Death (and Funeral)
PERRY T. HAMALIS
While death undeniably shapes Eastern Orthodoxy’s worldview, Orthodox Christians understand and respond to this phenomenon in a way that is complex, affirming both sharply negative and positive assessments of human death. On the one hand, death is not from God (Wis. 1.13), human beings were created in order that they should live, not die (Ezek. 33.11), death enters the world through humanity’s sin (Rom. 5.12), and the New Jerusalem is characterized by the absence of death (Rev. 21.4). Reflecting these beliefs, death is described variouslybyOrthodoxvoices as “the enemy,” “a painful metaphysical catastrophe,” “a deep tragedy,” and “a failure of human destiny” (Florovsky 1976). It is “foreign,” “unnatural,” and “perverted” (Schmemann 2003). Death grounds an existential condition that is “profoundly abnormal,” “monstrous,” and “distorted” (Ware 2000), as anyone who has lost a loved one can attest (Hamalis 2008). It follows that, for the Orthodox, God’s saving action through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection is, first and foremost, victory over death. On Easter and throughout the paschal season the Orthodox proclaim joyously and repeatedly, “Christ is risen from the dead! And death by his death is trampled. And to those in the tombs he is granting life.”
Yet Orthodoxy also sees in death both God’s mercy and the means through which the faithful participate in Christ’s victorious resurrection. Death reveals God’s mercy insofar as it limits the fallen condition of creation and prevents human beings’ earthly sufferings from becoming a condition of everlasting torment. Furthermore, death is the mystery through which resurrection in Christ can be experienced (Rom. 6.3–11). Recalling the paschal hymn mentioned above, for the Orthodox it is “by his death” that Christ’s victory was achieved, and it is both by dying with Christ through baptism and by ascetically dying to the passions that the faithful are themselves resurrected (Col. 2–3). In these ways, death is also a blessing – even a sacrament – within Orthodoxy’s worldview (Bobrinskoy 1984; Vassiliades 1993; Behr 2006).
Plate 16 Russian Orthodox funeral. Interstock/Superstock
Without mitigating death’s catastrophic nature, then, Orthodoxy complements its negative assessment of death with a positive one.
While the sources within Orthodox tradition do not provide a univocal comprehensive teaching on the nature of human death, several widely shared claims can be discerned. Orthodox thinkers universally reject a “physicalist” understanding of death: the view that human existence wholly ceases with the death of the body. In contrast to a physicalist understanding, Orthodox thinkers generally affirm the following four claims: (1) the human being is a unified reality with both physical and nonphysical (spiritual) dimensions; (2) nonmetaphorical death pertains to both the physical and the spiritual dimensions; (3) in a real and personal sense, a human being’s spiritual dimension exists after physical death; and (4) spiritual death, which is a condition possible before and after physical death, does not imply annihilation but rather a state of radical separation, rupture, or alienation from God (Florovsky 1976; Vassiliades 1993; Hamalis 2008).
The above claims are supported by the church’s liturgical practice of praying both for and to the dead (Fedwick 1976; Ware 2000). For recently deceased members of the church, a funeral service is held. Typically, the casket remains open as a countercultural acknowledgment of death’s reality, a way of honoring the body, and an opportunity for mourners to offer a face-to-face farewell and be provoked toward repentance. Death’s antinomic nature as both a terrible tragedy and a marvelous mystery is reflected in the Orthodox funeral prayers. One hymn, attributed to St. John of Damascus, states:
I weep and I wail when I think upon death, and behold our beauty, fashioned after the image of God, lying in the tomb disfigured, dishonored, bereft of form. O marvel! What is this mystery which doth befall us? Why have we been given over unto corruption, and why have we been wedded unto death? Of a truth, as it is written, by the command of God, who giveth the departed rest. (Hapgood 1956: 386)
Memorial services are also held for departed Orthodox, most frequently forty days and one year after death, as well as during occasional “Saturday of Souls” liturgies. A clear indication of Orthodoxy’s understanding of death lies in the practice of venerating saints. The saints, commemorated liturgically on the day of their death, are not merely remembered for their exemplary lives but rather are engaged personally – as alive in Christ – through believers’ requests for intercessory prayers.
