Православная эсхатология

“I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come,” says the last member of the creed, and this is the general Christian faith. Present life is the path to the life of the future age; the “kingdom of grace” passes into the “kingdom of glory.” “The image of this world is passing away” (1 Cor. 7:31), rushing to its end. The entire worldview of a Christian is determined by this eschatologism, in which, although earthly life is not devalued, it receives the highest justification for itself. Early Christianity was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of the near, immediate end: “Hey, I’m coming soon! Amen. Hey, come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev.22:20); these fiery words sounded like heavenly music in the hearts of the early Christians and made them seem supermundane. The spontaneity of waiting for the end with its joyful tension in the subsequent story, naturally, was lost. It was replaced by a sense of the finitude of personal life in death and the reward that follows it, and eschatologism has already taken on more severe and strict tones - equally, both in the West and in the East. At the same time, in Christianity, and especially in Orthodoxy, a special veneration of death developed, to a certain extent close to the ancient Egyptian one (just as in general there is a certain underground connection between Egyptian piety in paganism and Orthodoxy in Christianity). The dead body is buried here with respect, as the seed of the future resurrection body, and the very rite of burial is considered a sacrament by some ancient writers. Prayer for the dead, their periodic commemoration, establishes a connection between us and that world, and each buried body in liturgical language (in the breviary) is called relics, and is fraught with the possibility of glorification. The separation of the soul from the body is a kind of sacrament in which at the same time the judgment of God is carried out on the fallen Adam, the composition of man is torn apart in the unnatural separation of the body from the soul, but at the same time a new birth into the spiritual world takes place. The soul, having separated from the body, directly realizes its spirituality and finds itself in the world of disembodied spirits, light and dark. Her self-determination in the new world is also connected with this new state, which consists in the self-evident self-disclosure of the state of the soul. This is the so-called preliminary trial. This self-awareness, the awakening of the soul, is depicted in church writing in the images of “going through ordeals,” bearing the features of the Jewish apocrypha, if not directly Egyptian images from the “Book of the Dead.” The soul goes through ordeals, in which it is tortured by the corresponding demons for various sins, but protected by angels, and if the severity of sin in it turns out to be overcome, it is delayed in one or another ordeal and, as a result, remains distant from God, in a state of hellish torment. Souls that have gone through ordeals are brought to worship God and are awarded heavenly bliss. This destiny is revealed in various images in church writing, but doctrinally is left by Orthodoxy in wise uncertainty, as a mystery, penetration into which is accomplished only in the living experience of the Church. However, it is an axiom of church consciousness that although the world of the living and the dead is separated from one another, this wall is not impenetrable to church love and the power of prayer. In Orthodoxy, a huge place is occupied by prayer for the dead, both performed in connection with the Eucharistic sacrifice, and in addition to it, in connection with the belief in the effectiveness of this prayer. The latter can alleviate the condition of sinful souls and free them from a place of languor, extricate them from hell. Of course, this action of prayer presupposes not only intercession before the Creator for forgiveness, but also a direct impact on the soul itself, in which the strength to assimilate forgiveness is awakened. The soul is reborn to a new life, enlightened by the torments it has experienced. On the other hand, there is also the opposite effect: the prayers of saints are effective for us in our lives, and from this we can conclude that any prayer is effective, even of unglorified saints (and perhaps not even saints at all) who pray to the Lord for us. The Orthodox Church distinguishes between the possibility of three states in the afterlife: heavenly bliss and the double torments of hell, with the possibility of liberation from them through the prayers of the Church and the power of the internal process occurring in the soul, and without this possibility. She does not know purgatory as a special place or state that is accepted in Catholic dogmatics (although, to tell the truth, modern Catholic theology does not know what to do with it). There is no sufficient biblical or dogmatic basis for the acceptance of such a special third place. However, one cannot deny the possibility and existence of a purifying state (the acceptance of which is common between Orthodoxy and Catholicism). Religiously and practically, the difference between purgatory and hell is elusive due to the complete unknown for us of the afterlife fate of every soul. Essentially, what is important is not the distinction between hell and purgatory as two different places for the afterlife of souls, but as two states, or more precisely, the possibility of liberation from hellish torment, the transition from a state of rejection to a state of justification. And in this sense, one can ask not whether purgatory exists for Orthodoxy, but rather whether there is hell in the final sense, i.e. Doesn't it also represent a kind of purgatory? At the very least, the Church does not know any restrictions in its prayer for those who have departed in unity with the Church, believing, of course, in the effectiveness of this prayer. About external ones, i.e. The Church does not judge those who do not belong to the Church or have fallen away, committing them to the mercy of God. God has placed in ignorance the afterlife destinies of those who in this life did not know Christ and did not enter His Church. A ray of hope here is shed by the teaching of the Church about the descent of Christ into hell and the sermon in hell, which was addressed to all pre-Christian humanity (Catholics limit it only to the Old Testament righteous, limbus patrum, excluding from it those whom St. Justin the Philosopher calls “Christians before Christ”). The word is firm that God “wants all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). However, regarding the fate of non-Christians, both adults and infants (for whom Catholic theologians also reserved a special “place” - limbus patrum), there are still no general church definitions, and freedom of dogmatic quest and theological opinions remains. The personal eschatology of death and the afterlife in historical consciousness to a certain extent overshadowed the general eschatology of the second coming. For the second coming of Christ is not only terrible for us, for He comes as a Judge, but also glorious, for He comes in His Glory, and this Glory is both the glorification of the world and the fullness of the accomplishment of all creation. The glorification inherent in the resurrected body of Christ will be communicated through it to all creation, a new heaven and a new earth will appear, transfigured and, as it were, resurrected with Christ and His humanity. This will happen in connection with the resurrection of the dead, which will be accomplished by Christ through His angels. This accomplishment is depicted in the Word of God symbolically in the images of the apocalypses of the era, and for our consciousness certain aspects of it are revealed in history (in particular, this includes Fedorov’s question about whether the sons of men take any part in this resurrection). One way or another, death is defeated, and the entire human race, freed from the power of death, for the first time appears as a whole, as a unity, not fragmented in the succession of generations, and its common cause in history will appear before its consciousness. But this will, at the same time, be a judgment against him, the Last Judgment of Christ over humanity. The doctrine of the Last Judgment in Orthodoxy, as far as it is contained in the Word of God, is common to the entire Christian world. The last separation of sheep and goats, death and hell, damnation and rejection, eternal torment for some, and the kingdom of heaven, eternal bliss, the sight of the Lord, for others - this is the result of the earthly path of mankind. The court already presupposes the possibility of not only justification, but also condemnation, and this is a self-evident truth. Every person who confesses his sins cannot help but realize that if no one else does, then he deserves God’s condemnation. “If You, Lord, notice iniquities, - Lord! who can stand?" (Ps. 129:3). However, hope remains - in God’s mercy towards His creation: “I am yours, save me; for I have sought Your commandments” (Ps. 119:94). At the Last Judgment, where the Lord himself, meek and humble in heart, will be the Judge of Truth, carrying out the judgment of His Father, where will there be mercy? To this question, Orthodoxy gives a silent but expressive answer - iconographically: on the icons of the Last Judgment, the Most Pure Virgin is depicted at the right hand of the Son, begging Him for mercy with Her maternal love, She is the Mother of God and the entire human race. The Son entrusted mercy to her when He Himself accepted the judgment of righteousness from the Father (John 5:22, 27). But behind this, a new secret is also revealed: the Mother of God, the Spirit-Bearer, is the living medium of the Holy Spirit himself, through Her participating in the Last Judgment. After all, if God creates the world and man by council in the Holy Trinity, with the corresponding participation of all three hypostases, and if the salvation of man through the incarnation of the Son also occurs with the participation of the entire Holy Trinity, then the outcome of earthly creation, the judgment of humanity is also carried out with this participation: the Father judges through the Son, the Holy Spirit has mercy and heals the wounds of sin, the wounds of the universe. There is no person who would be without sin, who would not even turn out to be a goat among the sheep in one way or another. In Christian eschatology there has always been and remains the question of the eternity of hellish torment and the final rejection of those who are sent “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Since ancient times, doubts have been expressed about the eternity of these torments, seeing in them a temporary, as if pedagogical means of influencing souls, and hoping for the final restoration of ἀιτοκαιάστασις. Since ancient times, there have been two directions of eschatology: one is rhetorical, affirming the eternity of torment in the sense of its finality and infinity, the other is St. Augustine ironically called his representatives “complainers” (misericordes) - they denied the infinity of torment and the persistence of evil in creation, confessing the final victory of the Kingdom of God in creation, when “God will be all in all.” Representatives of the doctrine of apocatastasis were not only Origen, who was doubtful regarding the Orthodoxy of some of his teachings, but also St. Gregory of Nyssa, blessed by the Church as an ecumenical teacher, and their followers believed that the corresponding teaching of Origen was condemned at the V Ecumenical Council; however, modern historical research no longer allows us to assert even this, while the teaching of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, much more decisive and consistent, moreover, free from the touch of Origen’s teaching on the pre-existence of souls, was never condemned and on this basis retains the rights of citizenship, at least as an authoritative theological opinion (theologumena) in the Church. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church has a doctrinal definition of the eternity of torment, and therefore there is no room for apocatastasis in one form or another. On the contrary, in Orthodoxy there was and is no such doctrinal definition. True, the prevailing opinion expressed in most dogmatic manuals either does not dwell on the question of apocatastasis at all, or is expressed in the spirit of Catholic rigorism. However, along with these individual thinkers, opinions were and are being expressed that are close to the teachings of St. Gregory of Nyssa or, in any case, much more complex than straightforward rigorism. Therefore, we can say that this question is not closed for further discussion and new insights sent down from the Holy Spirit of the Church. And in any case, no amount of rigorism can eliminate the hope that is given in the triumphant words of the Apostle Paul that “God has imprisoned all in disobedience in order to have mercy on all. Oh, the depth of wealth and wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His destinies and unsearchable His ways!” (Rom.11:32–33). The picture of the judgment of the world ends with the descent of heavenly Jerusalem to the new earth under the new heavens and the appearance of the Kingdom of God descending from heaven to earth. Here the teachings of Orthodoxy merge with the beliefs of all Christianity. Eschatology contains the answer to all earthly sorrows and questions.