The official teaching of the Orthodox Church on Heaven and Hell is that they are not places so much as states of being. God is “present in all places and filling all things,” and that what we interpret as salvation or damnation is actually our response to, and experience of, God’s unconditional love.
The Orthodox Church’s view of Heaven and Hell is very different from what most people in America are used to. The teaching on Hell that most know (or think they do) is of eternal punishment inflicted on sinners by an angry God. This teaching is frequently criticized on social media by atheists. To counter their criticism, I point them to the actual, authoritative teaching of the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
When confronted by the authentic Christian teaching on Hell, typical reactions are:
- “How can love be punishment?”
- “If Gods sends me to Hell, is that unconditional love?”
- “Isn’t infinite punishment for finite actions unjust tyranny?”
To explain the Orthodox concept of Hell better, I wrote the following example of how love can feel like punishment. Further down is an explanation from the official OCA Website in more formal language. Here goes my own explanation:
You are married to a good spouse. A kind, loving person who has never done anything wrong to you. Your spouse loves you unconditionally. And you are so over it. You treat your spouse like garbage, because you are totally done with the relationship. You’d like to move on, but you are trapped over finances, housing, whatever. There is no escape. You have to stay there, and you hate every single minute of it. You cheat on your spouse. You embarrass your spouse in public. You launch into vicious tirades, calling your spouse every name you can think of. You hate your life, and you blame your spouse for everything wrong. No matter what horrible things you do, all your spouse does is give you even more love in return. It’s nerve wracking. The love you get just makes you feel worse about all the crap you have done and keep doing. You wish you could just punch this person in the face for loving you. What a pathetic loser someone has to be to keep loving you when you treat him/her this way! It would be easier if your spouse hated you, because then you wouldn’t feel so rotten about all bad things you have done. Your spouse’s good qualities really make your blood boil. You are desperate to get away from the goodie-two-shoes routine. Being around your spouse makes you confront how much of an ass you really are, and deep down inside – that is incredibly painful. Just hearing your spouse’s voice makes your skin crawl. Talking to your spouse causes chest pain and your stomach gets all tied in knots. The pain gets worse and worse every day. The longer you are trapped in this situation, the more you scream inside. The more frenzied your psychological state becomes. You’ll do anything to make it stop. Eventually, you feel yourself losing touch with reality. All because your spouse loved you unconditionally, and you could not bear it.
You can substitute parent, sibling, friend, or God for spouse and the story is the same. People throw away love all the time. Especially children, who too often hurt their parents and themselves for unfathomable reasons. Based on prior experience, many atheists, or those troubled by Protestant notions of Hell, will say to the above story, “I’d divorce my spouse and move on!” Sure, if you could. But the key point of the story is – you can’t. God is everywhere and filling all things. In the world to come, you just go on hating and raging against Him forever while all He is doing is loving you in return.
It is a given that this concept of Hell will be rejected and ridiculed by most atheists. That is fine. All we can do is expose them to the truth. The rest is up to them and God.
For a more official explanation of this teaching, here is an excerpt from the OCA Website:
Thus it is the Church’s spiritual teaching that God does not punish man by some material fire or physical torment. God simply reveals Himself in the risen Lord Jesus in such a glorious way that no man can fail to behold His glory. It is the presence of God’s splendid glory and love that is the scourge of those who reject its radiant power and light.
. . . those who find themselves in hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God . . . But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed! (Saint Isaac of Syria, Mystic Treatises).
This teaching is found in many spiritual writers and saints: Saint Maximus the Confessor, the novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. At the end of the ages God’s glorious love is revealed for all to behold in the face of Christ. Man’s eternal destiny—heaven or hell, salvation or damnation—depends solely on his response to this love.
Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America
If you post a disagreement with this teaching, please also post, at minimum, your canonical Orthodox jurisdiction and, preferably, a link to the teaching of your jurisdiction on Hell. All canonical Orthodox jurisdictions have at least basic teachings online. You are free to disagree with this post, and we publish disagreements, but we will pay less attention to heterodox opinions and those who claim to be Orthodox but are not part of the canonical Church.
Vladimir Moss has written a ton on this subject. In particular an article on The River of Fire Revisited. This article is a distortion that takes a morsel of truth and then runs with it. Dozens of quotes from the Holy Fathers contradict it.
Which jurisdiction are you? The reason we ask is that we know that at least three of the major jurisdictions teach this during catechism and publish articles affirming the teaching on their Website. We’ve read Moss, and don’t find him particularly convincing. The articles dance around the thrust of this teaching. Did God create Hell? If so, is He in Hell or did he manage to create a space that is outside of His presence? Did God design a torture chamber for people? If the punishments are truly physical, then how do disembodied souls get a foretaste of that prior to the Resurrection? Can literal fire burn a soul? What other tortures are there? Does God stop loving sinners after they are condemned? Is God’s love conditional on our behavior? What is interesting is that we ask these questions, but those questioning the teaching in this article do not wish to answer them so far.
These are questions that atheists ask. They pound Christians on social media with these. Those of weak faith ask them as well. The teaching that is supported by the GOA, OCA, and Antiochian Archdiocese answers all these questions in a positive, sound way. We read Moss, and others like him, and we don’t see good answers.
This was one of the teachings from the Church which amazed and drew me, that the Almighty Creator and sustainer of all is not going to personally torture people eternally. And let us not forget, in Revelation it says they are tormented in the presence of God forever. A wonderful demonstration of this is found in a short youtube video which if I recall is titled Orthodoxy in Chairs. The idea that such a magnifient God, all knowing, everywhere present, all powerful is able to inflict such horrible suffering was conjured up from the hearts of fallen and hateful men under the guise of some twisted and legalistic system of justice. Whoever you are out there, you must believe in your pride that you are really something that you could prompt such a One to act this way.
