Judgment

WENDY PAULA NICHOLSON

Orthodoxy teaches two judgments: “partic­ular” and “general” or “Last Judgment.” Particular judgment occurs immediately after death (Lk. 16.19–31; 23.43) The newly departed experience either a foretaste of the eternal blessedness promised to the righteous at the Last Judgment, or a foretaste of punishment if there has been incomplete or no repentance of sin before death.

Plate 38 The western outside wall of the 16th- century church at Voronets, Romania, depicting the Doomsday. The golden gate depicts the entrance to Paradise guarded by an Archangel. Photo by John McGuckin.

The Last Judgment will occur at the second, glorious coming of Christ, when he will resurrect the dead. The effect of this judgment will be eternal.

The subject of judgment is not limited to these two critical moments, but is pervasive in Orthodox thought, finding its strongest expression in the ascetical writings. There are two notable features, which appear, at first, contradictory. The first is the insis­tence that God’s judgments are designed for healing and regeneration, not for retri­bution: He takes “no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn back from his way and live” (Ezek. 33.11, cf. St. Basil the Great 1987: 338). The second is the call frequently to bring to mind death and judgment. Liturgically and iconographically, judgment is remem­bered in vivid scriptural images of hell-fire, punishment, and eternal torment (Ware 1984: 150–67).

The first feature, merciful judgment, corresponds to healing and deification at the heart of Orthodox soteriology, as opposed to the idea of Christ’s appeasement of the wrath of God, which came to domi­nate western theology and was built largely upon the Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin. According to Augustine of Hippo, the human being, from conception, is so corrupted that he has no freedom with respect to God or his salvation (St. Augustine 1993a: 247). In Orthodoxy, conversely, “it is not God who punishes, but a person who punishes himself because he does not accept God’s gift” (Hierotheos 2000: 252). Christ is hardly envisioned as passing judgment upon the sinner. Judg­ment is generally regarded as occurring in the actual encounter of the unrepentant sinner with Christ, and is thus always an essential element of the divine-human relationship. Every word of God will be experienced as judgment by those living in opposition to the “Truth and the Life” (Jn. 14.6). It is in this sense that Christ, the incarnate Word, is the one entrusted by the Father with all judgment (Jn. 12.46–50).

God’s judgment upon the fallen Adam is believed to have issued conditions under which human beings can realize their sick­ness, turn, and be healed. The idea of future retribution is rejected as unworthy of God in the Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian:

It is not the way of the Compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out ... and whom nonetheless He created. (Isaac of Nineveh 1995: 165)

“Fire” in the biblical judgment narratives is, in Orthodox theology, nothing other than the uncreated Light of God. To those who choose to share in this divine energy, it is an experience of love and overflowing blessed­ness, but it is a dark and caustic bitterness to those who are not akin to it, on account of their conformity and blind attachment to the world (Symeon, n.d.: 45). The Ortho­dox believe that before the Last Judgment the soul can be purified of this attachment. This is a painful process only as long as the soul continues to cling to what cannot exist in the Kingdom of God:

The divine judgement... does not primarily bring about the punishment of sinners ... it operates only by separating good from evil and pulling the soul towards the fellowship of blessedness. It is the tearing apart of what has grown together which brings pain to the one who is being pulled. (St. Gregory Nyssa 1993: 84)

This is in contrast to the Latin doctrine of purgatory or punishment by a temporal fire created by God, which the Orthodox reject as error. Punishment by material fire after the particular judgment is clearly present in St. Augustine (St. Augustine 1993b: 461–4). The doctrine had been refuted by St. Mark of Ephesus at the Council of (Ferrara) Florence (1438–45), but a modified form of it was approved at the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) in the Confession of Dositheus. The extent to which this is the same as the western concept of purgatory is debatable, and it is generally interpreted as having been a dogmatic expression unduly influ­enced by western scholasticism.

The irrevocable nature of the Last Judgment in Orthodoxy maintains God’s beneficence versus mercilessness. God will not destroy human freedom even in eter­nity, and will allow those who turn against him to do so eternally. For this reason, Origen’s apokatastasis, the final restoration by which even the Devil has to be redeemed, was anathematized by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553.

The second feature of judgment in Orthodoxy, remembrance of death and the “dread judgment seat,” is primarily an ascetic practice, attesting to the infinite blessedness of fellowship with the Holy Trinity tasted by the saints before death, compared with the desolation ofits absence. In recent times this is found in the writings of St. Silouan of Athos (d. 1938), where its philanthropic power is manifest. St. Silouan describes how knowledge of God by the Holy Spirit inspires one to pity and pray with tears “more especially for those who do not know God, or who resist Him and therefore are bound for the fire of torment” (Sophrony 1991: 352). Our judgment of others is therefore irreconcilable with the Holy Spirit, who imparts God’s universal love to the humble so that they may participate in the salvation of souls. By vol­untarily accepting judgment upon oneself alone, following Christ’s humble descent even to hell, one is also joined with him in his victory over death. The teaching “keep thy mind in hell, and despair not” (Sophrony 1991: 298, 430f.), which Christ imparted to St. Silouan, is, for the ascetic, a way of maintaining humility.

SEE ALSO: Eschatology; Grace; St. Isaac the Syrian (7th c.); St. Mark of Ephesus (1392–1445); St. Silouan of Athos (1866–1938); Soteriology

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Augustine, St. (1993a) Enchiridion. Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers Vol. 3.

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Augustine, St. (1993b) City of God. Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers Vol. 2.

Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Basil the Great, St. (1987) Pre-communion Prayer. Prayer Book for Orthodox Christians. Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery.

Gregory of Nyssa, St. (1993) On the Soul and Resurrection. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Hierotheos Metropolitan of Nafpaktos (2000) Life after Death, trans. E. Williams. Levadia-Hellas, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery.

Isaac of Nineveh (1995) The Second Part, trans. S. Brock. Louvain: Peeters.

Sophrony, Archimandrite (Sakharov) (1991) Saint Silouan the Athonite, trans. R. Edmonds. Maldon, UK: Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist.

Symeon, Archimandrite (n.d.) “L’enfer, chemin vers Royaume,” in Buisson ardent. Paris: Le Sel de la Terre.

Ware, Archimandrite Kallistos and Mother Mary (trans.) (1984) The Lenten Triodion: Texts for The Sunday of Last Judgement. London: Faber and Faber.