Глава 5 Загробная жизнь вообще

1. The question of the corporeality of the soul in the first period of the afterlife. The human soul and body, although connected into an organic unity, nevertheless represent separate, independent entities. Death separates them from each other, after which the body turns into world matter, and the soul continues to live independently. From here one could recognize the idea that the soul is incorporeal after death as not requiring further proof. Nevertheless, even in Russian literature we come across the opinion that the soul after death not only retains the form of the earthly body with which it was endowed 46 but also has a certain kind of physicality 47 . The Holy Scripture does not provide any data for the acceptance of “immaterial corporeality,” however, it does not affirm the absolute spirituality of the soul. Already on the basis of considerations of reason, we must admit that only God can be an absolute spirit; all other created spirits represent a lower degree of spirituality and are in essence closer to the material world. How we should represent this materiality and how far it justifies the doctrine of the “immaterial corporeality” of the soul, the solution to this question can hardly be satisfactory. The words of Jesus Christ: “a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39) speak about the body with which a person is clothed during earthly life, but cannot be brought against the materiality or, rather, against the non-absolute spirituality of the human soul. The disciples considered the appearance of Jesus Christ to be a ghost, which, as an unreality, has no flesh. But from the immateriality of ghosts one cannot yet draw any conclusions regarding the absolute spirituality of the soul. Finally, if the disciples accepted the appearing Christ as the actual manifestation of his spirit, then even with this assumption, the intangibility of the appearing spirit, about which the Lord speaks, cannot serve as a basis for denying the relative materiality of the soul, because in nature, not every kind of matter is accessible to touch and generally sensitive perception (see the book of St. Apol. Temnomerov: “Teaching. Holy Scripture. On the Afterlife,” St. Petersburg 1899, pp. 134, 139–140). 2. The place of residence of the souls of the dead after the descent of Jesus Christ into hell. After the descent of Jesus Christ into hell, the New Testament definitely distinguishes between the places of residence of the souls of the dead righteous and sinners. Regarding the first, we hear the words of the Lord in his prayer to God the Father: “Father, I want them whom you have given Me to be with Me, so that they may see My glory, which You have given Me” (John 17:24). These and similar words: “Where I am, there will My servant also be” (John 12:26) relate to the entire afterlife existence of the righteous, embracing not only life after the resurrection, but also the first period of the afterlife, which is undoubtedly evidenced by the promise to the prudent thief: “Today you will be with Me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). In agreement with this and Ap. Paul views the life of the soul after the death of the body as being with Christ (Phil. 1:23). But if Christ and the souls of the righteous are with God the Father (John 14:12, 18, 16:16–28), in his heavenly abodes (John 14:2–3), then we cannot imagine that the souls of sinners, rejected from the blessed union with Christ, are also there. Stay in the heavenly abodes is promised only to the elect, but it is said about sinners that they must depart from the Savior (Matt. 7:23), that they will be expelled from the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 8:12; Luke 13:28; Matthew 25:30 etc.). That this means not only deprivation of moral unity with God, but also spatial removal from the place of blissful sojourn of the righteous, can be seen from the words of the book. Acts about the traitor Judas hanging himself, that he went to his place. The place where the souls of sinners reside is called hell in the New Testament. This Greek word expresses the concept of darkness, which is completely consistent with the Old Testament idea of ​​Sheol as the kingdom of darkness. The place of residence of the souls of the wicked is also called in the New Testament “the nether regions of the earth” (Eph. 4:9); “sheol” (Phil. 2:10). The basis of the metaphorical meaning of the name of hell used in scripture as the underworld of the earth, located somewhere significantly below the latter, may lie in the common idea among all peoples of the sky located above a person’s head - a sphere of light, purer and more perfect than the earth. Hence, it is quite natural to have a metaphorical representation of good and bad, perfect, glorious and humiliated under the image of high and low. Words undoubtedly represent this kind of metaphor. The very name of God as the Most High is already a metaphor, indicating not the height of his dwelling, since God is everywhere, but rather his infinite perfections in comparison with man. The location of the souls of the righteous until the general resurrection is usually given the name of paradise. In the New Testament, this word appears only twice in the Lord’s promise to the prudent thief: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43), and in the apostle. Paul, who was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words that man cannot utter (2 Cor. 12:4). In other places of scripture, the location of the souls of the righteous is called the “Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 8:11; cf. Matthew 5:3, 10), the “Kingdom of God” (Luke 13:28–29; 1 Cor. 15:50), the house of the heavenly Father (John 14:2), “Mount Zion, the city of the living God,” “Jerusalem in heaven” (Heb. 12:22), “Jerusalem on high” (Gal. 4:26), “the heavens” (Luke 12:33–34; Heb. 10:34). In all these places, one idea is clear about the closeness of the souls of the righteous to God, and only the names: “heaven”, “heavenly” give the idea that the souls of the dead righteous are in heaven (see the book of St. Apol. Temnomerov: “Teachings of the Holy Scriptures on the afterlife,” St. Petersburg, 1899, pp. 125–131). 3. The certainty of the afterlife. At all times and among all peoples, along with faith in the Divine, there has always been faith in a future afterlife. Ancient Greeks and Romans, Persians and Arabs, savages of Polynesia, Melanesia, central and southern Africa, American Aleuts, etc. - everyone one way or another believed and believes that a person’s life does not end with his death, but continues in one form or another on the other side of the coffin. This universality of belief in the existence of the afterlife has a deeply significant and instructive meaning: it eloquently speaks of the fact that the future life really exists, since faith in it is directly inherent in the very nature of man and is an essential element of religious consciousness. The same thing that is universal and constitutes the inalienable, necessary property of man, at the same time always happens to be reliable. The evidence of common sense also undoubtedly assures us that human existence does not end with earthly existence and that, in addition to present life, there is a future life, an afterlife. Let us pay attention to the visible, external nature. “In the whole world it is