Translated From
Paul Evdokimov. L’amour fou de Dieu. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1973. pp 91-107.
1. Death
The silence of the dead weighs upon the living. Yet since Christ, death has become Christian; it is no longer an intruder, but the great initiator. “Queen of terrors,” according to Job, death halts habitual profanations and forgetfulness; it strikes with its irreversible event. It has no existence in itself; it is not life that is a phenomenon of death, but death that is a provisional phenomenon of life. Just as negation follows affirmation, it is a secondary and essentially parasitic phenomenon. After the rupture of the original balance, death becomes the “natural” destiny of “mortals,” while remaining contrary to nature — this explains the anguish of the dying. The gravity of the wound is measured by the power of the antidote. The injury is so deep, the affliction so virulent, that they require a truly divine therapy — hence the tragedy of the death of God and, following it, our own passage through the purification of death. The Incarnation of the Word is already the beginning of the Resurrection. The Word united Himself to a “dead” nature in order to vivify and heal it. “He took on a body capable of dying so that, suffering in it for all, He might render powerless the master of death.”1 He “approached death to the point of entering the state of a corpse, and thus provided nature with a point of departure for the resurrection.”2 He “destroyed the power of mortality.”3
The Bible teaches no natural immortality. The resurrection spoken of in the Gospel is not the survival of the soul, but the penetration of the whole human being by the life-giving energies of the divine Spirit. The Creed confesses it: “I await the resurrection of the dead,” and, “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” The saints embrace death with joy, in the exultation of being born into the world of God. Saint Seraphim of Sarov taught the “joyful dying.” That is why he greeted all with the Paschal salutation: “My joy, Christ is risen!”— death is no more, and life reigns. For Saint Gregory of Nyssa, death is a good thing; and Saint Paul declares in a striking vision: “All things are yours… whether life or death” (1 Corinthians 3:22); both alike are gifts of God, placed at man’s disposal.
By fully assuming it, man becomes the priest of his own death — he is what he makes of his death. The sacrament of anointing ushers him into this final priesthood, offering “the oil of gladness,” lifting the heart above the body in its agony. Diadochus notes that illnesses take the place of martyrdom. When, faced with the executioner whom death now replaces, a man can call death “our sister,” and confess the Creed, he anticipates and lives the reality of having passed from death to life. The great spiritual elders would sleep in their coffins as in a nuptial bed, showing a fraternal intimacy with death, which is but a final Paschal passage. If the wisdom of Plato teaches the art of dying, only the Christian faith teaches how to die in the Resurrection. For death is wholly within time — it lies behind us. Ahead lies what has already been lived in baptism: the “little resurrection”; and in the Eucharist: eternal life. “He that heareth my word… hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life” (John 5:24; cf. Colossians 2:12).
2. The Passage of Purification and the Celestial Waiting
Death is liturgically called a “dormition”: a part of the human being is in a state of sleep — namely, the psychic faculties bound to the body — while another part remains conscious: the psychic faculties connected to the spirit. Many passages in the New Testament clearly show that the dead retain full consciousness. Life, passing through death, continues — and this continuation justifies the liturgical prayer for the dead. If the existence between death and the final judgment may be called purgatory, this is not a place but an intermediate state.
The East teaches purification after death, not as a punishment to be served, but as a destiny embraced and lived through to the end, with the hope of progressive healing as its goal. The collective waiting of all the dead is creative because it is receptive.
The prayers of the living, the services of the Church, and the intercessory ministry of the angels take part in and continue the saving work of the Lord. It is not so much that guilt is punished as that nature is being restored — regaining its integrity and the “health” of the Kingdom. This explains the frequent image of the souls of the dead passing through “tollhouses” (τελωνεία), where demons claim what belongs to them, and where one is set free by retaining only what is the Lord’s. It is not a matter of tortures or flames, but of maturation through the stripping away of all defilement that burdens the spirit.
