The punishment has a therapeutic and correctional meaning. It is always connected with His “compassionate intentions and purpose” to set us on the upright path,and not to bring us to perdition. Gehenna’s torment is “a matter of immense and ineffable compassion.” It must have its end and achieve its purpose. For this reason it is subject to a limit. It is not for eternity and will last only for a fixed period, decreed by God’s wisdom. The punishments, measured out in correspondence to the sins, are finally going to have an end. The eternal punishment would be a monstrous reality unworthy of God. Who thinks otherwise has not overcome an”infantile way of thinking,” “the childish opinion of God.” (The Challenge of Hope, pp. 82-83)
Hilarion Alfeyev describes Isaac’s vision of Gehenna as akin to the Catholic doctrine of purgatory: “Gehenna is a sort of purgatory rather than hell: it is conceived and established for the salvation of both human beings and angels. However, this true aim of Gehenna is hidden from those who are chastised in it, and will be revealed only after Gehenna is abolished. According to Isaac, all those who have fallen away from God will eventually return to Him because of the temporary and short torment in Gehenna that is prepared for them in order that they purify themselves through the fire of suffering and repentance.” It is unclear to me why Isaac believes that the true aim of hell, namely, salvation, will be hidden from the wicked. How does this not lead to a despair that makes repentance impossible? But perhaps even ultimate despair can become the occasion of total surrender to God.
Most Christians appear to be content to simply accept the eternal reality of hell, in all of its horror. But Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov is not one of them. Though he could not have known the eschatological homilies of St Isaac, he was well acquainted with the teachings of the Eastern Fathers, including most especially St Gregory of Nyssa, on the universal restoration of creation (see John Sachs, “Apocatastasis in Patristic Theology,”Theological Studies 54 [1993], pp. 617-640). “It is simply unacceptable,” Evdokimov declares, “to imagine that from all eternity God prepares hell as a destination for his creatures. This would be a contradiction of the divine plan and thus a victory of evil!” (In the World, Of the Church, p. 29).
St Isaac is well aware that the eschatological hope of apocatastasis can be exploited to justify laxity and wickedness. This does not lead him to dilute the glorious revelation of grace and triumph, however. The full proclamation of the mystery of Gehenna leads us to wonder and amazement and finally to silent adoration (II.39.1). And so Isaac summons his readers to repentance. No one wants to experience the torments of hell, he tell us, even for a single moment. Far better to begin the ascent to God now. Now is the time to repent; now is the time to accept the forgiveness of God and to begin living the union of love:
Let us beware in ourselves, my beloved, and realize that even if Gehenna is subject to a limit, the taste of its experience is terrible, and the extent of its bounds escapes our very understanding. Let us strive all the more to partake of the taste of God’s love for the sake of perpetual reflection on Him, and let us not have experience of Gehenna through neglect. (II.40.1).
The call to repentance flows from the gospel and the hope of universal salvation.
St Isaac of Ninevah has presented us with a glorious vision of the future, a vision grounded in his mystical experience of the God of Jesus Christ and his contemplative reading of the Scriptures. “In every epoch,” Alfeyev writes, “the christian world needs to be reminded of this universal love of God for his creation because in every epoch there is a strong tendency within Christianity to replace the religion of love and freedom taught by Jesus with a religion of slavery and fear” (The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian, pp. 300-301). We need not fear the proclamation of the unconditional love of God and the triumph of his Kingdom. It is this gospel that transforms our lives and gives birth to the Church. As the saint reminds us, “Divine hope uplifts the heart, but fear of Gehenna crushes it” (I.51, p. 384).
O the astonishment at the goodness of our God and Creator! O power for which all is possible! O immeasurable kindness toward our nature, that He will even bring sinners back into existence! … Where is Gehenna, that can afflict us? Where is the torment that terrifies us in many ways and quenches the joy of His love? And what is Gehenna as compared with the grace of His resurrection, when he will raise us from Sheol and cause our corruptible nature to be clad in incorruption, and raise up in glory what has fallen into Sheol? Come, men of discernment, and be filled with wonder! Whose mind is sufficiently wise to wonder worthily at the bounty of our Creator? His recompense of sinners is that instead of a just recompense, he rewards them with resurrection, and instead of those bodies with which they trampled upon His law, He robes them with the glory of perfection. That grace whereby we are resurrected after we have sinned is greater than the grace which brought us into being when we were not. (I.51, p. 388)
Elder Paisios once fasted and prayed for two weeks for the eternal salvation of the devil. While praying he saw a dog’s head sticking his tongue out and mocking him. Paisios concluded from this incident that “God is ready to accept the demons provided they repent, but they themselves do not want their salvation.”
