Eastern Orthodoxy and the Particular Judgment

In previous articles (The Wanderer, July 3, 2014; June 25, 2015), it was observed that:

"Perhaps to the surprise of some Catholic ecumenists, Catholic doctrine regarding the Particular Judgment remains obscure, confused, or even denied among the Eastern Orthodox. They have no clear official teaching that the just go to Heaven immediately after death. Some even say there are no souls in Heaven or Hell, this occurring only with the Last Judgment and the Resurrection. Even then some say the saints do not see God 'face-to-face' by seeing the essence of God in the Beatific Vision.
It is not true to say [as some Orthodox do] that they do not believe in Purgatory for, in fact, they offer prayers, alms, and the Unbloody Sacrifice for the eternal repose of the deceased."

The traditional Catholic teaching on Purgatory, the particular judgment, and the Beatific Vision in Heaven was reaffirmed dogmatically in the Reunion Council of Florence (1439) wherein the Greek and Latin Churches attempted to end centuries of rupture and schism between them. After months of debate, even Mark of Ephesus, who would fiercely reject the council and become the leader of the anti-unionists preferring "the turban of the Ottoman Turks to the papal tiara" was obliged to admit that the issue of Purgatory was not serious enough to divide the two Churches.

The essentials of Catholic teaching, however, continued to hold sway among the separated Orthodox in one of their most important confessions of faith known as the Confession of Dositheos (produced by a synod convened in Jerusalem in 1672 by its Patriarch Dositheos). There one reads "as the expression of pure Orthodoxy":

"We believe that the souls of those who have fallen asleep are either at rest or in torment, according to what each has wrought. Such as though involved in mortal sins have not departed in despair but have, while still living in the body, repented, though without bringing any fruits of repentance — by pouring forth tears, by afflicting themselves, by relieving the poor, and in fine by showing by their works their love toward God and their neighbor, and which the Church has from the beginning rightly called satisfaction — of these and such like souls depart into Hades [i.e., the 'middle state' of Purgatory] and these endure the punishments due to their sins which they have committed."

Later, the Patriarch Dositheos retracted belief in an intermediate state between Heaven and Hell (Purgatory) and denied that temporal punishment was due to pardoned sin. Unfortunately, to this day, contradictions of the "pure orthodoxy" confessing the existence of an immediate entrance into Heaven or Hell and an "intermediate state" where souls are purified would become common in the various autocephalous Orthodox Churches.

At a recent funeral, a Greek Orthodox priest asserted, We do not believe in Purgatory."
A noted spiritual writer, the Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos in Greece, teaches in his writings that:

"neither the “good thief” nor the saints enjoy the Beatific Vision of God in the Kingdom of Heaven. The departed have to await the Second Coming and the Resurrection to enjoy heavenly bliss."

In similar vein wrote the well-known theologian Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, foreign secretary of the Patriarchate of Moscow. He also adds some bizarre elements in writing about the Orthodox view on "Death and Resurrection":

"What happens to souls after death? According to the common teaching of the Orthodox Church, souls do not leave the Earth immediately after their departure from the body. For three days they remain close to the Earth and visit the places with which they were associated. Meanwhile, the living show particular consideration to the souls of the deceased by offering memorial prayers and funeral services. During these three days, the personal task of the living is to be reconciled with the departed, to forgive them and ask their forgiveness."
"With the passage of three days, the souls of the departed ascend to the Judge in order to undergo their personal trial. Righteous souls are then taken by the angels and brought to the threshold of Paradise which is called 'Abraham’s bosom', there they remain waiting for the Last Judgment. Sinners, on the other hand, find themselves in 'Hell', 'in torments' (cf. Luke 16:22-23). But the final division into the saved and condemned will actually take place at the universal Last Judgment, when 'many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt' (Daniel 12:2). Before the Last Judgment, the righteous souls anticipate the joy of Paradise, while the souls of sinners anticipate the torments of Gehenna."