Regarding after-life existence and eschatology, Orthodox thinkers are reticent and quick to acknowledge such realities as mysteries (Florovsky 1976; Vassiliades 1993). Nonetheless, two generally taught claims are, first, that immediately following physical death, a human being’s spirit or soul experiences a foretaste of heaven or hell and, second, that the dead will receive resurrected bodies of glory and experience a final judgment at Christ’s second coming.
SEE ALSO: Baptism; Communion of Saints; Eschatology; Judgment; Kollyva; Original Sin; Psychosabbaton; Resurrection
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Behr, J. (2006) The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death.
Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. Bobrinskoy, B. (1984) “Old Age and Death: Tragedy or Blessing?” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 28: 237–44.
Fedwick, P. J. (1976) “Death and Dying in Byzantine Liturgical Traditions,” Eastern Christian Review 8: 152–61.
Florovsky, G. (1976) Creation and Redemption: Collected Works, vol. 3. Belmont, MA: Nordland. Hamalis, P. T. (2008) “The Meaning and Place of Death in an Orthodox Ethical Framework,” in A. Papanikolaou and E. Prodromou (eds.) Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, pp. 183–217. Hapgood, I. F. (1956) Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, 3rd edn. New York: Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese.
Schmemann, A. (2003) O Death Where Is Thy Sting? trans. A. Vinogradov. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Vassiliades, N. P. (1993) The Mystery of Death, trans. P. Chamberas. Athens: Orthodox Brotherhood of Theologians “The Savior.”
Ware, T. (2000) The Inner Kingdom: Collected Works, vol. 1. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.
Deification
STEPHEN THOMAS
“Deification” and sometimes “divinization” are English translations of expressions used by the church fathers to describe the manner in which God saves his elect by mercifully initiating them into his communion and his presence. The most-used Greek term, theosis, acts as a master-concept in Greek theology, by which the truth of doctrinal statements is assessed. The fathers used theosis to bring out the high condition to which human beings are exalted by grace, even to the sharing of God’s life. Theosis means that, “In Christ,” we can live at the same level of existence as the divine Trinity, to some extent even in this life, and, without possibility of falling away, in the next. Closely connected with theosis is the pervasive use of Genesis 1.26 – “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ ” – as a description of human anthropology. A distinction is often made in Orthodox theology between the image, which is the human potential to be as Christ, the perfect image of God (so that we are made “in the image of the image”), and the likeness, which is the actualization of this in the possession of God-like qualities, that is, human perfection. But spiritual teachers often refer to theosis without using the term, preferring simpler expressions such as “grace” and “life.” In biblical terms, the nearest expression to theosis is “glory” (Greek doxa, Hebrew kavod). While the divine glory is communicable, the divine nature (Hebrew panim, God’s “face”) cannot be seen or known: in the expression of St. John the Theologian and Evangelist, “No one has even seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (Jn 1.18). The revelation of God is, however, still a matter of present experience in this life before a fuller and perfect vision of God after death, through the knowledge of God’s glory, divine grace, which brings likeness to God.
The patristic expressions “theosis,” “theopoiesis,” and “being made gods by grace” point to the consequences of our adoption as children of God which Scripture teaches (1Cor. 8.15–17; 1Jn. 3.1–3): Christ’s faithful are promoted, by grace, to the level of existence which the Son possesses though his divine nature (Rom. 5.2; 6.4, 22; 7.4; 8.1, 9–12). In an important text, which in Orthodox belief is the witnessing of the Apostle Peter, we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2Pet. 1.4). We obtain eternal life, a state commencing here and now (1Jn. 1.2). We have intimate communion with Christ in a manner hidden from the world; it is mystical knowledge (Col. 3.4; 1Pet. 3.3–4). We possess “all truth,” knowledge of the Trinity, knowing by experience the relationship of the Father to the Son, because the Holy Spirit takes everything belonging to the Father and shows us that it also belongs to the Son (Jn.
16.13– 15). We are enriched with the gift of miraculous healing (Acts 3.6). As our standard of perfection we have God-like love, love of our enemies (Mt. 5.43–6). St. John’s gospel, in the final discourses of Christ, in sublime language gives an account of how disciples can become “friends” of Christ (Jn.
