I am very perplexed by the teaching of the Rev. Father Thomas Hopko and am wondering if his teachings on immediate life after physical death are Orthodox.
Specifically, he teaches that not only do we not believe in the platonic ideas that the soul preexists the body and that the soul is entrapped in the body, but he denies completely that the soul can survive the death of the body and enter paradise, despite our Lord's teaching that this in fact happens as in the story of the rich man and Lazarus and despite the many sayings of the Fathers that tell of sightings of souls leaving bodies and being crowned with life IMMEDIATELY after death.
He states:
"Those who have been Baptised have died, raised and sealed with the life creating Spirit. They are literally raised from the dead and can not die, and death becomes the transfiguration or the passage of everlasting life in Christ, because Christ is risen. This is important, not because we have an immortal soul; our soul is as dead as our body is, as far as the Bible is concerned. We do not teach immortality of the soul in our Church; we are not Socrates or Plato, but we follow the Bible. Death is the enemy of the body and soul, and Christ raises us up in body and soul. It is because Christ is risen that we have hope over death, not because of any 'natural' teaching."
"We see it all in terms of the end and not some immortal soul that is out there floating around somewhere and we wonder where.
No, we see it all in terms of the final victory of Christ that is already anticipated by us on earth in the Church by our Baptism and Eucharist. Furthermore, when we die we leave the temporal and spatial conditions of the planet earth and enter the very presence of God anticipating already the age to come."
http://www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/afterdeath.htmHow do we leave the temporal and spatial conditions if we have not soul/spirit that departs the body????
1) THIS IS MIND BOGGLING Fr. Thomas Hopko states duriong his lecture on The Descent Of Jesus Into Hades
on April 30, 2008
"... we do not ever want to imagine the dead as disincarnate souls. Some of the great teachers of Christianity do that, even Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, Hierotheos, he does that. I must say honestly say I do not agree with him when he does that. The dead are simply completely and totally dead. And then when you are alive, you are completely and totally alive. And I believe that when Christ rose from the dead in His glorified body, He gave the glorified body to all those in the tombs immediately, that they enter into eternal life with Him. That is why when we glorify the saints we glorify them as completely and totally alive. When they appear to people they do not appear as disincarnate souls, they appear as people in their glorified bodies, with their risen bodies. They are clothed with the raised body of Jesus Christ. The relic of their physical body might still be in the tombs, and they are in the tombs until the last day when all the tombs will be empty and there will be no more cemeteries and no more death anymore at all. But the dead in Christ are already entering into that splendid glory of the age to come. That is how we relate to them and venerate them within the Orthodox Church."
WHEN in the last 2000 years did ANY of the FATHERS TEACH THIS?
It appears to me that Father Hopko does NOT believe in spirits/souls of the departed being able to servive outside of the body.
At time 1:26 of the video at the following link, Father Thomas claims that "somehow" you are immediately in the age to come, resurrected, supposedly (transported in time). He believes when the saints appear, they are appearing in their resurrected body. At 1:31 he states that it is "absurd" that disincarnate souls are what we are seeing when Saints make apparitions
http://ancientfaith.com/specials/hopko_lectures/the_death_of_christ_and_our_death_in_himDoes this mean that Saints are going back in time to appear to us? Am I already physically dead and resurrected in the future kingdom?
3) In the following article he appreas to be equating "soul" with life as though when saying that the soul leaves the body, all is meant is that the life leaves the body. He seems to insist that eternal life is eternal biological life.
He says that that idea of saying that you have a soul that leaves your body is not the biblical teaching that it is Platonism: "'You have a spirit in you. You have a soul in you. And when you die, your body rots, but your soul goes off to contemplate eternal realities in some purely spiritually heavenly world.' That’s Platonism, basically, and even in some sense, that’s Hinduism and Buddhism, that the spiritual reality somehow remains and so on. But that’s not the Biblical teaching at all."
http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/nam...the_life/printWhile Plato believed that souls are eternal, preexist the body, trapped in the body, then leaves the body to be free, he shares the idea of a soul leaving the body with Christianity which, according to the parabled of the rich man and Lazarus, there IS a soul that leaves the body and goes somewhere. Fr. Hopko seems to deny that there is a soul that leaves the body simply because plato had other wrong ideas about the soul.
I am confused and now confused and somewhat apprehesive of physical death. To my knowledge, all martyrs went bravely to their physical deaths believing that they will continue to be in the love of Christ as their spirit/soul departs the body to live conciously and immediately after death.
I often read works by Father Thomas Hopko as he is very precise and knowledgable about Orthodox Church history and Fathers. But on this issue he has confused me completely. It appears that many Eastern Orthodox Christians share similar teachings as he does.
Do we have souls/spirits that are sustained by God and grant us conciousness immediately after physical death or not, according to Orthodoxy?? If not, and what Fr. Thomas Hopko teaches is correct, then what is it in our nature that is created by God that allows us to have a presence in the immediate afterlife after physical death if we do not have conscious minds/souls that leave the body?
Please assist me as I am greatly troubled by this confusion. Do we have immediate coniousness after death, according to the Consensus of the Fathers and Eastern Orthodox understanding???
Although I am Coptic Orthodox, I often read many of his writings as I thought he was a very precise and learned theologian.
I corresponded with him briefly and he does believe in immediate consciousness after death for all humans, but he does not believe in disincarnate human souls, that is souls outside of the body.
It seems that he is going against the ideas of Plato who taught that the soul pre-existed the body and is naturally immortal on its own, but I think he went to the other extreme in completely denying that there is a separate soul that leaves the body and enters into the afterlife.
Comments
This is often a challenging discussion to have because the expressions which we use such as 'soul' are very vague. The expression Soul can mean anything from the biological life which subsists within a person's body (which is the reason why the Apostles command us not to eat the blood of animals) to the rational nature of a being or even a person's spiritual element.
In the Hebrew scriptures the terms for soul and spirit are used almost interchangeably which makes this as a subject for discussion very challenging.
Some of these notions of 'soul' which I have defined will definitely die with the body and others form part of our the disembodied state of consciousness we have after death.
I would ask Fr. Thomas to clarify what he is referring to when he says 'soul' if you haven't already because some texts - and perhaps for no other reason than poor translation or word choice make matters complicated.
