For a complete treatment of the differences between Orthodox Catholicism and Roman Catholicism / Protestantism, visit our Western Series: Orthodox vs. Western Christianity from this same contributor Irene Polidoulis MD.
In Holy Scripture, the concept of death is first introduced in Genesis, where we read what God said to Adam: “…but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you may not eat; for in whatever day you eat from it, you shall die by death” (Genesis 2:17). According to the Orthodox Study Bible, to “die by death ” means to decompose or rot in the grave. Why did God arrange such a thing if He is all-loving, good and merciful?
Let us answer this question after first examining God’s goodness and mercy, His love and His humility. Because of His profound Love for us, and His deep humility, He did not hesitate to share His divine attributes with us when He created us. These divine attributes are not found in the human body, but in the soul, and they are also called the three powers of the soul. These are: free will; the nous, which is the intelligence or the mind that is capable of reason; and the conscience, which is the voice of God that guides us to all truth. Why did God do this? So that we could use these divine powers of His to progress ourselves toward His likeness, which means to become as much as possible like Him without becoming actual gods. Acquiring God’s likeness is called Theosis.
Because God is completely free in His actions, He gave us free will. He freely decided to create us knowing that we would sin; and after we sinned, He freely died on the Cross to save us from sin. And all this because He freely loves us. What type of freedom did He give us? Regardless of how we are gifted in other areas, be we athletic, physically impaired, mentally impaired, slow, smart, rich, poor, there is one absolute freedom that we all share in equal abundance, and that is: how we choose to respond to God; because in the grand scheme of things, that is the only freedom that truly matters. Will we freely love Him or not? According to St. Maximus the Confessor, “in His love, God does not wish to force anyone, neither into good nor evil. In return, He does not expect from us blind (meaning forced) obedience, but love. Since God is Love, it is only in our freedom that we can be assimilated (meaning joined) to God through our Love for Him.” God loves us and wants to share His divinity with us, but only if we freely choose to love Him also.
Just as Jesus did, we, too, are free to express our love for God through obedience. Free obedience is the fruit of love and humility. When we truly love someone, we freely humble ourselves to fulfil their request. When we obey someone out of fear or ignorance, that is not free obedience; it is forced obedience or blind obedience, which God does not want. He desires our free obedience, not because it benefits Him in any way, for God does not need anything from us; but because it benefits us.
God is also Most Wise, and so, He also gave us a nous. This is the mind, or the intellect that we reason with. Our reasoning is not limited to only those things we can see and touch; but it can also penetrate down to their depths or rise upwards to the very Source of all that exists, which is God. There is something intuitive about the nous, which automatically sees or understands certain truths. The nous is in the soul, and not in the physical eye or brain. In death, when the soul departs from the body, it still retains its noetic vision and intellect. Jesus referred to the nous as the lamp of the body and as the eye, meaning the spiritual eye of the soul. One could also say that the nous, spiritual eye or lamp of the body is a person’s outlook, mindset or general approach to life – the way we look at things. Do we look at things positively, lovingly, angelically? Or do we look at things negatively, despairingly, demonically? Jesus said, “The lamp of the body is the eye (nous, spiritual eye). If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye (the way you look at things) is bad (evil), your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23). Keeping the spiritual eye, the mind or the nous wholesome, healthy, and pure – of evil thoughts, evil intentions, evil desires – illuminates the inner Man, his soul. This illumination, which is the light of God, governs and governs Man’s will with God’s will.
Let’s say we have two different people; both are watching a playground filled with poor but happy children. One of the onlookers is watching with a “good eye” because he is thinking about how he can support the families or the school of these poor children. The other, who is watching with an “evil eye,” is thinking about how he can abduct the children to exploit them or their families. Our mindset, our approach, our purpose, all determine how we govern our will. Ultimately, this determines, not just who we become – a plumber, a lawyer, a teacher – but more importantly whose we become – God’s or Satan’s.
