Those who know me know I am not anxious to unnecessarily entangle myself in controversy. I am particularly loath to use this forum as the bully pulpit. However, I feel compelled to address a theological error ripe to stir up descensions in the Anglophone Orthodox world. On August 22, His Grace, Irenei (Steenburg) released a video titled “Is Hell Real?” wherein he asserts two primary claims:

1. “Hell is a real thing, it is a real place…it is a placed created to conform to man’s and the devil’s rebellious desires” (timestamp 1:12).

2. “The vision of hell as simply the same reality experienced differently is simply nowhere attested to in the teachings of the Church” (0:59).

Concerning his first claim he offers no biblical or patristic evidence to support it. Rather, he seems to imply the perspicuity of Holy Scripture as sufficient thereof. Then he launches into a long digression about human freedom and its misuse. Nothing he says here is controversial in and of itself; and it would be a fine argument if directed at the sort of deterministic “universal salvation” peddled by the likes of David Bentley Hart and his ilk. But in context, the bishop’s argument is entirely non-sequitur. He posits (I summarize): God gives the man freedom, the man thusly misuses his freedom, ergo God must fashion a fiery place to punish the man. The premises do not necessitate the conclusion. Although it would be correct to assert that the misuse of freedom entails consequences of some kind, it does not follow that hell must be defined as a realm created by God for the sole purpose of punishing the rebellious.

But what does His Grace mean by “hell” in the first place? That the term has multiple meanings in English only muddies the waters. Does His Grace mean Hades / Sheol, that temporary intermediate state often described as a dark, gloomy underworld; or does he refer to Gehenna, the everlasting hellfire of the age to come? We would not be wrong in wishing he had disambiguated this for us, especially as he is American—a native English speaker and a convert to Orthodoxy—and thus should be well aware of the confusion associated with the term in our Protestant-saturated culture. Yet we are left to infer that he in fact means the eschatological reality of hell, since he contrasts his idea of hell with an eschatology he outright rejects.

Turning to his second assertion, perhaps we could be accused of being uncharitable and reading too much into what he has said by challenging it. Perhaps he intends to critique an exaggerated version of eschatology? Perhaps he has in mind the thesis of Alexander Kalomiros, as elaborated in his 1980 lecture “The River of Fire“? We would be right to be cautious if our primary source were the musings of a controversial, self-taught theologian who remained in schism from the Church for most of his adult life. But alas, His Grace explains exactly what he rejects later in the video (3:21):

“That this ‘doctrine’ (I use in deeply inverted commas or quotation marks because it is a false doctrine, a demonic doctrine), this teaching that hell isn’t real, that ultimately God sends everyone, draws everyone into the same reality—the fire of his love, which is experienced as joy for those who longed for it, and which is experienced as pain by those who have rejected it—as comforting as that might be to a modern generation that wants to exonerate somehow God as if he were guilty for those who choose to rebel: this simply is not born out in the testimony of the Church.”

Here he makes some unfortunate equivocations about the teaching he opposes: 1) to believe that hell is the torment of God’s rejected love is the same as asserting that “hell isn’t real”; 2) to describe hell as the fire of God experienced in different ways is an attempt to “exonerate” God from human accusations; and 3) to assert such is to succumb to modern sentimentality by adopting a view unsupported by “the testimony of the Church”.

First, His Grace establishes a false dichotomy: either hell is a real place created for sinners, or there is no real punishment for sin. Our culture demands “a happy ending in every circumstance” (1:58) he avers, and some have therefore fabricated an alternative concept of hell. But to say that sinners are tormented by God’s love or glory is no “happy ending” at all. The consequences of freedom persist, and culpability remains. There is nothing “unreal” about torment, no matter its theological explanation. Again, it sounds as if he has the heresy of Origenian apokatastasis in mind, and therefore talks past his real interlocutors.

