| John Anthony McGuckin Death (and Funeral) PERRY T. HAMALIS While death undeniably shapes Eastern Orthodoxy’s worldview, Orthodox Christians understand and respond to this phenomenon in a way that is complex, affirming both sharply negative and positive assessments of human death. On the one hand, death is not from God (Wis. 1.13), human beings were created in order that they should live, not die ( Ezek. 33.11 ), death enters the world through humanity’s sin ( Rom. 5.12 ), and the New Jerusalem is characterized by the absence of death (Rev. 21.4). Reflecting these beliefs, death is described variouslybyOrthodoxvoices as “the enemy,” “a painful metaphysical catastrophe,” “a deep tragedy,” and “a failure of human destiny” (Florovsky 1976). It is “foreign,” “unnatural,” and “perverted” (Schmemann 2003). Death grounds an existential condition that is “profoundly abnormal,” “monstrous,” and “distorted” (Ware 2000), as anyone who has lost a loved one can attest (Hamalis 2008). It follows that, for the Orthodox, God’s saving action through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection is, first and foremost, victory over death. On Easter and throughout the paschal season the Orthodox proclaim joyously and repeatedly, “Christ is risen from the dead! And death by his death is trampled. And to those in the tombs he is granting life.” Yet Orthodoxy also sees in death both God’s mercy and the means through which the faithful participate in Christ’s victorious resurrection. Death reveals God’s mercy insofar as it limits the fallen condition of creation and prevents human beings’ earthly sufferings from becoming a condition of everlasting torment. Furthermore, death is the mystery through which resurrection in Christ can be experienced ( Rom. 6.3–11 ). Recalling the paschal hymn mentioned above, for the Orthodox it is “by his death” that Christ’s victory was achieved, and it is both by dying with Christ through baptism and by ascetically dying to the passions that the faithful are themselves resurrected (Col. 2–3). In these ways, death is also a blessing – even a sacrament – within Orthodoxy’s worldview (Bobrinskoy 1984; Vassiliades 1993; Behr 2006). |
| Archpastoral Greetings with the Resurrection of Christ 2015, from Constantinople and Beyond By God’s Mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch To the Plenitude of the Church Grace, Peace and Mercy from Christ, who has Risen in Glory Brother concelebrants and beloved children in the Lord, Christ is Risen! All Orthodox Christians once again this year joyously celebrate The Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and chant: “We celebrate the death of death, the destruction of Hades, and the beginning of another, eternal way of living. And so we jubilantly praise the Cause.” (Troparion from the Paschal Canon). Yet, while we gladly celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection as the reality of life and hope, all around us in the world, we can hear the cries and threats of death launched in many parts of the planet by those who believe that they can resolve human conflicts by destroying their enemies, which in itself constitutes the greatest proof of their weakness. For, by causing the death of another, by taking revenge on our neighbor, on whosoever differs from us, neither is the world improved nor are our problems solved. After all, as everyone – especially the intellectual people of all periods—admits and recognizes, evil is never overcome by evil, but always by good. Problems are genuinely resolved when we acknowledge and acclaim the value of every human person and when we respect their rights. By contrast, all kinds of problems are created and exacerbated when we despise human beings and violate their rights, especially when it comes to the vulnerable, who must feel secure, while the powerful must be just in order for peace to exist. Therefore, Christ arose from the dead and demonstrated in this way as well the inability of death to prevail and bring about any stable change in the world. The various situations caused by death can be reversed because, despite how things appear, they are always temporary, having no root or vitality, whereas Christ, who has forever conquered death, is invisibly always present. |
| Annotation The spiritual realm after death defies observation, yet mankind persists in its desire to peer beyond this threshold – a threshold through which we all must pass. “You will not die. Your body will die, but you will go over into a different world, being alive, remembering yourself and recognizing the whole world that surrounds you.” – St. Theophan the Recluse, 19th Century THE SOUL AFTER DEATH is a comprehensive presentation of the 2,000-year-old experience of Orthodox Christianity regarding the existence of the other world, addressing contemporary “after-death” and “out-of-body” experiences, the teachings of traditional Oriental religions and those of more recent occult societies. Although the mystery of what lies beyond the veil of death is not fully visible to us in this life, nonetheless, writings and teachings of ancient Christianity dating from the first century have proven timeless and straightforward, yielding sound insights into the spiritual world beyond death. From the firm foundation of Orthodox patristic teaching, Fr. Seraphim Rose offers an interpretation of the meaning of the contemporary experiences which have been publicized by Drs. Kubler-Ross, Moody, Osis and Haraldsson, and other researchers. “He who has the memory of death as his constant companion, painfully seeks to learn what awaits him after departure from this life.” – St. Symeon the New Theologian, 11th Century Principal teachings of Orthodox Christianity concerning the properties of the soul after death are presented in a clear concise manner, as taught by Church fathers and teachers of the early centuries. THE