Of all of these comments and replies I do not see any quotes from the Fathers.
At this point, we’d just be happy to get some links to any information put out by any canonical jurisdictions that are contrary to this teaching. That would be a start.
If you post a disagreement with this teaching, please also post, at minimum, your canonical Orthodox jurisdiction and, preferably, a link to the teaching of your jurisdiction on Hell. All canonical Orthodox jurisdictions have at least basic teachings online.
OCA and Greek Arch. , those are the examples and references you use ? Yes, we are in a LONG-Game , a race of duration …….
And Antioch. Plus we could post ROCOR sources as well. This is taught in all our seminaries. If you have specific issues with teaching that Hell is a choice and the you suffer externally in the presence of a righteous God whose love you reject, then feel free to provide. What are you arguing?
No arguement , just an aversion to anything that, in iota, would lead my wretched self near a path that would in any way seperate me , even a tip-of-toe, from my Lord. Lord have mercy.
I’m Orthodox but I agree with John Smith’s comment on your blog. Your understanding of hell indeed sounds post-modern, not patristic.
Salvation or damnation is not a matter of “what we interpret” as such. This is wrong. This is not Orthodox teaching. When a soul is in torment, she is IN torment, not a “tormented state of mind” or “state of being”. And she is definitely not in a state manufactured by her interpretative faculties!
The torture is very much real. The post linked and quoted the OCA.
Here is the OCA page again on Heaven and Hell:
https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/the-kingdom-of-heaven/heaven-and-hell
Greek Archdiocese:
https://www.goarch.org/-/heaven-and-hell
Antioch:
This idea, that both heaven and hell are experiences of the same divine presence, is startlingly different from contemporary assumptions. But even more so is the next idea: hell is not a punishment. We assume God’s justice means settling the score; that each sin must have its payment, either in Christ’s blood or human writhing in hell. We can even sort of like the idea. Surely God will torture murderers and rapists and bad guys, and anyone who ever did us a wrong turn. Justice, we think, means finally getting even…
http://ww1.antiochian.org/node/18270
Perhaps you have something to share that indicates these sources are wrong?
“The official teaching of the Orthodox Church on Heaven and Hell is that they are not places so much as states of being.”
So the Orthodox are post-modern heretics? Why not just say that God is only a concept and not a being while you’re at it? No wonder so many traditionalist catholics puke at the suggestion of just becoming Orthodox when Francis bans the traditional mass, if this really is the official teaching about hell.
Post-modern? This is the ancient teaching of the One, Holy, Apostolic Church. There is nothing modern about it. As for the Catholic teaching, it is not much different.
Among all the things that separate Orthodox from Roman Catholic, this is not really one of them. So our guess would be that you are from a Protestant background? Was the description of eternal separation and rejection from God not horrible enough for you?
If the LGBT, BLM, and Fauci’ites aren’t burned for all eternity, is justice served? After the lockdowns, eternal hell is looking excellent and let all the modernists who oppose it join Fauci there. Eternal hell is necessary for Klaus Scwab, Bill Gates, and so on. Otherwise God may as well come out as being the devil.
When comments are posted like this one, we often wonder, “Are we unclear? Can they read but choose not to?” The post said, “Sure, if you could. But the key point of the story is – you can’t. God is everywhere and filling all things. In the world to come, you just go on hating and raging against Him forever while all He is doing is loving you in return.” The key word in that passage is – forever. We can’t decide what you are trying to say. Do you think we somehow are denying eternal punishment? Can you clarify?
You are using modernist postmodern language to be purposefully ambiguous just like Pope Francis. A state of being not a place, until you get called on it and backtrack. Same old masonic tricks.
Actually, we thought we were being straightforward. We backtracked on nothing that we are aware of. We are masons now? Or fans of Pope Francis? Have you read anything on this site? What are you actually objecting to in this article? Are you Orthodox snd if so what jurisdiction? Only asking so we can get level set for what your jurisdiction teaches about Hell.
Hello, brother. Please forgive me for daring to contradict you. I feel your pain for what’s happening in the world, however, as you know, it is not our job to place specific people in hell. Only God knows for sure where each of us will go. He is the only one entitled to judge, because He doesn’t do it like we do it, punishing with revenge; He awaits and looks for the slightest shade of repentance so He can win the lost sheep, just like He did with the criminal hanged on the cross together with Him whose contrite heart made one last theft, he stole the Heaven as Father Cleopas Ilie used to say. The wicked and lazy servant said: ‘Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown’ but God is not like that, He is love. We fear God in the sense that we do not want do disappoint and betrade His love. In the Psalms we read that He is not quick-tempered but ‘merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy’ and ‘He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever.’ (Psalm 102).
It is very easy to understand that it is infinitely harder to bear hell than staying in a material fire as it is oftenly portrayed. Since God’s love is the best thing we can get, the true happiness, it must be that being deprived of it is the worst thing that can happen to us. Those who cannot see this, are not taking seriously their own life, their own existence.
Considering all these, the vision explained by Fr. Steven Robinson as someone pointed out in another comment ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WosgwLekgn8 ) seems to me in accordance with God’s merciful love, and it does not seem to relativize the reality of the eternal torments of hell. Sure, we must not abuse His love, this is a risk we must never forget.
I wonder whether St. Sophrony of Essex speaks about these concepts, I haven’t managed to read his writings unfortunately, but I have a feeling that he has approached this subject. Maybe someone can help.
It’s not the “official teaching.”
The same teaching is presented by OCA, Greek Archdiocese, and Antioch. There are no alternative views presented. Just this one. The article links to OCA’s page on Heaven and Hell. Do you disagree with this teaching?
The toll houses await brethren
As I have read in the past, God will not judge us, we will judge ourselves by the life we live.