The Hebrew word for “eternity” comes from the verb עָלַם (ʿālam), which means “to hide.” God has wrapped the destiny beyond the grave in darkness; and this secrecy is not to be violated. Nevertheless, patristic thought clearly affirms that the time between death and judgment is not empty. As Saint Irenaeus says, the souls “mature.”4
Saint Ambrose speaks of the “heavenly place” where souls dwell. According to tradition, this is the “third heaven” of which Saint Paul speaks — the heaven of “unspeakable words” (2 Corinthians 12:2–4). It is clear that these are not spatial notions. This is symbolic language, and therefore mysterious by nature. The approaches to the Kingdom refer not to places, but to states and spiritual worlds. According to Saint Gregory of Nyssa, souls enter the intelligible world, the city of the celestial hierarchies above the heavens — that is, beyond all known dimensions. It is Eden transformed into the forecourt of the Kingdom, also called “Abraham’s bosom,” “a place of light, of refreshment, and of rest.”5
This ascent strips away the weight of evil, and purified souls rise from one dwelling to another (the mansiones of Ambrose), from one state to another. They are gradually initiated into the mystery of the beyond and draw nearer to the Lamb-Temple.6
Souls and angels enter into a preliminary intercommunion, and to the chant of the Sanctus they ascend together the courts of the “House of the Lord.” This is the sanctuary into which the Lord Himself has entered (Hebrews 9:24), where the “wounded friends of the Bridegroom” — the martyrs and saints — are gathered in the Communio Sanctorum, around the agapē-heart of the God-Man. It is the life of disembodied spirits, wrapped as in a mantle by the presence of Christ, whose glorified, light-radiating flesh compensates for the nakedness of the soul.
The senses, now interiorized within the spirit, perceive the heavenly realm.
This is an active waiting, in communion of prayer with the Church, robed in purple linen, the righteous deeds of the saints that follow them (Revelation 14:13; 19:8).
The verse, “I sleep, but my heart waketh” (Song of Songs 5:2), speaks of the watchful sleep of the “little resurrection.” While ascending the degrees, the souls await the “Day of the Lord.” This is the mystery of the entire Body, of the “sheaf of harvested wheat bound together,” for “there is but one Body that awaits perfect beatitude,”7 and only at that fullness does the abyss of the Father open. The gaze of all turns toward the formation of the Totus Christus — and the eschatological Advent opens out into the unique destiny of Man, restored in his entirety in Christ.
3. The End of the World
“The form of this world passeth away,” but “he that doeth the will of God abideth forever” (1 Corinthians 7:31; 1 John 2:17). There is that which disappears, and there is that which remains. The apocalyptic image speaks of fire that melts down and purifies matter, but this passage marks the ultimate threshold. There is a hiatus. The “last day” does not become a yesterday, and it will have no tomorrow; it will not be counted among the other days. The hand of God grasps the circle of phenomenal time and lifts it to a higher horizontal.8 This “day” closes historical time, but does not itself belong to time; it is not found on our calendars, and that is why it cannot be predicted.
“For the Lord, one day is as a thousand years” — this refers to incomparable measures or states of being. The transcendent character of the end makes it an object of revelation and of faith.
4. The Parousia and the Resurrection
The Parousia will make manifest to all the sudden and dazzling advent of Christ in His glory. But it will not be within history that the Parousia will be visible — it will be beyond history, which presupposes a transition to another aeon: “All shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51) — “Those who are alive, who remain, shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). According to Saint Paul, there is an energy in the seed-grain that God causes to rise again: “It is sown a natural [psychic] body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44), clothed in immortality and bearing the image of the heavenly. “All shall come forth at the call of the voice.” The eschatological texts bear a symbolic density that forbids all simplification — and especially any literal interpretation. Impotent speech gives way to images of a transcendent dimension for the world. The precise meaning utterly escapes us and invites us to “honor in silence” the reality of which it has been said: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
The resurrection is the final exaltation. The hand of God grasps His prey and lifts it into an unknown dimension. One can say, at most, that the spirit recovers the full integrity of the human being — soul and body preserved in the exact uniqueness of their identity. Saint Gregory of Nyssa speaks of the “seal,” the “imprint” which pertains to the form of the body (a function of the soul) and which will allow the familiar face to be recognized. The body will be like the risen body of Christ — that is to say, no longer subject to weight or impenetrability. The repelling energy that renders things opaque and impervious will give way to the sole energy of attraction and mutual interpenetration — of all and of each.
5. The Patristic Conception of Salvation as Healing
Jesus on the Cross said: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (St Luke 23:34). Not knowing what one is doing is characteristic of a sick person, the behavior of one driven mad — made deaf and blind.