SOUL AFTER DEATH offers an undiluted draught of pristine, mystical Christianity as it has existed since the time of Christ. Preface The aim of the present book is two-fold: first, to give an explanation, in terms of the Orthodox Christian doctrine of life after death, of the present-day “after-death” experiences that have caused such interest in some religious and scientific circles; and second, to present the basic sources and texts which contain the Orthodox teaching on life after death. If the Orthodox teaching is so little understood today, it is largely because these texts have been so neglected and have become so “unfashionable” in our “enlightened” times; and our attempt has been to make these texts more understandable and accessible to present-day readers. Needless to say, they constitute a reading material infinitely more profound and more profitable than the popular “after-death” books of our day, which, even when they are not merely sensational, simply cannot go much below the spectacular surface of today’s experiences for want of a coherent and true teaching on the whole subject of life after death. |
| In truth God as a man was born on earth! Why? That we might live through him (1 John 4:9). For without the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, human life is wholly and completely a suicidal absurdity, and death is truly the most outright and horrible absurdity on earth. To comprehend death means comprehending life in all its depth, height, and limitlessness. This can only be done by the All-man-loving Lord, Who by His immeasurable love becomes man and forever remains the God-man in the human world. Only as God-life, life in God, can human life acquire its eternal meaning. But outside of God, life is the most ridiculous absurdity, filled with offense and bitterness. Your life, O man, can find its only reasonable, rational, logical meaning in God alone. And your thought, brother, your human thought finds its divine and immortal meaning only in God, only as God-thought. Human thought only becomes God-thought in the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the same with your senses, O man—only in God do they find their divine, immortal meaning. Without this, your senses are your most merciless torturers, continually crucifying you on an eternal cross, after which there is no resurrection. And the conscience? Where does this ferocious stranger come from in us, people? It too only unites with its divine and eternal meaning as God-conscience. Without this, human conscience is a ferocious and ghastly absurdity. And your death, and my death, and the death of all people—isn’t it the cruelest torture for human beings throughout the world? Yes, it truly is. But it too, only as the death of the God-man, gains its eternal meaning through the resurrection of the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ; for through Him and only through Him does victory over death happen and death in the human world can be comprehended. Thus also everything human, the entire human with all his innumerable infinities, only as the grace-filled God-man in the deified and all-vivifying Body of the God-man Christ—the Church—gains his divine, eternal, God-human, and higher meaning. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Baptism SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY Baptism is the first sacrament of the Orthodox Church. In the Early Christian centuries this mystery was known under various names, including “the washing of regeneration,” Illumination (photismos) and “the sacrament of water.” In Christianity baptism is also considered the most important sacrament of the church, as it initiates one into mystical communion with Christ. Therefore, it is also called “the door” that leads peoples into the Christian Church. Baptism completely releases the believer from ancestral sin and personal sins committed up until that time. It is rebirth into new life, justification, and restoration of communion with God. The theological significance of baptism in Orthodox Christianity is summed up in its primary sacramental symbols: water, oil, and sacred chrism. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann noted, water is the most ancient and universal of religious symbols. It has multiple, in some cases contradictory, scriptural significations attached to it. On the one hand, it is the principle of life, the primal matter of the world, a biblical symbol of the Divine Spirit ( Jn. 4.10–14; 7.38–39 ); on the other, it is a symbol of destruction and death (the Flood, the drowning of the pharaoh), and of the irrational and demonic powers of the world (as in the icon of Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan). Sacramentally, the use of water symbolizes purification, regeneration, and renewal. It has an extraordinary significance in the Creation narrative of the Old Testament, and is also a key symbol in the Exodus story. In the New Testament it is associated with St. John the Baptist and his washing of repentance and forgiveness. These three biblical types are combined powerfully in the Orthodox ritual of baptism. In Christianity water became a symbol that incorporated the entire content of the Christian faith. It stands for creation, fall, redemption, life, death, and resurrection. St. Paul the Apostle in his Epistle to the Romans (6.3–11) gives a foundational account of this mystical symbolism. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his 4th-century homilies on the “awe-inspiring rites of initiation” (Mystagogic Catecheses) described what takes place during baptism as “an iconic imitation” of Christ’s sufferings, death, and resurrection that constitutes our true salvation. Thus, here a believer dies and rises again “after the pattern” of Christ " s death and resurrection. Death symbolizes sin, rejection of God, and the break of communion with God. Christ, however, destroyed death by removing sin and corruption. Here death becomes a passage into communion, love, and joy. Baptism dispenses divine grace which is given in the Spirit to humankind through Christ’s mediation. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Soteriology STEPHEN THOMAS The ecumenical councils of the Orthodox Church do not give a soteriology or doctrine of salvation, but offer rather a rich and exhaustive Christology. Nevertheless, there is a profound soteriology underlying the Christology which the fathers used to support it. The main idea of salvation found in the eastern fathers, as well as western fathers such as Pope St. Leo the Great of Rome, concerns the victory over death which Christ won, and the victory over all the morbid limitations which humanity has acquired though sin, the alienation from God. Orthodox soteriology is extremely hopeful because it thinks of salvation as a victory over the malicious powers exercised by the demons (Heb. 11.35). It has two elements, which complement one another: salvation is, firstly, therapy, and, secondly, deification or divinization. The victory motif dominates Orthodox liturgical texts, especially in the paschal liturgy. Continually repeated during the paschal season is the following poem: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the graves, bestowing life” (Pentekostarion 1990: 27). In Orthodox soteriology sin and death are personified as forces which belong to the sphere of the Devil and the demons, who, through divine respect to their freewill, are still active until the judgment. Christ’s voluntary sacrifice on the cross brought the depths of suffering into intimate contact with the divine light, so that suffering could be transfigured and conquered. The victorious Christ descended to Hades, conquered the power of the Devil, and brought out the souls imprisoned there. While this idea is found in medieval Catholicism, in the form of the harrowing of hell, it is not as prominent as it is in the Orthodox services which accord to Holy Saturday an essential role in the process by which Christ saves humankind: “He quenched Death by being subdued by Death. He who came down into Hades despoiled Hades; And Hades was embittered when he tasted of Christ’s flesh” (Pentekostarion 1990: 37). |
| The story of Lazarus, which occurs before Christ’s suffering and death, specifically addresses the heart of the Church after Christ’s suffering and death. For though we rejoice in Christ’s death and resurrection, it is our dead brother (mother, father, sister, friend) who lies heavy on our hearts. St. John’s Gospel records the story of Christ’s raising Lazarus from the dead as the last action of Christ before His entry into Jerusalem. That setting has given rise to the feast of Lazarus Saturday in the Orthodox Church – a small Pascha before Holy Week. The three synoptic gospels make no mention of these events, to which I draw no historical conclusions. The gospels include and exclude events for many reasons, historical considerations seeming to be of the least importance. Which stories, and in what order, primarily serve deeper theological concerns. For St. John, the story of Lazarus serves as the occasion for commentary and teaching on the resurrection of believers, much like the Feeding of the Five Thousand serves for commentary and teaching on the Eucharist. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” (Martha’s words) echoes the universal voice of the Church in the face of Christ’s delayed Second Coming. It is the plaintive heart of believers who wonder why God allows suffering. And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?” (Joh 11:37) It is an obvious question, repeated in various forms by believers as well as scoffers through the centuries. The story of Lazarus, which occurs before Christ’s suffering and death, specifically addresses the heart of the Church after Christ’s suffering and death. For though we rejoice in Christ’s death and resurrection, it is our dead brother (mother, father, sister, friend) who lies heavy on our hearts. “Your brother will rise again.” These words of Christ, like a statement of Church doctrine, bring little comfort to someone stuck in their grief. It is Christ’s affirmation, “I am the resurrection and the life,” that sums up the encounter. The people do not understand, not even when Lazarus is raised from the dead. That Christ Himself is the resurrection and the life does not become clear until His own resurrection. |
| Photo: romfea.gr Each week during Lent, as you know, I’ve been writing about the rich depth of our Orthodox spirituality. A few weeks ago, I talked about how fasting opens us up to others ( click here ), and, last week, I spoke about how confession allows us to experience God’s loving mercy ( click here ). But, the mystery, par excellence , is communion! If, as Orthodox Christians, we understand salvation as union with God (theosis or deification), then communion is the pinnacle of our spirituality! The word says it all—”communion” is a Latin word that means, “fellowship, mutual participation, or sharing.” When we commune, we take Christ into ourselves and we are transformed into the Body of Christ. Or, to put it another way, we find union with Christ and begin to share in his life. Sometimes, people ask me: “What’s the gospel … the Good News?” What it isn’t, is just an ethical system. It’s much more than that. The Good News is actually the proclamation of Christ’s triumph over death, which leads to the transformation of the world: new creation. This, brothers and sisters, is what we call the Kingdom of God. If God had a “mission statement” it would probably be something like: To destroy death by death so that everyone may experience new creation in the form of resurrection! Communion, therefore, is an opportunity to step forward and embrace God’s vision of new creation, to experience a foretaste of God’s new world. If we hold back, we’re not only excommunicating ourselves from God (yikes!), but we’re saying “no” to the Kingdom. In other words, we’ve excluded ourselves from the grand vision God has planned out for us. (F.Y.I., if a priest serves Divine Liturgy and doesn’t take communion, he is defrocked! And, isn’t the priest an example—though flawed by his own unworthiness—for us all?) Yes, the spiritual life begins with a change of heart (μετνοια or repentance, which finds it’s pinnacle in confession), but it is sustained through a regular encounter with Christ when we commune at the Heavenly Banquet (another name for the Divine Liturgy). |