Met Kallistos Ware tells the story of a four hour car journey he once had with a Greek archbishop. Hoping to enjoy a long conversation on the topic, he asked the Archbishop, “If it is possible that the devil, who must surely be a very lonely and unhappy person, may eventually repent and be saved, why do we never pray for him?” The hierarch peremptorily responded, “Mind your own business.” End of discussion. Ware comments:
He was right. So far as we humans are concerned, the devil is always our adversary; we should not enter into any kind of negotiations with him, whether by praying for him or in other ways. His salvation is quite simply none of our business. But the devil has also his own relationship with God, as we learn from the prologue of the book of Job, when Satan makes his appearance in the heavenly court among the other “sons of God” (Job 1:6-2:7). We are, however, altogether ignorant of the precise nature of this relationship, and it is futile to pry into it. Yet, even though it is not for us to pray for the devil, we have no right to assume that he is totally and irrevocably excluded from the scope of God’s mercy. (“Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?” in The Inner Kingdom, pp. 202-203)
I am with Met Kallistos on this completely. We know nothing about the nature of angelic beings. God has not seen fit to speak to us of the salvation of Satan. God did not assume angelic nature and die on a cross for him and his fellow angels. Perhaps the saints and holy elders may safely pray for the salvation of Satan and his minions; but I know that I am not called to do so. I am too weak, too broken, too sinful. Except for renouncing devils and praying for defense against them, they are truly none of my business. It is therefore with some reticence that I write this particular blog article. I’m not sure if this is spiritually dangerous territory, but it is certainly territory in which few of us are called to travel.
But one who did travel in this territory was St Isaac the Syrian. As we have already seen in this series, the fallen angels are as much the objects of God’s infinite love as are we human sinners. In Isaac’s judgment we cannot speak about the one without speaking about the other. God loves Satan and the demons, and he wills their salvation:
Nor are we able to say that the love of the Creator is diminished towards those rational beings who have become demons as a result of their demonic action, and is any less than the fulness of love which He has towards those who remain in the angelic state; or that it is less for sinners than for those who are justly named righteous. This is because the divine Nature is not affected by what happens and by opposition, nor does there spring up within it any causal stirring which takes its origin from creation, and which is not to be found with Him from eternity; not does He have a kind of love which originates as a result of events which take place in time.Rather, everyone has a single place in His purpose in the ranking of love, corresponding to the form He beheld in them before He created them and all the rest of created beings, that is, at the time before the eternal purpose for the delineation of the world was put into effect. For it was not with an adventitious love that He had, without any beginning, the stirring that initiated the establishment of the world. He has a single ranking of complete and impassible love towards everyone, and He has a single caring concern for those who have fallen, just as much as for those who have not fallen.And it is clear that He does not abandon them the moment they fall, and that demons will not remain in their demonic state, and sinners will not remain in their sins; rather, He is going to bring them to a single equal state of perfection in relationship to His own Being—in a state in which the holy angels are now, in perfection of love and a passionless mind. He is going to bring them into that excellency of will, where it will not be as though they were curbed and not [free], or having stirrings from the Opponent then; rather, they will be in a state of excelling knowledge, with a mind made mature in the stirrings which partake of the divine outpouring which the blessed Creator is preparing in His grace; they will be perfected in love for Him, with a perfect mind which is above any aberration in all its stirrings. (II.40.2-4)
I have quoted St Isaac at length because I want all to see that St Isaac does indeed prophesy the ultimate salvation of the demons. His argument is identical to the argument he has offered for the salvation of humanity: God’s love does not change; it is immutable and impassible. It is not affected by what happens within the creaturely realm. Even after one of his creatures, whether angelic or human, has separated himself from him through pride and disobedience, God continues to love him with the same love that he possessed before all the ages. And just as God made eternal provision to save the obstinately wicked through the mystery of Gehenna, so God has made eternal provision to ultimately restore Lucifer and the fallen angels to perfect love. How this is possible St Isaac does not tell us. But in a mystery God will overcome the demonic resistance and restore the angels to himself.
