Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 27: Death as a Way to Eternity

Mortuary practices and our views on death affect how we treat this life. Anyone may “reject” the idea of an afterlife. But it’s impossible for humans to live without the assumption that everyone desires to live forever or live as if they will in the different forms that takes for individuals. Any general study of cultures throughout time, universally among pre-modern people, will find a belief in a kind of existence, whether intact or altered, after death. This age or eschaton in Greek biblical terminology doesn’t imply that Christians, at least in Orthodoxy, have a so-called “linear” view of time and reality, since the “coming Kingdom” is eternal so that the end of this age is actually the beginning of eternity. The many parables and teachings of Christ focus on this eternal Kingdom that is coming from heaven to earth and how to live in that realm here while awaiting the one who is coming to us, the Son of Man. The end of time and the end of our individual lives coincide now and will take place soon. Likewise, the study of eschatology involves both a “personal” and an “universal-historical” aspect. 

If each death of a person is not the end of one’s existence, then for the Christian there is not a never-ending tragedy or evil that we associate with such destruction in this world as mournful as it is. St. Isaac the Syrian calls death “falling asleep” because our body and bones wait for the return of the soul. In this way, grief can make us reflect on the hope we can have that our loved ones and our own bodies will some day reunite. But that hopeful view has not been the dominant philosophy of this age. Some question why death had to be introduced. St. Gregory of Nyssa explains death as providential and purificatory, since sin “flows away” at the separation of this dying body and soul so that a new creation can emerge without any “evil.” Death, suffering and evil, then, are not going to be allowed by God, as some people argue. The only charge against Him is the way that God conquers them. 

An important point that is overlooked in this narration of eternity is the role of the demons who enslave people to evil desires and forgetfulness of God and doing good to others. Death was often a deity or a frightening, uncontrollable force for many cultures in the past as it is today in its modern forms. But for Orthodox Christians, even the fear of this inevitable event has lost its power because the Lover of Mankind, the Creator will not let the eternal separation reign in the universe that He created. Christians have the most hopeful and truthful creation story among the nations of people. The real fear is not mending our lives before we depart, as St. Macarius of Egypt teaches his monastic brothers.  

The Orthodox Church teaches that those who die await the Last Judgment. This teaching is highlighted during the Synaxarion of Meatfare Saturday, which teaches that the dead are not judged now and may be helped by Christian prayer and ascetical offerings until that final day. The mentally ill, infants, even unbaptized ones as opposed to the Roman Catholic theological explanation of limbus puerorum or limbus infantum (limbo for infants/children), and youths who die early are not held liable for “retribution” because there wasn’t yet an intent to do evil or good. Often critics of Christianity blame God for death and corruption; there are questions about why He would allow it. But the real heading is that God is not going to allow for it all and His Son reversed it all, and His Son will come again to prevail.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 26: The Theotokos

In this last chapter of part 5, Metropolitan Hilarion sums up the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ, the Conciliarity and Catholicity of the Church, the Apostolicity and the Veneration of the Saints by surveying the place of the Mother of God, the Theotokos in the Church. There is no separate treatment of the Most Holy Virgin Mary in the Orthodox Church in contrast to the developed Marian dogmas in Western theology. Metropolitan Hilarion draws some distinctions between Orthodoxy’s integration of the Theotokos into the liturgical calendar and feasts, the hours and yearly cycle of prayer and the devotional aspects of iconography and the more set-apart, leading role and apparitional character of Mary in Roman Catholicism. In the former tradition of the East, She is a mediating Mother (Mediatrix) that protects and helps save all of Her Son’s children. In the latter tradition of Western Christianity, She is viewed more independently acting as a redeemer and savior of our souls (Co-Redemptrix), and though this teaching is respected among the pious, it is not a dogma in Roman Catholicism. In the second part of the Orthodox wording of the Hail Mary, Mary is described as She who “bore the Saviour of our souls” not equated to a Savior also of our souls. These two important Latin terms form two different ways of telling the origin of the Church and the Creation in Christianity, not merely a matter of semantics or sophistry. 