16.14– 15) and of God the Father through the comforting of the Holy Spirit (Jn. 14.16–17). Moreover, Christ promises to come to them, so that then “You will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” The disciples are given a share in the divine glory (Jn. 17.22) and through this glory may be perfectly united to Christ (Jn. 17.22–23).
Jesus Christ blessed the idea of deification by using it himself. In his authoritative interpretation of Jewish Scripture, he demonstrated that it was an idea revealed to Israel: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said ye are gods?’” (Jn. 10.34; Ps. 82.6; Septua- gint Ps. 81). In interpreting this psalm, Jesus taught the godhood of which the Israelites were capable. The psalm declares divine judgment to God’s people, telling them what to do to be “gods”: to treat with justice the weak, orphaned, and destitute, and to rescue the vulnerable from the power of the wicked. This is, in Christ’s expression, to have the word of God come to one (Jn. 10.35). This word deifies man. Failure to receive and so obey God’s word is to “die like men and fall like any prince” (Ps. 82.8).
In thus opening the scripture, Christ showed that human nature possesses two opposed possibilities: deification or death. The divine Word and Son of God took up this human nature, defeated death in it and divinized it. If we find perfection in Christ, identifying ourselves with him and living in faith and obedience to his commandments, then we come to share in Christ’s divinized human nature and thereby share in the divine nature. Humankind is deified, not only by a participation in divine life which is experienced, felt, and lived, but also by service to others, just as God kenotically serves humankind, looking after us, bearing with us, and, ultimately, sharing our condition (Phil. 2).
The Bible taken as a whole narrates, in a history of salvation, the human potential for, and attainment of, deification. It is the history of God’s grace as he puts forth his energies in various ways according to humanity’s condition (Heb. 1.1–2). God created humankind in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1.26); that is, as having deification as its potentiality, perfection, end, or ultimate purpose. But humankind, in Adam’s person, was tricked by the serpent, that is, the Devil, who used the good and inborn desire “to be as gods” to induce him to disobey. In fact, the Devil subtly modified deification by adding the words “knowing good and evil” to the promise “You surely will not die” (Gen. 3.4–5). Disobedience led to alienation from God through shame, as humankind hid from God and no longer felt able to respond to God’s call to walk with him (Gen. 3.9–10). To “walk with God” means in Hebrew to follow God’s commandments. Humanity had been led to taste of the false wisdom of good mixed with evil (“knowing good and evil”), as one desires to know everything by tasting or experiencing it. Alternatively, the first human beings reached out for the fuller knowledge of what was good and evil before they were mature enough to receive it and were impatient to go beyond God’s simple, protective command. Or, in yet another interpretation, humanity desired knowledge of everything, the expression “good and evil” meaning “everything.” Whatever the interpretation, humankind could not have remained in Paradise to partake of immortality from the Tree of Life without suffering hell, that is, to be in a state of fear and shame forever. Out of compassion for humanity, in view of the craftiness with which Adam had been tricked, God placed the race, male and female, into the world and gave human life a limit and set term (Gen. 3: 22–4). Death would not annihilate humankind but it would make us finite. From the moment humanity fell, moreover, according to the Orthodox tradition, God had the plan for humanity’s restoration.
The above account of Genesis 3 gives the outline of the Orthodox interpretation of it, which takes a gentler and more merciful view than some others of “original sin.” Humankind had been deceived. Being at an early stage of development, Adam was not fully responsible. He had contracted an illness, which all human beings came to share. Yet God is not a judge, but a healer (Mt. 9.12; Mk. 2.7). The therapeutic motif dominates in Orthodox language about salvation (Larchet 2000: 10). However, salvation, being an act of supreme generosity, is also deification; it takes humankind beyond the healing of our faults.
In earliest times only Enoch lived as God desired: “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Gen. 5.24) He was truly “Man,” as God first intended him (in Hebrew, Enoch means “Man”), Consequently, he, uniquely, did not suffer death, but was assumed into heaven. He was unique in living perfectly by following his conscience. Man needed more help to walk with God.
