Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 5: Liturgical Vestments of the Clergy

Hierarchs and clergy wear symbolic vestments in Holy Orthodoxy, and it’s a distinguishing mark of our worship and identity as Orthodox Christians. Hierarchy is a principle that governs human relationships naturally, and it also mirrors metaphysical reality. The unity that derives from hierarchy requires that distinctions of rank and role be made between members that work toward a common end, to accomplish harmony together. Equality that protests for an obliteration of rank and a reversal of roles, sometimes the vestments and “outward rituals” specifically, is a refusal to admit distinctions. This reasoning tends toward disunity and disintegration at all levels of practical life. Resentment and egoistic orientations toward social relationships lurk behind this kind of fake “egalitarianism,” writes American thinker, Richard M. Weaver. Shakespeare wrote: O, when degree is shak’d, which is the ladder to all high designs … Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark what discord follows! Each thing meets in mere oppugnancy. The Holy Apostle Paul reminds us too: And if they were all one member, where were the body? Vestments and garments in general symbolize a spiritual reality that transcend time and space. Adam and Eve were clothed with light in the garden, though they were nude. The removal of our original garments of light was the immediate consequence, we realized our nakedness right away, of grabbing for equality with the Holy Trinity through matter without the Spirit. The Serpent’s seductive lie was aimed at perverting the holy hierarchy of creation by presenting this grasp for a higher, divine understanding as a right to some perceived inequality in the cosmos.

Symbolism is the opposite of nominalism – a rejection and skepticism of the existence of anything transcendent, like Plato’s forms, in particular words (our language) or material objects (the stuff) of the world. The principle of iconography presents an example of how symbols participate in a higher order while remaining distinct from the reality itself. The holy fathers described the type, the icon or object, as participating in the prototype, the reality. When we bow and kiss an icon of Christ or a saint, that gesture returns to Christ Himself or the saint. Whenever the laity touch the hem of the priest’s garment during the great entrance at the liturgy, it is as though we are doing it to Christ. Without the hierarchy of ideas and things, without the images relating to transcendentals and ultimately the divine source of life, humans are left only with bare objects, facts, and a material mindset that will be engulfed by an obsession with details and physicality. Nominalism rejects the foundation that a word or a thing represents what exists beyond the physical and phenomenal experiences of nature. It’s all arbitrary. It’s just a word. In Greek, symbolos meant a token or proof of identity, and it was variously used to refer to voting tokens, wax impressions, seals, contracts, and passports. It literally means something thrown or come together. The Greek verb symballo could mean: to meet, to join, to unite. Symbolic thinking works like a covenant or an icon. It is a real connection between heaven and earth. It’s like the unity between the Word and our flesh, or between a husband and wife; it’s a great mystery. The symbolic worldview, then, refers to a close joining between distinct things, not a mere masking between the representation and the supposed reality. The first “meal,” as Metropolitan Hilarion describes it, often called the Last Supper, was not a primitive, underdeveloped event, but a highly developed, fulfilling, symbolic feast that continues in Orthodox liturgies. Some vestments were inherited from Judaism, some taken from Greco-Roman styles of antiquity and the Mediterranean climate, and others adapted for later use such as headdresses and the mitre. Roman, but even more so, the Oriental Orthodox of the East have much in common with Byzantine, Antiochian, and Russian clerical vestments. The sticharion (a tunic) symbolizes purity of the clergy. Deacons wear the orarion (a long ribbon or cloth) and it symbolizes the angelic wings. The phelonion (cloak) carries with it strength and enlightenment; it’s also mentioned in scripture, 2 Timothy 4:13. The omophorion symbolizes the lost sheep, the good shepherd and it is worn by the ranks of bishops. The epimanikia, epigonation, zone, sakkos, panagia, kidarin, hieron epikalymma and mantia also have spiritual symbolisms. 

Richard Weaver wrote that, “Equality is found most often in the mouth of those engaged in artful self-promotion.” He also describes barbarians with the specific desire to seize and inspect an object “as it is.” Satan wanted to convince humanity that there was something unjustly wrong with the established order and that the tree and the fruit itself wasn’t a symbol, but a hidden raw power to take, rather than something that only God can give us in a refined form. But we learn that the connection is real and deeply symbolic. The rapacious impulse to strip forms or ladders of transcendence, to rent veils, to throw off inhibitions and clothing, and to remove all mediation that hinder one’s access to analysis, freedom, nature, or knowledge is the revolt of the main antagonist, the Devil. A refusal to pass honor from the symbol to the form, from type to prototype, tree in the garden to God, is to ignore that only God can be Bodiless, He Alone is the Formless One; it is to sacrifice symbol – holy objects, ritual, the body, vestments, icons – to grab at materiality and divinity without mediation. This ancestral sin, unoriginal in pattern and seen in many kinds of iconoclasm and revolutions, refuses to see distinction and plots to separate what God has put together in creation. Adam learned that knowledge and virtue require a divine transcendence that is based on the Holy Trinity’s hierarchical, glowing garments that were given to all of creation graciously. Vestments of the clergy work in this way in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy. Symbols secure the structure of higher orders “in the heavens and on earth” and it follows the patristic teaching that what happens on earth happens in the heavenly realms outside time. Without hierarchical positions and these symbolic vestments arranged through the Holy Trinity, veneration and worship become nearly impossible, and life is reduced to animalistic and appetitive instincts.  Icons, then, have a very honorable place and enlightening purpose in Orthodox temples. Next, Part 2 begins with the discussion of venerating icons in the Orthodox Church. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Chp 4: Arrangement of Churches and Church Objects

