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Question 107.
Hi Fr Christopher,
Christ the Saviour called Himself the "light of the world" (John 8:12).
He enlightens every man who comes into the world. I hear this towards
the end of every liturgy (Christ, the true light, who lights and
sanctifies every man who comes into the world). What exactly is this
lighting/sanctification that Christ bestows on all His creation? Is it
perhaps wisdom, a logical soul, the breath of life, the Holy Spirit,
etc? Does this even mean that the people/souls that have departed or
have been condemned to hell/Gehenna, once had this enlightenment and
sanctification from Christ, when they came into existence in this world?
Is everyone enlightened/sanctified in the same way or according to the
measures that Christ wishes to enlighten every single person?
Regards, John
Answer to Question 107.
Dear John
Throughout the Bible God is described as being Light. Light is used
synonymously for righteousness, holy and good while darkness is used for
everything evil and sin. God can have no part with evil for "God is
light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1John 1:5) and "for what
fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion
hath light with darkness?" (2 Cor. 6:14) If God is only light then where
did Hades come from and if as we say in a prayer that "God is in all
places and fillest all things" then is God also in Hades? The answer to
this will become clear further down, but before this we must ask "if God
is life and light where did death come from?"
Firstly we must understand that God did not create death, death is evil
and there is no possible way for evil to proceed from God since God is
only good. Neither does God take pleasure in destroying the living
things he has created. God created man to live forever, but
simultaneously he gave him a choice with the gift of free will to remain
in this immortality or to become mortal. This choice was the commandment
he gave to Adam and Eve not to eat of the forbidden fruit and he warned
them that on the day they eat of it they would surely die. They chose to
eat and sure enough they lost immortality. But why by eating a fruit did
they die? The fruit is not important, what is important is that God gave
them a commandment which was to help them grow spiritually and they
chose to disobey God’s word. By rejecting God’s word they were rejecting
God himself. But it goes even deeper because through their action they
were saying to God “we don’t believe you, we have no need of you, we can
live by ourselves, self-sufficient and independent. Thus of their own
free will they chose to separate themselves from God and eternal life,
because eternal life can only be in God's light and separation from God
means death.
So what then is death? Death is the consequence of being separated from
God. This is what God meant when he gave them the commandment not to eat
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The Orthodox
Church understands death as the consequence of sin, but Western Churches
regard death as God’s way of punishing man because of his sin and sees
the inheritance of death on the whole human race as a heritage of guilt.
Thus for western theology God created death to punish mankind. They
paint a picture of an unloving God punishing and seeking revenge because
his creatures disobeyed his commandment. For us Orthodox this goes
totally against the grain and we cannot fathom a God so unloving that he
can be the cause of death.
Separated from God and eternal life, man freely accepted communion with
the devil and so fell under his jurisdiction and became a slave to sin
and death.
With the death of the body the soul lived in an existence without God's
light which was called Hades. We should not think of this as a physical
place but rather as a state of the soul which cannot perceive God.
Before the coming of Christ people were spiritually blind because they
were bound by the consequences of Adam's fall. The door of Paradise was
shut to all men even the Prophets because everyone was a partaker of sin
and sin is a barrier that separates man from God, because as already
said, God can have no part with sin.
Ever since then man had sat in darkness and lived in the shadow of death
(Luke 1:79). Death has two meanings, the first a bodily death and the
second a spiritual death. The soul is immortal, but as life means to be
with God then any existence distant from God is not life but death.
St. John the Theologian begins his Gospel by telling us in very clear
terms that Christ is God and the creator of the universe and the life of
every living thing. He gives us two descriptions of God: God is life and
God is light. Christ came into the world to give life and light to the
world, in other words to give hope of eternal life with God and to
enlighten the world by freeing them from ignorance of God and his
Kingdom and teaching them the way of salvation.
Christ said: "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall
not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12)
What Christ is saying is that if we follow his way of life we will no
longer live a life distant from God, we will attain knowledge of God and
be freed from the darkness of ignorance: we will be enlightened to see
that there is a way of life that gives hope of salvation and which will
lead us to a blessed and eternal life in the Kingdom of God.
Thus for the first part of your question God's light is wisdom because
it enlightens people to see that there is a way of life that leads to a
place of eternal light. But light is also synonymous with
sanctification, deification and life itself because without these we
cannot partake of God's kingdom. God is light but we also can become
light by becoming one with Christ and partaking of his Divine Light.
Christ showed us that we can do this when he was transfigured on Mount
Tabor "and his face did shine as the sun and his raiment was white as
the light." Christ appeared to his disciples as God in the Second Person
of the Holy Trinity, he revealed to them the glory of his divine nature.
This event in the life of Christ not only tells us that He appeared to
His disciples as God, but also that man’s nature appeared in the divine
glory. God became man so that man may become God.
For the second part of your question – whether people condemned to hell
were enlightened and sanctified by Christ when they come into this world
and whether everyone is enlightened/sanctified in the same way, I will
give you the church's teaching on Paradise and Hades and the teaching of
St. Gregory of Nyssa concerning infant deaths.
