Orthodox Church distinguishes two states of mind in afterlife: Heaven and Hell. It does not accept the Catholic doctrine of the middle state in purgatory, because in Holy Scripture there is no indication of an average state. At the same time, the Church teaches that the torment of sinners in hell can be alleviated through prayers for them and through good deeds committed in their memory. Hence the tradition of prayerfully remembering the dead and giving alms for their souls.

Some represent hell in some primitive images of red-hot frying pans, boiling cauldrons in which sinners are fried and boiled. It must be remembered that these pictures are only symbols and images of future torments. The soul will suffer, not the body, and it does not have pain receptors in our carnal understanding. Rather, such a definition would be more accurate: we often say in a mournful state: "the soul hurts." Something similar, but many times stronger, the soul will feel in hell. Let's take a simple example. A man who was a drunkard dies. Perhaps, at the beginning of his life, he was a good person, but gradually the passion for drinking wine so captured him that other vital interests diminished, if not completely disappeared, only the desire to drink and enjoy the state of intoxication remained. Such a person dies. His soul fully retains all the interests and properties inherent in it. The need for constant satisfaction of passion not only does not disappear, but is also exacerbated many times over. The state of dissatisfaction will forever torment the soul. Add here great suffering from the knowledge that he could be different, could be with God, fear and horror from fierce demonic forces. And hopelessness, bitter hopelessness. The same awaits a person who is possessed by fornication, pride, love of money, etc. The more passions live in a person’s soul, the more terrible and painful his future sufferings will be.

And now imagine a believer who has conquered passions, full of chastity, humility, love for God and neighbor. He lived his life in union with God, and now he is in the ocean of love and joy. Nearby are the same believing souls, who have served the forces of Good and Light all their lives. And here in afterlife, with them the Angels of Light, the Lord Himself and the Mother of God.

These are separate cloisters in which dead souls are placed depending on the degree of their sinfulness, but cloisters not in the spatial sense, but in the sense of a different state: each will have their own measure of suffering. Very little is known about the state of the souls of sinners after the private judgment. Literally, "hell" means "a place devoid of light." In Scripture, it is also called "the lower places of the earth" (Eph. 4:9), simply "hell" (Philippians 2:10), "outer darkness" (Matt. 22:13; 25, 30), spirits” (1 Pet. 3:19). In the Orthodox confession (ch. 68) it is said that sinners are "in places of condemnation and wrath of God."

Where is hell? The place of hell has never been precisely determined. St. John Chrysostom says that hell is outside this world, and St. Augustine teaches that it is impossible to know the place where hell is located. Although the words of God the Creator: “Thou shalt return to the earth” (Genesis 3:19) are deeply rooted in the mind of man, and many imagine hell in the depths of the earth, perhaps in its very center. And in colloquial speech, people often refer to Heaven as "above" and Hell as "below." This is a symbolic understanding of heaven as something higher, and hell as something lower. People who saw the state of hell during their clinical death invariably described approaching it as a descent.

Most of the stories of modern people who have experienced near-death experiences describe places and conditions that are “close” to our world, still on this side of the “border”. However, there are also descriptions of places reminiscent of heaven or hell, which the Holy Scriptures speak of. So, for example, one of these people describes hell as a place of insatiable attachment of sinners to their earthly desires. He saw killers who were, as it were, chained to their victims. The killers cried and asked for forgiveness from their victims, but they did not hear them. They were useless tears and pleas, repentance that would never be accepted.

One man told how, while working at a sawmill, he slipped, fell into a river and was crushed by huge logs. It took workers more than an hour to find his body and remove it from under the logs. Seeing no signs of life in him, they considered him dead. The victim himself, in the state of his temporary death, found himself on the shores of an immense fiery ocean. At the sight of the rushing waves of burning sulfur, he was dumbfounded with horror. It was hellfire, which is difficult to describe. Right there, on the bank of hellfire, he recognized several familiar faces who had died before him. They all stood in a daze of horror, looking at the rolling fire shafts. The images of hell may be different, but they are always associated with torment, fear, hopelessness.

“There, according to the Scriptures, fire, darkness, bonds, an endless worm, mean not only what they express, but something else, much more terrible. To convince you of this, now pay attention to the following. If there is fire, then tell me, how is darkness also there? Do you see that it is much more terrible than here? It does not fade, and therefore is called inextinguishable. Imagine, then, what a torment it is to be burned incessantly, to be in darkness, to constantly let out cries, gnash your teeth and not be heard? What is it like to be burned along with the killers of the whole universe, to see nothing and not be visible, but among so many people to consider yourself alone? For darkness and the absence of light will not allow us to recognize even our neighbors, but each will be in such a state as if he suffered alone ”(St. John Chrysostom).

How does the Holy Scripture describe this state? First of all, it is a state of separation from God. The Lord says to sinners: "...depart from Me, you workers of iniquity" (Matt. 7:23). Sinners, unlike the righteous, have no rest: "...their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:44). The cause of these torments are remorse and unsatisfied passion. The Apostle Paul speaks of this state: "Sorrow and distress to every soul of a man who does evil..." (Rom. 2:5). Sorrow and tightness are intensified by the knowledge of the blissful state of the righteous, the consciousness of the impossibility of leaving the place of torment, for "...the great abyss has been established, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot..." (Luke 16:26). This difference in states between the righteous and sinners and the inability to voluntarily move from one state to another was already in the Old Testament Sheol. Although both the righteous and the wicked were in Sheol (Ps. 89:49; Job 30:23), nevertheless, they were in a different state. After Christ's descent into hell, the righteous were led out of Sheol by Him (1 Pet. 3:18-20).

Sinners in hell also communicate with each other and recognize each other. For example, Isaiah (14:9-10) speaks of the descent into hell of the king of Babylon, where he was recognized. The prophet Ezekiel has a similar story - the descent into hell of the king of Assyria (31, 16-17) and the king of Egypt (Ezek. 32, 21). But, despite the fact that communion is also possible for sinners, this is communion in which there is no God, there is no unity with the same unfortunate ones, because complete unity is possible only in love, and there is just no love in hell, since no, by definition, its Source - God.

As already mentioned, during their afterlife, sinful souls, thanks to prayers for them, can improve their situation and move to another abode of hell, with less painful conditions of existence. But, in any case, hell is a distance from God and stay with the devil and demons. In addition, no matter where the soul is in hell, it will face a complete absence of light (“outer darkness”), constant grief and sadness. And in despair the condemned soul will hate itself, will be angry, will curse the hour of its birth, curse the time in which it sinned. But until the Last Judgment, hope remains, especially for those sinners who repented before their death, but did not have time to bear worthy fruits of repentance.

So, for example, in the life of the martyr Perpetua (3rd century, commemorated February 1), the fate of her deceased brother was revealed to her in the form of a reservoir filled with water, which was located so high that the brother could not reach him from that dirty, unbearably hot place where he was imprisoned. Thanks to Perpetua's fervent prayer throughout the whole day and night, he was able to reach the reservoir, and she saw him in a bright place. From this she understood that he was spared from punishment. There are many similar cases in the lives of Orthodox saints.

Therefore, we must pray for our neighbors not only when they are with us, but also when they are absent; and not only when they are still living on earth, but also when they move to another world: “For if we live, if we die, we are the Lord” (Rom. 14:8), and the dead, as well as the living, “is live for God” (Luke 20:38).