This chapter covers the arrangement of churches and objects of liturgical use. Though there is variety in Orthodox churches, there is much unity across places and times. Like the Old Testament tabernacle, the Orthodox temple consists of three major areas: the sanctuary (naos), the nave (kyrios naos), and the narthex. The Greek word naos means temple and it is often translated into English with the word church, and modern Greeks still refer to “churches” as temples. The nave is a Latinate word that means ship; it is called the main temple, the kyrios naos, in Greek. Each of these three areas of the Orthodox temple has specific functions. The Eucharist and Epiclesis transforms the bread and wine at the altar in the sanctuary. Chanting, healing prayers, confession and epistle readings happen in the main temple, the nave. The catechumens were taught, and certain types of penitents worshipped from the narthex. All members of the Church (ekklesia in Greek) were expected to commune. This important connection between the arrangement of churches and communion is not mentioned by Metropolitan Hilarion. There were not two groups of Christians, communing people and non-communing people each week that can be discerned from the patristic sources. There were different categories of penitents that were defined under ecclesial canons. They were asked to demonstrate their faith and reconciliation for certain weighty or specific sins committed after baptism, apostasy, heresy, adultery, murder/killing, for example. In the narthex, all-night vigils and panikhidas, memorials for the departed were conducted, and people were made catechumens. It’s the place where catechumens wait for illumination and where penitents usually wait for confession nowadays. 

At a Sunday divine service, the liturgy of the catechumens starts first, then the liturgy of the faithful, those who are communicants of the Most Precious Body and Blood of Christ. Likewise, there seems to be only two groups that the ancient Church knew of: communicants and catechumens. Christians were excommunicated, put outside of communing in the Church, with the hope that they would return, but not used as retaliation. Penitents technically were performing reconciliatory actions for certain sins committed after baptism. All Christians, in fact, must constantly reconciliate themselves to others before receiving communion, and it is one of the major criteria for communicants in Orthodoxy, since “the kiss of peace” mentioned in the Gospels precedes communion closely, a symbol or sign of unity and reconciliation. The “sign of peace” then is one of the most important outward symbolic gestures one can give during the liturgy toward your brothers in Christ and the Eucharist because it reveals the inner disposition of the heart, the nous of a person. 

Candle lighting is an important feature, often not found in Protestantism or Roman Catholicism nowadays, in the arrangement of temples. Candles represent offerings and the chandelier, the polykandelion, is sometimes lit and swung back and forth during feast days and in monasteries, as well as in icon corners of Orthodox homes. The nave (kyrios naos) is traditionally decorated with frescoes, mosaics, and icons, and it contains the iconostasis that separates it from the sanctuary, where “royal gates” are found. These doors symbolize the entrance of the King of Glory, where Christ Himself comes out to feed all the people His life-giving food. The showbread of the ancient Jews, like the Eucharist, were meant to show Israel that the One God Alone is the source of life and paradise, which no substance could replace. If material things are not the ultimate source of life, then some Christians from our own culture may argue that these sacred objects and their ritual organization for worshipping God are just unnecessary, even contrary and distracting to our experience of God. But the principle has been forgotten among some Christian groups that what happens in the heavens happens on earth. The next chapter discusses the importance of symbolism in the liturgical vestments of the Orthodox clergy and hierarchy, and it has implications too for how lay Orthodox Christians dress during or outside the liturgy. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol III, Ch. 1

“Theology is based on liturgical experience,” writes Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev in the preface of Volume III. Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Moses, all offered sacrifices to God and served the Father in prayer. The presence of God was once in Eden and everywhere in creation. The first parents were shut out of this paradise. The Hebrew patriarchs did not construct a building for worship in contrast to the advanced cultures around them, most notably the Egyptians, who had built extravagant and elegant temples for worshiping idols of nature and deities of power, fertility, and war. The Old Testament patriarchs did revere holy places where the presence of God visited and appeared to them, and not merely like the sacred groves of Greco-Roman mythologies, but places that became witnesses to a real manifestation of God’s power and presence. Pillars of stone were held to be sacred to the Hebrew tribes in these places and they built altars wherever they dwelt. Some of the psalms of David are called miktams, translated into Septuagint as stelographia, or pillar inscriptions, which testify to these sacred stones.