Christian tradition of the East and West have agreed with each other that the Protestant idea that the brothers were from the union of Mary and Joseph is incorrect. Justin Martyr wrote against Trypho the Jew in his Dialogue that outlined the Hebrew prophets and word play within the Scriptures to prove that Mary was the Mother of God and ever-virgin just as Origen wrote against Celsus, a Gentile hostile to Christianity. The prophetic role and typology of Mary is key to remember when the discussion of her virginity and place in the Church is questioned. If she was not ever virgin and fulfills the prophecy of giving birth to the Godman, then the prophecies about Christ too must be doubted. St John Damascene describes Mary as virgin even after Christ’s birth by appealing to the primal sense of sound when he says, “the conception, indeed, was through the sense of hearing …” Since hearing seems to be the deepest sense organ and since the Word created the world by the sound of His voice that was heard throughout heaven and earth, so too Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit, as in the first creation, Christ Jesus. The recapitulation teaching also plays a prominent part in the Holy Virgin Mary’s free choice to bear Christ Jesus in her ever-virginal womb. Eve listened to the voice of the serpent and was opened to many sufferings and death. Mary was hidden from the Evil One and she listened to the Word who became Man, the Creator of the universe, Eve was in pain at childbirth, but Mary was pierced in the heart at the foot of the Cross, not in her God-bearing. The conception that was stainless refers to Christ’s birth, and not to Mary’s in Orthodoxy, unlike the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in Roman Catholicism. Christ’s conception is our salvation and the prophetic reversal from death and corruption. With this kind of typology, Mary’s place in Orthodoxy is not as a “mere channel” of some inanimate “tool” as ancient and modern Christians have argued, but she is part of bringing about the new creation of mankind. All the mysteries of salvation can be summed up in the Theotokos, the Mother of God. She bore not a “deified man” as Nestorius wished to invent, but She bore the Word in flesh, God incarnate. Through Mary and the recapitulation, humanity was given the heavenly Father and God took up a Mother into the heavens. She remained sinless, although she had normal human emotions and weaknesses. Her holiness surpasses angels because the Devil came to reverse the order of man to serve angels instead of angels to serve man. What was haughty was humbled and what was humbled was raised to heights. 

Many of the old and new controversies around Christianity and within its schisms involve an uncomfortable connection between the human body and soul, and how God can and did “take up abode in our flesh.” When the Holy Virgin Mary agreed to the Angel Gabriel’s message from God, the Holy Spirit said to have “reposed and cleansed her and made her holy.” The hearing and believing of the Word is the same path all Christians strive to do just as the Most Holy Virgin Theotokos did. She was holy by “pre-election” and she kept herself from choosing evil at the same time. It is the beautiful synergy and harmony of sounds that She leads all of us to follow in her footsteps; She offered specifically her “will” and her “faith” when she heard God speaking to her through an angel. She offers us the perfect example of what freedom means for all people. The Annunciation shows us that God doesn’t force us to love him and work with him, but he does all he can to bring our desires into unity. The Serpent came with coercive, cunning words and seduction. The Savior came with calmness and a kind annunciation to Her. When Mary said to the angel, “let it be” she echoed the freeing and creative words of Genesis “let there be light.” The Word didn’t coerce any woman or Mary, but God “waits for her word” and her voice so that sound reverberates onto sound. This is the real Creation story of Christianity. Archpriest George Florovsky describes the leading up to the Nativity of Christ as the summation of all the Old Testament righteous and faithful. Like Mary, we strive to become a holy temple to bear Christ within our members. Metropolitan Hilarion points out that “every ode of a canon contains a Troparion dedicated to the Mother of God.” There is nothing like that in other Christian traditions, and Christ wants us to hear what she heard in her heart. The silence of Orthodox iconography calls us, such as the miraculous icons of the Theotokos of Kazan, Smolensk, Tikhvin and Serpukhov in Russia, to attend to God with our hearts and ears; icons call us to hear what the next world wants us to know and to hear the sounds of the “spiritual world.” The Most Holy Virgin Theotokos is our best model for holiness and deification at the end of the eschaton (age). 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 25: The Veneration of the Saints

The veneration of the saints has always been a part of the fabric of the Church. It involves our own salvation as deification, catholicity and apostolicity, all types of martyrdom, and the partaking of the Eucharist. In the Book of Acts, a martyr means to bear witness to Christ all the way to our deaths, whether by persecution or by professing Christ through our virtuous deeds and repentant actions throughout life. The basic questions about life and death are answered by cultivating a veneration of the saints and embodying their example into our own practice of following Christ in His Church. There are ancient saints like Noah, Abraham, Rahab and Judith in the Bible. There are New Testament saints like the Apostles Peter and Paul. There are recent saints like St. Silouan the Athonite and St. Herman of Alaska. Local churches did not coerce each other into accepting their own saints, but with the mark of catholicity and conciliarity, they would present a list that had to be mutually received into the diptychs of two churches before new saints could be venerated together as one Church. There was not always a systematized process of canonization in the Orthodox Church, neither in the West, which has developed a more rigorous process today in modern Roman Catholicism. In both East and West, there have been variations in how sainthood could be verified, usually through the laity’s prayers, a council and the abundant appearance of miracles through prayers by the faithful. The canonization of a saint involved the whole community, the bishop in communication with another bishop at the diocesan or metropolitan level. The eucharistic community led by one bishop in communion with his brother bishops was designed to produce saints and pass down sanctity. 

According to the tradition passed down through the grace-filled Apostles and episcopacy, the resurrection of Christ is the true prosperity Gospel. The examples of the saints were crucial in building up and passing down holiness to the next generation of Christians as well as correcting Churches who had gone astray into divisions, as St. Clement of Rome had done by writing letters to the Corinthian Church’s hierarchs around the 1st AD, and who is said to have met the Apostle Peter himself. Rather than appealing to a formula that the Church is equated to authority, St. Clement of Rome, one the earliest of bishops at Rome, like Peter and Paul in their letters who preached the foolishness of Christ, advise with brotherly love the Church “sojourning” at Corinth by recalling and explaining the saints from the Old Testament to the New Testament to their own time. 

The holy martyrs of every age reveal the reality of this world. That our desires are dead-ends, material goods and achievements fade. But spiritual gifts and the adornment of a virtuous life, which even pagans have praised, will endure in the resurrected life. All kinds of people of different rank and riches are remembered for their miracles, before and after their death. In Old Testament Law, the Jews were prohibited from touching or coming near to the dead or sick bodies because it would make them ritually unclean. But because of Christ’s resurrection and our participation in it through our deeds and in the Eucharist, the bodies of holy people today are now the opposite of disease and corruption. Their clothes, homes, belongings, images and even bringing up their names in prayer to God – all prayer and messages are addressed to and sent to God – have the power to heal and make us holy with them. Holiness, then, is not strictly an individual pursuit bound by the limits of this sojourning life. But intercessory prayer is a necessity to get a foretaste of paradise, deification and the life of the resurrection promised to us by God. Evidence of this belief and practice is found in the very earliest times of the Church. Christians celebrated the Eucharist in worship at places of martyrdom in and around the Roman Empire and universally pieces of the saint’s body were placed under the altars found in the dank catacombs of candle-lit liturgies in Italy. The Eucharist unites all Christians, whether in life or in departure of this world, whether in times of distance or closeness, persecution or secular peace. All holiness is in a sense foolishness to this fading secularism that exists in its own way in every age. But there is a unique category and tradition of saints called holy fools. Their lives can be so simple or so extraordinary that even the Church’s hierarchs need time to process their model, such as St. John of Kronstadt and St. Xenia of St. Petersburg in Russia. Holy fools may have started in Egypt and Syria, though rare in Byzantium. Yurodivy or the holy fool became an important example for Russian veneration. The veneration of the Most Holy Theotokos is the best example of a saint for all humanity. At the same time the Orthodox dogmas and feasts of the Hoy Virgin Mary may be one of the most difficult and misunderstood saints for other religions and Christian groups. The next chapter discusses why the Orthodox Church venerates Her as the Theotokos (God-bearing in birth). She is the fabric of the Orthodox Church. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 24: The Apostolicity of the Church. Hierarchy and Clergy