So, briefly, hell can be defined not as a place, but as a state. But the important thing is that a person enters this state already on earth: he himself, by his deeds, passes a posthumous sentence on himself. The Savior said that the Kingdom of Heaven does not begin in any particular place, but already in this world - in the heart of a person whose soul has not yet parted from the flesh. From this we can conclude that the kingdom of darkness settles inside a person before death. Thus, after death, the infernal state fills the soul, hell itself settles in it, a natural process takes place, the beginning of which was laid by the sinner himself: a person reaps the fruits of his wicked deeds. For sin is everything that alienates the soul from God, “drives away” the grace of God from a person, and in hell this Divine energy is finally taken away from the soul. The soul is left by God, which never happens when it is united with the body: the Lord supports all people and leads everyone to salvation, never leaving anyone. Surely, every Christian who once felt the presence of the Lord, united with Him in love, and at least once felt God-forsaken, can approximately comprehend what the Kingdom of Heaven is, being with the Source of endless Love, and what is the bitterness of the separation of the soul from the Lord - a state close to hellish.

There are more or less serious sins. Are the punishments for them in hell also different?

Of course, the penalties are different. But know that the weakest torment in hell is equal in strength to the strongest torment on earth. The weakest joy in paradise is like the strongest earthly joy. Depending on how a person spends his life, according to the strength of the sins he has committed, he sinks to the bottom of hell. Take, for example, Khrushchev, the "miracle worker". He closed about 10,000 churches, many monasteries; What do you think - he's not suffering there? He will face eternal terrible torment there - if he did not repent before his death.

And how many other such rulers were there? They raised their hands against God, against the House of God, against the monasteries. How many people were tortured according to their orders! People did not suffer in vain, they are martyrs before God, but these rulers will receive a good punishment. Take Nero: he set fire in the 1st century Christian city, there was a strong fire, and he stood on the balcony and enjoyed. He opened the most severe persecution of all Christians. Diocletian, Julian, Nero - there were many of them; of course, they all got a place in hell, according to their deeds. God did not punish them, they punished themselves.

The man was baptized at a mature age. Continuing a sinful life, he became an apostate from Christ. What awaits the soul of such a person? Would it not be better for him not to be baptized at all than not to justify the mercy of God?

Saint Macarius the Great was once walking through the desert and met a human skull. He was a special person before God, had the grace of the Holy Spirit, and much was revealed to him from God. He, being in special grace, struck the skull with his staff and asked:

Tell me who are you and where are you?

I am an idol priest, he replied. - I'm in hell.

Do you ever find consolation, the Reverend asked.

There is joy when in the Orthodox Church Christians commemorate their dead on Saturdays and Sundays. In the upper layers of hell then there is light, it partially penetrates to us. Then we see each other. It brings us great joy.

The Reverend also asked:

And below you - idol priests - is there anyone?

Orthodox Christians who were baptized, but did not go to Church, did not wear crosses, did not repent of sins, did not confess, lived unmarried, did not receive communion and died without repentance. They are even lower than those pagans who did not know the True God.

What awaits those people who blaspheme God, who once broke churches, removed crosses, bells from churches, burned icons, holy books?

There were times when all this was done en masse. Some were afraid of God, but there were "braves" - they did all this. But often they fell from the temple or from the bell tower and were smashed to death. Such people generally do not often live to see their death. There was such a case in the Caucasus Mountains. One monk from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra - Hierodeacon Isaac - 92 years old suffered from bandits. Monks lived in the mountains, there was a church. He himself was blind. The brothers went to the city of Sukhumi for worship on a big holiday. He was left alone. Three Muslim Abkhazians came and said:

Give me everything of value you have. - They began to ask him for gold, money.

He says:

I am a wilderness. I don't have any of that. Look for what you find - yours.

We will kill you. We kill a monk - what a fly!

They took a towel, tied it around his neck, led him to a cliff and threw him into the abyss. He crashed to death.

Now an old archimandrite lives in the Pochaev Lavra. His cell was then built just below Fr. Isaac. He heard everything they said and saw everything that the robbers did, but he could not help - the mountains interfered. Then he went down into the abyss - Isaac was already dead.

So the fate of these killers is interesting. They all died within a year: one was driving a car and crashed - fell into an abyss, another was crushed by a tractor, a third was killed.

If the Lord does not punish in this life those people who go against Him, against the servants of God, then they will be severely punished on the Day of the Last Judgment. Everyone should know that he will get what he deserves. The Lord loves everyone. The Lord is waiting for everyone. He waits for the person to repent. But when there is no longer a feeling of repentance in a person, when the person who is choking has completely hardened, then there is a sudden death. Demons take this soul and drag it straight to hell. Sometimes these people commit suicide.

What do those who have been in the other world say about hell? What is he?

Television rarely shows something soulful, instructive. But then somehow an interesting program was going on on the Muscovy channel. One woman, Valentina Romanova, told how she was in the afterlife. She was an unbeliever, got into a car accident, died and saw how her soul was separated from her body. In the program, she told in detail what happened to her after her death.

At first, she did not realize that she had died. She saw everything, heard everything, understood everything, and even wanted to tell the doctors that she was alive. Screaming: "I'm alive!" But no one heard her voice. She grabbed the doctors by the hands, but she did not succeed. I saw a piece of paper and a pen on the table, I decided to write a note, but I could not take this pen in my hands.

And at that time she was drawn into a tunnel, a funnel. She came out of the tunnel and saw a dark man next to her. At first she was very glad that she was not alone, turned to him and said: - Man, tell me where I am?

He was tall and stood on her left side. When he turned, she looked into his eyes and realized that no good could be expected from this man. Fear gripped her and she ran. When she met a luminous young man who protected her from a terrible man, she calmed down.

And then the places that we call hellish opened up to her. A cliff of terrible height, very deep, and below there are many people - both men and women. They were of different nationalities, different skin colors. An unbearable stench emanated from this pit. And there was a voice to her that said that there are those who committed terrible Sodomic sins during their lifetime, unnatural, fornication.

In another place, she saw a lot of women and thought:

These are child killers, those who had abortions and did not repent.

Then Valentina realized that she would have to answer for what she had done in her life. Here she first heard the word "vices". I didn't know what the word was before. Only gradually she understood how terrible the hellish torments are, what sin is, what vice is.

Then I saw a volcanic eruption. A huge fiery river flowed, and human heads floated in it. They then plunged into the lava, then emerged. And the same voice explained that in this fiery lava there are souls of psychics, those who were engaged in divination, witchcraft, love spells. Valentina was frightened and thought: "What if they leave me here too?" She did not have such a sin, but she understood that in any of these places she could stay forever, since she was an unrepentant sinner.

And then I saw a staircase that led to heaven. There were a lot of people going up this staircase. She also began to rise. A woman walked ahead of her. She was exhausted, became exhausted. And Valentina realized that if she did not help her, she would fall down. It can be seen that she is a merciful person, she began to help this woman. So they got into the light space. She couldn't describe him. She spoke only about the amazing fragrance and joy. When Valentina experienced spiritual joy, she returned to her body. She ended up in a hospital bed with the man who hit her standing in front of her. His last name is Ivanov. He told her:

Die no more! I will pay for all damages on your car (she was very worried because the car was broken), but don't die!

She was in the next world for three and a half hours. Medicine calls it clinical death, but allows a person to be in this state for no more than six minutes. After this period, irreversible changes in the brain and tissues begin. And even if a person is then revived, he turns out to be mentally handicapped. The Lord once again showed the miracle of the resurrection of the dead. He brought a person back to life and gave him new knowledge about the spiritual world.