After the Hebrews were delivered from Egyptian captivity, Exodus 27 begins to lay out the plan for building a transportable tent for worshipping God called the tabernacle. It consisted of twenty posts in the north and the south sides, ten posts in the east and west sides. There was a sanctuary with seven lamps of gold, a table of showbread, an altar for incense, and the holy of holies with the art of the covenant that was separated by a veil of blue, purple, and scarlet linen. There was a tent of meeting that filled with a “cloud of smoke” in the day and at night a fire appeared, both of which were understood to be the glory of the Lord. The people followed the presence of God wherever they traveled. The nomadic Hebrew nation experienced liturgical worship in this sojourning way. Sacrifice and temple worship have been deeply connected to the problems of human nature and social behavior in general. In Psalm 50, David wrote that God does not desire, nor does He really require, the blood of animals, nor our own blood, but a hymn of praise and humility with a “broken spirit.” Some rabbis referred to the Psalter as the Tehillim, “Songs of Praise.” 

There were different kinds of sacrifices offered on the altar: burnt offerings of animals, peace offerings, and sin or guilt offerings. 2 Samuel recounts that King David wanted to build God a temple, but the Lord did not wish to have such a place to dwell. David made Jerusalem the political center of the Judean kingdom. King Solomon, David’s son, took unprecedented amounts of labor and resources to build the first temple. Animal sacrifices filled the temple yearly with immense blood and burnt flesh. It became a place of pilgrimage for pious Jews. The prophets often warned that sacrifices and rituals were pointless if the priests and the people did not throw away their idols and cease from mistreating and abusing others. The prophets warned that the Temple would be destroyed completely if they did not repent. The history of the Hebrew people is inseparably from the Temple. The Babylonian empire took it around 586 BC, as Ezekiel prophesied. The Jews returned to the Temple in 538 BC and began the period called the Second Temple in 516 BC with the help of King Cyrus of the Persian Empire. Ezra prophesied its destruction and it fell in 164 BC to Antiochus Epiphanes, the Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire. The Pharisees, the scholars and “spokesmen” for the people and the religion, approached the scriptures with hermeneutical liberty and promoted worship separate from the Temple. They viewed the nationalistic Zealots and animal sacrifices performed by priests as less important, and they invented the synagogue as the center for Jewish study and worship. Flavius Josephus, a Pharisee much in favor of Roman culture and rule, is an example of the progression of later Judaism.

But for the most part, the Temple in Jerusalem was still central for Jewish worship and identity. It once contained the Law, the Ark of the Covenant, God’s presence, the sacrifices, the offerings, and the kingdom. It stood against many empires of the world until Rome. The Temple became deeply connected to Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. He cherished it and He was often there worshipping and teaching about His Father. In the New Testament, Jesus identifies the Temple with His own body, which became the universal, “worldwide temple” of all humanity. Christ Himself became everything and He crucified all these earthly human relations to teach us to walk this path to God the Father again. The desires of mankind, the scapegoating, the violence, the powers hidden in religions and civilizations are unveiled. Christ, the King of Glory, crucified this fallen reality. Because of Christ’s resurrection, the people of God cannot ever be limited or consolidated into one locale, be it Corinth, Jerusalem, or Rome. Wherever Christians are, Christ is there too, just as the Hebrews followed the Lord in the Old Testament with the tent of the glory of the Lord. The building of a temple, then, seems to have been an inborn search to find and worship the Good Father. The religious authorities in the first century, before and after Christ, had lost sight of this sacred sojourning, and they had tragically made the physical type higher than the prototype. The Book of Acts records that the protomartyr Stephen boldly stated to the religious leaders, “the Most High does not dwell in temples made with hands.” Christians and Jews soon, with the Temple having been destroyed finally in 70 A.D. by Titus, dispersed throughout the Roman Empire. The kingdom of God, however, found now in the bodies of Christians and manifested at the Eucharistic communion, entered the empires of the world with these bodily, spiritual, indestructible temples of Christ united in the Eucharist, specifically in Orthodox Christian temples. The Church relies on persuasion. It does not, like many other kingdoms, operate based on fear, an elaborate system of punishments, however necessary those may be, and bloody sacrifices. The veil of that reality has been torn. The Orthodox temple is modeled on this history and theology, and it influenced the way that the Byzantine culture traditionally built churches, especially after Constantine’s rule.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 32: "New Heaven" and "New Earth"