Please pray for me,
LiD
I'll have to apologize about not reading your whole post in detail, nor did I listen to the podcast by Fr. Thomas Hopko that you linked in your post (I will listen to it soon, though, as I'm interested in hearing what he says about the subject). This will mean that I'll give a very short and straightforward answer, which is as follows:
In Platonism (and ancient Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Indian, and virtually any pagan thought), the soul of the human person was considered the whole human being entrapped in the prison of the body, and the aim of human life was to live a virtuous life so as to allow the soul to escape the body. So, the end of human life in death is the release of the soul from the prison of the passions and corruptibility - a release from the body. It is for that very reason that Socrates, in Plato's Apology, was not afraid to commit suicide by drinking the hemlock that ended his life.
It is only in biblical revelation, beginning with Judaism, that we find that God created the whole human person, body and soul, to continue in that kind of existence immortally. The whole human person is in the image of God. The body is supposed to live immortal, but it was sin that brought about death. The revelation of what is the human person in Scripture is at direct odds with the pagan religions.
With Christ's death and resurrection, we have further evidence of our being created and living immortally as body and soul, through the grace that Christ gives us in his resurrection. No where in Scripture do we find that the immortal soul does or needs to live apart from the mortal body, but we only read of death entering the world through sin, and the immortal life with the resurrected, incorrupt, and glorious body that will rise with to live in the Kingdom of God.
Unfortunately, Platonism and other pagan ideas did creep into Christianity, so that in between the time of death and the general resurrection, some Christians borrowed the pagan ideas of the soul living on without the body in either a paradisal state or in Hades. Some Christians went even further to imagine a whole journey of passing by angels and demons (toll houses) until you reach God, which sounds very much like the journeys described by the Ancient Egyptians in the Book of the Dead. The problems with those wonderful stories are:
1) It sounds like the soul is getting judged before the general Judgement Day, and is both having and awaiting a reward or its punishment.
2 The judgement in this stage doesn't come from God, but from angels and demons. No where in Scripture or Tradition are we told that angels and demons will judge us, but Christ is the only one who could judge us.
3) It is injustice to judge the disincarnated soul, as the human person sins or does good with the body, and not just as a soul.
Those, at least, are the inherited paganisms in Christianity. These days, however, we tend to "comfort" people who lost a family member or a close friend by telling them that the soul of the departed person is in paradise. Even though its intended as "comfort," this nonsense is not part of Christianity. Once again, this is both a judgement from people, rather than God, and there is no indication anywhere in Scripture or Church Tradition (not infected by Platonism) that we believe in the soul living without the body. Both Scripture and Tradition are clear about our belief in the resurrection of the dead, after which we live immortally in our body and soul. The resurrection is all we know about life after death, based on revelation in Scripture and in Christ's resurrection. We can't go any further by borrowing any fanciful stories from paganism or the language of the prevailing culture that the soul of a dead relative is happily living in the clouds of Paradise with the angels.
Those, at least, are the inherited paganisms in Christianity. These days, however, we tend to "comfort" people who lost a family member or a close friend by telling them that the soul of the departed person is in paradise. Even though its intended as "comfort," this nonsense is not part of Christianity. Once again, this is both a judgement from people, rather than God, and there is no indication anywhere in Scripture or Church Tradition (not infected by Platonism) that we believe in the soul living without the body. Both Scripture and Tradition are clear about our belief in the resurrection of the dead, after which we live immortally in our body and soul. The resurrection is all we know about life after death, based on revelation in Scripture and in Christ's resurrection. We can't go any further by borrowing any fanciful stories from paganism or the language of the prevailing culture that the soul of a dead relative is happily living in the clouds of Paradise with the angels.
Just to be clear, are you suggesting that there is no Paradise/Hades after death? Does everything just go dark when we die? Wasn't the spirit of Christ separated from His body as He went down to Hades to save the other spirits who were awaiting their day of salvation? Wasn't the Lord's spirit united back to His Body in order to cause His Glorious Resurrection? Isn't this very similar as to what will happen with us?
If I understood your point correctly, then there is much reason to be fearful of death.
I am a fan of Fr. Thomas Hopko. He is a skilled theologian. But I am also aware that too much seminary could make a person go a little crazy...
Not to take the discussion off topic, but there is much evidence to believe that toll houses are in fact real, and that the spirit of a person does indeed go through angels and/or demons before reaching Paradise or Hades.
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This is all speculation - pious speculation, perhaps, but sometimes mixed with pagan stories and old wives' tales - but it's all unnecessary for our salvation. What we know has been revealed to us by Christ, and it is what we read in Scripture, recite in the Creed, and chant in the liturgical services: that after death, there is life in Christ, and one day when Christ will come in judgement (not angels, not demons, but Christ is the Judge), all the bodies will rise and those who are righteous will rise to glory, and those who were unrighteous will rise to condemnation (cf. John 5:26-29).
This is all speculation - pious speculation, perhaps, but sometimes mixed with pagan stories and old wives' tales - but it's all unnecessary for our salvation. What we know has been revealed to us by Christ, and it is what we read in Scripture, recite in the Creed, and chant in the liturgical services: that after death, there is life in Christ, and one day when Christ will come in judgement (not angels, not demons, but Christ is the Judge), all the bodies will rise and those who are righteous will rise to glory, and those who were unrighteous will rise to condemnation (cf. John 5:26-29).
To deny that Paradise/Hades exist is a very deep doctrinal error. The tradition of the Church teaches that Christ went down into Hades to save the spirits of the righteous after His death on that most glorious and holy Cross. There are numerous passages and prophecies in the Old Testament that declare this.
Where did Our Lord bring those spirits after they were taken away from Hades? Paradise. Where are the spirits of the righteous now? In Paradise, where we will go after we depart this earth by the tender mercies of Our Lord. Why are we able to communicate and ask for intercession with the saints? Because they are alive now in Paradise.
Where exactly Paradise is, I cannot speculate.
As I mentioned in the other thread:
[quote author=✞TheGodChrist✞ link=topic=12723.msg149479#msg149479 date=1324794139]
If this is true, how in the world do the spirits of the saints continue to communicate with us? And why would we still have their relics!!!