What, then, if we are confused? How can we discern between a good choice or a bad choice? That is when our conscience, the third attribute of God’s image, will help us. By its nature, the conscience, also called the “heart,” is a spiritual instinct, which more quickly and clearly distinguishes between good and evil than the mind. The conscience is the universal inner compass that is the same in everyone, the guiding voice of God Himself, that “gut feeling” if you will, that speaks to our soul. The conscience is a divine gift that helps us avoid spiritual and even physical danger. This inner voice is not under our control and will express itself spontaneously despite our will. In the conscience or the “heart” is where one immediately knows if something is right or wrong, good or bad, safe or dangerous. However, God respects our free will so much, that we still have the freedom to obey the voice of our conscience, or to ignore it and even suppress it, purposely turning our will against God’s will. It is there to help us and guide us to God’s Kingdom, if we choose to pay attention to it.
Continuing with the topic of death, when God created Adam and Eve, He gave them a physical body that was designed to become immortal. It was not designed to sicken, to age or to die. That physical body came to life when God breathed into it, the soul, made in His image – with a nous, a conscience and free will – and according to His likeness. God graced the soul with immortality and the body with potential immortality. This means, He did not make Adam and Eve perfect, but potentially perfect. Had they chosen to reciprocate His Love and Humility by means of free obedience, then they would become imitators of God, and they would progress from His image to His likeness. Then, besides already being spiritually immortal, they would have also become physically immortal. By freely imitating God, they would have been assimilated into God’s divinity. This is called Theosis, Mankind’s true destiny, which is not just a mere salvation, not just being present in the Kingdom of Heaven.
However, as we all know, Adam and Eve betrayed God when they chose to trust the Serpent, instead of the One who truly loved them. In doing so, they chose their own path, away from God, and as a result, they did not achieve His likeness or Theosis. Instead, sickness, also called corruption, and death entered Man’s reality. In addition, the image of God in them was not destroyed, but it was profoundly damaged. Because of their departure from God through sin, the power of their will weakened, their nous or intelligence dulled, and their conscience diminished. From a condition naturally prone to godliness, they descended to confusion, and a predisposition to further sin. This became the new condition of their soul, and as for their body, it became corrupt. It sickened, aged and died.
To the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches of the West, death is a sentence pronounced by an “angry” God. The Western teaching is that God “cursed” the Serpent, Adam and Eve, as a literal “punishment” for their wrongdoing. After Adam and Eve’s disobedience at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God had “no choice” but to impose suffering and death upon them. Adam and Eve sinned, so now they had to suffer the consequences to “pay the price.” This type of “legalistic punishment” was a necessity required by God’s by Divine Justice.
In contrast, Orthodoxy believes that “God [who is the Giver of Life] did not make death” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:13). Death is not a punishment imposed on man’s nature by a “curse” from God. It is the natural consequence of sinfulness, which was our choice. Because our very lives are continuously upheld by God’s grace, when Man turns away from God through disobedience, he cuts himself off from God’s grace, and because only He is the source of Life, death is the natural outcome.
By sinning, Man chose to undo what God had done for him. Since God had created him from the ground, by choosing to depart from God, Mankind literally returned himself to the ground. Man cursed himself with death. When God told Adam he would die if he ate the forbidden fruit, he was telling him what the outcome of his disobedience would be. It was a statement of fact. The Lord warned him, saying, “if you turn from Me, the only source of Life, then death will be the outcome.” The issue is not legal or juridical, but ontological. It’s like saying to a child, “if you put your hand in the flame, it will burn.” It does not mean “I will burn your hand,” but “you will burn your hand,” because fire burns. Similarly, rejecting the source of Life brings death. Without life, the only option is death. For Adam and Eve, the real issue was not that they ate some fruit they weren’t supposed to eat. The real issue was their change of heart at the deepest level. Adam and Eve wanted to become all-knowing like God, but without God, independent from God. The pinnacle of all creation, the Creator’s image, wanted to be emancipated from the Sustenance of Life and the Source of their very existence, because they no longer trusted, loved or desired God. And so, as the loving father did for his prodigal son, God allowed them to depart.