What happens to the soul after its departure from the body depends
entirely on its spiritual state while it was still in this life. Angels
or demons receive and lead it to a place of rest which we call Paradise
or Hades. We should not think of these as physical places but rather as
a state of the soul. We use the terms Paradise and Hades to indicate a
particular way of life, since the righteous partake of the glory of God,
while the sinners receive the caustic energy of God. In the patristic
tradition it is clear that there are not two ways, but God Himself is
Paradise for the saints and God Himself is Hades for the sinners. God
sends His grace to all men, since “He makes His sun rise on the just and
the unjust and sends His rain on the evil and the good”. If God gives us
a command to love all people, even our enemies, He does the same
Himself. It is impossible for him not to love sinners as well. But each
person feels God's love differently, according to his spiritual
condition. God is light and light has two properties, illuminating and
caustic. If one person has good vision, he benefits from the
illuminating property of the sun, and he enjoys the whole creation. But
if another person is deprived of his eye, if he is without sight, then
he feels the caustic property of light. This is how it will be also for
the life of the soul after it leaves the body. God will also love the
sinners, but they will be unable to perceive this love as light. They
will perceive it as fire, since they will not have a spiritual eye and
spiritual vision. Therefore the same love of God, the same energy will
fall upon all men, but it will work differently. Therefore Hell exists
not in the form of a threat and a punishment on the part of God, but in
the form of an illness and Paradise as a cure. Those who are cured and
those who are purified experience the illuminating energy of divine
grace, while the uncured and ill experience the caustic energy of God.
St, Gregory of Nyssa writing on the death of unbaptized babies gives us
an almost identical teaching. Gregory explains that just as food
nourishes and gives life to the body so too does the soul receive life
by participation in God’s light. The purpose for which man was created
is to be united with God. Thus the fulfilment of this purpose, which we
call deification or theosis, is not actually a reward from God but a
natural condition and not to participate in God is not a punishment, but
rather an illness of man’s soul and of his whole being. This he explains
by again using our eyes as an example. The capacity of our eyes to see
is not a reward, but a natural condition of healthy eyes. And the
inability to see is not a punishment but an illness of the human body.
This is the same for the spiritual eyes of the soul: those who have
purified their senses participate in seeing God’s light while those who
have spiritually unclean eyes cannot participate in God and do not know
him. This is not a punishment, but a natural state or illness of the
soul. Thus our participation in God or non-participation depends
entirely on the state of the soul whether it is in a clean and healthy
state or whether it is diseased. In babies the state of their souls can
only be in a state of purity because they have done nothing to make it
impure.
From his birth man experiences illumination of the nous. The nous is
what the fathers call the place where the spiritual heart and mind come
together. When a person is created his nous is in a state of
illumination. Here then we see that Orthodox theology does not agree
with Western theology which says that man inherits the guilt of original
sin. We believe that at birth a person has a pure and illuminated nous,
which is the natural state. As the child grows and passions develop then
the noetic part of his soul begins to darken.
This is where the Mystery of Baptism comes in. Holy Baptism is not the
getting rid of original sin as the West believes, but our participation
in the death and Resurrection of our Lord. By Baptism we are grafted on
to the Body of Christ and we acquire the power to conquer death. This is
how we understand the baptism of babies. We baptize them so that they
may become members of the Church, members of the Body of Christ, so that
they may pass over death and overcome the garment of decay and
mortality. In other words, as children grow and the nous becomes
darkened by the passions and evil in the world, through baptism they
have the ability to conquer death in Christ, they have the ability
through the Church to overcome the passions and cleanse and purify the
noetic part of their souls once more. This ability remains with them
into adulthood and with the help of the sacraments and ascetic struggles
ordained by the Church as tools to help in the purification process,
they can acquire the power to defeat death and attain deification. For
deification is the purpose of baptism and it can only be achieved in
Christ and in the Church.
Thus if someone lives a sinless spiritual life fighting the passions
then it follows that the darkness of his eyes will slowly fade and allow
him sight of the divine light. Salvation therefore relies on the health
of one’s spiritual eyes. If they are darkened through many sins he will
not be able to see the divine light and so will not be able to
participate in God, but if he has struggled to cleanse himself from the
passions and his spiritual eyes allow him to see even a little glow of
the divine light then that means he participates in God to the level
that his eyes allow him.
In your question you write "condemned to hell/Gehenna". People often
talk about God condemning sinners to hell, but that would make God an
unloving God who punishes people because they didn't love him. This is
the Western image of God but for the Orthodox Church God is always love
and love cannot think of revenge and punishment. In the Parable of the
Last Judgement (Matthew 25:31-46) Christ places the righteous to his
right saying "Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Then placing the
unjust to his left he says "Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
In this sentence we should take note of two important differences with
what he said to the righteous. Firstly we should notice that with the
righteous he said “blessed of my father,” now with the unrighteous he
doesn’t say cursed of my father, but only cursed. God doesn’t curse
anyone: they are cursed by their own works. The condemnation and curse
of the sinner is a result of his bad actions, but the salvation of the
righteous is an act of grace and therefore the word blessed is followed
with “of my Father.” Secondly, that the everlasting fire is not for us,
but for the devil and his angels. To the blessed he said “inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” but he
doesn’t say this of the everlasting fire, but only that it has been
prepared for the devil and his angels. He is thus saying: "For man I
have prepared the Kingdom, the fire is not meant for man, but only for
the devil and his angels: But you have taken on the likeness of his
demon angels, you no longer resemble the man I created in my image and
of your own free will you have put on the image of demons. Therefore you
will share the same reward as the demons you resemble."
With love in Christ
Fr. Christopher
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