[quote author=Biboboy link=topic=12724.msg149480#msg149480 date=1324825781] If they were real, it would've been included in the Gospel, for just as Scripture shows us how to battle with the demons in the flesh, it would've been necessary to know how to battle with the demons after death as well.
As you may already be aware, our beloved Church does not approve of the phrase "Bible alone" (or for that matter "faith alone"). We are not protestants, and the tradition of the Church holds considerable weight that is essential to the Orthodox faith.
Here is one account of toll houses from St. Macarius the Great of Egypt:
“When the soul of man departs out of the body, a great mystery is there accomplished. If it is under the guilt of sins, there come bands of demons, and angels of the left hand, and powers of darkness that take over that soul, and hold it fast on their side. No one ought to be surprised at this. If, while alive and in this world, the man was subject and compliant to them, and made himself their bondsman, how much more, when he departs out of this world, is he kept down and held fast by them. That this is the case, you ought to understand from what happens on the good side. God’s holy servants even now have angels continually beside them, and holy spirits encompassing and protecting them; and when they depart out of the body, the hands of angels take over their souls to their own side, into the pure world, and so they bring them to the Lord…
“Like tax-collectors sitting in the narrow ways, and laying hold upon the passers-by, so do the demons spy upon souls and lay hold of them; and when they pass out of the body, if they were not perfectly cleansed, they do not suffer them to mount up to the mansions of heaven and to meet their Lord, and they are driven down by the demons of the air. But if whilst they are yet in the flesh, they shall with much labour and effort obtain from the Lord the grace from on high, assuredly these, together with those who through virtuous living are at rest, shall go to the Lord…” (Homilies, XLIII, 4, 9)
Here is a good article on toll houses...and its from an Eastern Orthodox perspective:
http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/articles/214/death-toll-houses/
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Agape,
I'll have to apologize about not reading your whole post in detail, nor did I listen to the podcast by Fr. Thomas Hopko that you linked in your post (I will listen to it soon, though, as I'm interested in hearing what he says about the subject). This will mean that I'll give a very short and straightforward answer, which is as follows:
In Platonism (and ancient Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Indian, and virtually any pagan thought), the soul of the human person was considered the whole human being entrapped in the prison of the body, and the aim of human life was to live a virtuous life so as to allow the soul to escape the body. So, the end of human life in death is the release of the soul from the prison of the passions and corruptibility - a release from the body. It is for that very reason that Socrates, in Plato's Apology, was not afraid to commit suicide by drinking the hemlock that ended his life.
It is only in biblical revelation, beginning with Judaism, that we find that God created the whole human person, body and soul, to continue in that kind of existence immortally. The whole human person is in the image of God. The body is supposed to live immortal, but it was sin that brought about death. The revelation of what is the human person in Scripture is at direct odds with the pagan religions.
With Christ's death and resurrection, we have further evidence of our being created and living immortally as body and soul, through the grace that Christ gives us in his resurrection. No where in Scripture do we find that the immortal soul does or needs to live apart from the mortal body, but we only read of death entering the world through sin, and the immortal life with the resurrected, incorrupt, and glorious body that will rise with to live in the Kingdom of God.
Unfortunately, Platonism and other pagan ideas did creep into Christianity, so that in between the time of death and the general resurrection, some Christians borrowed the pagan ideas of the soul living on without the body in either a paradisal state or in Hades. Some Christians went even further to imagine a whole journey of passing by angels and demons (toll houses) until you reach God, which sounds very much like the journeys described by the Ancient Egyptians in the Book of the Dead. The problems with those wonderful stories are:
1) It sounds like the soul is getting judged before the general Judgement Day, and is both having and awaiting a reward or its punishment.
2 The judgement in this stage doesn't come from God, but from angels and demons. No where in Scripture or Tradition are we told that angels and demons will judge us, but Christ is the only one who could judge us.
3) It is injustice to judge the disincarnated soul, as the human person sins or does good with the body, and not just as a soul.
Those, at least, are the inherited paganisms in Christianity. These days, however, we tend to "comfort" people who lost a family member or a close friend by telling them that the soul of the departed person is in paradise. Even though its intended as "comfort," this nonsense is not part of Christianity. Once again, this is both a judgement from people, rather than God, and there is no indication anywhere in Scripture or Church Tradition (not infected by Platonism) that we believe in the soul living without the body. Both Scripture and Tradition are clear about our belief in the resurrection of the dead, after which we live immortally in our body and soul. The resurrection is all we know about life after death, based on revelation in Scripture and in Christ's resurrection. We can't go any further by borrowing any fanciful stories from paganism or the language of the prevailing culture that the soul of a dead relative is happily living in the clouds of Paradise with the angels.
This sounds like the metaphysics of the 7th Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses and others who believe in soul sleep.
Do you believe in soul sleep?
How then do the Saints pray and intercede for us?
What did Christ mean when He told the thief on the Cross, "Today you will bw with me in paradise"?
When king Saul visited the witch of endor, he believed that he could.talk to a conscious Samuel who was physically dead.
What did St. Paul mean when he said, "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better"? Hiw could feoRting be better if he was going into complete unconsciousness?
What about the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus and the Souls of the martyrs under the altar talking to God while people are still physically alive on earth? Both portray conciousness for the physically deceased.
St. Paul also talks about hiw haw paradise but was not sure if he was in or out of the body, meaning it was possiblw to be conscious and out of the body.
Plato and others may have been wrong about the pre-existance of souls and the body being a trap, but we should not say that he was wrong about consciosness outside of the body any more than we should reject the idea that God created us aimply because some pagans also believed that we were created by the suoernatural.
St Antonius speaks of seeing demons attempting to frighten and prevent souls from ascending to heaven and so does St. Macarius.
While there may or may not be "toll houses" there certainly are disincarnate souls/spirits/ consciousnesses of humans immediately upon physical death in the Tradition of the Orthodox Church, Coptic and otherwise, all over the Synaxarium and sayings of the Fathers.
Even in modern times, Pope Kyrillos, St.Apanoub and many others still appear and do miracles. Either they are going back in time if they are already resurrected in the future or they are conscious active happy disincarnate spirits appearing to us. The consensus of.the Church seems to be the latter.