In his sermon on "Life After Death", the Russian Orthodox John Maximovitch of Shanghai and San Francisco (declared a saint) further embellishes the nature of the future life with the "toll-houses":

"For the course of two days the soul enjoys a relative freedom and can visit places on Earth which were dear to it, but on the third day it moves into other spheres. At this time (the third day), it passes through legions of evil spirits which obstruct its path and accuse it of various sins, to which they themselves had tempted it. According to various revelations, there are twenty such obstacles, the so-called 'toll-houses', at each of which one or another form of sin is tested; after passing through all of them can the soul continue its path without being immediately cast into Gehenna... Then, having successfully passed through the toll-houses and bowed down before God, the soul for the course of 37 more days visits the heavenly habitations and the abysses of hell, not knowing yet where it will remain, and only on the fortieth day is its place appointed until the resurrection of the dead."
"Some souls find themselves (after the 40 days) in a condition of foretasting eternal joy and blessedness, and others in fear of the eternal torments which will come in full after the Last Judgment. Until then, changes are possible in the condition of souls, especially through offering for them the Bloodless Sacrifice (commemoration of the Liturgy), and likewise by other prayers."

What is evident from all the above is a clear denial of the doctrine of the Catholic Church as defined in the Ecumenical Council of Florence (1439) which repudiated false teachings spread in the East concerning Purgatory, the Particular Judgment, and the Beatific Vision of God. There, both Latin and Greek bishops agreed:

"We define that the souls of truly penitent Christians, who die in charity before they have made satisfaction by worthy fruits of penance for sins of commission and omission, the souls of these are purged after death by the pains of Purgatory; and in order that they may be relieved from such pains, it is profitable for them to have the suffrages of the faithful who are living; such as Masses, prayers, alms and other pious exercises, which are customarily offered by the faithful for other faithful, according to the institution of the Church."
"The souls of those who, after Baptism, incurred no stain of sin; and those souls who, after contracting such stain of sin, whether in the body or after having put off the body (as said above) have been purged of such sins, are forthwith received into heaven, and clearly behold God Himself, in Trinity and Unity, more or less perfectly, in proportion to the diverse merits of each and other"

Many Orthodox writers today clearly profess as their "pure orthodoxy" not only the rejection of the intermediate state termed by Catholics "Purgatory" but also an outright confusion between Paradise and Heaven. As Orthodox scholar Fr. Laurent A. Cleenewerck wrote in his book His Broken Body:

"The souls of the reposed do not go to heaven or hell (in the sense of a final destination), they go to lower-hades or paradise-hades, a temporary intermediate state where the fullness of blessedness is yet to come."
(p. 355)

Whereas Catholic doctrine on the Particular Judgment insists that the souls at death immediately enter Heaven, Purgatory, or the Hell of the damned (there is no fiction or mythology of "toll-houses" having to be undergone at the behest of demons or "aerial-spirits"), too many Orthodox still distort the meaning of the Particular Judgment: Thus, the Romanian Orthodox theologian Fr. John A. McGuckin has written:

"The righteous dead will be admitted into the heart of Paradise only after their final purification after the Last Day and after the resurrection of the body has occurred."

It is true that various ancient writers including some Greek Fathers were ambiguous in expression concerning the state of souls between death and the Last Judgment or outright postponed the bliss of Heaven for the saved until after the Last Judgment. It is also true that the Latin tradition in the Church became more and more explicit concerning the existence of purgatorial punishments; the just receiving beatitude immediately after death; and that heavenly happiness consisted in the "face-to-face" vision of the Holy Trinity.

Clarity that the Vision of God is given at once to the soul that dies in sanctifying (deifying) grace and has been purified matured in the Church gradually, culminating in the infallible dogmatic pronouncement by Pope Benedictus XII in Benedictus Deus, 1336.

It is ironic that Greco-Slav Orthodox negations of Catholic doctrine cannot be considered "official" Orthodox doctrine since there have been other Orthodox theologians who contradict them and who agree with or approximate the essentials of Catholic teaching. Certainly, no ecumenical councils have confirmed negative Orthodox opinions as dogma.

In evaluating the variations in Orthodox teaching on the Last Things, it is undeniable that their serious errors have stemmed from the fatal lack of an infallible teaching Magisterium headed by the Successor of Peter and failure to recognize the reality of a real historical development of doctrine that takes place under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

 

James Likoudis has written three books dealing with Eastern Orthodoxy. Two of them are still available from the author: "Ending the Byzantine Greek Schism" [$20.00] and The "Divine Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and Modern Eastern Orthodoxy: Letters to a Greek Orthodox on the Unity of the Church" [$27.95].

---