I also knew such a case - with Claudia Ustyuzhanina. It was in the sixties. When I was returning from the army, I stopped by Barnaul. A woman approached me in the temple. She saw that I was praying and said:

We have a miracle in the city. The woman lay in the morgue for several days and came to life. Would you like to see her?

And I went. I saw a huge house, a high fence, there. Everyone had these fences. The shutters in the house are closed. We knocked and a woman came out. They said that we came from the church, and she accepted. At home there was still a boy of about six, Andrei, now he is a priest. I don't know if he remembers me, but I remember him well.

I spent the night with them. Claudia showed certificates of her death. She even showed scars on her body. It is known that She had cancer of the fourth degree and she died during the operation. She told a lot of interesting things.

And then I entered the seminary. He knew that Claudia was in persecution, the newspapers did not leave her alone. Her house was constantly under control: nearby, two or three houses away, there was a two-story police building. I spoke with some fathers in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, and she was called. She sold her house in Barnaul and bought a house in Strunino. The son grew up, now he serves in the city of Alexandrov.

When I was in the Pochaev Lavra, I heard that she had gone to the other world.

Where is hell?

There are two opinions. Saints Basil the Great and Athanasius the Great imagine that hell is inside the earth, because in the Holy Scriptures the Lord, through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel, says: "I will bring you down /.../ and place you in the underworld of the earth" (Ezek. 26, 20). The same opinion is confirmed by the canon of Matins of Great Saturday: "Thou hast descended into the lower earth," "Thou hast descended into the underworld of the earth."

But other teachers of the Church, for example, St. John Chrysostom, believe that hell is outside the world: "Just as royal dungeons and ore mines are far away, so hell will be somewhere outside this universe. But what are you asking, where and in what place will is she? What does it matter to you? You need to know what she is, and not where and in what place she hides. And our Christian task is to avoid hell: loving God, neighbors, humble ourselves and repent, go to that world.

There are many mysteries on earth. When Archdeacon Stephen was stoned to death, a temple was erected for him at this place, at the gates to Jerusalem. In our time, archaeologists from Belarus and Ukraine came there, opened the entrance under the temple, which leads under the city, brought equipment there and suddenly saw black birds with wingspan of more than two meters in huge underground caves. The birds rushed at the archaeologists, caught up with them

such fear that they left the equipment, drove an excavator and blocked the entrance with stones and sand, refusing to further research ...

How many people go to the Kingdom of God, and how many go to hell?

One priest was asked this question. He smiled.

You know dear! When I climb up to ring the bell tower before the Divine Liturgy, I see people coming from the nearby villages along the paths to the church. Grandmother with a wand, grandfather mince with her granddaughter, young people go ... By the end of the service, the whole temple is filled. So people go to the abodes of Paradise - one at a time. And to hell... Now the service is over. I - again to the bell tower, I see: people all come out of the church gates together. They can’t get through right away, but they still hurry from behind: “Why are you standing there! Get out faster!”

Holy Scripture says: "Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many go through it" (Matthew 7:13). It is very difficult for a sinful person to give up his vices and passions, but nothing unclean will enter the Kingdom of God. Only souls purified in repentance enter there.

The Lord gave all the days of our life to prepare for eternity - all of us will have to go there someday. Those who have the opportunity should constantly go to church - both in the morning and in the evening. The end will come, and we will not be ashamed to appear before the heavenly inhabitants, before God. The good deeds of an Orthodox Christian will intercede for him.

Nika Kravchuk

Is hell a place or a state of mind?

The word "hell" has long been rooted in our language. Hellish torment, hellish heat - such an epithet is somehow alarmingly perceived. But a person drives away sad thoughts from himself by the fact that it is somewhere far away, in some other dimension. But what if it is much closer and you don't have to die to see it?

Like in Hollywood movies

We are accustomed to that vivid image of Gehenna, which is familiar to us from our own interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, apocrypha, literature and fine arts.

Someone is looking for "tartare" in the depths of the earth, someone imagines terrible pictures of sinners boiling in tar cauldrons, a third recalls the gospel lines about the outer darkness, where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Indeed, an inventory for Hollywood shots: red light, horned demons, cauldrons of tar, the torments of sinners, everything is boiling, screaming, screaming.

But do not be wise and think that these are fairy tales and inventions. In all the representations above, there is a deep meaning.

But is it such, the underworld, as it is depicted in the pictures - this can hardly be verified in earthly life. After death, for each person, according to the Christian idea, a 30-day excursion to fiery Gehenna awaits.

But this is not yet a complete picture of the underworld.

Where does Sheol begin?

We imagine it as something far away, in the earthly sense, usually as a kind of image, a symbol. He is supposedly real, but somewhere very far away.

But in fact, the underworld is very close and we predict ourselves to it every day.

In this sense, it is to be separated from God. What causes us to separate from God? Due to sin.

That is, what in the Church Slavonic language sounds like “tartar”, in fact, is not only a place where sinners stay, but also the very state of a person who creates lawlessness. In the second case, Gehenna begins already on earth.

Probably, if you live with the thought that every rude word, a sidelong glance already prophesies us to separation and estrangement from God, that is, to hell and, in case of impenitence, to eternal torment, then you will want to change and lament about sins.

God does not send a man to hell

God does not send a person to hell and eternal torment. Moreover, God did not create hell and has nothing to do with the appearance of sin.

A person has the right to choose. And if during his lifetime he renounced God and consciously took a different path, then how to be here? God does not silhouette anyone for anything.

Therefore, even on earth, a person can choose tartar and stay in it. The transition to another world will only confirm this choice and confirm it in eternity. This is the scariest thing.

Take it, tell your friends!

Read also on our website:

show more

The spiritual state of a person can be determined by what he thinks about other people. We look at others through the prism of our inner world. So, everything will be crooked to the crooked, but to the pure, as you know, everything is clean. And even a notorious sinner pure in heart will look like a saint.

The word "hell" (Gr. κολασε - flour) comes from the verb κολαζο and has two meanings. The first meaning is “to cut the branches of the tree”, the second is “to punish”. The word is used mainly in the second sense. Moreover, in the sense that he does not punish a person, but a person punishes himself, because he does not accept the gift of God. Breaking communion with God is punishment, especially if we remember that man is created in the image and likeness of God, and this is precisely the deepest meaning of his existence.

Hell in Scripture

Two scriptures clearly speak of hell.

One of them is in the gospel text, where Christ speaks of the future Judgment. Christ said:

“And these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46).

If this verse is connected with the previous one, “depart from Me, you cursed, into eternal fire prepared for his own” (Matt. 25:41), then it becomes clear that hell is identified here with eternal fire, which is prepared not for man, but for the devil. and his angels.

The second place in the Holy Scriptures, which contains the word hell, is in the message of the Evangelist John: “Perfect love casts out fear, because in fear there is torment ( κολασε ). He who fears is imperfect in love” (1 John 4:18). Of course, hell is not spoken of here as a mode of existence for sinners after the Second Coming of Christ, but as a state of torment that is alien to love and therefore associated with fear.

In addition, the state of hell is conveyed in the Holy Scriptures by the following words and expressions: “eternal fire” (Matt. 25:41), “outer darkness” (Matt. 25:30), “gehenna fiery” (Matt. 5:22), and etc. However, it is not our task now to analyze these expressions. We will return to them in another chapter when we consider the conclusions to be drawn from the teachings of the Fathers about heaven and hell.