Second, theodicy is not a dirty word, but a commendable endeavor meant to mitigate the risk of imposing our human standards of right and wrong upon God (as if justice were an extrinsic force greater than God himself). The Greek Fathers encourage us to free our minds of idolatrous impressions of God. But this is not really why Bishop Irenei’s accusation is misguided. Any eschatology that envisages the eternal torment of sinners—whether from a material fire, or in response to divine love, or some other affliction—hardly exonerates God of anything. If this were the intention, it fails miserably. Some of the greatest theologians of the past century have taught that God’s love and glory are also punishment, and none of them admitted a desire to free God from blame.

Third, his claim that the view he opposes is modern—mere “decades” old, he adds—fails because he does not support it with any evidence. Extraordinary claims (such as calling the opposing view “myths and fairytales,” an idea “nowhere attested to in the teachings of the Church”) require extraordinary evidence. Yes, he could quickly cite the Parable of the Sheep and Goats: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt 25:41), making the case for an absolute literal definition of “prepared”. He could then cite, for example, St. John Chrysostom’s reference to this verse in his epistle to Theodore of Mopsuestia where he says hell was “made.” This would be a good start, but he would still need to deal with passages that clearly state that God’s presence (and therefore his Uncreated Energies) are everywhere, and will continue to permeate the entire cosmos in the age to come. He would have to address, for example, St. Paul’s teaching that God will be “all in all” after the judgment (1 Cor 15:28); or David’s address to God, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there” (Ps 138/139:7-8). He would need to deal with the reality that “our God is a consuming fire” (Deut 4:24; Heb 12:29). Any facile dismissal of contrary evidence would immediately call his thesis into question. However, Bishop Irenei does not grace us with any such analysis. He simply directs us to read the “red letter” words of the Gospel in order to figure it out for ourselves, hence leaving us with the impression that Holy Tradition consists merely of the Bible and modern episcopal exegesis.

So what does the witness of the Church actually say about hell vis-à-vis the presence of God? What exactly do the saints tell us about the age to come? It is important to state, from the outset, that the Orthodox Church has declared little in terms of formal dogma in this regard. The Nicene Creed skips over hell altogether: “He will come again with glory to judge the living and dead, whose kingdom will have no end… I look for the resurrection from the dead, and the life of the age to come.” The rarely heard “second” creed recited by those being consecrated a bishop adds the following: “He will come to judge the living and the dead, both the righteous and the sinners, rewarding the righteous for their works of virtue with the kingdom of heaven, for which they labored here, and punishing sinners with eternal torment and the unending fire of Gehenna.” Nothing here is mentioned of a created place, or what the fires of Gehenna consist of; only that this fire will be a ceaseless torment. Thus, without a clear dogma regarding the fires of hell, we must look to the Fathers for clarification.

Perhaps the most succinct presentation of the patristic material comes from St. Dumitru Stăniloae, considered by many to be the greatest Orthodox theologian and patrologist of the 20^th century. The Holy Confessor Dumitru published his magnum opus Orthodox Dogmatic Theology in Romanian in 1978. In Volume 3 (Volume 6 in the English translation) he presents the biblical and patristic witness regarding eschatology. What is the fire of hell? Is it akin to anything we may experience on earth? St. Dumitru cites St. John Damascene who believes it “will not be a material fire as we are accustomed to” (177). Christ will appear, and the fiery glory of his face will be unbearable to those who hate him. The experience of the condemned, St. Dumitru believes, will be dark and even hallucinatory, an everlasting and unlimited second death. “God is infinite and incomprehensible,” states St. Symeon the New Theologian, “tell me, if you can, what place will there be for those who fall outside his kingdom?” (178).