Isaac even speculates that the fallen angels may be elevated to an even more brilliant noetic level than the unfallen angels:
Maybe they will be raised to a perfection even greater than that in which the angels now exist; for all are going to exist in a single love, a single purpose, a single will, and a single perfect state of knowledge; they will gaze towards God with the desire of insatiable love, even if some divine dispensation [i.e., Gehenna] may in the meantime be effected for reasons known to God alone, lasting for a fixed period, decreed by Him in accordance with the will of His wisdom. (II.40.5]
Who can put limits on the power of the Father’s love? Who can fathom the wisdom of the Creator? Who can envision the wondrous reality that is and will be the Kingdom in which angels and humans will be united as a single choir in praise of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
We may wonder how Isaac can assert his opinion so confidently, given the testimony of the Book of Revelation: “And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Rev 20:10). One reason he can be so confident is that this book was not included in the 7th century Syriac canon of the Bible, the Peshitta. Hence we can only speculate on how he might have interpreted the verse. But we have already noted in our blog series one aspect of the holy mystic’s interpretation of Holy Scripture: he does not remain at the surface level of meaning. The Scriptures are an icon of God. We cannot and must not simply state the “plain” meaning of the Bible; rather we must, in prayer and meditation, penetrate through the text to the spiritual truths and realities the words intend. Isaac was not a practitioner of the allegorical method that had been popularized by Origen; but like Origen he knew that the truth of Scripture could only be apprehended by moving through the biblical letter to God himself, or perhaps alternatively stated, by allowing God to reveal to the contemplative the deeper truths of Scripture.
Regardless how a critical-historical critic might exegete Rev 20:20, the verse cannot pose an insurmountable problem for St Isaac, for he reads the Bible through a hermeneutic of love, the very love that he found embodied in the crucified Christ and which he transformatively experienced in prayer and contemplation. It is this love that was foundational for him, as we have seen over and over again. The Syriac mystic invites us to read Scripture with him, to read it in love and through love. If we dare to do so, if we dare to embrace the hermeneutic of love, if we dare to follow Isaac on his journey into the divine, we may find God surprising us in ways we had never dreamed. We may even be given to see that God will most certainly find a way, a way beyond our conceiving, to convert Satan, defeat and overcome all evil, and achieve the consummation of the entire creation.
No part belonging to any single one of all rational beings will be lost, as far as God is concerned, in the preparation of that supernal Kingdom, which is prepared for all worlds. Because of that goodness of His nature by which He brought the universe into being and then bears, guides and provides for the worlds and all created things in His immeasurable compassion, He has devised the establishment of the Kingdom of heaven for the entire community of rational beings—even though an intervening time is reserved for the general raising of all to the same level. And we say this in order that we too may concur with the magisterial teaching of Scripture. (II.40.7)
As Waclaw Hryniewicz writes, “Sin and Gehenna will be ultimately abolished, although their end is a mystery surpassing human understanding. The final outcome of the history of the created world must correspond to the beauty of the beginning and to the goodness of God. If we suppose the truly eternal punishment of sinners and demons, this would mean that the creation of the world was an enormous failure and mistake. God is able to overcome, by His goodness and beauty, every evil, even the opposition of the devil himself” (“Universalism of Salvation,” in The Challenge of Hope, p. 85).
This matter is beyond me. It is none of my business. And yet perhaps it is. Devils are fellow creatures. They are beyond my comprehension, much as sociopaths and psychopaths are beyond my comprehension and sympathy. All I know is that they are dangerous and destructive. I have no love for them. I know they were responsible for the death of my son Aaron. Yet as alien as they are to my experience, as deeply as they have injured me and my family, they and I are bound to the one God by our very creation. And St Isaac teaches me that they are the objects of God’s love. And Jesus the Incarnate Son teaches me to pray for my enemies. And St Silouan teaches me that “He who does not love his enemies, does not have God’s grace.” Satan is my enemy—not only my enemy but the enemy of my family and friends. I cannot pray for him, but perhaps I can be glad that St Isaac does so. I must pray for a merciful heart.
And what is a merciful heart? It is the heart burning for the sake of all creation, for men, for birds, for animals, for demons, and every created thing; and by the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful man pour forth abundant tears. By the strong and vehement mercy which grips his heart and by his great compassion, his heart is humbled and he cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in creation. For this reason he offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner he even prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns without measure in his heart in the likeness of God. (I.71, p. 491)