impossible,” says the late famous Russian hierarch Filaret, “to find any example, no sign, no proof of the destruction of any insignificant thing; there is no past that does not prepare for the future; there is no end that does not lead to the beginning; Every special life, when it descends into its characteristic coffin, leaves in it only the old, worn-out clothing of physicality, and itself ascends into the great, invisible realm of life in order to appear again in new, sometimes better and more perfect clothing. The sun sets to rise again; stars die in the morning for the earthly viewer, and are resurrected in the evening; times end and begin; dying sounds are resurrected in echoes; rivers are buried in the sea and resurrected in springs; the whole world of earthly vegetation dies in the fall, and comes to life in the spring; a seed dies in the ground, grass or a tree is resurrected; the creeping worm dies, the winged butterfly is resurrected; The bird's life is buried in a soulless egg, and again rises from it. If creatures of lower degrees are destroyed to be recreated, die for a new life: does man, the crown of the earth and the mirror of heaven, fall into the grave only to crumble into dust, more hopeless than a worm, worse than a grain of mustard?! (Works. Philaret, Metropolitan, Moscow, vol. II, ed. 1879, p. 210). But for a believer, much more important than the evidence of human reason is the testimony of the Holy Spirit. Scriptures about the afterlife. The Word of God, as truth, is and should be the source of all our knowledge and in such a great mystery as the future life of man. In the Old Testament sacred books we find a fairly clear indication that the soul continues to exist even after it is separated from the body. “And the dust will return to the earth as it was,” says Ecclesiastes, “and the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7). This is the teaching about our life after death, which people of the first times so often forgot and therefore spent their earthly life in a very rude, vile and shameful manner. The Lord very often renewed in the Old Testament through his chosen people - the prophets, so that the Jewish people and all others who were in connection or in relations with him would not lose faith in the future life. The Son of God Himself, whom God the Father deigned to send to our earth, among other things, in order to teach us the truth (John 18:37), assured us in many different ways of the immortality of our soul and in the future life, for example, clearly saying: “the time is coming, and has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and having heard, they will live” (John 5:25); “for the time is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who have done good will come forth into the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil into the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28–29). “I am the resurrection and the life; He who believes in Me, even if he dies, will live. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” (John 11:25–26), etc. The holy apostles said the same thing. St. ap. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “Do not grieve as others who have no hope,” that is, the pagans (1 Thessalonians 4:13). On faith in the future life, the holy apostles based in their epistles all their admonitions, threats, consolations and encouragements for those to whom they wrote: thus, convinced of the truth of the future life, St. ap. Paul said about himself “I must live, O Christ; And even if you die, you have gain” (Phil. 1:21); “I have a desire to be resolved and to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). The holy apostles took as the starting point of their teaching about the afterlife the greatest of world-historical facts - the resurrection of Christ the Savior from the dead. This miracle of miracles forms the basis of all Christianity, standing and falling with it; All our hopes for eternal life after the general resurrection and destruction of our last enemy - death are based on it. “If it is preached about Christ that he rose from the dead,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, how do some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ has not risen, then our preaching is in vain, and so is your faith. At the same time, we would also turn out to be false witnesses about God, because we would testify about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if the dead do not rise. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ has not risen, then your faith is vain: you are still in your sins. Therefore those who died in Christ also perished. And if in this life only we hope in Christ, then we are the most miserable of all people. But Christ rose from the dead, the firstborn of those who died. For as death is through man, so through man is the resurrection from the dead. Just as in Adam all die, so in Christ all live... Just as we bore the image of the earthly (Adam), so will we bear the image of the heavenly” (Christ) (1 Cor. 15:12-22, 49). The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only the object of our living faith: it is at the same time the most reliable, most satisfactorily attested historical event. “Just as Christ is truly risen,” says the same famous Moscow High Hierarch Philaret, “so we too will truly be risen.” Christianity is the religion of the Risen One. Slaying death. Real death is only an inevitable transition to immortality, “what you sow will not come to life unless it dies” (1 Cor. 15:36). These words of the great apostle contain a beautiful analogy of human immortality, full of deep meaning, taken from natural life. Sown grains, rotting in the ground, retain their sprout incorruptible - the embryo of a future plant, completely similar to the one that produced it. This is not a simple transfer of life from one plant to another, but the complete preservation by the embryo of its life and its manifestation in a new form. The grain is a person in his current state, an individual, special being, distinguished by certain qualities, having his own personal life. But this creature dies, goes into the ground, is sown like grain. Does it die without a trace, rotting, decomposing into its component parts? No! Just as a grain will appear as a beautiful plant, which is not different from the grain thrown into the ground, but is the same grain that rotted in the ground, so a person who has decayed in the ground will turn into a beautiful being, with a new spiritual body, but not different from the person who died - he will be the same person, only becoming incorruptible 48 . Finally, there is experimental proof of the reality of the existence of the afterlife - the appearance of the souls of dead people. These examples should already be fairly familiar to readers. Tertullnan (De anima, cap IX: Migne, s. l. t. II, col. 661) notes that the soul behind the grave has the image of the body with which it was dressed. Also Irenaeus (“Against Heresies,” book 2, chapter XXXIV, 1). Origen strongly argued that the soul after death is clothed with a certain body, which it retains until the resurrection (Eragmenta ex libris de resurreclionë Migne, s. sr., t. XI, col. 96). “Thoughts about the immortality of the soul and the future. Sunday Dead", see Dyachenko Ave.: "Lessons and examples of Christ. Hopes", page 629. You might be interested in: