In this recording, Archimandrite Athanasios Mytilinaios (1927-2006), answers the question of how to interpret St. Isaac the Syrian’s teaching that the fires of Hell are actually the love of God, explaining that the divine uncreated light is experienced as illuminating joy by the righteous but as burning torment by the unrepentant.
Audio source: “Answers to questions”, no. 596 (in Greek), March 7th, 1993
https://arnion.gr/index.php/diafora-uemata/pantiseis-pori-n-katixitiko
Fr. Athanasios:
There is another question: In the Ascetics of Isaac the Syrian it is written… Well, “it is absurd,” says St. Isaac the Syrian, “to think that sinners are deprived of the love of God in Hell”. He declares that it is absurd to believe that there is no love of God in Hell. “For the love of God, being the result of His knowledge, is commonly given to everyone but it works through the power of its own nature in two ways: it punishes sinners, and rewards the righteous, and in my opinion, this is the meaning of the fire of Hell.” How do you interpret this passage, how should we understand it, etc.?
Notice here that other fathers also say this. Who told you that the love of God does not exist in Hell? Who told you that? It is true that God’s love is for everyone, both sinners and the pious, and exists both in the kingdom of God and in Hell. How is God’s love in Hell? Here he says that God’s love works in two ways: it rewards the pious, and punishes the sinners. To understand this, let me analyze it further. After all, I have told you this before. The uncreated light, the light of Transfiguration, is uncreated. Uncreated means that it is not a creation, it derives, so to speak, from the divine essence. Therefore, this energy, this light is uncreated just as the divine essence is uncreated, right? This is, of course, the light that people receive when they are pious. How do they receive it and when they do, how are they called? Theoumenoi (God-seers). Do you think that the three disciples on Mount Tabor did not bear this light as well? When Motovilov, the disciple of St. Seraphim of Sarov, went to find him once, he asked him: how can I know that I have received the spirit of God, the uncreated glory? At that time, Saint Seraphim’s face shone and said to him: “Yours is the same”. It is amazing.
Well, this uncreated energy is, of course, permanently present in those who are saved in the kingdom of God. Where does it come from? From the essence of God. What is it? Light. God is light, says John the Evangelist. But I will take the material light as an example because God creates according to certain standards; do not be surprised by this. This universe is modeled on his kingdom. Therefore, the material light, the created light is a kind of an image, as God also said to Moses: “Be careful so that you will create according to what you see in Heaven”, and the Apostle Paul says that Moses made the Ark according to what he saw etc., and in fact, he says “be careful, you will build what you saw”, not something different. In the same way, the created light is an image: the image of the uncreated light. Take, for example, the rays of the created light, the sunlight. What properties do they have? Too many of them. They have chemical, mechanical, properties etc., but let’s take two: a solar ray has the property of illuminating and the property of heating. So here too the uncreated energy of divine light has these two properties: to illuminate and the other to heat or rather to burn. What I am explaining to you now is also written by the Fathers, and in fact you can see it more plainly in the Hexaemeron of St. Basil the Great.
Well, the uncreated energy of the divine light passes through the kingdom of God and only the luminosity remains there without the heat, the causticness; only the luminosity, which of course pardons the saints and deifies them. Then, it resumes its course and reaches Hell. There, it goes without the luminosity but only with the causticness, burning the people there, but the uncreated energy of the divine light is a product, if I am allowed to say so, of His love, so to speak. His love reaches Hell, but it arrives without the presence of light but only with the caustic property. That’s why in Hell there are…, some people say cauldrons mockingly, but I wish there were cauldrons; it’s something much more terrible and worse. There, darkness exists because there is the lack of light, and causticness.
This is what the demons say through the possessed people when we take them to heal them to various saints like Saint Nektarios, Saint Dionysios, Saint Spyridon, etc. What do the possessed scream? “I’m burning, I’m burning”. What does it mean I am burning? Demons are burning. What does it mean they are burning? They are burning from the divine glory of the saints who have received it from God. You see they say, “I am burning” or “you burned me” or they refer to some saints like Saint Gerasimos as “the scorcher”, because he burns them. What does it mean? When a possessed person appears in front of a God-seer, the demons are burned. Do you realize now what this fire is? “Is this love?” you will ask. Well, I know you will object, in fact.
Now, let me tell you about a passage that is in Proverbs chapter 25, verse 21, and the Apostle Paul uses it in Romans chapter 12, verse 20, that says the following: “If therefore your enemy is hungry, give him food, if he is thirsty, give him water”. In other words, if your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. “For by doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head”. Doing this is like putting burning coals on his head. How does one feel with burning coals on his head? Very bad. In other words, God provides, but His beneficence reaches the unthankful, the ungrateful, the scoundrel, the apostate as coals of fire.
I think we can understand this passage by examining someone who says to another person: you accused me, you insulted me, you did this and that to me. There are many examples among us; someone told me: “my father was killed at one time and the one who killed him came to the village. What should I do?” says, for example, the man whose father was killed. What should you do? Show him love. He returned poor to the village; how else could he return? Wretched are the people who think that they will achieve something by committing crimes; in any case, if someone pardons him -specifically if the one whose father has been killed, pardons him- no matter how much hardened conscience he has, he will feel bad inside. What is your ultimate goal? You punish him by showing your love, or as I have told you, God also shows His love to the damned, but they feel it as a punishment. In this way, we can understand exactly how Hell exists.
We would like to encourage you to support our efforts to comfort and inspire Christians and seekers around the world using digital media. We are a 100% donor supported non-profit Christian ministry.
Please support our ministry with your love gift.
Our address to receive BTC on Bitcoin network: bc1qre644umv5dk0ej3ajprvjvwavvkcq3x5ptja8p