Holy fathers about hell

We should start with St. Isaac the Syrian, who very clearly shows that there is heaven and hell. Speaking about paradise, he says that paradise is the love of God. Naturally, when we speak of love, we mainly mean the uncreated energy of God. Saint Isaac writes: "Paradise is the love of God, in which is the enjoyment of all blessings." But speaking about hell, he says almost the same thing: hell is the scourge of divine love. He writes: “I say that those who are tormented in Gehenna are stricken with the scourge of love. And how bitter and cruel is the torment of love!”

Thus, hell is torment from the impact of the love of God. Saint Isaac says that sorrow from sin against the love of God is "more terrible than any possible punishment." Indeed, what a pain it is to deny someone's love and go against it! What a terrible thing - to behave inappropriately towards those who truly love us! If what has been said is compared with the love of God, then it will be possible to understand the torment of hell. Saint Isaac considers it inappropriate to assert that “sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God.”

Consequently, people in hell will not be deprived of divine love. God will love all people - both the righteous and sinners, but not everyone will feel this love to the same extent and in the same way. In any case, it is inappropriate to say that hell is the absence of God.

This leads to the conclusion that the experience of experiencing God in people is different. To each will be given from the Lord Christ “according to his dignity”, “according to his virtues”. The ranks of teachers and students will be abolished, and "the acuteness of every striving" will be revealed in each. One and the same God will equally give His grace to everyone, but people will perceive it in accordance with their “capacity”. The love of God will spread to all people, but it will act in two ways: it will torment the sinners, and rejoice the righteous. Expressing the Orthodox Tradition, St. Isaac the Syrian writes: “Love by its power acts in two ways: it torments sinners, just as it happens here for a friend to endure from a friend, and rejoices with itself those who have fulfilled their duty.”

Therefore, the same love of God, the same action will spread to all people, but will be perceived differently.

Hell in church life

The writings of the holy fathers of the Church (we have analyzed the testimonies of some of them above) have meaning for us only within the framework of church life. After all, the holy fathers are not just thinkers, philosophers, reflecting on doctrinal topics. No. They express the experience of the Church, interpret the Revelation entrusted to her.

I will give two simple examples to show that the above teaching is the conviction and experience of the entire Church.

The first example is Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ. Divine Communion acts in accordance with the state of a person. If a person is unclean, it scorches him, but if he strives for his purification, or even more so if he is already in a state of deification, it acts in a different way.

The Apostle Paul writes about this to the Corinthians: "Whoever eats this bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:27)". Below he confirms his thought: “Therefore, many of you are weak and sick, and many die” (1 Cor. 11, 30). And this happens because “he who eats and drinks unworthily, he eats and drinks condemnation to himself” (1 Cor. 11, 29). Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, becoming life for people purified and deified, for the unclean is condemnation and death, even bodily death. Many illnesses, and sometimes even death, as the Apostle Paul affirms, are caused by the unworthy Communion of the Blessed Gifts. Therefore, the Apostle gives this advice: “Let a man examine himself, and thus let him eat from this bread and drink from this cup” (1 Cor. I, 28).

The phrase of the Apostle Paul "let him test" should be compared with the spirit of all his Epistles. According to them, the grace of God should enlighten the heart of man, which is confirmed by the following quotation: “For it is good to strengthen hearts through grace” (Heb. 13:9). From this it is obvious that, approaching Divine Communion, a person must experience what spiritual state he is in. For for those who purify themselves, Communion becomes purification, for those who are enlightened, it becomes radiance, for those who deify it, it becomes deification, and for those who are impure and unrepentant, judgment and condemnation, hell.

That is why in the liturgical prayers he implores God that the Divine Communion should not be for judgment and condemnation, but for the remission of sins. The prayer of St. Chrysostom is very indicative: “Vouch for us to partake of Your heavenly and terrible Mysteries, sowing sacred and spiritual meals, with a clear conscience, for the remission of sins, for the forgiveness of sins, for the communion of the Holy Spirit, for the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven, for boldness towards You, not to judgment or condemnation.”

We see the same repentant spirit in the prayers “Following Holy Communion”.

At the appearance of God at the time of the Second Coming, the same thing will happen that is already happening now at the time of Holy Communion. For those who have cleansed themselves and repented, God will become a paradise. For those who are not cleansed, God will become hell.

Another example is from, which, of course, is a visible expression of the teachings of the Church. On the image of the Second Coming, as it is presented in the vestibules of temples, we see the following: from the throne of God comes light, embracing the saints, and from the same throne of God comes a river of fire, scorching unrepentant sinners. The source of both light and fire is one and the same. This is a wonderful expression of the teaching of the holy fathers of the Church, the teaching we have considered above about the two actions of divine grace - enlightening or scorching - depending on the state of a person.

From the book of Metropolitan Hierofei (Vlachos) “Heaven and Hell”

death and hell

After the fall of the first man and his rejection by God, and in him the whole human race, all people, having ended their earthly wandering with the death of the body, descended into the underworld dungeons of hell. Hell is in the bowels of the earth. There is ablaze eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels(Matthew 25:41), which, therefore, by their fall preceded the creation of the material world. There is total darkness, there is tartare, there is gnashing of teeth, there is an unsleeping worm, there is crying without consolation, uninterrupted and in vain.

The Descent of Christ into Hell

There are various torments for a variety of sins; there are different degrees of torment corresponding to different degrees of sinfulness. Spiritual death, essential death, which struck the human race in its ancestors, expressing its power over the body of the earthly wanderer during his earthly wandering with illnesses and countless other sufferings, at the end of earthly wandering expresses this power by the most terrible phenomenon: the separation of the soul from the body.

Upon the separation of the soul from the body, the power of death over a person is fully developed (here we are talking about the times preceding the Redeemer): the decaying and stinking body is buried in the bowels of the earth, and the soul of every person, both the wicked and the Old Testament righteous, descends into hell. The souls of the wicked plunged into eternal fire, as if they belonged definitively to eternal death; the souls of the righteous descended into hell, into its less deep and fearful dungeons, where they dwelt, languishing with life in hell and at the same time comforted by the hope of redemption. All the circumstances of earthly life prove to a person that he is an exile on earth for a terrible crime; but death proves it most of all. It shows neither respect nor pity for anything lofty and important human. It strikes youth, and beauty, and genius, and power, and wealth. Nothing can avert the inexorable death that serves for the human race as an experimental proof of its fall, its sin against God, its execution. It testifies before people that man is a creature and a slave who has rebelled against his Creator and Lord, that the most famous and most important deeds of people for the earth mean nothing for eternity, that the high human - an abomination is before God(Luke 16:15). Death is punishment. Striking every person, it proves that every person is a criminal; striking all people without exception, it proves that humanity is punished for a crime common to all mankind. Death reveres before piety alone, and the prayer of a righteous man can sometimes stop the ax of death and delay its hour (Isaiah 38:5).