Christians who lived closer to the time of the apostles had a liturgical worship that centered on the Eucharist. They understood that there was a role to build each other up as “spiritual temples” and “living stones.” The apostles were not of the Levitical priesthood. Not all Christians were from Israel genealogically. Christ continued the apostolic ministry through the priesthood and the episcopacy and the holy nation of people by transferring these to the New Israel, who are now Orthodox Christians. Archpriest Nikolai Afanasiev, an Orthodox theologian in the 20th c., expressed this early Christian background by emphasizing the lay leadership in the Church. When unholiness of the clergy began to make Medieval Christians call into question the dogmatic and structural aspects of the Church and in the later Reformation Era, anticlerical movements gained ground in Protestant countries as well as Roman Catholic ones. The Council of Trent exacerbated animosity toward the clergy when the Pope of Rome more sharply distinguished the roles of “teachers” and docile “learners,” or priests and people. 

But there was an important distinction between apostles who witnessed Christ’s earthly ministry and later apostles. The “circle of the apostles” revolved around the eucharistic community and overseeing various “ministries” of the members of all the churches. One of the charismatic gifts given by the Holy Trinity to the Church is leadership. The Holy Apostles Peter and Paul had been given this apostolic gift of leadership among the other apostles too, and that is carried on in the apostolic succession of the hierarchy, which is a Greek word that means “holy leadership” (hiero-archos). The Holy Spirit secures this passing down of gifts to all believers. In this way, Jesus’ ministry has continued through the charismatic succession of apostles in the hierarchical structure of the Church. There was not a solidified distinction between priests and bishops until the 2nd c. Priests came to represent the apostolic assembly while the bishops became the symbol of the Shepherd who serves, heals and leads the sheep into grace-filled gifts. The Greek word episcope means a person who oversees or watches over others. Bishops sit watching “in the place of God,” but not in replacement of Him. Jesus Christ did not come to leave the Church to wander off like sheep tend to do, as many Protestants would like to imagine how the early Church got easily off course so soon. Order is the ontological structure of the Church. Without hierarchy, there is anarchy, whether in our souls or buildings. The priesthood is also important because it is described as “the art of healing men.” Jesus first said to the disciples to become fishers of men. Another important ordered ministry of the Church are deacons (another Greek word that means service). Deacons often are put in charge of baptizing men, calling Christians to prayer, teaching and eucharistic service, just as we see happening today. There were also deaconesses who helped to teach and minister to other women and assist with female baptisms. Here we can see a recognition of the spiritual importance of ministry and order even to the needs of different genders. The inner structure of the Church and its outward hierarchy leads us into imitating holiness and virtue so that we can pass on those gifts to other Christians. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 23: The Conciliar Church

What affects all, includes all and encompasses all is the Catholic or Universal Church. The word catholic is a Greek derived word that describes the Orthodox Church. It means the whole stock, what is common to all, general, and more literally over the whole or each whole to describe a whole that is distributed into parts. Parts are the whole insofar as they are in relation to each other. Catholic can also mean spiritually what is in heaven and on earth, what is open to all people, involving the whole human race, the Church where all categories of sin are healed, and all the kinds of virtues that are given to Christians. 

There are no real geo-political boundaries for Orthodox Christians that the Holy Trinity cannot overcome, though we find ourselves in different places and under different governments. There are no limits to how the Holy Catholic Orthodox Church can reach the world. For millennia rulers of world empires and civilizations sought limitless kingdoms, eternal panaceas and utopias to bring all the parts into a whole and maintain that identity over time. But the divine liturgy in each local church led by one bishop is how the Church has taught and worshiped the same everywhere. 