St. Gregory Palamas, (13-14th century) wrote, “ …God created neither death of the soul nor death of the body…neither did He command saying, ‘Die on the day when you shall eat,’ but ‘On the day when you shall eat, you shall die.’ And neither did He command saying, ‘Return to the earth’ but ‘…you shall return,’ announcing the consequence beforehand and allowing them complete freedom to disobey the commandment, and not even trying to prevent the outcome, because He respected their freedom (abridged version).” St. Basil the Great ( 4th century) explained it this way, “[Life] is God, and the deprivation of life [God] is death. Thus, Adam prepared death for himself through his withdrawal from God…therefore, God did not create death, but we brought it upon ourselves by our wicked purpose. Neither did He prevent [death itself] … so that the illness [of sin] would not be preserved immortal in us.”
This last phrase means that God permitted our potentially immortal bodies to become mortal and die so that sin and sinfulness (our tendency to sin) would not, together with our bodies, become immortal and perpetuate into eternity. The Orthodox understand this as an act of great mercy rather than judgment or punishment, so much so, that they view the death of a righteous person as his birthday into the Kingdom of Heaven. Man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden before they could eat of the Tree of Life, and his subsequent physical death, was God’s providential way of doing “damage control,” to prevent the great tragedy of sin and the sinful condition from becoming eternal.
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When Adam and Eve sinned, they did not incur any wrath or indignation from God, for God is dispassionate. He is not governed by anything, least of all any passions or emotions. When we say that God is Love, He is not our kind of emotional love that comes and goes. The divine Love of God is one of His uncreated energies, a love that Man cannot achieve or comprehend. God’s love does not change when we sin, and He unconditionally loves us to death – but not our death, His death – a death He freely embraced on the Cross.
Similarly, sickness is not a punishment for sin, but the inevitable consequence of sin.
St. Nicolai of Zica said,
“[In Eden] there was not a trace of sickness or death, for there was not even a thought of sin”
St. Justin Popovic said,
“[Sin] darkened, blackened, crippled the beautiful image of God in the soul of the primordial man…Due to the close and direct connection of the soul with the body, sin caused disorder [sickness] in the body of our first parents. The consequences of the Fall for the body were sickness, suffering and death.”
The great Russian theologian, Fr. Michael Pomazansky said,
“…diseases, hard labor, and death… are the natural [physical] result of the moral fall, the falling away from communion with God, man’s departure from God. Man became subject to the corrupt elements of the world, in which dissolution [sickness] and death are active. Nourishment from the Source of Life [God] and from the constant renewal of all of one’s powers became weak in men …”
In a similar way, we often fail to understand God’s Justice which is never wrathful or punitive but loving, merciful and restorative. He gives us the freedom to make our own mistakes so that when we experience their painful consequences, we may learn from them, spiritually mature, and come to repentance. This experience may feel like punishment; we may feel that God is angry or indignant, but this feeling comes from our own guilty consciences. This is why we find expressions of punishment in the Bible, because these expressions are based on the feelings of the people who wrote them. If there is any punishment, we are the source of it, not God.
So that sin, and all its suffering, would not become eternal, God permitted our bodies to die. Likewise, God mercifully shortened Man’s lifespan to diminish our wickedness and encourage our earlier repentance. Think of how many people already postpone changing their sinful ways, because they want to enjoy themselves when they’re young. They think they will have lots of time to go to church later in life, to start reading the Bible later in life, to repent and go for Confession later in life. Just imagine how much more sin we would accumulate if we knew we had centuries of life ahead of us.
But a long life does not always work in our favour because what may happen is the longer we sin, the easier and the more grievous sinning becomes, making it progressively harder for us to spiritually change later. This is what we mean by “hardened criminals.” These people are so accustomed to criminal behaviour, except for the grace of God, they cannot change. There is a real danger that if we sin long enough and badly enough, we become so spiritually deranged, we become incapable of repenting later. This is what happened to Noah’s neighbours, and Abraham’s neighbours, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. God destroyed the first group with a flood, and the second group with fire and brimstone from heaven, because as He foreknew, they were too far gone in sinfulness to ever repent. And so, He destroyed them, not to punish them, but to end their sinfulness and to reduce their suffering in hell.