First two days after death

During the first two days, the soul enjoys relative freedom and can visit those places on earth that are dear to it, but on the third day it moves to other realms.
Here Archbishop John is simply repeating a doctrine known to the Church since the 4th century. Tradition reports that the angel who accompanied St. Macarius of Alexandria, said, explaining the church commemoration of the dead on the third day after death: “When an offering takes place in the church on the third day, the soul of the deceased receives relief from the angel guarding her in sorrow, which she feels from separation from the body, receives because the doxology and the offering in the church of God has been made for her, which is why a good hope is born in her. For for two days the soul, together with the angels who are with it, is allowed to walk the earth wherever it wants. Therefore, the soul that loves the body sometimes wanders near the house in which it was separated from the body, sometimes near the tomb in which the body is laid; and thus spends two days, like a bird, looking for its nests. And a virtuous soul walks in those places where it used to do the right thing. On the third day, He Who rose from the dead, commands, in imitation of His resurrection, to ascend to heaven for every Christian soul to worship the God of all.
In the Orthodox rite of burial of the departed Ven. John of Damascus vividly describes the state of the soul, parted from the body, but still on earth, powerless to communicate with loved ones whom she can see: “Alas for me, what a feat to have a soul separated from the body! Alas, then how much will shed tears, and have mercy on her! Lifting up your eyes to the Angels, praying idlely: stretching out your hands to people, not having someone to help. The same, my beloved brethren, having thought of our brief life we ask for repose from Christ, and great mercy to our souls ”(Following the burial of worldly people, the stichera is self-voiced, tone 2).
In a letter to the husband of her dying sister mentioned above, St. Theophan writes: “After all, the sister herself will not die; the body dies, but the face of the dying remains. Passes only to other orders of life. In the body lying under the saints and then taken out, it is not there, and it is not hidden in the grave. She is somewhere else. Just as alive as now. In the first hours and days it will be near you. - And only she won’t speak, - but you can’t see her, otherwise here ... Keep this in mind. We who remain weep for those who have departed, but it is immediately easier for them: that state is gratifying. Those who died and were then introduced into the body found it a very uncomfortable dwelling. The sister will feel the same way. She is better there, and we are killing ourselves, as if some kind of misfortune had happened to her. She looks and, surely, marvels at that ”(“ Soul Reading", August 1894).
It should be borne in mind that this description of the first two days after death gives general rule which by no means covers all situations. Indeed, most of the passages from Orthodox literature cited in this book do not fit this rule - and for a completely obvious reason: the saints, who were not at all attached to worldly things, lived in constant expectation of transition to another world, are not even attracted to places, where they did good deeds, but immediately begin their ascent to. Others, like K. Ikskul, begin their ascent earlier than two days by the special permission of God's Providence. On the other hand, all modern “post-mortem” experiences, no matter how fragmented they are, do not fit this rule: the out-of-body state is only the beginning of the first period of the disembodied wandering of the soul to the places of its earthly attachments, but none of these people has been in a state of death. long enough to even meet the two Angels who are supposed to accompany them.
Some critics of the Orthodox doctrine of life after death find that such deviations from the general rule of "after death" experience are evidence of contradictions in Orthodox teaching, but such critics take everything too literally. The description of the first two days (as well as the subsequent ones) is by no means dogma; it is simply a model that only formulates the most general order of the soul's post-mortem experience. Many instances, both in Orthodox literature and in accounts of modern experiences, where the dead instantly appeared alive on the first day or two after death (sometimes in a dream), serve as examples of the truth that the soul does indeed remain close to the earth for some short time. (Actual apparitions of the dead after this brief period of freedom of the soul are much rarer and always by God's Will for some special purpose, and not by anyone's own will. But by the third day, and often earlier, this period comes to an end. .)

ordeal

At this time (on the third day) the soul passes through the legions of evil spirits, which block its path and accuse it of various sins, in which they themselves have involved it. According to various revelations, there are twenty such obstacles, the so-called "ordeals", at each of which this or that sin is tortured; having gone through one ordeal, the soul comes to the next. And only after successfully passing through all of them, can the soul continue its path without being immediately plunged into hell. How terrible these demons and ordeals are can be seen from the fact that the Mother of God Herself, when the Archangel Gabriel informed Her of the approach of death, prayed to Her Son to deliver Her soul from these demons, and in answer to Her prayers, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared from heaven accept the soul of His Most Pure Mother and take Her to heaven. (This is visibly depicted on the traditional Orthodox icon Dormition.) The third day is truly terrible for the soul of the deceased, and for this reason prayers are especially needed for it.
In the sixth chapter there are a number of patristic and hagiographic texts about ordeals, and there is no need to add anything else here. However, here we can also note that the descriptions of ordeals correspond to the model of torture that the soul undergoes after death, and individual experience can differ significantly. Minor details such as the number of ordeals, of course, are secondary in comparison with the main fact that the soul is really subjected to judgment (private judgment) shortly after death, which sums up the “invisible battle” that it waged (or did not wage) on earth against fallen spirits. .

Continuing the letter to the husband of the dying sister, Bishop Theophan the Recluse writes: At those who have departed will soon begin the feat of transition through ordeals. She needs help there! - Then stand in this thought, and you will hear her cry to you: "Help!" “That is where you must direct all your attention and all your love for her. I think that the most real evidence of love will be if, from the moment your soul departs, you, leaving the worries about the body to others, step aside yourself and, secluded where possible, immerse yourself in prayer for her in her new state, for her unexpected needs. Having started like this, be in an unceasing cry to God - for her help, for six weeks - and beyond. In Theodora's legend - the bag from which the Angels took to get rid of the publicans - these were the prayers of her elder. The same will happen to your prayers… Do not forget to do this… Behold, love!”
Critics of Orthodox teaching often misunderstand that “bag of gold” from which the Angels “paid for the debts” of Blessed Theodora during the ordeals; it is sometimes erroneously compared to the Latin notion of "super-due merits" of saints. Here, too, such critics read Orthodox texts too literally. Here we have in mind nothing more than the prayers for the departed of the Church, in particular, the prayers of the holy and spiritual father. The form in which it is described - there is hardly even a need to talk about it - is metaphorical.
The Orthodox Church considers the doctrine of ordeals so important that it mentions them in many places (see some quotations in the chapter on ordeals). In particular, the Church especially expounds this teaching to all her dying children. In the "Canon for the Exodus of the Soul", read by the priest at the bedside of a dying member of the Church, there are the following troparia:
“The prince of the air, the rapist, the tormentor, the terrible paths of the defender and the in vain of these words, make me pass unhinderedly departing from the earth” (Song 4).
“Holy Angels, lay me to the sacred and honest hands, Lady, as if I covered those wings, I don’t see the dishonorable and stinking and gloomy demons of the image” (Ode 6).
“Having given birth to the Lord Almighty, the bitter ordeals of the head of the world-keeper are far from me, whenever I want to die, but I will glorify Thee forever, Holy Mother of God” (Song 8 ).
So dying Orthodox Christian prepared by the words of the Church for the coming trials.

forty days

Then, having successfully passed through ordeals and bowed to God, the soul visits heavenly abodes and hellish abysses for another thirty-seven days, not yet knowing where it will stay, and only on the fortieth day is a place assigned to it until the resurrection of the dead.
Of course, there is nothing strange in the fact that, having gone through ordeals and done away with earthly things forever, the soul should get acquainted with the present. otherworldly world, in one part of which she will dwell forever. According to the revelation of the Angel, St. Macarius of Alexandria, a special church commemoration of the dead on the ninth day after death (in addition to the general symbolism of the nine ranks of angels) is due to the fact that until now the soul has been shown the beauties of paradise, and only after that, during the rest of the forty-day period, it is shown the torment and horrors of hell, before on the fortieth day a place is assigned to her where she will await the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment. And here too, these numbers give a general rule or model of the after-death reality, and, of course, not all the dead complete their journey according to this rule. We know that Theodora really completed her visit to hell exactly on the fortieth - by earthly standards of time - day.

