Timeline: Hell as the Experience of God’s Love

 

 

Timeline: Hell as the Experience of God’s Love

 

Century	Figure	Key Teaching on Hell
2nd c.	Irenaeus of Lyons	Separation from God = death; punishment arises from refusal of Life, not divine cruelty.
2nd–3rd c.	Clement of Alexandria	Punishment is medicinal and corrective; God acts as teacher/physician, not avenger.
3rd c.	Origen of Alexandria	Divine fire is spiritual, exposing sin; souls punish themselves by resisting divine reality.
4th c.	Basil the Great	God remains good; suffering results from human opposition to divine goodness; fire = God revealed.
	Gregory of Nazianzus	Divine light illuminates saints, burns sinners; God’s presence is the measure of judgment.
	Gregory of Nyssa	The same divine light that glorifies saints torments the unrighteous; suffering comes from resistance to God.
7th c.	Isaac of Nineveh	Explicit: “The punishment of hell is the scourge of God’s love.” God never ceases loving; torment is inability to receive love.
7th–8th c.	Maximus the Confessor	Judgment reveals spiritual state; God’s energies save or burn depending on human disposition.
8th c.	John of Damascus	God’s love remains unchanged; heaven/hell = different reception of divine energies.
14th c.	Gregory Palamas	Theology of uncreated energies: the same divine light is bliss for the purified, fire for the unrepentant.
20th c. (Orthodox)	Vladimir Lossky	Fire of hell = divine love; God’s presence is experienced as bliss or torment depending on spiritual state.
	Georges Florovsky	Judgment reveals spiritual condition; salvation = participation in divine life; God’s love never ceases.
	John Romanides	Heaven and hell = encounter with God’s glory; spiritual illness determines experience.
	Kallistos Ware	Same as Lossky; divine love is joy or torment according to human openness.
20th c. (Catholic)	Hans Urs von Balthasar	God’s love offered to all; hell = self-exclusion from love; suffering arises from refusal of God.
	Karl Rahner	Hell = existential state of final rejection of God; judgment = ratification of human freedom.
	Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI)	Hell = interior isolation; self-imposed inability to receive God’s love; not a place of punitive vengeance.
	Henri de Lubac	Separation from God = tragedy; punishment = consequence of refusal to participate in divine communion.

 

Observations from the Timeline

1. Continuity: From Irenaeus → Cappadocians → Isaac → Palamas → modern Orthodox and Catholic theologians.       

 

2. Core Idea: Hell is the experience of divine love or presence, not divine vengeance.      

 

3. Development: Early hints in 2nd–3rd centuries → clearer articulation in 4th–8th centuries → precise synthesis in Palamas → 20th-century revival.     

 

4. Western Convergence: Modern Catholic theologians like Balthasar and Rahner independently rediscovered what the Greek Fathers taught centuries earlier. 

 

Loss of Greek Patristic Continuity in the West

Everything changes with Augustine of Hippo.

Because of:

• his intellectual brilliance,

• the collapse of the Western Roman Empire,

• and the decline of Greek learning in the Latin West,

Augustine became the primary theological authority for medieval Western Christianity.

His framework emphasized:

• inherited guilt,

• divine justice,

• legal judgment,

• punishment as penalty.

Over centuries, this became the default Christian imagination in Western Europe.

 

After roughly the 6th century:

• fewer Western theologians could read Greek,

• Cappadocian and Eastern texts circulated less,

• theological development relied mainly on Latin sources.

So teachings associated with:

• Basil the Great

• Gregory the Theologian

• Gregory of Nyssa

became comparatively unfamiliar in Western theology.

 

A "pseudomorphosis" (or "Western Captivity") began in the

17th century where western influences trickled into Orthodox theology.

In the 20th century, both Orthodox and Catholic theologians independently returned to:

• Scripture,

• early patristic sources,

• pre-scholastic theology.
   

Two parallel renewals occurred:

Orthodox World	Catholic World
Neo-Patristic synthesis	Ressourcement movement
Florovsky, Lossky	de Lubac, Balthasar
Return to Cappadocians & Palamas	Return to early Fathers

Both rediscovered older Christian ways of understanding judgment.

  

Venerable Father Ephraim of Katounakia in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Venerable Ephraim of Katounakia was born in 1912 in Ampelochori of Thebes. His father was named Ioannis Papanikitas and his mother Victoria. The Elder’s secular name was Evangelos. He completed secondary school, yet the grace of God closed before him every path toward worldly advancement.

In Thebes, where his family later moved, Evangelos met his future elders, Ephraim and Nikephoros. Even before becoming a monk his life was already monastic; while still living in the world he struggled spiritually, practicing the Jesus Prayer, prostrations, fasting, and above all obedience. His deeply devout mother was granted assurance from Saint Ephraim the Syrian that her son’s desire to become a monk was also the will of God and that Evangelos would honor the monastic life.

Indeed, on September 14, 1933, Evangelos left the world and came to the desert of Mount Athos, to Katounakia, at the hesychasterion dedicated to Saint Ephraim the Syrian, placing himself in obedience under the Elders Ephraim and Nikephoros. After his trial period he was tonsured a monk of the Small Schema with the name Longinos. Two years later he received the Great Schema from his Elder Nikephoros and was given the name Ephraim. The following year he was ordained a priest.

Confession on Friday of the First Week of Great Lent (St. Sergius Mechev)

Confession on Friday of the First Week of Great Lent 

By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

I think our main misfortune is that we consider confession to be merely an obligation performed once a year. Then we fast, confess, feel relieved — and this divine lightness we wrongly reduce to simple emotional relief, an ordinary human feeling. We feel lighter — and that seems to be enough.

But is repentance given only so that we may feel better?