But God is so gracious that after the Fall, the first people did live on earth for several centuries. Genesis chapter 5 tells us that Adam lived 930 years before he died. Adam’s third son, Seth, lived 912 years before he died. Seth’s son, Enosh, lived 905 years. This genealogy takes us all the way to Noah, who lived 950 years before he died. Why did they live so long? God graced them with several centuries of life on earth so they would have sufficient time to complete their repentance and approach His likeness.
But when sinfulness increased, He mercifully shortened the human lifespan. During the days of Noah, when Man’s wickedness had grown and deeply grieved God. “…[He] said, ‘My spirit [My life-giving grace] shall not remain with these people forever, for they are [sinful according to the] flesh. So, their days shall be 120 years ’” (Genesis 6:3). But when the rampant murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts and every manner of sin continued to increase because of Mankind’s stubborn unrepentance, God blotted them out with a Great Flood to end their sinfulness and reduce their suffering in the afterlife. He spared the family of only one righteous man, Noah. Later, He obliterated Sodom and Gomorrah for the same reason, and still later, during the time of Moses, because Man’s sinfulness again increased, God diminished the human lifespan further. In A prayer of Moses, a man of God (Psalms 89 (90):10), we read, “As for the days of our years, their span is 70 years…perhaps 80…”
In addition to shortening our lifespan, either to facilitate our salvation or to mitigate our condemnation, God mercifully permits each person’s death to take place when it is of greatest spiritual benefit to them and to those around them. How we die can be salvific if it brings about repentance. St. Paisios had once said that Paradise is filling up with the souls of those who die of cancer, because suffering patiently while knowing that death is near, has brought many people to repentance. What sometimes seems like a tragic, sudden, unfair or difficult death can also be an expression of God’s love and mercy.
For example, there is a famous story of a very pious widow who had two sons. After the death of her husband, she devoted herself to God, raising her sons in the Church with all piety, and living an exemplary sacramental and liturgical life. One day, both her beloved teenage sons died in a tragic car accident. The grief-stricken widow was beside herself. She was so angry with God for allowing this to happen after the death of her husband, and the hardship she had endured, and the devotion she had shown God, that she abandoned God and His Church. The clergy and people of the parish fervently prayed for her until one day, she had a vision. An angel of the Lord appeared and showed her the future of her sons had they lived. In the vision, the boys grew up and both fell in love with the same young woman. The competition between them escalated into a conflict so great, that each shot the other. Both died in the exchange of gunfire and the act of murder. When the vision ended, the mother was stunned. She realized that by permitting their earlier deaths, God had protected her sons from a far worse outcome – the loss of their lives and their salvation. She repented of her anger and returned to her parish.
This shows that God does not interfere with our freedom. For as long as we are alive, we are free to choose how we live. However, as the Giver, and also Taker of Life, God also has the freedom to bestow Life or to take it away; and because He has the foreknowledge of what we will do with our freedom, He has the power to shorten or lengthen our lives to protect us from hell, or to lengthen them if that will progress towards salvation. This is why some people die in infancy, others in childhood, others as young adults, others in old age and so on. From our point of view, these early deaths are a great tragedy, but if we had the foreknowledge of God, we would see them as a great blessing.
At the End Times, God promises to shorten time again, not only to mitigate wickedness but also to reduce suffering. Jesus said, “For then, there will be great tribulation [suffering], such as has not been seen since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened (Matthew 24:21-22). The Orthodox, therefore, view sickness and suffering as a means for salvation, and death as God’s merciful intervention in the sinfulness of Man.
However, death is twofold. Jesus warned us that there is another death, which is far worse than physical death. He said, “My friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that, they have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell” (Luke 12:4). In other words, Jesus is saying we should fear the death of our souls far more than we should fear the death of our bodies.