State of mind before the Last Judgment

Some souls after forty days find themselves in a state of anticipation of eternal joy and bliss, while others are in fear of eternal torment, which will fully begin after the Last Judgment. Before that, changes in the state of souls are still possible, especially thanks to the offering of the Bloodless Sacrifice for them (commemoration at the Liturgy) and other prayers.

The teaching of the Church about the state of souls in heaven and hell before the Last Judgment is set forth in more detail in the words of St. Mark of Ephesus.
The benefits of prayer, both public and private, for souls in hell are described in the lives of the holy ascetics and in patristic writings. In the life of the martyr Perpetua (III century), for example, the fate of her brother was revealed to her in the form of a reservoir filled with water, which was located so high that he could not reach it from that dirty, unbearably hot place where he was imprisoned. Thanks to her fervent prayer throughout the whole day and night, he was able to reach the reservoir, and she saw him in a bright place. From this she understood that he was spared from punishment.
There is a similar story in the life of the ascetic, nun Afanasia (Anastasia Logacheva), who died already in our 20th century: “At one time she undertook a prayer feat for her sibling Paul, drunkenly choking himself. Initially, she went to the blessed Pelageya Ivanovna, who lived in the Diveevsky monastery, to seek advice on what she could do to alleviate the afterlife fate of her brother, who ended his life unhappily and wickedly. earthly life. At the council, it was decided as follows: Anastasia shut herself in her cell, fast and pray for her brother, every day read the prayer 150 times: Mother of God, Virgin, rejoice ... After forty days, she had a vision: a deep abyss, at the bottom of which lay, as it were, a bloody stone , and on it - two people with iron chains around their necks and one of them was her brother. When she reported this vision to the blessed Pelageya, the latter advised her to repeat the feat. After a second 40 days, she saw the same abyss, the same stone, on which were the same two faces with chains around their necks, but only her brother got up, walked around the stone, again fell on the stone, and the chain was on his neck. Upon the transmission of this vision to Pelageya Ivanovna, the latter advised to endure the same feat for the third time. After 40 new days, Anastasia saw the same abyss and the same stone, on which there was already only one person unknown to her, and her brother left the stone and hid; the one who remained on the stone said: “It’s good for you, you have strong intercessors on earth.” After this, the blessed Pelageya said: “Your brother was freed from torment, but did not receive blessedness.”
There are many similar cases in the lives of Orthodox saints and ascetics. If one is inclined to be overly literal about these visions, then one should probably say that, of course, the forms that these visions take (usually in a dream) are not necessarily "photographs" of the state of the soul in another world, but rather images that convey the spiritual truth about the improvement of the state of the soul through the prayers of those who remained on earth.

The prosperity of evil on earth

When the human race spent many millennia in cruel enslavement by a fallen angel, then the Redeemer promised by God appeared on earth. Before we begin to describe this greatest and most wonderful event, let us take another look at the state of the unfortunate world, while the Lord descended to earth and became man for the renewal and salvation of mankind. The world was immersed throughout its space in idolatry. People, hating each other, envying each other, watered the entire surface of the earth with their blood in fierce battles, in which numerous peoples were exterminated and disappeared, shaken by the sword and deprived of nationality by slavery and sale in the markets of the universe like cattle or soulless goods. The disasters and destruction of mankind are recognized as the greatest glory for mankind, and the conquerors, stained with the blood of their brethren, were declared gods even during their lifetime. Other villains, distinguished by vile vices, were given divine honor after their death. Satisfaction with the most shameful passions was considered the highest pleasure. Some of the most outcast people entered into open intercourse with Satan, clothed in his strength, and helped to strengthen his dominion over the earth and mankind. This dominance has reached its full development. The chosen people of Israel also bowed under this dominion. Extremely diminished in number and fallen in civil respect, this people fell under the power of idolatrous peoples. His inner, essential strength, which consisted in communion with God through the knowledge and fulfillment of His will, was exhausted. Life according to God, which forms purity of mind and heart in a person, which Divine Grace overshadows, enlightening a person with true spiritual reason and Theology, was replaced in the majority by the school study of the Law, combined with neglect of a charitable life, which the scribes and Pharisees called the Jewish scientists of that time - tried to replace pretense and hypocrisy. These scholars, darkened by satanic pride, filled with contempt and hatred for all other classes of the people, slaves of passions, incapable of faith due to their unlimited and frenzied attachment to earthly glory and earthly advantages, capable due to this attachment to all kinds of crimes, the perpetrators of these crimes, captured they rejected the commandments of God from it, introduced their absurd traditions into it, themselves striving in their blindness to perdition, attracted the people led by them to it. Few, very few people have remained faithful to God by their very life and from such a life dependent and shining with true knowledge of God. Their holy names are in the Holy Gospel.

Now let's move on to the most gratifying spectacle. Let us prepare, prepurify ourselves with tears of repentance, and diverting our mind and heart from all earthly cares, let us join the hosts of the Holy Angels to indulge together with them in the sacred contemplation of the incarnation of God the Word, so that together with them in sacred wonder and joy we sing: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men(Luke 2:14).

Why does Hell exist if God is Love?

Many people prefer to think of their relationship with God in terms of reward and punishment and agree that God can condemn a person to eternal death for not loving Him.

Without going into too much detail, let's take a critical look at the above. After all, what is hell? Literally translated from Greek, this is a place devoid of light, that is, God, since Light is one of His most common names.

Thus, hell is nothing but a state of God-forsakenness, alienation of the creature from its Creator.

The hallmark of love is the desire for unity, the reunion of the divided.

The heritage of the Kingdom of Heaven, understood as the overcoming of spiritual death, i.e. disintegration and loneliness, is acquired by us in the striving for God, Who is this all-unifying Force.

Therefore, in patristic thought, salvation itself is associated rather with the restoration of a person in his original dignity, his recovery, rather than with deliverance from condemnation, i.e. the same "sending to hell" about which the slogan in the title of our conversation speaks.

To be saved means to be together with God, and hell is so terrible precisely because it is as far from Him as possible.

So how to explain the popularity of the opposite, it would seem, deliberately distorted model of the relationship between God and man? It is likely that such an understanding to some extent corresponds to the religious expectations of the majority of believers who need a set of very specific things from God, among them invariably: health, success, well-being, posthumous guarantees, etc.

The slogan "Love me or I'll send you to hell" offers a linear logic of salvation, a kind of contract, observing the terms of which a person receives guarantees of his posthumous well-being.

The goal of religious activity in this case is not a union with God, but the acquisition of this well-being, understood in a "spiritual" key.

This is associated with the desire to protect oneself from God, to protect oneself from His interference in our lives, since God all the time wants from a person what the person himself does not need. As if each of us owed Him something. And that “love” that a person squeezes out of himself is a kind of tax, a payment for those guarantees, without which he cannot overcome anxiety and fear of death.

The article does not set out the last and final word of Orthodox cosmology, but an attempt is made to explain the teachings of the Church in a language familiar to modern rationality. thinking person. Items marked with "" are the private opinion of the author.

Opponents of God and re-ligare raise questions to which it is impossible to formulate convincing or even understandable answers in the current church terminology (especially at the parish level). For example.