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Whenevr Christ spoke in parables he used real objects and events that exist never in mythological ways. Based on the parable ( if it is even a parable and not an actual historic event) it stands that there is immediate consciousness after death, angels that assist the departed into the afterlife, etc while others are still alive on earth. So there is immediate consciousness after death.
Fr. Hopko believes this.
What Fr. Thomas Hopko points out is that nowherw is the word."soul" mentioned in the parable so he questions only the "how" of this consciousness and he posits that it is immediate transportation to the future kingdom. He believes this is possible because when one dies he is released.from the constraits of space and time. Because Christ entered.the realm of the dead, those who died can not be unconscious or unhappy but are somehow alive and happy.
This is the idea that puzzles me especially because it comes.from.such a learned theologian.
Also when Christ sayz, "Concerning the RESURRECTION"... I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacoub...God is the God of the living.not the God of the dead" This means that the three Patriarchs are still alive now, even though they are physivally dead but at the same.time He is talking, Concerning the Resurrection"
Supposedly Fr. T. Hopko would take this to support his belief that people are immediately conscious but also immediately resurrected. To us who are in time we see only the relic of.a.dead body. Most priests and.bishops do not teach this.
... No where in Scripture do we find that the immortal soul does or needs to live apart from the mortal body... Platonism and other pagan ideas did creep into Christianity, so that in between the time of death and the general resurrection, some Christians borrowed the pagan ideas of the soul living on without the body in either a paradisal state or in Hades....Those, at least, are the inherited paganisms in Christianity. These days, however, we tend to "comfort" people who lost a family member or a close friend by telling them that the soul of the departed person is in paradise. Even though its intended as "comfort," this nonsense is not part of Christianity. Once again, this is both a judgement from people, rather than God, and there is no indication anywhere in Scripture or Church Tradition (not infected by Platonism) that we believe in the soul living without the body.... The resurrection is all we know about life after death, based on revelation in Scripture and in Christ's resurrection.
Is this the belief of most Copts/ the Concensus of the Church/ the teachings of the Apostles, the Fathers, the Synod, the Pope/Patriarch , the majority of bishops and priests and what the lay people teach?
I am curious, is the correct Orthodox teaching that there is no immediate consciousness after death?
Can a person in the Coptic Orthodox Church believe the above and still be permitted to take communion?
[quote author=Biboboy link=topic=12724.msg149477#msg149477 date=1324789967]
We can't go any further by borrowing any fanciful stories from paganism or the language of the prevailing culture that the soul of a dead relative is happily living in the clouds of Paradise with the angels.
What about Christ's teaching about Lazarus being comforted withg Abraham before the resurrection? Is Christ making use opf prevailing pagan mythology to make a point? Would not most listeners including the Apostles understand that there is such a thing as immediate consciousness after death where the righteous are carried to Paradise by angels upon death?
Do you believe that the Apostles, including St. Paul are no longer conscious and that they are currently as dead as a door nail?
If this is the case, then to depart is not to be with Christ, to depart is not far better, as St. Paul said, because a depearture from the body would lead to complete uncoconsciousness and loss of existence until the resurrection.
I find it hard to believe that most of the martyrs went to their deaths believing that they will see nothing, feel nothing, and cease to exist consciously.
Please clarify, do you actually mean that when humans die, they have nothing to look forward to until the resurrection?
Also, pleas clarify if you believe in the intercession of the saints, if they are not conscious, how do they intercede for us?
What then did Christ mean when He said to the theif on the cross, "...Today you will be with me in Paradise"?
Matthew 27
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split,
52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;
53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
I think we are confounding soul and spirit. They are different, so their clear definitions should be posted and agreed upon first.
GBU
A good understanding of these verses should answer your topic.
Matthew 27
50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.
51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split,
52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised;
53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.
I think we are confounding soul and spirit. They are different, so their clear definitions should be posted and agreed upon first.
GBU
Do we have consciousness immediately after death or are we as dead as a door nail?
Biboboy stated that it is fantasy or a lie to tell someone that their departed relative is happy in Paradise.
The implication is that there is no consciousness immediately after physical death. Consciousness is regiven at the final resurrection.
My contention is that this is not what the Bible teaches neither is it the consensus of the Church currently or of the Fathers or Apostles of the past.
When St. Paul stated, "I desire to depart and be with Christ which is far better" and when he stated, "to die is gain," and when he stated, "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, "how could the departure be better and a gain, and a presence with the Lord if it is a departure into complete unconsciousness or annihilation, or non-being, where one can not longer feel the love of God. It would not be better or a gain if we are not in the presence of Christ, conscious and still feeling His love.
I am not as learned and well-read as Biboboy so I am terrified at the prospect of what he is saying, if it is true. Could the Fathers and the Bible actually teach this and, as he states, false pagan ideas have snuck into the Church Tradition to give us false assumptions of the afterlife? Such are the same claims of the 7th Day Adventists, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of God, Christadelphians, and several other heretical sects.
I am also concerned becasue it seems that such ideas are creeping in among some of the so-called Orthodox, as you can also see from the following site, where souls sleep is espoused by an Orthodox break away groupo citing several modern fathers such as John Romanides as well as ancient fathers. Particularly concerning are pages 11 and 12 that indicate that we ask for the Intercession of the Saints because they have been granted consciousness to pray for us where as we pray for the repose for the rest of the departed and don't as for their intercessions because they are asleep and unconscious.
http://www.homb.org/resources/docs/on-soul-sleep-dec-09.pdf?PHPSESSID=a0ef2de9f21d3754d16624bae45e091d
At the end, it implies that Church prays for the "repose" of the departed souls because they are asleep, whereas consciousness is only given to the saints and that is why we ask for their intercessions only.
Personally, I don't feel any peace about such ideas and I view them as completely heretical. When I contemplate on such ideas I feel no peace whatsoever. When I pray and feel the love of God I am naturally drawn to the prospect of meeting Christ and the saints after my physical death, before the resurrection, as I am confident all the martyrs felt as they were approaching their martyrdom.