In physical or bodily death, the soul, which gives life to the body, departs from the body and the result is the death and decomposition of the body. The soul remains immortal because God’s loving grace continues to give life to the soul. In spiritual death, the soul again departs, but this time it departs from God, and from the higher spiritual life. When the soul departs from God, it continues to exist, but its closeness to God, its fellowship with God, diminishes. This is why it is possible to be physically alive and at the same time, “spiritually dead.” The spiritually dead soul suffers but it does not die like the body. It does not cease to exist because God’s grace continuously sustains it. St. Gregory of Nyssa said: “Human nature has not been completely lost as death has not laid hold upon the Divine image in man [in the soul]. Death occurs externally [to the physical body] but not internally [to the soul] as the soul is immortal and not subject to physical corruption [sickness or death]. How did death take hold? The participation of evil … [Evil] affects both the soul and the body but only leads to the [sickness] and death of the body – not the soul. The soul, apart from the grace of Christ, still suffers regardless, from a diseased condition of the will.”
For the unbeliever, death is a dreadful and terrifying threat; but for the Christian, death closes the chapter of our human life and leads us over a mysterious threshold where a new chapter opens to eternal life. Jesus Christ, by His own death and Resurrection, transformed death into a happy and victorious event for all those who believe in Him. In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul explains the Christian understanding of Death: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet…the dead will be raised…and we will be changed…So when this corruptible [body] has put on incorruption, and this mortal [body] has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:52-54).
This does not mean that our earthly life has no meaning. On the contrary, the everlasting life of a Christian begins with his earthly life. Therefore, the Christian should not neglect his earthly life. Our earthly lives have been blessed with the image of God and whatever other merits, gifts and purposes our Creator has bestowed upon us. These are tools that God has given to each of us that make our earthly life the workshop of our future life. The question then becomes, are we using whatever tools, or talents, God has given us to work out our salvation? Are we growing spiritually stronger? Are we progressing from God’s image to God’s likeness? Jesus told us to do this when He said, “Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matt.5:48).
What does perfection mean for the Christian? Does God expect us to become as smart, powerful or majestic as Him? In one of his icons, St. Paisios holds a scroll which says, «Αγάπη και ταπείνωση. Σ’ αυτή τη συχνότητα εργάζεται ο Θεός». In English this means, “Love and Humility; this is the frequency in which God works.” God does not expect us to become perfect in power or majesty, which is all that Satan wanted and the reason behind his rebellion. He wants us to become perfect in virtue, especially the key virtues of love and humility. “But” one may say, “God’s divine Love and Humility are infinite. Perfection in these virtues alone is a moving target. How can we even approach the perfection of our Heavenly Father?”
The answer is that God wants us to try, but to try our very best. This is why His greatest commandment is, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). He did not say we should love Him with the same love as His infinite divine Love, but as much as we are able, committedly, with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind – not just sentimentally, but actively. The second commandment, which is like the first, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39), also means to “treat others as we wish to be treated” as much as we are able. (Matt. 7:12, Luke 6:31).
“Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matt.5:48). This is both a command and a blessing. In this life, we can never become perfect like our Heavenly Father. Nevertheless, this perfection, this Theosis is the reason we were born and the true purpose of our life; and God wants us to struggle towards achieving His perfection until our last breath. We must constantly strive to use the image of God in us, and any other gift or ability He has given us, to progress ourselves towards HIs perfection, His likeness, without giving up, even when there are setbacks.
If we freely start the process in this life and we die still struggling, God Himself, will continue to perfect us in the next life for all eternity, progressing us in His joy, His grace, and His glory. Then, the command, “be perfect,” becomes a blessing when He takes over where our perpetual perfection in His likeness and our Theosis. In his classic work On the Incarnation, 4th century St. Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become god.”
And that, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is why we have sickness, suffering and death. Because of sin, without our death and without Christ’s death on the Cross, we have no chance at eternal Life. But thanks be to God who conquered sin and death.
“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”
(1 Cor. 15:55)