Christ Himself is and will be the King of the New Heavens and the New Earth, and neither Hell nor Hades will be a parallel kingdom that never ends just as every judgment in the Old Testament lasted only as much as was necessary for humility and repentance. Metropolitan Hilarion begins this chapter by investigating what “all in all” means in the Scriptures. Our experience of this earth is ruled by passions, various human rulers and tyrants, and the incessant demonic influences, all of which will not last in the Kingdom of God. Metropolitan Hilarion does not offer us a historical background of Origen’s apokatastasis and writings. He could have selected many passages from Ss. Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzen, or Isaac the Syrian that would sway in favor of a scripturally rooted and Orthodox understanding of apokatastasis (restoration, reversal), not an heretical or pagan, platonic one. Many Orthodox, as well as other Christian scholars recently have argued that no ecclesial authorities considered his theology heretical during his lifetime, neither Rufinus or Jerome, but certain characters who were jealousy of Origen. But the scriptures do contain the teaching of “the restoration of all things” (Acts 3) and it is a well-known patristic term. Among most of eastern fathers, death is the primary problem and enemy of humanity, the source of sins, fears, brutality, and corruption. For the East, the resurrection dissolves this death. Western theology has tended to emphasize sinfulness and sins as well as the crucifixion first. In 1 Corinthians 15-22-28, Paul writes with a “universal” theme in mind that would lean toward Origen’s apokatastasis, but the use of the phrasing of “final transfiguration” for each individual person is not found. Metropolitan Hilarion presents several key scriptural passages that seem to speak in favor of or against universal salvation. What may surprise many Christians is that these passages can be read as either condemning that teaching or supporting it, as many church fathers have done. It may be saying that only the “righteous” receive the “final victory” or it may be saying that the righteous conquer with Christ and even the wicked are put into submission and finally bow down to God. John the Apostle at Patmos writes in the Book of Revelation 21 that the righteous and the wicked will worship the Lamb; all humanity participates in worshiping Christ in His Glory. When all bow their knee before God, He doesn’t need reluctant worshippers. The Apostle Paul teaches that “when all things are subdued to him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” No human person has a choice about worshipping Christ Jesus. In Revelation 21, John inserts a positive statement about the unrepentant “kings of the earth” that was probably borrowed from the Septuagint passages of Isaiah 60, Psalms 2 and 88. It says that “the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day – and there will be no night there.” Nothing “unclean” or sinful enters God’s kingdom is clear. These unrepentant and wicked people are also said to enter through the lake of fire and at the same they bring gifts and worship Christ, the Lamb. If Christ sanctified all outside the city on earth with his cross, likewise it would seem logical that his Light and Fire will cleanse all outside the heavenly city of Jerusalem. The Old Testament and the New Testament Scriptures together give us good reasons or foundations to interpret God the Father as giving sinners "corrective punishment or “chastisement” (kolasis) that would heal sinners in need of change; also, Metropolitan Hilarion has already mentioned in preceding chapters about how sin and corruption is “foreign” to the human body and soul, and that it requires precise healing. Apokatastasis can mean to restore from an illness. Gregory of Nyssa teaches that God will “become all, and instead of all, to us, distributing himself proportionately to every need of that existence.” Christ the Lamb is every blessing and good for creation. Nothing earthly will ever be able to become that source of life for us, not even the earthly sun and its light since God will be our Light. Isaac the Syrian teaches that God rewards our ascetical struggles by giving us different degrees of His Light when we enter His Kingdom without passing through any fiery trials. The idea of blessing is rooted in Old Testament prophecies where we find that God may bless all people. Orthodoxy does not teach that God changes in his love toward us, as Marcion taught in the early Church, a heresy condemned as Marcionism. God does not act kind in the New Testament to the nations, but He becomes angry in the Old Testament against the Gentiles and Hebrews. Like the Old Testament typology, in the future there will be people who were perfected in this life and enter the promise land, the imperfect who struggled to and hoped to find that promised life, and the wicked who are chastised by fire and their cities and idols are destroyed. It does not seem fitting to believe that God acts kind toward us now in this age, but He will become angry or loving people to the point of torture at the Last Judgment without a limit, since the Old Testament is filled with phrases and ideas that show exactly how God cannot bear to let “anger” and “judgment” last forever. Isaac the Syrian describes the new creation in his Ascetical Homily 58 as “the contemplation of divine beauty” by our noetic eyes. The powerful connection between seeing, loving, and salvation calls into question traditional understandings of free will. If all could see God’s beauty and love revealed, how could our nous depart from Him again to pick from the tree of good and evil? Just as a young couple are mutually enamored, just as if someone had a spiritually uplifting moment of clarity when they see an icon for the first time, so too God’s Divine Beauty may be overpowering to the viewer. That the Kingdom of Heaven will overcome all is our victory, and that all will worship the Holy Trinity in transfigured light is at least our eschatological hope. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 31: Posthumous Retribution