St. Athanasius says:
But that the soul is made immortal is a further point in the Church’s teaching which you must know ... For this is the reason why the soul thinks of and bears in mind things immortal and eternal, namely, because it is itself immortal. And just as, the body being mortal, its senses also have mortal things as their objects, so, since the soul contemplates and beholds immortal things, it follows that it is immortal and lives for ever. (Against the Heathen: Section 33)
But whether we talk of "soul" or "spirit", we are concerned with whether or not we are conscious with the saints immediately after physical death.
I noted, from His Reverence Father Thomas Hopko that his believes that "Biblical and Orthodox teaching is that a person is completely and totally alive in, through and after biological death because he/she is kept alive by God's grace and power .... Before Christ's death in the flesh everyone was held captive by death in "sheol" or "hades" -- alive by God's presence and power, but caught by death and unable to live and act... But now that Christ has destroyed death and raised all the dead with himself -- leaving the relics of our earthly bodies in the tombs on earth -- everyone immediately encounters the risen Lord when they die, and are judged by their encounter with the risen and glorified Messsiah.
Those who have done good enter immediately into everlasting life. (John 5) And those who resist repentance and the mercy of God are raised "unto condemnation and judgment."
His Reverece Father Thomas Hopko believes that the Bible and Orthodox teching is that they are happy and conscoius and fully alive and in the presence of Christ. HOW this is so is the mystery.
His Reverence points out that in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, while both were fully conscious, one in Abraham's Bosom and the other in Hades, the words "soul" or "spirit" are not used. Christ simply said that Lazarus was carried by the angels to Abraham's Bosom. We assume that it was the soul/spirit that was carried, but Father Thomas points out that this is not explicitly stated. Using the same logic, we could say that when Christ told the theif on the cross, "... Today you will be with Me in Paradise" He did not say how this will be. We assume it was the theif's soul/spirit but this is not explicitly stated. Likewise St. Paul, when he stated that to depart and be with Christ is far better, and when he said that he saw Paradise, whether in the body or out of the body he does not know, he did not mention the words spirit or soul. St. John the Aposlte though uses the word "soul" to describe the consciousness of the martyrs under the altar.
So Biboboy's comment that the dead in Christ are not consciously living in Paradise is a form of soul sleep, though I still need clarification on exactly what he meant by this, while Father Thomas Hopko does believe as I believe the rest of the Church does, that the dead are FULLY CONSCIOUS and ALIVE. The only contention is how, is it through a dualistic soul/spirit that exists in us or through and unrevealed mystery.
Here are some points that I feel conclusively show that soul sleep or lack of conscousness immediately after death is a heresy:
1)
The book of Ecclesiastes expresses the views of a man who sees life without God as vanity and sees the dead as knowing nothing "under the sun" meaning in this realm not in the spiritual world. Ecclesiastes 9:5 states that the dead know nothing and they have no more reward. Those of you who erroneously take this verse to support souls sleep would also have to deny the resurrection since the same verse also states that the dead have "no more reward." Clearly this is not the case.
2)
The Holy Bible clearly states that King Saul sought out a medium (the wich of Endor) in order to speak to the prophet Samuel who was dead. See I Samuel 28:11-16. Not only does Saul, King of Israel believe that it is possible to speak with the dead and have them conciously speak back, but the Bible text clearly states that Samuel did speak back to Saul.
Clealy King Saul believed you can be disembodied and concious.
3)
The Gospels were written in Greek. In the Greek Language, there are no commas. Luke 23:43 states that Jesus said to the theif on the cross, "Truly I say to you today you will be with Me in Paradise" The Church Fathers, for the last two thousand years have always understood today to mean this very day, DESPITE THE FACT that in GREEK there are no commas. This was understood EVEN BEFORE the BIBLE was printed in the English Language and the comma was used.
The false idea that the "Today" should be understood as "Truly I say to you today [,] you will be with me in paradise (at a future time)." is false because the Church did not for the last 2000 years and does not today have that false understanding. Secondly, Christ NEVER spoke in that way ANYWHERE in the Gospels. He always said, Truly I say to you (and then make the statment)..... Thirdly, the false understanding that He is saying something today would be redundant, "Today as opposed to what, I am telling you something yesterday, I am telling you something tomorrow? I already know you are telling it to me today. Although it is possible that one might state that I am bearing witness against you today, let history record today what I am saying to you, Christ did not speak in such a way in any of the narratives.
Remember that Jesus said that the Spirit will lead the Church into all truth. Is it not unreasonable to say that the Holy Spirit waited 1400 years to lead the Church into all truth to understand this verse? Our Lord was saying that that very day the theif would be with Him in Paradise.
4)
St. Paul states that to depart and be with Christ is far better. It would not be far better if he departed and was asleep and not aware of the presence of Christ.
St. Paul also stated that he is torn between the two, to remain in his body or to depart and be with Christ. But it was more needful that he remain in the body. Philippians 1:23
In 2 Cor. 12:3 St. Paul indicates that a man saw paradise, but he was unsure if he was in the body or OUT OF THE BODY, indicating that there was a clear belief that one could be out of the body and concious.
5)
The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, even if it is a parable, teaches that there is conciousness after death. Our Lord NEVER used mythology, fairytales, or demonstrated his point using examples that did not exist in reality. He used sheep, houses, sand, rocks, water, streets, people, and angels. He NEVER referred to fairytales to make his point of a moral, spiritual or metaphysical point. In the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, he likewise refers to: a human being named Lazarus, a human being named Abraham, angels, a place where Abraham is and a place where the rich man is and Lazarus after they died and befor the Resurrection. Both were fully Conscious, Lazarus was aided into the afterlife by angels. Simple folk, including the disciples would very easily understand the metaphysical implication of this parable, besides the many moral lessons and polemic message against he pharisees.
To say that Christ used prevailing Platonic ideas to make a point is not likely as Christ never did such things, to the best of my simple-minded knowledge. Most people understand this parabale to teach metaphysical truths, including the fact that dead people are conscious outside of hte body and befor the resurrection.
6)
Moses died and was burried long ago. Yet he was seen by the disciples speaking with the Lord Jesus during the Transifuration. Moses was conscious.