| John Anthony McGuckin Resurrection THEODORE G. STYLIANOPOULOS Belief in resurrection, and specifically resurrection from the dead, is a distinct biblical teaching that derives from Judaism and finds its full significance in the person and life of Jesus of Nazareth, historically proclaimed to have died, been buried, and risen from the dead. Much more so than in Judaism, resurrection is absolutely central to Christianity ( 1Cor. 15.12–19 ), especially Eastern Christianity, because the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ constitute the foundational saving events, and the core of the gospel, which lie behind the birth and character of the church, the New Testament, and Christian theology and spirituality. While resurrection is chiefly tied to the resurrection of Jesus and to the hope of the resurrection of the dead at his glorious return, the term also carries diverse metaphorical meanings such as the historical restoration of a people, life after death, immortality of the soul, and even an experience of spiritual renewal in this present life. In ancient paganism the theme of resurrection was connected not to a historical person or historical event, but rather to mythological deities such as Isis and Osiris whose cult celebrated the annual rebirth of nature and the power of fertility, a phenomenon that scholarship has widely judged to be entirely different from the Christian understanding in origin, scope, and meaning. In the Old Testament the focus was on this present order of life, the main arena of God’s blessings and chastisements. Existence after death was viewed as virtual nonexistence, called Hades, a “land of forgetfulness,” a place of shades ( Ps. 88.10–12; 87.11–13 LXX), having no contact with the living and cut off from God himself ( Ps. 6.5; 6.6 LXX). Exceptionally, some righteous persons such as Enoch ( Gen. 5.24 ) and Elijah (2 Kings 2.11) escaped death not by resurrection but by direct transfer to heaven. In other rare cases, Elijah and Elishah revived dead children to ordinary life as apparent acts of healing (1 Kings 17.21–22; 2 Kings 4.34–5). Texts such as Hosea 6.1–3 and Ezekiel 37.1–14 look to the resurgence and restoration of Israel in space and time, although also easily seen by Christian interpreters as prophecies of the final resurrection of the dead. A singular text such as Isaiah 26.19 that foresees a resurrection of the dead is as rare as it is peripheral to classic Old Testament teaching. Regular belief in a future resurrection of the dead, especially of the righteous as reward for their persecution and martyrdom, developed among Jews after 200 bce and is attested notably in Daniel 12.1–3 and 2Maccabees 7.9, 22–9. By the time of Jesus, among other divergent views of the afterlife, this doctrine was firmly established among the Pharisees (in contrast to the Sadducees, Mk. 12.18 ) and subsequently became a key teaching of mainstream Christianity. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Christ JOHN A. MCGUCKIN The confession of the Christ by the Orthodox Church is inspired by the Spirit of God. Its acclamation of Jesus as Lord, Son of God, and Savior largely rises within and out of doxology (in which all the titles of acclamation are joined seamlessly so as to present varieties of “aspects” – epinoiai – on a mystery that transcends the limits of all titles and earthly words), but that confession is also present in the controversial refutation of those whom the Orthodox Church, throughout history, has withstood as falsifying his name and message with sectarian or heretical views. The first repository of the church’s confession of Christ is thus found in the Scriptures it prays from and the liturgical songs and texts it composes and sings from (its liturgical books); and the second is chiefly found in its doctrinal tradition, especially as preserved in the seven ecumenical councils which, taken together, constitute a monument of Orthodox Christology. This is the sacred Paradosis which the Lord has delivered to the Orthodox Church by the medium of the Spirit (as promised in Jn. 14.26; 15.26; 16.13–14 ), and which is marked by three distinctive characters: first, spiritual enlightenment and discernment; second, biblical rootedness; third, ecclesial conciliar consensus. The predominant “tone” of the evangelical picture of the Lord, which Orthodoxy has always closely adhered to, is one of Christ’s obedient confidence in God, culminating in the absolute trust of the Son who follows the path of ministry and service even to the point of the cross. The predominant tone of the apostolic letters, alongside the gospels, is one of triumphant victory: Christ the Lord of Life and Death. Both the confession of the Lord as Suffering Servant, and as Victor, are equally canticles of glory, and together make up the rich harmony of the whole New Testament corpus in terms of its “Song of Christ”; for this is a rich weave, rather than a simplistic or monolithic picture. For this reason Orthodoxy understands that the icon of the suffering and humiliated Lord which the gospels offer is no less glorious than the Savior who |
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