Catholicity is the principle of spiritual organization among Orthodox Churches around the world. St. Cyprian of Carthage describes catholicity or universality as distinct rays of the sun that remain a part of the same light or the waters that flow from a single river. St. John Chrysostom comments on 1 Corinthians that the “the whole body was not the Corinthian Church, but the Church in every part of the world … individually … i.e., the Church amongst you is a part of the Church existing everywhere and of the body which is made up of all the Churches.” The unity of the original Church has been the eucharist that is held in common among all churches everywhere because they are in relation to and in communion with each other with Christ as the Head of all churches or the Catholic Church. Each church is not merely a part lacking the fullness of a church, nor can bishops shepherd a church without being in communion with other bishops from other churches; in fact, according to the canons, bishops are confirmed to their role by other bishops. When all local churches and bishops are in communion with each other, they are called catholic, universal and meeting together in oneness in love and in the eucharist is called conciliarity. The Latin word concilium means to call together to meet and unite in peace. Just as a bride would meet the groom in unity or the members of the body would call each other together to work in unison, so too the Church is conciliar as a body or bride would be. If each individual church was not the universal church, then to seek and find the whole church one would either have to go to all churches at once or claim only one local church contained all, and so to alter the principle of catholicity and conciliarity among the apostles of Christ and the successors to the apostles. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 22: The Holiness of the Church

The two primary images that Metropolitan Hilarion has chosen to focus on in chapters 21 and 22 are the body and the bride of Christ. All Christians are called to deify the body through the Holy and Healing Body of Christ. All Christians are also called to enter the closeness of a marital kind of union with the Holy Trinity. The Church, then, is described often as a “pure virgin,” a term that is also used of the Theotokos. The Book of Acts describes members of the Church also as “holy ones” or the Latinate word, “saints.” They are the faithful members who are made one and holy through partaking of holy communion. 

We yield to the Church as a bride who would be led by the groom into a new oneness of life. Faithfulness must be practiced in the Church daily as a newlywed must work at loyalty and love over the course of many years. Holiness is a mystery to be lived in the deepest part of the body – the noetic heart – where our body and soul meet the Divinity of Christ within our members in the Eucharist. Marriage is a fitting image because two people become one body. The recapitulation and reversal of humanity happens through the incarnation so that the incarnation can make us divine within ourselves through grace. Deification is the true marriage of Christians. The Church is given as a holy bride of Christ. The Holy Apostle Peter speaks of the holy ones as a royal priesthood. The whole people of ancient Israel were often called priests, or a “nation of priests” in the book of Exodus. So, we are called to be a holy nation, to become married mystically in our hearts, to be royal priests in the new kingdom. Christians all over the world are one people. Many indigenous and nations of the past called themselves in their own languages, “the first people,” “original men” and “the real humans” as opposed to foreigners. Likewise, we become fully human in the Church through deification, and the source of all life, light, holiness, purity, spotlessness, and infallibility in teaching everywhere flows from the Holy Trinity, St. Clement of Alexandria teaches. 

The Church has been given the apostolic succession through holy hierarchs, and the Holy Spirit moves within it to preserve the doctrines, teachings and traditions of the Church intact. Holiness is pursued fully in the faithful practice of what was handed down to us through apostolic successive authority. There was no prerequisite of being holy, however, before entering the Church because sin is viewed primarily as an illness that can be cured, and Christ wants more than anyone to heal us all in His Church, often called a “hospital” by the eastern and western fathers. There were heretical and misguided views about the contradiction between individual holiness and the Church’s reputation of being “pure and spotless.” In the 3rd c. AD, the Roman episcopacy fought against such heretical groups as the Novatians and Donatists who wanted to create a pure church of their own. Novatian set up his own authority on the seat of the Roman episcopate and Donatus wanted to purge the Church of repeat sinners and apostates seeking forgiveness. Though there may be times when sacrifices are not offered rightly to God on the altar, the East and West early on agreed that the sacraments do not depend on the person doing the action but the faith of the person receiving the action, such as baptism, for instance. Holiness is not a numerical data point or added up individually; sacraments are given to make us holy from God Himself in a process of time. But the growth, experience, holiness and discipline of leaders in the Church are still important. The New Testament often exhorts churches to guide and order affairs according to the maturity and reputation of Christians and their calling. A “virtuous life” is the real rank of importance, as Metropolitan Hilarion reminds us because for every ecclesial rebirth, there is a downfall. The Roman way of governing and constructing city life was very systematic and defined in comparison to others outside of the empire. They marked the boundaries of the known world. This kind of “powerful institution” was a temptation for the Church to imitate. How then can the Church still claim to be Holy, One, Universal, if we see so much of secular dealings encroaching on the Church? St. Cyril of Alexandria asks that question in the next chapter, “Where is the Catholic Church?” The idea of conciliarity is part of the body and bride. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 21: The Unity of the Church

Whether in heaven or on earth, the Head of the Church is Christ Himself, the New Testament teaches. All breath and life come together as one because Christ is the only breathing One who can give life to a body. All Christians are unified into the sacraments through baptism, Eucharist, and the Spirit of Christ. In Holy Tradition and Scripture, the signs of unity are not merely outward nor merely inward; the body and spirit in a great mystery are one. God made the Church one so that mankind cannot undone this teaching on unity. This oneness is “ancient,” teaches Clement of Alexandria, because it is tied to the One God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Because of that, the Old and New Testaments are really One Testament that stretches across time, as he writes in the Stromata. 

In the Eastern churches, unity was taught to founded on the existence of the Holy Trinity and how the Church can imitate that divine unity in “openness and love.” There is, then, only “one mind” among Christians and the true Church. The Eucharist has been the sign of unity and the way Christians are unified by partaking of the holy communion. St. Cyril of Alexandria teaches that “for if we partake of the one Bread, we are all made one Body; Christ cannot suffer severance.” Because of the communion of Christ’s Precious Body and Blood, we also have unity with the Holy Spirit. The Church’s oneness and the so often talked about unity of Christians today comes from the oneness of the Holy Trinity. 

The Holy Trinity established the episcopate to help us order our lives and arrange ourselves to live within the sacraments. In the East, Christians who have separated themselves from the Church were dealt with according to the degree of deviation from dogmas and to the degree of schism. If the separation was serious and involved dogmatic variance with the teachings on the Trinity, akrivia or strictness might be used by the bishops. Heretics who doubted foundational dogmas had to be baptized in order to enter the Church, for example. If the separation was less about doctrines but involving a minor schism or dispute over ecclesial territory or historical misunderstandings, then economia or a lenient approach might be used. Schismatic groups who were already baptized in the Trinity, for example, and desired to enter the Church, did not need to be re-baptized, as St. Augustine and the East argued. St. Cyprian of Carthage also started with the Holy Trinity as the foundation of the Church, but with an emphasis on St. Peter as representative of the unity of all bishops in the Church, since his main argument with the schismatic Novatians set up rival bishops in opposition to the bishop of Rome. In both eastern and western churches, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church was found in the one episcopate with its “starting-point” in St. Peter; however, Rome developed a theology that connected this idea specifically with the Roman throne later.  In the West, there was a tendency to apply definitions of outlining the effects or powers, effectus as St. Augustine called it, and degrees of grace in schismatic groups. Both East and West did not view the sacraments of those who separated themselves as effectual to change the lives of Christians, but that those sacraments offered outside the Church can be “perfected” when they are brought under the unified episcopacy. The lamb must be eaten within the house at the exodus just as holy communion can only be received within the Orthodox Church. Spiritual unity of sacraments is arranged orderly and kept organized by the episcopate to help Christians maintain “one mind” within the altars of their heart just as priests offer sacrifice on the altar during the liturgy to make us all holy. The next chapter discusses, then, the holiness of the Church.  

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 20: Salvation as Deification

Deification, also known as theosis in Greek, is a word from Latin that refers to a deeply grace-filled life with the Holy Trinity that begins here and will be completed in the resurrected life. Deification developed much more in the East than in the West, and Orthodox Christians are reminded of this transformation into becoming like God in the Eastern liturgies as well as in the writings of the Eastern church fathers. Beyond the juridical pardoning of sins and guilt, beyond mere restoration of what was lost, deification entails an elevated life and a transcendent goal for humanity. Metropolitan Hilarion writes that God earnestly wants to give us his divinity and God gives us the deepest desire of our heart — to become like Him. Deification is the original plan of the Holy Trinity, whether or not we sinned in the garden. Diadochus of Photiki teaches, “for God formed people to be gods.” Great Vespers for the Transfiguration (Sticheron at the Aposticha) hymn, “O Christ, making the image that had grown dark in Adam to shine once again like lightning, and transforming it into the glory and splendor of your own Divinity.” Holy Thursday, Ode Four hymns, “I will be with you in my Kingdom, as God with gods.” We become god as much as iron that is put into the fire takes on the likeness and heat of fire but does not become fire itself, as the fathers taught. This idea of salvation and justice is not congruent with the ancient religions. Christ does not hold a scale nor is He depicted blindfold, but Christ holds a scroll and a cross. 

Metropoitan Hilarion writes that salvation is not “a one-time event.” God gives us His divinity and holiness and we give Him our humanity and weakness, writes St. Symeon the New Theologian. He developed this eternal exchange as taught by the fathers of the Church, like Irenaues, Ephraim, and Athenasius who had formulated this reversal teaching earlier. Symeon describes deification as birth-giving, “ineffably he begot me spiritually” and as a process, “while I remained a man, he made me god.” The human race is returned to God in a better state because He is “the lover of mankind.” 

Salvation isn’t given without a mutual offering to God, that is, to offer ourselves as living sacrifices. We experience this deification by becoming pure sacrifices and lovers of God and all mankind, as if we too were blind folded like lady justice. Many ancient civilizations prized and worshipped justice. The Egyptians worshipped Ma’at, the goddess of justice, law, truth and order; however, the Pharaohs could not see the lover of mankind in their dealings with the enslaved Hebrews and the encounter with the One God. Moses experienced the divine light on Mt. Sinai. Likewise, our communion with God through purification, illumination and the Eucharist will place us on the path of contemplating the Divine Light. Deification refers also to the deeper transfiguration of a person’s soul and body with Christ’s “Divine Spirit” so that “man becomes tri-hypostatic by grace.” To become godlike is to become an image of the Holy Trinity in the very structure of our soul and within the bones of our body. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 19: The Resurrection of Christ

 The resurrection of Christ is the saving plan of the Holy Trinity, and that dogma rests also on the incarnation of Christ, His first coming. In Orthodox Christianity, there are two Passovers. The first, Holy Friday celebrates the Passover Crucifixion, and the second, Holy Pascha (Easter) celebrates the Passover Resurrection – with Christ’s Descent on Holy Saturday being in the middle of the two. The word pascha means a passing over in Aramaic. The Old Testament tells us that the angel of death passed by the homes of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt and that Pharaoh refused to free them just as Hades held onto all humanity in death. The exodus prefigures the resurrection of all people. The crucifixion, dying, and descent into Hades all precede the paschal joy of Christ’s resurrection and our own too. Likewise, our suffering must come before we experience real joy. Pascha is joyful because it celebrates a specific victory over death and hell; it saves our body and soul together. On Holy Pascha, Orthodox Christians begin to sing throughout the festal season, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.”  Life is specifically given to people who have died and are waiting in the grave for life, and to those who are going to the grave – the so-called living. The typology of the Old Testament is linked to the New Testament by several key images. The Passover lamb links to the Eucharist, the Red Sea to baptism, and the exodus from Pharaoh’s Egypt to the freedom from Hades. So, the Eastern fathers did not write about these themes as a separate arrangement but as if it were one icon.

How do we experience and witness the resurrection if we were not there to see it? The Apostle Paul teaches that we do witness the same resurrection of Christ through faith by believing “in your heart.” Metropolitan Hilarion in Orthodox tradition describes that experience of trust and persuasion as “seeing with the noetic eyes [of the heart],” and not necessarily relying on the physical eyes. St. Symeon the New Theologian also answers that faith question by describing the experience as “beholding” and not believing with our logic. Faith has its own rules, understanding, and persuasion in the heart; it’s another kind of knowing lost on those who only see logical knowledge. When we hold something dear, we trust it and believe it and behold it as a witness. Being a witness of the resurrection today has a kind of personal and communal knowledge, or faith, that shares in the cloud of martyrs of the Church. In his Homilies on Romans, St. John Chrysostom describes faith as a kind of persuasion rather than just a mental acceptance based on reason or ignoring what is convincing. Nothing reveals more quickly a person’s honest belief and faith than facing up death itself within us and around us. Orthodox faithfulness also holds that we will resurrect like Christ. We trust and behold that what will happen to those in the tomb will happen to us in our own tombs. Faithfulness makes us “co-strugglers” with Christ in His suffering, death and resurrection, Metropolitan Hilarion writes. The Godman, Jesus Christ in Orthodox Christianity, is the summa of all theology and anthropology. This recapitulation of the created world is preached through a poem written by Melito of Sardis called On Pascha. He writes, “…in the man was Christ encompassing all things.” Christ is the reality of the type, the man of the lamb, the Word of the Law. In Melito’s paschal poem, Christ is the Victor and sole speaker with Hades; mankind doesn’t negotiate, fight, escape from Hades except through Christ’s word of freedom. The resurrection is tied to the freedom found in Hades. The victorious Christ has brought salvation to the dead and the dead are saved by rising with Him, teaches St. Gregory the Theologian on his Oration on Holy Pascha. If we suffer with Christ, if we live with Christ, and if we rise with Christ, then we become divine like him. This core teaching of salvation is called deification. It can mean making godlike or making God within us again. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 18: The Descent into Hades

Adam came to us through Christ, writes St. Gregory of Nyssa in his Greek poems on Scripture. Christ’s descent into Hades is one of the most important teachings in Holy Orthodoxy. That theme is connected to many other dogmas. In the Church’s hymnography, Christ’s coming to save the whole of Adam’s race and lead humanity as a whole out of captivity from death and hell is heard most often in the Festal Hymns, Holy Friday, and Pentecost. The First Epistle of Peter and the Apostle Paul, many of the patristic writings, and early Christian traditional belief also holds to this core idea of Christ saving us by His descent to all of those who were hoping for salvation, both the virtuous and sinners. 

The Orthodox teaching emphasizes the total victory of Christ who conquered Hades and all who were trapped there in gloominess. True freedom for Christians is salvation from every part of Hell, and that encompasses a freedom from death, corruption, passions and even the very prison that once held all souls, which is now destroyed once and for all. In contrast, Roman Catholic dogma teaches a “partial victory” because only the righteous are taken out of infernum partum. That is a Latin phrase that designates a part of Hell where the holy patriarchs of the Old Testament were kept; but other sinful souls were not saved by the preaching of Christ to “the spirits in prison.” Orthodox teaching does not divide Hell into sections as the Thomistic and scholastic tradition does in the West. The Revelation of Jesus Christ according to St. John speaks about Christ holding the “keys of Hades” that is a powerful image of our coming salvation against all infernal enemies and territories throughout any time, even outside of time. The Psalter too speaks of “the king of glory” who destroys “the gates of Hades.” Hell has no power in the kingdom of God. 

The descent of Christ is also part of the wider theme of recapitulation, the reversal of all that is sorrowful, evil and grief-stricken in our human nature. The tree was used by the serpent to trick mankind, the demons are mocked by the wood of the Cross. Death and Hell devoured souls like sheep, we are found and led out by the Good Shepherd. The Devil bound us in chains, Christ frees us and binds the demons in chains. Death kept us in darkness, Christ’s descent enlightened us. Our true home is in Paradise, not Hades, which is a place that was assigned only to the demonic angels, a different fallen race who are the sole source of genuine wrath, suffering, sin, as Metropolitan Hilarion writes. The reversal is finished. Christ entered and departed from Hades as the conqueror in a complete way for the human race. His descent is tied closely to the dogma of redemption and the resurrection. The holy fathers did not need to treat this topic separately or systematically because of the wide-ranging connections the descent into Hades already has to the teaching on salvation of souls and bodies. Eastern iconography depicts Christ with a glowing, white robe coming out of the tomb and pulling the wrists of Adam and Eve out of Hades. The resurrection of Christ, then, is celebrated joyfully during the great feast of Pascha.