In the light of the Bible, salvation has nothing juridical about it; it is not a courtroom sentence. In Hebrew, the word for salvation (יֵשַׁע, yēša’) means total deliverance;9 and in Greek, the adjective σῶος (sōos) corresponds to the Latin sanus and means to restore to health. The expression, “Your faith has saved you,” includes its synonym: “Your faith has healed you.” That is why the sacrament of confession is understood as a kind of spiritual clinic, and the Eucharist, according to Saint Ignatius of Antioch, is the remedy of immortality. The Council in Trullo (692) specified: “Those who have received from God the power to bind and loose shall behave like physicians, attentive to discovering the remedy that each penitent and his fault require,” for “sin is the sickness of the soul.” Jesus the Savior, in the view of the Fathers, is the Divine Healer, the Giver of health, saying: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (St Luke 5:31). A sinner is a sick person who does not recognize the malignant nature of his condition. His salvation would be the elimination of the seed of corruption and the unveiling of the light of Christ — a return to the normative state of nature, to its ontological health.
6. The Judgment
Saint Paul speaks of the capacity to see oneself “with unveiled face” — this is already the pre-judgment, and the final judgment will be the total vision of the whole of the human being. Simone Weil said profoundly : “The Father in Heaven does not judge... it is through Him that beings judge themselves.” According to the great spiritual writers, judgment is this revelation in the light — not of the threat of punishment, but of divine love. God is eternally the same: He is love. “Sinners in hell are not deprived of divine love,” says Saint Isaac, and it is the same love that, subjectively, “becomes suffering in the damned and joy in the blessed.”10 After the unveiling at the end of time, it will no longer be possible not to love Christ; but barrenness of heart, inward emptiness, render one incapable of responding to God’s love — and that is the unspeakable suffering of hell.11
The Gospel uses the image of the separation of the sheep and the goats. But there are no perfect saints — just as in every sinner, there are at least a few fragments of good.12 According to the Epistle to the Romans, the Law condemns both sin and the sinner together; its only victory over evil is the annihilation of the sinner. But Christ on the Cross separated sin from the sinner: He condemned and destroyed the power of sin, and He saved the sinner. In this light, the notion of judgment becomes interiorized; it is no longer a separation between persons, but a separation within each person. In that case, even the “second death” refers not to human beings themselves, but to the demonic elements they carry within them. This is the precise meaning of the image of fire: it is not torture or punishment, but purification and healing. The divine sword penetrates to the depths of the human being and reveals what was given by God as gift but was never received; it unveils the emptiness carved out by the refusal of love and the tragic dissimilarity between the image-as-call and the likeness-as-response. But the complexity of the mixture of good and evil during earthly life — described in the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24–30) — renders any juridical notion inoperative and places us before the greatest mystery of divine Wisdom: the convergence of justice and mercy. “At the evening of our life, we will be judged by love”13 — by what and whom we have loved on this earth.
7. The Descent Into Hell
The human fiat, proclaimed by the Virgin Mary on behalf of all humanity, requires the same freedom as God’s own creative fiat. And that is why God accepts being refused, ignored, and rejected by the revolt of His own creature. On the Cross, God against God has taken the side of man. Humanity, from Adam onward, has descended into Sheol — the shadowy abode of the dead. The Holy Saturday service proclaims: “You descended to the earth to save Adam, and not finding him there, O Master, you went to seek him even in the depths of hell.” It is there that Christ goes to seek him — bearing the weight of sin and the wounds of crucified Love, carrying the sacerdotal care of Christ-the-Priest for the destiny of those in hell.
If “the Kingdom of God is in the midst of you,” then hell is present there also. A whole part of the modern world, from which God is excluded, is already there. According to Saint John Chrysostom, baptism is not only dying and rising with Christ, but also descending into hell with Him. Unlike Dante — whom Péguy reproached for descending into hell “as a tourist” — every baptized person encounters Christ there, and this is the mission of the Church. God created man as another freedom, and the risk God took already foreshadows “the man of sorrows,” casts the shadow of the Cross; for according to the Fathers, “God can do all things — except force man to love Him.” In His waiting, God renounces His omnipotence — even His omniscience — and fully assumes His kenosis, under the form of the Lamb who was slain. His destiny among men is suspended on their fiat. He foresees the worst, and His love is only the more vigilant for it, for man can refuse God and build his life upon that refusal, upon his revolt. Which will prevail — love or freedom? Both are infinite, and hell bears this question in its burning flesh.
The common conception of eternal suffering is merely a scholastic opinion — a simplistic, “penitential” theology that neglects the depth of texts like St John 3:17 and 12:47. What is truly inconceivable is the idea that, alongside the eternity of the Kingdom, God would prepare an eternity of hell — that would be, in a certain sense, a failure of God and a partial victory for evil.