That God wills universal salvation of each person is scriptural. Isaac the Syrian teaches from his homilies that even in Gehenna people are not experiencing a lack of divine love, but its fullness finally revealed to humanity. Free will is accepted by the Orthodox Church. God does not coerce us into loving Him, but He wants a willing heart. Irenaeus of Lyons teaches that not all angels and people choose to depart from God’s will. Departing from God creates an alternate, artificial reality, which Scripture and the holy fathers have called Hades. It is a spiritual experience that seems to be the natural consequence of self-isolation from God, a willful hiding from the truth just as the first parents did in the garden of Eden. But there will be no hiding place at the restoration of all things, as Scripture teaches. The Holy Trinity does not withhold goodness in any absolute sense just as God even now makes it rain on the just and unjust in this world. There seems to be an enigma between what the Holy Trinity wills and what creatures will against the Creator. It sounds as if creatures are allowed to maintain a co-parallel kingdom of Hades. But there is no paradoxical ending in Orthodox Christianity. Kenosis, meaning self-emptying or making room for the other, is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; it is the eternal sacrifice for mankind. God’s self-emptying does not seem to ever end, according to Holy Scripture. No one has a choice to opt out of this experience of God’s love. There is already a difficulty, then, for our understanding of free will, which is often used to explain the destiny of individuals. The dogma of the universal resurrection too already begins to encroach on traditional understandings of free will as well as Isaac’s Ascetical Homily 18.

Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky teaches that there is only one possibility: all will experience God’s eternal, unchanging love. “Hades is a tear … a revolt and apostasy” writes Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev in this chapter. We might understand that an obstinate refusal of love will feel tormenting to certain individuals. But Orthodoxy does not advocate for the existence of an ongoing, never-ending war between Good and Evil, like some gnostic teachings and pagan philosophies have taught. A choice may be more like a decision to offer sacrifice to the Holy Trinity or to a creaturely being. Sin may be better understood as a wish to “establish another level of being.” But God is not a Being, and He is beyond beings. Metropolitan Hilarion writes that the possibility of people rejecting God’s love does not reverse the teaching that Hades will be destroyed; people will not disappear, but ontological places that once held us hostage do not need to exist any longer when Christ comes into His Kingdom. Christ did open up the scenario that all people in Hades can be saved through our prayers and ascetical struggles.

In the Old Testament, Sheol is translated as Hades in Greek. It was a gloomy prison of forgetfulness, where evil doers are tortured by their self-will and there is no communion with God or others; others seem to have gone to Abraham’s bosom, waiting place of the righteous. Christ reversed all of that by his descent into Hades. Gehenna is called the “unquenchable fire.” Some think Hades is described in more detail in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16. Real fire, real worms are not required to feel or experience the separation of a soul from what it can see as a loss of repentance. Gehenna (Hell) already starts in this life, Metropolitan Hilarion mentions, just as it is seen in the psychological disturbances of well-known characters such as Tolstoy, Nietzsche or Nebuchadnezzar who appear to become mentally ill. Repentance is an inevitable consequence for all people since all have sinned; whether we hide from God or bring our sins to Him in life now. Repentance is a “change of mind” (metanoia); it is an activity of the nous that is turned back toward its Creator, the Holy Trinity. Isaac the Syrian teaches that Gehenna (Hell) is the nous’ attempting to repent for the past in frustration, or “the inability to change one’s mind.” It is the sadness that amends cannot be completed in the old earth that has been burned up.  Even in this scenario, however, we already find an admittance of the wicked wishing to escape a never-ending, limitless punishment of Hell. Hades is also described as “excommunication” and “an inability to relate to God.” To know is to have seen, and Christ says in the Scriptures to the goats, “I know you not.” It is the original sin that hides our shame that seems to prevent communion again. Will there be mercy for those in Hell? Mark of Ephesus teaches that it is the seeing or “contemplation” of God that is felt to have been lost by sinners; it is what is unseen that is the suffering of souls. Symeon the New Theologian teaches similarly to Isaac the Syrian that sinners will try to repent in vain.