Daniel 7:10 describes the judgment administered by the Son of Man as “a fiery stream [that] issued and came forth from before him.” St. Symeon Metaphrastes interprets this verse as follows: “Fire goes before him, and burns up his adversaries round about him. His lightnings lighten the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens proclaim his righteousness; and all peoples behold his glory.” (185) The demons also “feel God’s presence not as glory, but as fire,” St. Dumitru writes, “and the magnitude of darkness that they have produced does not allow those destined to darkness to see Christ’s glory” (185). This he supports with a reference from St. Maximus the Confessor, who also quotes Daniel 7:10. “Everything will be overwhelmed by the glory of Christ’s face,” St. Dumitru adds, “but this glory will appear to those who did not know him as a consuming fire, and to the righteous as a light of love that covers all” (185). He further supports his explanation of the eschaton using the theology of St. Maximus once more, particularly his development of St. Gregory of Nyssa’s concept of epektasis or eternal, dynamic movement towards God in the age to come. Those who rebel against God, St. Maximus believes, shall not participate in divine life as “eternal well-being” but rather as “eternal ill-being.” The damned will not move towards the Uncreated Light, ascending “from glory to glory,” but shall be lost and forgotten, eternally turned inward on themselves and tormented by their own darkness.

For St. John Damascene, who does not envisage the fires of hell as something corporeal, God will forever offer his goodness to those condemned: “God eternally offers the good things to the devil, but he refuses to receive them. And in the age to come, God offers good things to all, for he is the source from which good things flow. But everyone participates in the good inasmuch as he has made himself capable” (48). St. Dumitru is entirely reasonable in describing the torment of hell as resulting from God’s omni-presence. If, as St. Symeon the New Theologian states, the fire that shall consume the cosmos “at God’s command” is in fact “a divine fire” (150), then we are safe to assume that those suffering in the fire are in fact tormented by the face of the Lord.

Another well-known writer who has elaborated the ecclesial teaching of eschatology is Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos. In Life After Death (1995) he writes, “In the patristic tradition it is clear that there are not two ways, but God himself is paradise for the saints and God himself is hell for the sinners” (254). He then supports his claim beginning with St. Isaac of Nineveh (the Syrian): “I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love.” The saint continues, “The power of love works in two ways: it torments sinners, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; abut it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties” (256). Next he cites St. Basil the Great, who unpacks the meaning of Psalm 29:7: “‘The voice of the Lord divides the flames of fire,’ and in the dividing, the fire of hell is without light, and the light of peace remains unburnt” (257). To these references the Metropolitan joins additional ones from St. Gregory the Theologian, St. John Climacus, and St. Gregory Palamas.

One of the most prolific living Orthodox patristic scholars is Jean-Claude Larchet. In his monumental Life and Death According to the Orthodox Tradition (2012), published in English by the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, he explains that, although those in hell will experience a deprivation of God’s energies, “the energies, shown forth from the Father, by the Son in the Holy Spirit, are everywhere present and fill all things” (184). Because “God is united to all and is ‘all in all’… the divine Light shines everywhere, illumines everything, including hell and those who are confined there.” God’s love is even given to those condemned, he adds: “The divine energies are not then exterior to the damned, but the damned remain exterior to them, because they have made the choice to remain closed to them and persevered in this choice.” He then quotes St. Maximus:

“Above nature is the divine and unimaginable rejoicing that it is meet for God to produce by nature when he is united by grace to the worthy; against nature, the inexpressible pain that constitutes its privation and that the One who is God by nature is wont to produce when he is united contrary to grace with the unworthy. For God, being united with all according to the quality of the disposition in the depths of each person, the sensation [of this union] is given to each just as each person has shaped himself to receive the One who must be united with all at the end of the ages.” (185)

Before citing at length the same passages from St. Isaac the Syrian also referenced by the Metropolitan, Larchet quotes St. Gregory of Nyssa, who states that the divine Good “becomes a flame burning the soul.” This points us towards an immensely important biblical passage, which just so happens to be our reading for today (Revised Calendar):

“For we are God’s co-workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” (1 Cor 3:9-15).