God chose Abraham and revealed himself to him and his descendants, the patriarchs, by theophanies, manifestations of God, some of which are quite strange, while others are very beautiful, for example Jacob’s ladder, which is both about deification and a prophecy of Jesus Christ, who in his human nature descended from Abraham and the patriarchs (Gen. 28.12; Jn. 1.51). The descendants of Abraham became trapped and enslaved in a once- friendly and protective Egypt. God brought his people out through Moses, to whom he manifested himself in the theophany of the burning bush (Ex. 3.2). He revealed his holy name to Moses and gave him power to bring his people out of Egypt, revealing a Law for his people. As Origen saw, this drama, which had a historical reality, is also constantly being reenacted in the drama of human salvation, as humankind is exiled from God through enslavement to the Devil and to passion (Origen 1982: 230).
God showed to Moses his glory, the fiery light of the uncreated energy. The glory which the people saw only at a distance was experienced so fully and intimately by Moses, God’s friend, that when he came out from the tent where God’s presence rested, his face was transfigured. The glorified brilliant-white face of Moses had to be veiled for the sake of the people because they could not see it and live, since they were in an impure state (Ex. 34.30, 33–5). This was a prophecy of what was later possible for all through Christ: St. Paul refers to the glory or “splendor” (Greek, doxa) which is a matter of present experience in the “dispensation of the Spirit” and the “dispensation of righteousness” (2Cor. 3.8–9) for the Christian. This glory makes the Christian “very bold” (2Cor. 3.12).
While Moses had to veil his face “because the people were afraid to come near him” (Ex. 34.30), “When a man turns to the Lord, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2Cor. 3.17–18). The experience uniquely given to Moses in the Old Testament is offered to all Christians. In the passages examined above, Orthodoxy understands the “splendor” or “glory” to be a real light with a physical manifestation, rather than metaphors for inward experiences – even though the light is at the same time supernatural: St. Gregory Palamas cites St. Basil of Caesarea to this effect, making clear that the manifestation of divine light had a specific historical moment which was at the same time an eschatological moment – the apostles on Mount Tabor “Were privileged to see with their eyes a foretaste of his advent” (Palamas 1988:252–3); that is, of his coming in glory at the end of the world.
Most closely associated with deification in Orthodox teaching is the transfiguration or metamorphosis: when Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, the dazzling light emanating from him was experienced by the three apostles, St. Peter, St. James, and St. John (Mt. 17.1–8; Mk. 9.2–8; Lk. 9.28–36). On the mountain (in Orthodox tradition, Mount Thabor), Christ was transfigured, shining with a supernatural brilliance (Mt. 17.1–8; Mk. 9.2–8; Lk. 9.28–36). He manifested God’s glory, the uncreated light, to three chosen disciples. It continued to affect them throughout their lives, transforming them. St. Peter and St. John wrote in their own words, in their epistles, of their experience of the glory, an experience which marks their writings. The persecutor Saul was transformed into St. Paul the apostle through a manifestation of this same uncreated light (Acts 9.3–7; 22.6–8; 26.13–18).
The liturgical poetry of the Feast of the Transfiguration bears witness to the historical circumstances of the event. The disciples, especially St. Peter, had been scandalized at the prospect of the Messiah, his master, submitting to death. Christ allowed the divinity to shine through the flesh in order that the disciples might be able to bear the crucifixion, by knowing Christ’s divinity (Ware 1990: 477–88). It brings together the texts relating to the history of salvation, by which God revealed himself to the human race. In the biblical texts for Vespers, the events prefiguring and prophesying the transfiguration are read. They are the texts about Moses and Elijah in which their encounters with the divine glory are narrated (Ware 1990: 472–4; see Ex. 24.12–18; 33.11–23; 34.4–6, 8; I Kgs. 19).
