If we do not share St Isaac’s horror of an everlasting hell, then perhaps that says something very important about us. This, I suggest, is St Isaac’s unstated argument. It’s not just a matter of philosophical reasoning or biblical exegesis. Once one has experienced the extraordinary love and mercy of God, as Isaac had, once one has been drawn into the embrace of the Father through the Son in the Spirit, then one knows the truth—and thus one knows how to rightly interpret the Holy Scriptures and one knows how to rightly preach the gospel of Jesus Christ … and one knows the impossibility of eternal perdition.
But Isaac also believes that he is speaking from within the Holy Tradition of the Church. He is not presenting his readers with a doctrinal innovation. He is not teaching, he assures us, “things of which our former orthodox Fathers never spoke, as though we were bursting out with an opinion which did not accord with truth” (II.39.7). He invokes two respected Oriental Fathers specifically in support—Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of Tarsus. One quotation from Theodore is of particular interest:
In the world to come, those who have chosen here what is good, will receive the felicity of good things along with praise; whereas the wicked, who all their life have turned aside to evil deeds, once they have been set in order in their minds by punishments and the fear of them, choose the good, having come to learn how much they have sinned, and that they have persevered in doing evil things and not good; by means of all this they receive a knowledge of religion’s excellent teaching, and are educated so as to hold on to it with a good will, and so eventually they are held worthy of the felicity of divine munificence. For Christ would never have said “Until you pay the last farthing” unless it had been possible for us to be freed from our sins once we had recompensed for them through punishments. Nor would He have said “He will be beaten with many stripes” and “He will be beaten with few stripes” if it were not the case that the punishments measured out in correspondence to the sins, were finally going to have an end. (II.39.8)
Clearly Theodore does not understand repentance and purification as being impossible after death. He declares the hope and expectation that the wicked will eventually come to see the gravity of their sin and choose the good—and thus be saved. Divine punishment is educative and of limited duration.
St Isaac presents us with a simple choice—the punishment of Gehenna is either retributive or remedial, punitive or medicinal. If the former, then God, and we, are trapped in the past; if the latter, then God, and we, are open to a future beyond our imaginings:
So then, let us not attribute to God’s actions and His dealings with us any idea of requital. Rather, we should speak of fatherly provision, a wise dispensation, a perfect will which is concerned with our good, and complete love. If it is a case of love, then it is not one of requital; and if it is a case of requital, then it is not one of love. Love, when it operates, is not concerned with the requiting of former things by means of its own good deeds or correction; rather, it looks to what is most advantageous in the future: it examines what is to come, and not things that are past. (II.39.18)
Isaac’s eschatology is soundly biblical and must be distinguished from the Origenist construals of apocatastasis that were condemned in the sixth century.
In light of our reading of the eschatological homilies, the oft-quoted famous words of St Isaac of the scourging of the “scourge of love” take on a very different meaning. Read the passage yet once again:
I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. For what is so bitter and vehement as the punishment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is sharper than any torment that can be. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways: it torments those who have played the fool, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability. (I.28, p. 266)
The scourging of the “scourge of love” is nothing less than God’s work of purification in the hearts of the wicked. The chastisement that God imposes in hell is educative, remedial, and reparative. God scourges in order to bring the damned to salvation, to bring them into a knowledge both of his mercy and of their sin and its terrible consequences for themselves and for God’s creation. Even Gehenna falls into God’s redemptive purposes. Its purpose is to eventually create within the hearts of the condemned the stirrings of faith and repentance, thus allowing them to experience God precisely as love and not as torture. Only thus are the sufferings and anguish of the damned, caused by the inescapable presence of Love, morally tolerable.
St Isaac would emphatically reject any suggestion that the damned are beyond redemption. God would never have created a cosmos whose history would conclude, even for a small portion of those he has brought into being, with Gehenna. And it is unthinkable that he would have so constructed the after-life that the wicked would be incapable of turning their hearts to Christ and appealing to his forgiveness. The Lord’s face is set “all the time towards forgiveness” (II.40.13). His grace is like an ocean that knows no measure.
Here is where philosophy ends and mystery begins. Philosophers tell us that God so values human (libertarian) freedom that an eternal populated hell must remain a possibility, if not a definite certainty. Every human being is given an opportunity to definitively accept or reject God, and God will respect this choice, even if it means the individual’s suffering and destruction (see, for example, The Problem of Hell by Jonathan L. Kvanig and Hell: The Logic of Damnation by Jerry L. Walls). This has become the ecumenical justification for everlasting perdition. Freedom ultimately triumphs over Love. But the Syrian mystic refuses to be trapped by this philosophical problem, for the God who rose from the dead on Easter morning is not trapped by it:
Accordingly we say that, even in the matter of the afflictions and sentence of Gehenna, there is some hidden mystery, whereby the wise Maker has taken as a starting point for its future outcome the wickedness of our actions and wilfulness, using it as a way of bringing to perfection His dispensation wherein lies the teaching which makes wise, and the advantage beyond description, hidden from both angels and human beings, hidden too from those who are being chastised, whether they be demons or human beings, hidden for as long as the ordained period of time holds sway. (II.39.20)
Gehenna will end. Through his goodness and beauty God will overcome evil. The damned will be saved, not by force or coercion, but by the chastisement of love that will ultimately bring them to the true understanding of the happiness they have always hoped and dreamed for. St Isaac does not speculate further. He simply presents us with the confident hope that the infinitely wise and good God will restore and consummate his creation in Love.