The Roman Catholic interpretation of this verse is well known, used to support their doctrine of Purgatory. But the Orthodox interpretation, clearly rooted in the fact that St. Paul refers to the eschaton and not the intermediate state after death, envisages the glory of God—that same glory that will transfigure the cosmos—as being wrath upon the wicked. All will be subjected to God’s fiery glory, but those who have built their “houses” with useless things (wood, hay, straw) will forever remain in the fire. We find such an exegesis in St. Nikitas Stethatos:

“Since the day of judgment will be one of fire, what each of us has done, as St. Paul says, will be tested by fire. Thus, if what we have built up is of an incorruptible nature, it will not be destroyed by fire; and not only will it not be consumed, but it will be made radiant, totally purified of whatever small amount of filth may adhere to it. But if the work which we have burdened ourselves with is corruptible matter, it will be consumed and burnt up and we will be destitute in the midst of the fire.” (169)

In confronting the Latin heresy of Purgatory at the Council of Florence, Bessarion of Nicaea prepared the official response to Rome on behalf of himself and St. Mark of Ephesus. Collating the Greek patristic testimony, they challenged the Latin interpretation of St. Paul. Larchet summarizes their Orthodox response to the Council as follows:

“As for the passaged cited from 1 Cor 3:11-15, Bessarion defers to the uncontestable authority of one of St. Paul’s best exegetes: St. John Chrysostom. Now the latter deems that the fire mentioned by St. Paul is the eternal fire, which does not give up its victims. True, St. Augustine has understood the text otherwise. His mistake arises from a praiseworthy concern: to refute the error of those who apply this text to all the faults, in this way denying eternal punishment; to do this he found nothing better than to avail himself of a middle term: that of a temporal fire. In the expression of St. Paul: ‘he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire,’ the term sōzesthai must not be understood in the usual sense of ‘to be saved’ but in the sense of, which it often posses as well, ‘to be safeguarded,’ in other words ‘protected’ or ‘preserved.’ The Apostle—there is no indication that he has in mind a temporal fire—meant that the damned will not be exterminated, but will be preserved in eternal fire. Such is the exegesis of St. John Chrysostom and, along with him, all of the Greek Fathers. St. Paul himself ratifies such an interpretation as do other scriptural passages that mention the fire of the last judgment (e.g., Dan 7:10; Ps 49:3; 2 Pet 3:7).” (121-2)

St. Mark of Ephesus also makes it clear that both heaven and hell may only be described as “noetic places,” corresponding to St. Gregory of Nyssa’s description of them as states of being or modes of existence (175). If it is true that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9), then it is equally true that our created categories from this age tell us nothing about Gehenna in the age to come. Our Lord has given us contradictory imagery, of unquenchable fire and unending darkness. We hear of worms and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Just as heaven will not literally be a mansion with countless rooms, so hell will not be a smoldering garbage fire in a valley outside Jerusalem. We can speak of a “place” inasmuch as to say that everywhere will be a place, for the entire cosmos will be changed “in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor 15:52); and yet it is only possible to speak of topoi not chōrai in the age to come.

To be fair, His Grace may indeed have put more thought into his theory than seems apparent in the video. Maybe he has reviewed all the pertinent scriptural references, patristic works, and hymnographical sources and found the case for God’s fiery love to be lacking. Or maybe he simply wants to bring nuance to the discussion and discourage the sort of exaggeration that causes some to doubt God’s judgement, or leads others into the throes of apokatastasis. It is impossible to say, and I can only critique what has been presented.

Will the Lord’s glorious illumination of his servants also be the fiery condemnation of his enemies? From the biblical and patristic passages cited above, we would be on firm ground to propose such. As Vladimir Lossky summarized in his seminal work Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church: “[We shall be] raised up in incorruptibility to be united to God who will be ‘all in all.’ But some will be united by grace, others apart from grace, according to St. Maximus. Some will be deified by the energies which they have acquired in the interior of their being; others will remain without, and for them the deifying fire of the Spirit will be an external flame, intolerable to all those whose will is opposed to God” (178-9).