We must understand that confession is the means given by God for the ordering of our spiritual life — for the transformation of our entire existence. Otherwise repentance becomes fruitless. Repentance is a great mystery, yet we turn it into nothing more than a pleasant emotional experience.

The Holy Fathers teach that true repentance begins from the very moment you have confessed. The priest prays over the penitent that the Lord may grant him the image of repentance:

“Have mercy, O Lord, upon Your servant, and grant him the image of repentance.”

But why do we ask this, if the person has already confessed and repented?

Because from that moment — from confession, the forgiveness of sins, and union with the Holy Body and Blood — repentance in life truly begins. That is real repentance.

Homily on the Fall (Fr. Daniel Sysoev)

Homily on the Fall 

By Fr. Daniel Sysoev

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

After the Fall, Adam attempts to deceive God; he desires to become a god himself. When a man begins to sin, it becomes exceedingly difficult for him to stop. Therefore one must never say: “I will sin now and repent later.” For it is by no means certain that repentance will follow. Sin carries a man away, as it carried Adam away.

And do you know how far Adam was carried?

To the very depths of hades itself, where Christ found him after His saving death upon the Cross.

God said to Adam:

“Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree whereof I commanded you that you should not eat?” (Gen. 3:11).

Thus Adam already regards God as an enemy; he is ashamed before God and fears Him. Even now many people perceive God in the same way — as some distant and terrible force: something exists, yet it would be better if that Something remained far away. For men fear God because they do not wish to repent. This disposition comes from that very moment of the Fall.

Homily on Paradise (Fr. Daniel Sysoev)

 

Homily on Paradise 

By Fr. Daniel Sysoev

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

On the fourth day of Great Lent we heard the narrative from the sacred book of the Old Testament concerning Paradise, into which the man fashioned from the dust of the earth was introduced.

This is the most detailed description of Paradise given in Holy Scripture — that ancient homeland of ours, our primordial fatherland, to which we long to return, knowing that through the hidden path of Holy Baptism access to it has now been opened for us. Because the Lord was born, the barrier standing between God and mankind has been destroyed.

Indeed, the description of holy Paradise, in which we were settled by God, ought to inspire us to enter upon the path of righteousness.

Homily on the Sixth and Seventh Days of the Creation of the World (Fr. Daniel Sysoev)

Homily on the Sixth and Seventh Days of the Creation of the World 

By Fr. Daniel Sysoev

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

We see how wisely the Church guides us, showing us in every detail and from every side the greatness of God. Today we conclude the account of how the world came into being. We shall speak about the sixth and the seventh days of Creation — about Friday, the day that completed all creation, and about Saturday, which received the name of the day of rest.

On the sixth day, when the beasts were created, the earth brought forth living creatures possessing sensation and movement, yet not endowed with reason. At this point, the Lord, as it were, pauses in speaking about the creation of the world and begins to take counsel with Himself. Why?

Because the Lord resolved to create an astonishing and inconceivable union. He decided to unite two universes: the visible, material world and the world not perceived by the senses — the invisible or intelligible world. God resolved to bind these two worlds together by creating a flesh-bearing, mammalian angel.

Saint Prokopios the Decapolite in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Saint Prokopios first followed the monastic life and practiced every form of ascetic discipline with great exactness. He completely purified himself from his passions, while he also reproved and abhorred all those who impiously denied the Incarnation of the Son and Word of God. Then, for the sake of his faith, he was scourged and was revealed as a great confessor; and after performing many miracles, he departed unto the Lord.

According to the hymnography of our Church, Saint Prokopios constitutes a confirmation of that which God granted to man from the very beginning of his creation: namely, that he was fashioned according to the image and likeness of God. Although man distorted this divine gift through his fall into sin — so that the image of God in man was darkened and the likeness lost — Saint Prokopios, like our other saints, made use of the supernatural coming of God as man in the person of Christ. Through this coming, Christ restored humanity to its original condition and even beyond it: He purified the image of God in man and reopened the prospect of attaining the likeness, that is, deification, which is now accomplished within the living Body of Christ, the Church.

Prologue in Sermons: February 27

What Benefit the Remembrance of Death Brings Us

February 27

(From the Teachings of Saint John Chrysostom on Death)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Both the word of God and the Holy Fathers teach us that reflection upon death brings great benefit to us. The wise Sirach says: “Remember your end, and you will never sin” (Sirach 7:36). Likewise, Saint John Chrysostom teaches: “Keep death always before your eyes; for by reflecting upon it, you will not sin.”

Thus teach both Holy Scripture and the Holy Father - but is this truly so?

Saint John Chrysostom says:

“I beseech you, brethren, continually keep death before your eyes! Reflecting upon it, you will not sin. For we do not know at what hour the Lord will come to judgment. Shall we appear before Him unprepared and uncleansed from sins?

The Life of Saint Porphyrios, Bishop of Gaza

Saint Porphyrios, Bishop of Gaza

By Aristeidis G. Theodoropoulos, Educator

The “initiate of the Lord and filled with divine zeal,” the God-appointed, compassion-loving and wonderworking Hierarch of Gaza.

Among the God-bearing hierarchs who shone in a manner worthy of God during the 4th–5th centuries A.D., a prominent place is held by the loving and wonderworking shepherd of the people of Gaza, Saint Porphyrios, commemorated by our Orthodox Church on February 26.

This venerable and illustrious native of Thessaloniki is hymned, among other titles, as “an imitator and equal of the Apostles,” as one “who practiced virtue with longing and despised gold for Christ’s sake,” and as “the bulwark of the orthodox dogmas and the downfall of idol-worshippers.”

This most wise hierarch of Christ distinguished himself through simplicity, humility, meekness, freedom from resentment, chastity, compassion, tenderness of heart, and generosity in almsgiving, as well as through his ability to interpret difficult passages of Holy Scripture.