In former times, Saint Augustine denounced the “merciful” — those who, following Origen, advocated for the doctrine of universal salvation — because he wished to reject libertinism and misplaced sentimentality. But today, the pedagogical argument of fear is entirely ineffective. On the other hand, holy trembling before sacred things preserves the world from insipidity, and “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). To the personal opinion of Emperor Justinian (resembling the “righteous” of the Book of Jonah) stands opposed the doctrine of Saint Gregory of Nyssa,14 which has never been condemned. He speaks of the redemption even of the devil; Saint Gregory of Nazianzus15 mentions apokatastasis; and Saint Maximus the Confessor16 urges us to “honor it in silence,” for the spirit of the crowd is not capable of grasping the depth of such words, and it is unwise to open to the imprudent a glimpse into the abyss of mercy. According to Saint Anthony, apokatastasis is not a doctrine or the theme of a discourse, but a prayer for the salvation of all. Jesus the Savior — in Hebrew — means “Liberator,” and, as Clement of Alexandria magnificently says: “Just as the will of God is an act and is called the world, so His intention is salvation — and it is called the Church.”17 There is a sickness that must be healed, even if the remedy is the blood of God.
Without presuming anything, the Church entrusts itself to the philanthropy of the Father and redoubles its prayer for the living and for the dead. The greatest among the saints find the boldness and the charism to pray even for the demons. Perhaps the most fearsome weapon against the Evil One is precisely the prayer of a saint, and the destiny of hell may depend not only on the transcendent will of God but also on the charity of the saints. Every Orthodox believer, as he approaches the holy table, confesses: “I am the first among sinners,” which means the greatest, the “only sinner.” Saint Isaac observes: “He who sees his own sin is greater than he who raises the dead.” Such a vision of one’s own naked reality teaches that we may only speak of hell when it concerns us personally. My attitude must be to struggle against my own hell, which threatens me if I do not love others in order to save them. A very simple man once said to Saint Anthony: “When I look at the passersby, I say to myself, All will be saved—only I will be damned,” to which Saint Anthony replied: “Hell truly exists, but for me alone…” Recalling the formula of Saint Ambrose — “The same man is both condemned and saved,” one might say that the world in its entirety is also “both condemned and saved.” In this case, perhaps hell, in its condemnation, finds its own transcendence. It seems this is the meaning of the word Christ is said to have spoken to a contemporary starets, [Saint] Silouan of Athos: “Keep your spirit in hell, but do not despair…”
The East places no limit on the mercy of God, nor on the freedom of man to refuse that grace. But above all, it places no limit on the art of bearing witness, on inventive charity in the face of the infernal dimension of the world. Every baptized person is invisibly “stigmatized” — “Jesus is a wound from which one never heals,” said Ibn Arabi. It is this wound, suffered on behalf of the destiny of others, that adds something to the suffering of Christ, “who entered into agony until the end of the world.” To imitate Christ is to be conformed to the whole Christ; it is to descend after Him into the depths of the abyss of our world. Hell is nothing other than the autonomy of the rebellious man, who thereby excludes himself from the place where God is present. The power to refuse God is the most extreme point of human freedom; it is willed as such by God — that is, without limit. God cannot force even an atheist to love Him. And this — daring as it may be to say — is the hell of His divine love: the vision of man immersed in the night of his own solitudes.
If Judas fled into the night (St John 13:2–30), it is because Satan was in him. But Judas carried in his hand a terrible mystery: the piece of bread from the Lord’s Supper.18 Thus, hell harbors within itself a fragment of light, fulfilling the word: “The Light shines in the darkness” (St John 1:5). The gesture of Jesus reveals the final mystery of the Church: She is the hand of Jesus offering His flesh and blood; the call is addressed to all, because all are under the power of the Prince of this world. The light does not yet dispel the darkness — but the darkness has no hold over the invincible light. We are in the ultimate tension of divine love. God is not “impassible.” The Book of Daniel (3:25) tells of the three young men cast into the furnace. The king sees a mysterious fourth figure: “I see four men walking in the fire, unharmed, and the fourth has the appearance of a son of God…”
It is at this level that we encounter the necessity of hell — which testifies to our freedom to love God. It is this freedom that gives rise to hell, for it can always say, with all the rebels: “Thy will be not done”— and even God has no dominion over that word. By the reasons of our heart,19 we sense that unless God loves His creature enough that He refuses to punish it with cruel separation, our vision of Him becomes deeply troubling. It is equally troubling if God cannot save the beloved without violating or destroying his freedom. The Father who sends the Son always knows that even hell is His domain, and that “the gate of death” has become the “gate of life.” Man must never fall into despair; he can fall only into God — and it is God who never despairs.