7)
Christ descended into Hades (the witing place of the dead) thorugh the cross and preached to the spirits in prison, as St. Peter 1:3":18-21 states. This is the clear and simple teaching of the Orthodox Church and Church Fathers for the last two thousand years: that these are human spirits such as those who were disobedient to God in the time of Noah. To preach to them, they have to hear Him, in other words, they are concious, even in Hades in the Old Testament.
8)
The souls of those faithful who have passed on are STILL part of the Church. They are not cut off from the Church. All are alive in Christ. They are no longer in Hades (the Abode of the dead) but are in Christ.
God is an Immortal Spirit. We were created in His Image and Likeness. We have bodies. He is not a body (the Incarnation of our Lord aside)- to be in His Image and Likeness, we have to have spirits. Unlike other animals whom God commanded to be formed from the ground, God personally breathed into us the breath of life and we became living beings at the time of Adam. God does not literally breathe oxygen and nitrogen. When God breathed into Adam the breath of life, he personally put something in him that made him completely human, and like him, in his image, with something that is immortal by God's grace and subsistance.
Death is sleep of the body. For Christians, their bodies sleep in the dust, their spirit departs to Paradise to await the resurrection conciously. God created us body, soul, and spirit. BOTH THE BODY AND THE SPIRIT WILL BE REWARDED TOGETHER AT THE RESURRECTION AND ENTER HEAVEN. For those who are damned, both the body and the spirit together will be punished in hell at the resurrection. The body is important and will be resurrected and become immortal. At the final resurrection, Christ will appear and bring with Him from Paradise (where all those in Christ are now) the souls of those whose bodies are asleep, reunite the souls with Risen Glorified bodies for the final, complete reward in the Kingdom of Heaven. Those souls still in Hades will be reunited with their resurrected bodies and cast into Hell.
Hades is the waiting place of the dead, you can use any name you want from Greek, Hebrew or otherwise, it indicates the waiting place of the dead. From Adam to the last person to die before Christ all went to Hades. Christ descended into Hades conquered it, and opened the doors or Paradise and took Adam and all his rightous desendents to Paradise where all who repose in Christ now go. Those who depart from the body now and go to Hades receive a fortaste in the spirit of their damnation in hell and those who go to Paradise now receive a foretaste of their life in God's Kingdom which will be consumated at the Resurrection.
Souls Sleep is a Heresy that was condemned by the Orthodox Church around 327 A.D. where someone named Arnobius, I think, proposed it. The Orthodox Church has believed and taught, as guided by the Holy Spirit, since the time of Christ that in Christ there is no death anymore, but a departure to Paradise to await the Kingdom of God after the Resurrection.
It is this consistent, Orthodox Christian Faith that has empowered millions of Martyrs to readily accept physical death in Love for Christ, and to say with St. Paul, "I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better." How many
Martyrs do you know that went to their deaths happily who believed in the heresy of souls sleep?
May the Lord grant us all a right (Orthodox) faith that leads to Salvation, through the intercessions and prayers of the Theotokos and all the saints who have pleased Him since the beginning.
This is what I believe the Holy Bible and the Holy Tradition of the Church, as guided by the Holy Spirit teaches and these teachings give me peace. May God forgive me if my understanding is mistaken, as is implied by Biboboy, the teaching of soul sleep, and in part the idea of Fr. Thomas Hopko that there is full and immediate consciousness immediately after death but not through an immortal soul/spirit.
That is what I believe, but what about the rest of you.
God bless you.
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ICXC
NIKA
I'm afraid you misunderstood me. I did state that those who departed are living in Christ. This does not mean, in my opinion, that a soul that used to be in a body now moved on to live with Christ. All we say is that the person who departed is still alive in a way that we cannot imagine. Early Christians borrowed the language of paganism and Platonism that was prevalent in their age, but I don't think that works with our contemporary understanding of anthropology. Liturgically, we say that there is no death for the servants of God, but a departure. What departs? We don't know. How are they alive? We don't know. All we can say that there is life in Christ after death, that we are in communion with the Church Victorious, and that we are all going to rise from the dead and live in the age to come.
Even with the saints and martyrs, they looked forward to the day of the resurrection, and imitated Christ in his death because they longed for the resurrection in Christ. We do not find that they looked forwards to the separation of the soul from the body, and living immortally in the soul without the body, or anything of that Platonic sort. Their motivation is the resurrection, and so it should be the case with us. For example, in 2 Maccabees 7, the second among the seven Jewish brothers refused idol worship and eating swine's flesh because he chose to die for the law of God rather than obey the Greek authorities. His motivation was not the life of the immortal soul, but the resurrection: "You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws.... One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him" (2 Macc. 7:9, 14).
You'll find the same motivation (the resurrection) with the Christian martyrs, like St. Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote in his letter to the Romans: "It is a great thing for my life to set on the world, and for me to be on my way to God, so that I may rise in his presence.... If I suffer, I shall be emancipated by Jesus Christ; and united to him, I shall rise to freedom" (Letter of Ignatius to the Romans, 2, 4).
I also think that the question of consciousness in death is an irrelevant question. Why do you associate consciousness with the soul? When we are sleeping, we are not conscious, yet our soul is still in our body. Also, people who lie unconscious in the hospital are still alive, with a functioning brain, with the soul in the body, but they lay unconscious. In these two cases, you'll find that consciousness is not related to the soul, but to the condition of the body. Thus, the question of consciousness after death is irrelevant - you are alive when you're sleeping, so does it follow that you should be afraid of sleeping because you're going to be unconscious in that period of deep sleep? No, you go to sleep anyway. Why should you be afraid of death, then? We have the promise of life in Christ, and the Lord Incarnate, Jesus Christ, is the first-fruits of the resurrection.
You might feel that the time between a person's death and the resurrection of the dead is a long time, from our human chronological perspective of earth time. But just as when we sleep, we have no sense of time (and often wake up feeling that we slept for moments rather than hours), the time in between death and the resurrection is like sleep, where time is not an issue, but we rest in Christ and are somehow alive in him, until we rise to live with him and behold him. This is sense of "today" that Christ promised the criminal on the cross, in the same way that he said in the synagogue that Isaiah's prophecy of was fulfilled "today" (Luke 4:21), even though Christ did not begin to release the captive and give sight to the blind at that time in his earthly life.