Is the kingdom of heaven and paradise the same thing? If yes, and the Kingdom of Heaven, as you know, is within us, then where is the prudent thief now? In my? I don't watch. To this thief Christ Himself said now you will be with me in paradise(Luke 23:43). He did not say “in me”, but “with me”. Why did it become necessary to understand His words allegorically? And how exactly is allegorical? How many storytellers, excuse me, so many understandings. Maybe the Kingdom of Heaven and Paradise are just different realities?
Satan was expelled from paradise, but despite this he seduced Eve, as a result of which the forefathers were expelled from paradise. How did Satan manage to get back to Paradise to do his dirty work? Poorly expelled, God allowed or not expelled from paradise? And then a related question: where were they expelled? Really in paradise, since Satan found himself there?
Adam and Eve lived in paradise before their fall (well, since they were expelled from there, it means that they were there after all): then paradise and Eden are one and the same? If so, why do the righteous who have successfully passed ordeals stay in some third “place of anticipation of future blessings”, and do not return to Eden? If not the same thing, then what is the fate of uninhabited and uninhabited Eden after the end of the Last Judgment, when the righteous will gather in mountainous Jerusalem? Eden will be destroyed as unnecessary? Why destroy one paradise in order to immediately create another? Looks stupid. Or are Eden and the heavenly Jerusalem one and the same? But that's impossible, because the Lord said behold, I create everything new(Rev. 21:5), and not "behold, I restore all that is old." In any case, it turns out that Eden is “idle” for nothing. Who needs it, without people?
The Church teaches that the Savior destroyed hell, but at the same time warns that we would not get into it because of our sins - where is the logic? If hell was destroyed only by Christ thousands of years after Abraham, then where was the bed of Abraham, the place of residence of the Old Testament righteous? Really in hell, in fiery hell? After all, if the Savior brought the Old Testament righteous out of hell, then they were there.
The Old Testament speaks very reluctantly and covertly about the posthumous fate of the righteous, and only the Gospel teaches this clearly and definitely - why is this so, why is the doctrine of paradise taken out in New Testament What is the need for such a division? Didn't people before Christ need the consolation of the future heavenly reward? Unlikely. Perhaps the later teaching is erroneous, and it is time to finally return to the concepts of hell and sheol of the period of the second Jerusalem temple? And there is no Kingdom of Heaven inside us, but we just need to honestly and to the best of our ability fulfill the understandable Old Testament decalogue?

Usually, even the most restrained priests give approximately the following answer to questions of this kind: “According to the patristic teaching, there are no special places in space that limit heaven and hell in our understanding. The realities of the spiritual world are inexpressible by the categories of the earthly world. The most objective reality that awaits us beyond the grave is the reality of God's love.” As if we were asking about places in space, or doubting the reality of God's love. Even now it is the most objective reality, and it will not only become so after the grave.

But these are flowers; there are also berries: if we are believers, then we should at least trust the words of the Lord, and the epigraph for any open-minded reader means the following:

1. After death, even the workers of unrighteousness want to get to God.
2. The Lord drives them away from Himself.

The question is, why do the workers of iniquity want to get to God if His love causes them hellish torments?

Now judge for yourself. Here we have a modern, willing to understand, questioning man. Not stupid, brought up on trust in science, with repeatedly justified successful application of rational thinking and logic. On cosmological questions, he, on the one hand, has indistinct explanations of Orthodox priests: they say, "understand spiritually." On the other hand, there is the usual, consistent logic of Jews and Gentiles. Which side will the human mind take? Know what. So why not help the mind? Is it really impossible to give intelligible answers before acquiring personal knowledge of grace (and we are all in this deplorable state), and thereby clear the way for life-giving faith through the obstacles of the mind?
We believe it is possible and necessary. Here we will try.

Notes on terms.

About space.

The inability to give the usual physical spatial indications of a particular place (coordinates) does not mean the absence of a place as such or a difference between places. Only God, Who is everywhere, is unlimited, and His creation is limited: if the creation (man, Angel) is in one place, he (they) is not in another. The holy prophet Daniel waited three weeks for an angel sent to him, who was prevented from passing by the satanic army, and who finally passed only with the help of the Archangel Michael (Dan. 10:12-13). This means that although these are "spiritual realities" to which "our concepts do not apply," it nevertheless took the Angel three weeks to get where he needed to be. The angel could not be in two "places" at the same time, he needed to "come" from one place to another.
Therefore, when the word "place" is used further, this term will be taken in a broad sense. Whether in a five-dimensional space, parallel, spiritual, as you like and it does not matter - but this is exactly the place; place as a concept that characterizes the limitedness of the creature and is inextricably linked with this limitedness.

About the time.

The absence of time is not the absence of processes and cause-and-effect relationships. We know that there was a "time" when there was no time, and there will be a "time" when there will be no time. This biblical knowledge necessarily implies that neither God nor His creatures need any time to live (and not stand still).
It is even difficult to imagine that after the creation of the new earth and sky, all processes will stop. At a minimum, it is known that the righteous in Jerusalem on high will praise God - in the absence of processes, this would be impossible.
The person in Jerusalem on high will be in the body, like our Savior. Returning to the body (renewed, spiritual) means for a person the return of the possibility of creativity. Incorporeal Angels are fundamentally deprived of this possibility. And what, a creative person will live and not create?
When did time appear: before the creation of the world or after? And what is the cause and effect: God's plan for the world and man and, as a consequence, the creation of the world, or vice versa? Causes and effects, despite the lack of time, exist.
In short, the absence of time does not mean the absence of events, the absence of life and creativity.

Significant events in world history.

For our consideration, they recognize: (1) the creation of the world, (2) the creation of Angels, (3) the creation of man, (4) the fall of Dennitsa, (5) the fall of the ancestors, (6) the death of Adam, (7) the Resurrection of Christ, (8) ) The Last Judgment. Each of these events significantly changed the composition of the universe and established new connections (and/or changed old ones) between its constituent parts.
If you try to consistently comprehend the cosmology of the created world from Christian positions, but not as extensively as did Fr. Vasily Zenkovsky, we get the following picture.

The phased structure of the universe.

1. Creation of the world.

We know that the world, visible and invisible, was created out of nothing. Before the creation of the world, we only reliably know the phenomena of the absence of time, the existence of God and His plan of dispensation.

2. Creation of angels.

It happened before the creation of man, which is indicated both by the angelic destiny and the general logic of the creation of the world. We recall the biblical definition: the dwelling place of Angels is heaven (and not “paradise” at all, no matter what is meant by it).

3. The creation of man.

Created man dwells in Eden - and this is also a strict biblical term. He does not live in paradise, but in the Garden of Eden, which, with its beauty, deserved the sublime metaphor "Garden of Eden". But this is not a garden in paradise, this is a metaphor. Paradise in the proper sense does not yet exist.
And there are heaven (the place of residence of Angels) and Eden (the place of residence of man). Angels travel freely from heaven to Eden (Dennitsa is the guardian angel of the Earth) and back, a person is able to communicate with God. It is not said about the communication of people and Angels.

4. The fall of Dennitsa.

According to Tradition, the fall of Dennitsa was a consequence of the creation of man. In principle, the feelings of Satan are understandable: “How is it! I, a planetary angel of the cherubic rank, must serve this shabby former monkey, who, you see, has the gift of creativity? No way, I myself am a god!” Whether this was true, we do not know, and it does not matter.
And the important thing is that Satan was expelled from heaven. That is, they stopped Satan and the Aggels from his free access to heaven. And he turned out to be able to be only in Eden (and not in paradise), where he successfully seduced our foremother.