During the matins of the Paschal night, in the silence at the end of Great Saturday, the priest and the people leave the church. The procession halts outside, before the closed doors of the temple. For a brief moment, this closed door symbolizes the tomb of the Lord, death, hell. The priest makes the sign of the Cross on the door, and by its irresistible power, the door — like the gate of hell — is flung wide open. All enter the church, now flooded with light, and sing: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!” The gate of hell has once again become the gate of the Church, the gate of the Kingdom. One cannot go further in the symbolism of the feast. In truth, the world in its entirety is both condemned and saved; it is at once hell and the Kingdom of God. “Here is a commandment I give you, my brother,” says Saint Isaac, “let mercy always outweigh in your balance, until you yourself feel the mercy that God feels toward the world.”20
The Great Vespers following the Liturgy of Pentecost include three prayers of Saint Basil. The third prays for all the dead since the creation of the world. Once a year, the Church prays even for those who have taken their own lives. The charity of the Church knows no bounds; it bears and entrusts the destiny of the rebellious into the hands of the Father — and these hands are Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Father has entrusted all judgment to the Son of Man, and this is the judgment of judgment: the crucified judgment. “The Father is crucifying Love, the Son is crucified Love, and the Holy Spirit is the invincible power of the Cross.”21
This power bursts forth in the breathings and outpourings of the Paraclete, the One who is “alongside us,” who defends and consoles us. He is the joy of God and of man. Christ asks only that we entrust ourselves fully to this Joy: “I go to prepare a place for you… I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also” (St John 14:2–3). “God is patient with us all, not willing that any should perish… what manner of persons ought you to be in holiness and prayer, waiting for and hastening the coming of the Day of God?” (2 Peter 3:9, 11) For this Day is not only an end goal, nor merely the conclusion of history — this Day is the mystery of God in fullness.
Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr, Popular Patristics Series No. 44 (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), chap. 20.
Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Discourse, trans. Ignatius Green, Popular Patristics Series No. 60 (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018), sec. 32.3.
Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, trans. R. Payne Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859), vol. 1, on Luke 5:19.
Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses, Book IV, PG 7, 806; English trans. in St Irenaeus of Lyons: Against the Heresies, trans. Dominic J. Unger and John J. Dillon (New York: Paulist Press, 1992).
Prayer for the departed.
Editor’s note: cf Rev 21:22.
Origen, Homilia VII in Leviticum, no. 2, PG 12, 504; English trans. in Homilies on Leviticus: 1–16, trans. Gary Wayne Barkley, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 83 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1990), 157–59
Gregory of Nyssa, In Inscriptiones Psalmorum, PG 44, 504 D; English trans. in Gregory of Nyssa’s Treatise on the Inscriptions of the Psalms, trans. Ronald E. Heine, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
Editor’s note: this of course is one element of Jesus’ Hebrew name, יֵשׁוּעַ (Yēšūaʿ), “God is salvation.”
Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies, Homily 11, section 1; English trans. in The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian, 2nd ed. (Brookline, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011). Editor’s note: this is the fundamental perspective expressed by Alexandre Kalomiros. See The River of Fire.
Editor’s note: cf. the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, St Matthew 25:1-13.
Editor’s note: cf. Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago: “Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an un-uprooted small corner of evil.”
Editor’s note: From Saint John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love, no. 57, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez, 3rd ed. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991).
In PG 46, 609C and 610A. English trans. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, trans. Catharine P. Roth, Popular Patristics Series No. 12 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993).
In PG 36, 412 A and B. English trans. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations, trans. Nonna Verna Harrison, Fathers of the Church, vol. 112 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010).
In PG 90, 412 A and 1172 D. English trans. in St. Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios, translated by Maximos Constas (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018) and St. Maximus the Confessor, Two Hundred Chapters on Theology, translated by Luis Joshua Salés, Popular Patristics Series No. 53 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2022).
Instructor I, 6. English trans. Clement of Alexandria. The Instructor. Translated by William Wilson. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994.
This interpretation of Judas’ communion with the Lord and its retained sacramental mystery is found among Church Fathers such as St. Ephrem, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome.
Editor’s note: The phrase recalls Pascal: “Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.”
Isaac the Syrian, op. cit., Homily 48.
Editor’s note: cf. Philaret of Moscow, “Слово в Великий Пяток [A Word on Great Friday],” in Слова и речи [Homilies and Speeches], accessed April 12, 2025, https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Filaret_Moskovskij/slova-i-rechi/11.