Unlike the dogma of purgatory (an infernal part of Hell) taught in Roman Catholicism, based on an interpretation of “paying the last penny” in Luke 12 and Matthew 5, Isaac the Syrian does not posit any “intermediary” place between Heaven and Hell. It is Orthodox teaching that we can pray for and change the fate of people now until the Last Judgment. Eastern theologians and fathers have frequently asked the question, can people in Hell be saved ultimately. There is the difficulty of understanding concepts like free will, time, eternity and “ages” while applying them to a new creation outside of created time. On the one hand, people may choose their inner experience in this life and even change through faithful prayers after death. On the other hand, they will not choose the outcome of reality, the resurrection to eternal life of some kind. That is only in the will of the Holy Trinity. Origen investigated this idea of the universal restoration (apokatastasis) of all things. That theme is found in the Book of Acts 3:21. Some have argued that his theology was posthumously anathematized by a council, however, similar thoughts in Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor appear too without any condemnation as well as many other patristic saints. In fact, his theology was not the concern of the council. There are several different meanings of restoration. It can mean a “moral rebirth,” “physical rebirth” and the soul and body reborn into their dynamic, original image. Origen may have been playing off two Greek words “age” (aion) and “worldly” often translated as “eternal” (aionios). The word eternal is actually a Latin word (aeterna) that means the same as “eons” “worlds” or “ages.” In the New Testament, Gehenna, punishment and the everlasting torment of sinners are specifically not described with the Greek word “aeidios” (never-ending, forever) but with the word “aionios,” that means “of an age, eon, world” that would include a limit. He inferred from this that the fires of Hell (Gehenna) could be instructive suffering for the salvation of “every rational creature” with the exception of the demons, which the holy fathers have experienced in ascetic struggles, by going through ages that are completions of time. In this way, eternity is not “never-ending” but more of the idea of cyclical ages that are completed. From Acts 3, Origen took the principle of “the end is like the beginning.” That would hint at the idea of non-linear time in passages of Scripture like Psalm 60 and the Book of Revelation that speak of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. There are also possible connections to the Hellenistic “eons” or circles of finished time periods in his writings, On First Principles. But if sacrifice is part of human nature, then it is from the beginning of reality. The question is how can the wicked, if they so will it, offer sacrifice rightly in the end? There were other critics of Origen’s investigation. Georges Florovsky critiques Origen by calling his apokatastasis a “rejection of history.” Emperor Justinian oversaw the Council in 553 AD that supposedly anathematized Origen and his writings, who coerced Pope Vigilius of Rome to attend the council. Justinian thought it unfair to believe in universal restoration when some strived in asceticism and others did not in this life. Isidore of Pelusium also teaches that salvation cannot be coerced but only carried out by “persuasion.” The Church decidedly rejected the “pre-existence of souls” or a pagan conception of apokatastasis. But Origen’s influential and thought-provoking theologoumena still held a persuasiveness for Russian theologians such as Bulgakov, Berdiaev, Lossky and Sourozh. To imagine a world where the Devil will no longer “rule” humans as captives and where the constraints of the laws of this age are gone, Death is bound and defeated, no one really knows what this new kind of life of the ages will fully entail. So, the next chapter discusses this theme of the newness of heaven and earth that is to come soon.

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 30: The Last Judgment

The Book of Ecclesiastes warns to impart wisdom to a young man that how his time is spent matters; whatever he sets his eyes on will look back at him later in judgment. The Last Judgment begins in this life is an Orthodox teaching. We have a moral responsibility to others and ourselves. Mercy and forgiveness are the main criteria. Without love for others there is no belief in God. A 16th c. icon of the Last Judgment in northern Russia depicts Christ surrounded by all people and angels, seated in glory and light with books opened by his angels as well as the demons thrown into the eternal fire. The scene is not a “threat” to be good, but a revelatory reality that Christ has been given the authority to judge by God the Father. This teaching is not a fear tactic to manipulate us into being good. Mercy flows out of the heart, not a coercive act of kindness. We too are images like icons that can be read visually like books, imprinted with letters of our lives. 

The religious authorities in the New Testament prefigure foolish disbelief. The Apostle John says, “He who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment.” Hearing and believing involve both physical sight and ears as well as the noetic activity of the heart and our soul. The sheep and goats are already being separated based on who rejects the Gospel and who has apostatized. John Chrysostom teaches that “our thoughts will stand forth…[to] condemn … exonerate us.” Christ is the judge, but not the condemner. He reveals each person’s nous, their heart, and He reveals humanity. Orthodoxy teaches that all have been given enough of their own judgment to decide what is right or wrong. For Jews, they will be held to the words of the Law. For Gentiles, they will be held to their inner law, what we call a conscience, or inner knowledge. Christians are judged by the Gospel of Christ. All of these moral criteria come from the Most Holy Trinity, not merely a theory of natural law. They are lamps to enlighten our path in this life. To know is to see the other mercifully. The Greek word for “I know” comes from the root verb that means “I have seen” (oida). For the Latins, morals came from their forefathers that they called the mos maiorum. That can be translated as ancestral way or the way of the elders. They followed this unwritten ancestral way alongside the written legal documents. It was a highly interpersonal web of social relationships that was treasured by them up until Roman citizens began converting to Christianity. Gaius Lucillius, for example, said that virtus meant that a man was able to know what was right or wrong, upright or disgraceful, useful or useless. All cultures follow a way of behaving, a code of mores that have been given to understand God the Creator in our actions toward others, no matter what level of light is given to our minds. Whether by Law, Conscience or Christ, the soul is assumed to exist. Basil the Great teaches that our bodily actions become imprinted on our soul like a painting, and that we are all judged by people who lived in similar situations and positions as we did, since cultures vary, and we are born into different times and places. There is no room for rebuttal of unfairness. 