5. The fall of the ancestors.

The fall of Satan did not have any influence on the ontological (existential, physical) basis of the material Eden, did not make any change in it. Another thing is the fall of man, a spiritual and bodily being. As a result of his fall, Eden underwent catastrophic changes: the basic law of our world arose - entropy (decay), the food chain (the whole creature groans and suffers), the earth grew thorns and thistles, animals turned away from man, death appeared. Eden was damaged, because. the spiritual-corporeal man violated the main spiritual law of the universe and, through its dual nature, damaged the material Eden, which turned into the cosmos observed now with stars ugly scattering from each other. It is known for certain that from this stage at the latest, time exists in the created world.
As a result, we have heaven as the place of residence of the Angels, and the Universe familiar to us in the scientific sense, i.e. former Eden, as the place of residence of man and fallen angels.
In order to prevent free communication between man and demons, the Lord mercifully and providentially dresses us in “leather vestments” (from which every psychic strives so hard to escape). Thus, although we live in the same universe with demons, we do not see them and do not directly feel them. True, demons see us perfectly, but they cannot directly influence us.
At this stage in the development of the world, there is still no trace of paradise. As well as hell.

6. Death of Adam.

Death is the separation of soul and body. The naked soul, left without the protection of leather robes, immediately becomes accessible to Satan and his demons, since the soul is “one-corporeal” to angels in general. In the afterlife, the soul retains memory, consciousness, the ability to desire ... In a word, the personality is preserved, but the will, understood as the ability to act, completely disappears.
What will Satan want to do when he gets the weak-willed and helpless Adam into his hands? Yes, and other demons, finally reaching out to the human race? Alas, it doesn't take long to guess. For the dead, real hell begins. The Lord did not create this hell. The place of torment is our Universe (the former Eden), but the living in their leather vestments do not see what is happening. Where exactly the place of torment is located is unknown and uninteresting. According to the Tradition of the Church - in the center of the Earth ( earthly firmament for other-corporeal, other-material souls and demons is not denser than air, which the deceased no longer needs for life). Attention, we restore the biblical definition: this place of torment is called Sheol. It's not hell yet. This is a place of waiting for the final decision of one's fate at the Last Judgment.
Sheol is simply a part of the Universe "equipped" by Satan and demons for torture chambers. Are there pots and pans there? Maybe there is, never heard of it. Numerous testimonies of those who returned from the other world indicate that Satan has a richer fantasy. In any case, some church intellectuals who are willing to experience the maximum pangs of conscience in the afterlife will be cruelly and palpably disappointed. The soul feels everything the same as the body, if you act on it with the appropriate co-corporeal tools: “fire”, “cold”, or something else. Satan had plenty of time for experimentation and thoughtful choice (sheol is a part of the universe in which time flows), and he will find something to surprise the sinner. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.
There is also good news. They consist in the fact that just as Satan is not the master of the universe, so he is not the master of Sheol. We know that in "hell", i.e. in Sheol, there are "circles": from places where there is no torment, but no joy, to places where Judas is. If Satan were the master of Sheol, then he would torture everyone equally and as cruelly as possible, but the Lord does not allow this more than the unfortunate captive deserved during his earthly existence.
A characteristic and sad sign of the universe at this stage of history is the non-conditionality of the posthumous fate from the degree of righteousness of earthly life. Whether you are a sinner or a righteous person, only sheol awaits you beyond the grave: demons simply will not allow the soul of the deceased to reach the angels in heaven, and the universe has no other places. Old Testament nothing to promise his saints, and he is silent. The One about whom Job cried out has not yet come: My bones stuck to my skin and my flesh, and I was left only with the skin around my teeth ... But I know that my Redeemer lives, and on the last day He will raise my decaying skin from the dust, and I will see God in my flesh. I will see Him myself; my eyes, not the eyes of another, will see Him(Job 19:20-27).
As a result, we have: heaven (the place of residence of Angels), the Universe (the place of residence of living people and demons), and sheol (the place of residence of dead people and demons tormenting them). Neither heaven nor hell, in the proper sense of these words, is still there.

7. Resurrection of Christ.

And finally, the Lord directly includes Himself in the fate of the world He created, accepting the damaged by sin human nature. For more on this, see "From Death to Resurrection". It is important for us that after the glorious Resurrection of Christ, another “place” appears in the Universe: a place for the righteous to wait for heavenly bliss, foretaste of future blessings. Where exactly it is - God knows.

Structurally, the universe now looks like this: heaven, the universe, sheol, a place of anticipation of heavenly bliss. Again, no heaven, no hell. The Lord did not create them.
In the place of anticipation, the soul is delivered from the torments of demons, but remains outside the body, and therefore is not a full-fledged person and does not live a full-fledged life.
The newly dead get the opportunity to escape Sheol by successfully passing the ordeals.
Since the gates of Sheol are blown up by the resurrection of the Savior, sinners, through the prayers of the Church, have the opportunity to move on to easier circles of torment (if the direction of movement towards Christ coincides with their desire, for the gospel of Christ in hell continues) and even completely leave Sheol. It would be extreme disgust to leave your dead brothers without prayer help.

8. Last Judgment.

Everything here is short and simple. God's second act of creation: Behold, I create everything new(Rev. 21:5) and the heavens were rolled up like a scroll, and a new heaven arose and new earth. The corrupted Universe (the former Eden) was destroyed, with it (as those who are in it) they found their end and Sheol, since real hell is ahead, and a place of anticipation of future blessings, since real paradise is ahead.

The structure of the universe is simplified. A new, mountainous Jerusalem appears - the dwelling place of the righteous and the incorporeal. This is essentially paradise.
However, Satan, his demons, and goats from people must be separated from paradise, otherwise they will quickly defile him, as happened with Eden. And hell breaks out. The Lord chose a very good word for hell. Gehenna (Aramaic) is just a city dump on the lee side of Jerusalem, where they took out unnecessary garbage, set it on fire, and it always burned and stank. Gehenna is just a garbage dump. And this is a real hell - no one needs you, no one educates you and punishes you, no one expects or demands anything from you - they threw you out. Thrown out of life. You are excluded from communication even with the same sinners as yourself, you are surrounded by pitch darkness and icy silence. Absolute, eternal loneliness, in which your true friends there will be an unsleeping worm and an unquenchable fire (a black unluminous flame). Gehenna, that is, hell in the proper sense of the word, is intended primarily for Satan and his angels, but people can easily get there. And if in Sheol the demons were “on horseback” and tormented the souls of people, then in Gehenna they are bound and tormented themselves.

Pay attention - the Lord of hell did not create again - hell is just "out of place" for those who are thrown out. The source of the torment of the unfortunate inhabitants of Gehenna is divine love, which did not take away life, and their own hatred for it, combined with complete helplessness, absolute loneliness, fruitless and therefore meaningless repentance, and the absence of any hope for a change in their condition. There is nothing to wait - nothing will change.

The free choice of a free rational being, made in time, has led to eternal consequences. Not to "temporary" consequences in "eternity", as many would like, but simply to incessant ones. They warned.

The structure of the universe is simple - only paradise, Jerusalem on high.

Conclusion.

It is not without reason that the Orthodox Church does not have a dogmatic teaching about hell. The Lord did not create it and will not create it.
It is not for nothing that instead of the teaching about paradise, our Church has predominantly the teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven, which is within each of us.

It only remains to add that the Kingdom of Heaven is a state, and paradise is a place. It is those who have reached the Kingdom of Heaven in their souls who will be able to get to that place, which at first will be called a place of anticipation of heavenly bliss, and then simply heavenly (real, normal, righteous, correct) Jerusalem.