In his essay “Universalism of Salvation: St Isaac the Syrian,” Catholic theologian Waclaw Hryniewicz summarizes St Isaac’s understanding of apocatastasis in these words:
In the sufferings of Gehenna Isaac perceives a hidden mystery. Gehenna has no sense in itself. The wise Creator knew that it would disclose its purpose in the future. Iniquity and willfulness of rational creatures will not remain in them for ever in the state called Gehenna. God is able to carry out His work to the very end. The mystery of Gehenna remains provisionally hidden before humans, angels and demons. …
Isaac belongs to those Christian mystics who do not exaggerate the power of evil. In his eyes human sin is infinitely small in comparison with the infinite mercy of God. The torments of Gehenna are caused by self-exclusion from the great feast in the Kingdom of heaven, by a person’s inability to participate in the love of God. Yet they will come to an end, although here on earth we do not know when it will take place. Gehenna is a consequence of sin which also will have its end. If God punishes, He does it out of love, in order to heal a sick freedom of rational creatures. Sinners in Gehenna are not deprived of the compassionate love of God. The purpose of punishment is change for the better, purification and conversion. The punishment ceases when this purpose is achieved. The sinners are not deprived of God’s love even in their infernal state. They can always count on His help. God’s justice and mercy are inseparable. He awaits with love all His creatures at the end of their purification. If evil, sin and Gehenna do not have their origins in God, how can they be eternal? …
According to Isaac, Gehenna can only be temporary and provisional, permeated by God’s love and mercy. He would not allow a punishment which would deny His own nature. The punishment has a therapeutic and correctional meaning. It is always connected with His “compassionate intentions and purpose” to set us on the upright path, and not to bring us to perdition. Gehenna’s torment is “a matter of immense and ineffable compassion.” It must have its end and achieve its purpose. For this reason it is subject to a limit. It is not for eternity and will last only for a fixed period, decreed by God’s wisdom. The punishments, measured out in correspondence to the sins, are finally going to have an end. The eternal punishment would be a monstrous reality unworthy of God. Who thinks otherwise has not overcome an”infantile way of thinking,” “the childish opinion of God.” (The Challenge of Hope, pp. 82-83)
Hilarion Alfeyev describes Isaac’s vision of Gehenna as akin to the Catholic doctrine of purgatory: “Gehenna is a sort of purgatory rather than hell: it is conceived and established for the salvation of both human beings and angels. However, this true aim of Gehenna is hidden from those who are chastised in it, and will be revealed only after Gehenna is abolished. According to Isaac, all those who have fallen away from God will eventually return to Him because of the temporary and short torment in Gehenna that is prepared for them in order that they purify themselves through the fire of suffering and repentance.” It is unclear to me why Isaac believes that the true aim of hell, namely, salvation, will be hidden from the wicked. How does this not lead to a despair that makes repentance impossible? But perhaps even ultimate despair can become the occasion of total surrender to God.
Speaking about this stuff and speculating upon it brings a sort of fear to me, and rightly so, for it can swerve into heresy fairly simply; yet there is something so hopeful in the idea that it must be spoken about, aloud and shared.
The Catholic Church has declared Universalism a heresy, yet the full definition of Universalism includes an important logical clause, “that we know that all men will be saved.” The Church wishes to say that it is a possibility that all will be saved, but we cannot yet know it for it is outside of current revelation. The Church has, in fact, never declared anyone to be in hell, only some saints have written upon certain visions and experiences they’ve had with particularities in hell.
So this is why I personally find St. Isaac’s writings so special that it fills one with a sense of light illumined by hope; that there is a purpose even in Gehenna, even in hell, though it is hidden from us, wicked and righteous alike; thus Gehenna, for creatures in their limitedness, is eternal and cannot be explained any other way, though not in God’s eyes, the master of eternity, whose throne has been set in eternity for and through all ages and beyond ages. “In the sufferings of Gehenna Isaac perceives a hidden mystery. Gehenna has no sense in itself. The wise Creator knew that it would disclose its purpose in the future. Iniquity and willfulness of rational creatures will not remain in them for ever in the state called Gehenna. God is able to carry out His work to the very end. The mystery of Gehenna remains provisionally hidden before humans, angels and demons. …”
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