We will also be judged by books. Our decisions and actions will be written down, Cyril of Jerusalem teaches. We will see an image of ourselves and our relation to others “in an instant.” We can also see this kind of icon of ourselves even now in our behavior toward our neighbors, foreigners and family. Like icons that are painted with shades of light and symbolism of divine fire, we will experience the Light of the Trinity at the Last Judgment. If we struggle against the passions and acquired belief, we feel the warmth of Light and see His Glory without fear of judgment. If we knowingly turn from repentance, apostatize and are still obscured by passions, we become blinded by the light of love, as even now we are not able to see this light in ourselves or others. The Day of the Lord is not so much overshadowed by the coming doom of “dies irae” – a hymn on the Last Judgment written by Thomas Celano in the 13th c. as a prayer for the dead – but in Orthodox theology it is more of a joyful daylight that has already come for people who have pursued God’s commandments and have shown kindness, as Symeon the New Theologian taught. Christians who wash themselves in the baptism of death and add to that tears of repentance will have no fear or mourning. In stanza 18 of the Latin hymn dies irae, it says, “That tearful day, from which glowing embers will arise the guilty man to be judged. Then spare him, O God.” People who sought out “the blessing of the world” experience the Divine Light as a love that wounds their soul and body; their appearance will be as if they were surrounded by these loving flames. No one is deprived of God’s love after death, even in Gehenna, teaches Isaac the Syrian in his Ascetical Homily 18. The next chapter, then, discusses the justice that each person receives posthumously and hopefully.  

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 29: The Universal Resurrection

The New Testament records that Paul preached the gospel publicly to the Athenians at the Areopagus, the Hill of Ares (Mars), the god of War, to believe in the resurrection by appealing to what their own poets wrote, “For we are also His offspring.” The ancient Hellenistic and Latin peoples have been criticized for anthropomorphizing their deities. But their poetic traditions could serve to help them believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Likewise with other nations. Athens and Jerusalem can have a lot to do with each other. 

Orthodoxy preaches that at the end of the eschaton every person, whether wicked or repentant, will be resurrected into an eternal life. The Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament spoke of this resurrection. Isaiah prophesied about the earth casting out the dead like a harvest of souls from the ground. Daniel prophesied about death as if it were sleep. Ezekiel prophesied, as we remind ourselves on Holy Saturday, “You, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” He also says, “Behold I will bring upon you the breath of life … I will put my spirit into you,” which refers to the first creation in Genesis while it looks forward to the universal resurrection. Second Maccabees too is an example of the older Jewish belief in the resurrection, even though some sects around the time of Jesus, the Sadducees, doubted this doctrine. Orthodoxy teaches dogmatically that man’s “original nature” is eternal in both body and soul. There is no original sin that will last, since sin, decay and death are foreign to the body and to the soul of mankind. 

There are many examples and proofs of the resurrection from the cycles of nature itself, as Clement of Rome taught, in the way it rejuvenates itself and how the passing of time recurs as if it were eternal. It should be a fundamental belief of humankind. Science and many cultures today have no issue with explaining how mercury comes together naturally, or how a seed dies to grow into a tree, or how dry and dead soil regrows itself into a forest. Night and day descend and ascend; the fruits of the earth die and grow again. Farming is full of apt images of eternity imbedded around us. Scientists have explained how atoms stay together to form chemical compounds or elements from the periodic table as if they are spontaneously attracted to each other in beautiful patterns. Ezekiel too explained how the body and the soul return, “I looked, and behold, sinews and flesh grew upon them and skin covered them.” Scientist have often doubted the existence of the soul, however, while believing that a seed continues to live after its own death. Nevertheless, the body is immortal, and the soul eternally bears the “stamp” of it; it will not be saved separately from each other, as Justin Martyr and John Chrysostom have taught. We think today that math and the laws of nature are eternal, but the gospel teaches that the body of each person will return in its own form, some transfigured by glory and grace, others by the passions that stayed with them. Gregory of Nyssa taught that every human has its own form or eidos. The body stamps onto the soul. The incarnation of Christ stamped our humanity with his divinity. And we will have an elemental body again made of “the same stuff,” Gregory taught. The cosmos will be saved with our flesh because a body needs an environment in which to live and move. How our whole nature will reunite is not a scientific question, but a question of refashioning the beauty that God has made. The sin that took away grace is removed by death. The grace that was lost is given back by the resurrection. 