In the end, it doesn't matter what speculations we could enter into about life after death. God is all in all, why should we be afraid? The hope that is in us is eternal life of standing before God, beholding his light, in a glorified body.
Are you simply assuming that anthropology tells us everything we need to know about the human person? The Fathers of the Church were well aware that the soul of a man is not the same as his brain. The person we really are is not described by neurological patterns. We are a spirit/soul who has a body, but the body does not exhaust a description of who we are, and it continues to exist and be aware when it is separated from the body. If a person's brain is damaged they do not cease to be the same person, even if their manifestation as a person is diminished in their body.
This is surely and universally the teaching of the Church. This is another instance where secular and atheistic science can say nothing since the realm of the spirit is beyond experiment but is clearly seen and understood by even the person of simplest faith.
This is surely and universally the teaching of the Church.
Forgive me, father, but I don't agree.
If one were to go to the writings of the Fathers, you will notice especially a difference between the Alexandrians/Egyptians and the Syrians on this very issue of the human soul after death. The Alexandrians, who were not too critical with the Platonic milieu of their age, did speak of the immortality of the human soul in the Greek terms. metouro did bring up the example of St. Athanasius teaching the human soul is immortal and survives the death of the body, in his book Against the Heathen (#33). However, he does use the exact same argument as Plato did in his Phaedrus. While St. Athanasius was writing against the Greeks, he did use Greek philosophy and anthropology to argue for Christianity.
The Syrians, on the other hand, show no evidence of using Greek philosophy. I don't want to argue the case that the Syrians are more "biblical" because they avoided philosophy, unlike the Egyptians, but they do show us what the Church believes when philosophy is not used as an exegesis of Scripture. The Syrian Church Fathers are the ones who would speak of the "sleep of the soul" along with the body, until the day of the resurrection.
St. Ephraim the Syrian, for example, notes that the soul cannot enter Paradise without the body, just as Adam lived in Paradise with both body and soul:
That blessed abode is in no way deficient,
for that place is complete and perfected in every way,
and the soul cannot enter there alone,
for in such a state it is in everything deficient --
in sensation and consciousness;
but on the day of Resurrection
the body, with all its senses,
will enter in as well, once it has been made perfect....
When Adam was in all things complete,
then the Lord took him and placed him in Paradise.
The soul could not enter there of itself and for itself,
but together they entered, body and soul,
pure and perfect to that perfect place --
and together they left it, once they had become sullied.
From all this we should learn
that at the Resurrection they will enter again together.
(Hymns on Paradise VIII: 7, 9).
St. Aphrahat goes into even further detail, and says that the human soul, which is immortal, is actually buried with the human body, whereas the Spirit living in the human person after baptism goes to Christ and brings news of the life of the Christian person, and waits until the day of the resurrection. One may wonder about non-baptised people in this kind of anthropology - since they do not have the Spirit of baptism in them, does that mean they're completely dead until the resurrection day? There's no mention of them in St. Aphrahat, so I don't know the answer to that question. Anyway, here's what St. Aphrahat wrote:
"Now it if from baptism that we receive the Spirit of Christ: for at that moment when the priests invoke the Spirit, (the Spirit) opens up the heavens, descends and hovers over the water (Gen. 1:2), while those who are being baptised clothe themselves in her. The Spirit remains distant from all who are of bodily birth until they come to the birth (that belongs to the baptismal) water: only then do they receive the Holy Spirit. For at (their) first birth they are born with an animate spirit which is created inside a person, which is furthermore immortal, as it is said "Adam became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7; 1 Cor. 15:45). And at the second birth, which occurs at baptism, they receive the Holy Spirit, from a portion of divinity and this too is immortal.
"Now when people die the animate spirit is buried away with the body, and sense perception is removed from the latter, but the heavenly Spirit which we received returns to its natural state with Christ. There two (kinds of Spirit) were indicated by the Apostle, who said: 'The body is buried away according to the way of the soul (1 Cor. 15:44), whereas is rises according to the way of the Spirit.' And the Spirit reverts to Christ, to its natural state. The Apostle further said 'When we depart from the body, we shall be with Christ' (2 Cor. 5:8). For it is to our Lord that the Spirit of Christ which spiritual people receive reverts, while the animate spirit is buried away, in its own (natural) condition, and sense perception is taken away from it. In the case of the person who has preserved the Spirit of Christ in purity, when (this) Spirit goes to Christ, she says to him: 'The body to which I went and which put me on from the water of baptism, has preserved me in purity.' And the Holy Spirit will urge on Christ concerning the resurrection of that body which preserved her in a pure manner, asking him that the body be added to her again and that it might rise in glory.
"But in the case of that person who receives the Spirit from the (baptismal) water, and (then) grieves her, she will leave him before he dies and go back to her natural state, Christ; (there) she will make complaint to him about the person who has grieved her. And when the time of the appointed end has arrived, and the time for the resurrection is at hand, the Holy Spirit who has been preserved in holiness will take on great might from her nature and will go in front of Christ and stand at the entrance of the graves where people who have preserved her in purity lie buried, and she will await expectantly for the (last) cry, then, once the angels have opened the gates of heaven in front of the King, the horn will sound and the trumpets will blare (1 Cor. 15:52). And when the Spirit as she awaits the cry hears, she will open up the graves in haste, and raise up the bodies and that which lay buried in them; she will put on the glory which accompanies her. She herself will be within for the resurrection of the body, which the glory will be outside, for the adornment of the body. And the animate spirit will be swallowed up in the heavenly Spirit, and the whole person will become of the Spirit, while his body (exists) in her. And death will be swallowed up in the heavenly Spirit, and the whole person will become of the Spirit, which his body (exists) in her. And death will be swallowed up in life, and the body swallowed up in the Spirit. And as a result of the Spirit that person will fly off to meet the King (1 Thes. 4:17), who will receive him with joy. And Christ will thank the body for preserving his Spirit in pure fashion."
(Aphrahat, Demonstration VI: On the Sons of the Covenant, 14).
On the contrary all the great Fathers believe and teach that the soul of a man is conscious after death and though deprived of the flesh nevertheless retains all the spiritual means of sensation, which are even heightened.