However, the teaching of the feast is also about the possibility for every human being to experience the glory of God, his uncreated light, and to be transformed by it: “Let us be transformed this day into a better state and direct our minds to heavenly things, being shaped anew in piety according to the form of Christ” (Ware 1990: 468). This verse is drawn from Philippians: Christ was, by nature, “in the form of God” and by choice in “the form of a slave” (Phil. 2.5–7). Christ’s voluntary humbling of himself enables humankind’s exaltation: we may share in the “form of God.” Divine grace takes the form of transforming light, which is both healing and exalting: “For in His mercy the Saviour of our souls has transfigured man / And made him shine with light upon Mount Tabor” (Ware 1990: 468).
The transformation of the human condition is expressed in terms of an eschatological interpretation of the very psalm (psalm 82) to which Christ had referred: “To show plainly how, at Thy mysterious second coming, Thou wilt appear as the Most High God standing in the midst of gods, on Mount Thabor Thou hast shone in fashion past words upon the apostles and upon Moses and Elijah” (Ware 1990: 494).
While there is much in the theology of glory which is recognizable in other Christian traditions, there are a number of aspects of deification which are different in Orthodoxy from Western Christianity. Firstly, the experience of glory, the very idea of being in glory, is reserved in much Western Christian theology for the life after death; there being, in Catholic theology at least, a mystical way open to the few. In Orthodoxy the human person is being deified from the illumination of baptism throughout the course of his or her life, by participation in the sacraments or mysteries, especially the Eucharist, by prayer, and by following the commandments. Just as the prophets of the Old Testament knew Christ in a partial and hidden manner, while in the New Testament there is full knowledge, so Christians in this life experience a pledge and a foretaste of the uninterrupted brightness of the glory of the age to come. The saint is the paradigm of deification in this life, not a remote exception to normality.
The second difference concerns the sal- vific dimension of deification. Foreign to the Eastern Churches is a version of atonement theology in which Christ’s suffering on the cross satisfies the offense of human sin to the divine majesty and justice. The Orthodox God is a God of mercy through and through, not a God whose justice predominates. Christ suffered not to pay a debt to justice; rather, Christ voluntarily suffered in order that the divine nature might encounter suffering and attain the victory over death. It is this victory which constitutes the ransom and redemption of which the New Testament speaks. Salvation consists of the deification of the human person, who is in Christ transformed into a being in whom death is conquered, and suffering no longer has a hold. The incarnation makes this deification possible. As St Athanasius said in his De Incarnatione·. “He [the Divine Logos] assumed humanity that we might be divinized; He manifested Himself through the body in order that we might obtain knowledge of the invisible Father; and He endured insults from men in order that we might inherit incorruption” (Athanasius 1971· 268–9).
The third point of difference with western traditions is the doctrine of the uncreated energies of God and the metamorphosis of the human person through contact with these energies. “Energy” is the term used to describe the uncreated rays of goodness which the trinitarian God, in perfect agreement between the persons, puts forth towards his creation in the great acts of God which constitute divine revelation. While on the one hand the nature or essence of God is unknown and beyond human comprehension, on the other hand the energies or operations of God interact with human freedom and raise the human person to knowledge of the uncreated. The energies mediate between the created and the uncreated. Orthodoxy understands grace as a deifying energy, salvation being the union of the divine energy and the human will or energy in synergy. Orthodoxy does not hesitate to describe grace as uncreated and has reservations about the Catholic scholastic formulation of grace as having a certain created modality in the soul.
SEE ALSO· Eschatology; Grace; St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359)
REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Athanasius (1971) Contra Gentes and De Incarnatione, ed. and trans. R. W. Thomson. Oxford· Clarendon Press.
Gross, J. (2002) The Divinization of the Christian according to the Greek Fathers, trans. P. Onica. Anaheim· A&C Press.
Larchet, J.-C. (2000) Therapeutique des maladies spirituelles. Paris· Cerf.
Origen (1982) Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, trans. R. E. Heine. Washington, DC· Catholic University of America Press.
Palamas, St. Gregory (1988) The One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, ed. and trans. R. E. Heine. Toronto· Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies. Russell, N. (2006) The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition. Oxford· Oxford University Press.
Thomas, S. (2007) Deification in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition: A Biblical Perspective. Piscataway, NJ· Gorgias Press.
Ware, K and Mother Mary (trans. and eds.) (1990) The Festal Menaion. South Canaan, PA· St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press.