The Apostle Paul teaches that we cannot compare anything to this new life and world of the resurrection. But we do know that it will be filled with light and glory and fire. When Christ resurrected and the Apostles met him on the road to Emmaus, they knew him by his “voice and gestures” not so much by his earthly appearance. The recognition of each other at the resurrection requires that we experience a very similar voice and gesture of those whom we have known or have some connection to on this earth. Ephraim the Syrian teaches that children who died in the womb as well as younger children will be resurrected as adults, and these mothers and children will recognize each other, even if they had never met on earth. Age and physical appearance imply growing old, and that belongs to the corruptibility of this world. Deeds done in this life that shine in the next is an important feature of discerning who other people are in the resurrected kingdom of God, not possessions, wealth, skills, clothes or other more circumstantial things. 

The resurrection of the judgment and the resurrection of life go hand in hand, and it is the reason for having the mysteries of baptism into death and confession of sins in Orthodoxy. Baptism will reunite us not only with the form of our own bodies, but with the people we knew. How we experience being in a sinless world may differ according to how we behaved and treated others while we lived. The next chapter discusses the teaching on the Last Judgment, a revelation not only of God but of humanity itself. 

Orthodox Christianity, Vol II, Chp 28: The Second Coming

There are two main appearances of Christ. First, his incarnation at Bethlehem. Second, his appearing again to gather the faithful of every age into the Kingdom of Heaven. Christ and his Kingdom are “at hand” or close to happening. The Greek word parousia, the second coming, means to be present in, to be near, to have arrived. The period between his incarnation and his parousia is called “Christian history;” it is the beginning of a new creation that will have its summit when Christ appears again on earth at the end of time. 

Eschatology is another Greek derived term that etymologically means endpoint, last, furthest, summit and crown. The ending of this age of history will close to begin another eternal existence; it will be the crown of Christ’s creation so to speak. Protopresbyter George Florovsky writes that the Kingdom of God and eschatology, the study of the last things, are interwoven into the liturgical practices and dogmata (house teachings), of the Church. Faith and the prophecy about Jesus the Christ have a kind of "persuasion" that is an inseparable system, writes Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann. When we hear a homily, it bears witness to us what we hold now and what we will hold soon. The Orthodox Church is a patient Christianity that lives in high expectation.  Many of the New Testament parables of Christ teach us how to live in this fading world now while we look out for the eternal kingdom. Harvest imagery abounds in the parables because there is a quality of prophecy that is now and yet to be; it is living the mystery. The interim age is for all kinds of people to enter into eternal bliss and to ripen ourselves with repentance. The basic response to the apocalypse and eschatology in the East has been to seek prayer as preparation and purification for paradise, the Light of Christ’s Cross and Resurrection. 

The prophecy and the promise of the Old Testament is still being fulfilled in the New Testament today. Abraham awaits the parousia with us and with future people. The pain and perplexities in this age are going to end “at but a moment.” Orthodox Christians, like the Apostles and early Christians, are called to live moment by moment in a watchful and sober manner. Revelation 22:20 contains another Orthodox response to the end of this world, Maranatha! Come Lord! But some Christians have taken a different route by focusing on figuring out the timing and detailed signs of apocalyptic events. Chilialism (1,000 years in Greek) is an idea that some Christians used to explain how long Christ’s reign will last on earth before he appears. But Christ’s reign is eternal, not limited. Just as Christ waits to be revealed to all people, so too the Evil One must be revealed to the whole world so that Christ can conquer what will be clear and apparent to every human. St. Hippolytus of Rome taught that the Deceiver to be revealed at the end of the age will combine spiritual and political power, and that Satan will use this man to seduce and deprive Christians materially and he is “already at work,” as 2 Thessalonians 2:7 teaches. This political leader will sit on the Jewish Temple, as some holy fathers have taught, and will cause people to compromise their faith by replacing commerce with communion with God. There has not been one definitive interpretation of the Book of Revelation among the the holy fathers regarding the details of events. But the main outline and sequence is consistent. Orthodoxy has understood the apocalypse as an anti-dualistic revelation, as opposed to many modern critics of Christianity. The truth of the end is that there will be no corruption, no suffering, no warring of good and evil that will last. Beauty, Spirit, and the Truth conquer. For this reason, Orthodox Christians view Christ not as the victim of tribulation violence, but the victor and “protagonist” of the end of time. Christ wants us to win crowns and to resurrect with our body and soul united in order to prove that this evil in the world cannot possibly continue. Whether we believe or not believe, Orthodoxy teaches that everyone will universally be resurrected. The next chapter discusses what is called “the general resurrection.”