I am writing a paper on this subject, but for now it is enough to quote a few of the Fathers as I am going out..
St John Cassian
The souls of the dead not only do not lose consciousness, they do not even lose their dispositions – that is, hope and fear, joy and grief, and something of that which they expect for themselves at the Universal Judgement they begin already to foretaste… They become yet more alive and more zealously cling to the glorification of God.
And truly, if we were to reason on the basis of the testimony of the Sacred Scripture concerning the nature of the soul, in the measure of our understanding, would it not be, I will not say extreme stupidity, but at least folly, to suspect even in the least that the most precious part of man (that is, the soul), in which, according to the blessed Apostle, the image and likeness of God is contained, after putting off this fleshly coarseness in which it finds itself in this present life, should become unconscious – that part which, containing in itself the power of reason, makes sensitive by its presence even the dumb and unconscious matter of the flesh?” (First Conference of Abba Moses)
St John Chrysostom
Do not say to me, ‘He who has died does not hear, does not speak, does not see, does not feel, since neither does a man who sleeps.’ If it is necessary to say something wondrous, the soul of a sleeping man somehow sleeps, but not so with him who has died, for [his soul] has awakened.
St John Maximovich
Many appearances of the dead have given us to know in part what happens with the soul when it leaves the body. When it no longer sees with its bodily eyes, its spiritual vision is opened. This frequently occurs even before actual death; while seeing and even conversing with those around them, the dying see that which others do not. Leaving the body, the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually it strives towards those which are more akin to it, but if while still in the body it was under the influence of certain spirits, it remains dependent upon them when it leaves the body, no matter how unpleasant they might prove to be at the encounter.
St Adomnan writes of St Columba
One day he suddenly looked up towards heaven and said: ‘Happy woman, happy and virtuous, whose soul the angels of God now take to paradise!’ One of the brothers was a devout man called Genereus, the Englishman, who was the baker. He was at work in the bakery where he heard St. Columba say this. A year later, on the same day, the saint again spoke to Genereus the Englishman, saying: ‘I see a marvelous thing. The woman of whom I spoke in your presence a year ago today – look! – she is not meeting in the air the soul of a devout layman, her husband, and is fighting for him together with the holy angels against the power of the enemy. With their help and because the man himself was always righteous, his soul is rescued from the devils’ assaults and
is brought to the place of eternal refreshment.
I must leave now, but we also have the Homily on the Departure of the Soul by St Theophilus, which is in agreement with St Athanasius, St Cyril and St Severus. We have the prayers of St Basil for those souls even in Hell. We do indeed have a constant and almost universal witness to the belief that the souls exist without flesh in this intermediate state. The fact that a few may be found who say otherwise does not diminish the authority of the teaching of the Church.
It is not the teaching of the Church either that souls do not exist, or that the souls sleep, or that a person is immediately ressurected to a final state.
There's no way to confirm who's right about the soul after death. In my opinion, it's all pure speculation and based on hear-say. What matters is that all these Fathers are in agreement with the fact that the human person is alive in Christ after death, and, more importantly, everyone will be raised from the dead on the Day of the Lord.
It's only if any of those Fathers deny the resurrection of the flesh that the Church will be absolutely critical of their status as Fathers or theologians - or Christians for that matter.
To deny the consciousness of the souls of the departed is not Orthodox.
To suggest that there is no immortal soul is not Orthodox.
To suggest that the soul sleeps and that there is no intermediate state is not Orthodox.
You seem simply to be saying that anyone who does not agree with your position is corrupted by Greek philosophy and then deny the teachings of the greatest Fathers of the Church.
When we elevate our own opinion over that of the Fathers then we are not Orthodox. The Fathers are in agreement that the soul/spirit exists without the body. This is the teaching of the Orthodox Church. There is no 'different school', just a few writers whose views the Church rejected. It is not permissible to hunt out one or two such writers and suggest that their personal views are of the same authority as the constant teaching of the Church.
It is not Orthodox to suggest that the soul/spirit is not conscious and in existence between death and the resurrection. It is not Orthodox at all. The way to confirm who is right is not to judge the Fathers but submit to their witness. Anyone who says that we should dismiss the teachings of St Athanasius, St John Chrysostom, St Gregory, St Justin Martyr, St Irenaeus, St Cyril, St Severus and countless others is not speaking in accordance with Orthodoxy. These great Fathers are the measure and standard of Orthodoxy.
I am writing a paper on this subject, but for now it is enough to quote a few of the Fathers as I am going out..
Father Peter,
Please notify us as to when this paper will be finished, and where we would be able to read it. We have benefited immensely from your research on the Orthodox faith.
✞✞✞
God bless you
Father Peter
If I am to write something it will be soon as I must present a paper to my bishop on some subject of my choosing. So hopefully it will be this week or next.
God bless you
Father Peter
Is this a regular activity within your diocese or just a special event?
I came across some information written by H.H. Pope Shenouda III on the subject. I thought I would contribute these to the discussion. When talking about the resurrection he calls the eternal aspect of man his 'spirit'. He talks about the resurrection as a meeting between two old friends who were separated for a time. He says the following in "Contemplations on the Resurrection":
"When God created man, He gave him something eternal the spirit. Man dies but his spirit does not perish but remains alive. In this way, man differs from other creatures which live on earth because their lives are annihilated and come to an end...." (p.17)
"Because the spirit cannot form a perfect man, it was necessary for the body to rise and unite with it. Thus, the eternal life cannot be complete with one part but with the two parts-the spirit and the body in order that man may return to life." (p.18)
"This final judgment will take place after the resurrection and the unity of the spirits with their bodies. For it is unjust for the spirit to be judged alone leaving the body without retribution according to its obedience or disobedience to the spirit. Thus, the body must rise and the spirit must unite with it. And before God the two stand together because they were partners responsible for everything they did on earth." (p.15)
"Thus, the resurrection is considered a wakefulness after a long sleep. By this we mean the wakefulness of the body or that of the perfect man because the spirit is wakeful forever." (p.18)
I also look forward to any papers you might publish on this subject Father Peter.
Best Wishes
Gerhard
:)