Forward to The Future Life According to Orthodox Teaching
by Archbishop Chrysostomos
The Future Life According to Orthodox Teaching is written by Dr. Constantine Cavarnos
and published by the Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies (1985).
...Ther is Joye in heven and peyne in helle; And I accorde wel that hit
is so; But natheles, yit wot I wel also, That ther nis noon dwelling in
this contree, That either hath in heven or helle y-be, Ne may of hit non
other weyes witen, But as he hath herd seyd, or founde hit writen.
–Chaucer
There are few subjects in religious thought so
compelling as that of the future life, or life after death.
Indeed, there are those who would argue, with a somewhat
privative view of the subject, that religion itself rises out of
human desperation at the thought of death and the compensatory
need to seek the afterlife. Just such a notion well may be the
dominant one in a society such as ours, which admits
theoretically and with a certain nostalgia to the existence of
Eternity, but really does not predicate life on its existence.
To the Orthodox Christian, the afterlife is an
essential part of this life. In our Liturgical life, we attain
true communion with our fellow Christians only when that which is
Heavenly is joined with the earthly and the living join chorus
with those gone forth before us. Indeed, the culmination of our
Christian life is realized in the eating and drinking of the
flesh and blood of one Who died, yet still lives, Who brings to
death life, and Who joins the living and dead in the Eternal life
of the Resurrection.
In the mystical life of the Church, there is a
constant interaction between the Eternal and the timebound. Theosis,
in which man reaches his highest state of perfection on
earth, being bound in the body yet cleansed of the passions,
rests on the constant interplay and interaction of the Eternal
world and the world that is subject to death. Participating in
the divine, imperfectly communing with the perfect, our Holy
Fathers and Saints, who by Grace shine forth even in our day—though in ever fewer numbers—,
reveal in their lives a spiritual reality that links every
true-believing Orthodox believer to the Eternal. And it is from
the sayings, reports, witness, and written words of these holy
men and women that we know, too, as much as it is possible to
know in darkness what is a pure property of light, something of
the nature of the life after death.
In modern times, theology—and, alas, to some extent in the Orthodox Church, too—has become the domain of speculation and creative
presumption. We have separated the description of true spiritual
experience, which was once real theology, from the modern
practice of theology—the modern
"doing" of theology that gives forth to spiritual
dilettantism, if not blasphemy, if not, finally, disbelief. So it
is that many have written of late that Scripture and the Fathers
of the Church are silent about the afterlife and reticent in
their approach to this topic. Reticent they are, indeed, to speak
of the mystical realm of Eternity in words that might make of
Heaven the middle-class Protestant songfest so feared by Samuel
Clemens, or cast Hell in images, not of metaphysical anguish, but
of epic barbecues; but quiet about the afterlife Holy Scripture
and the Fathers most certainly are not. Only our departure from
Patristic study and from theology which derives from the
Patristic mind can account for this great error among our
contemporary theologians.
To return to a Patristic view of any religious
subject is difficult. If dilettantism (not to mention mediocrity)
and disbelief have become a hallmark of much of today's vogue and
official theology, it is as much an optic as a scholarly disease:
it distorts the vision of all those afflicted, such that they
see, read, and perceive all that about them as accordingly
superficial. Thus it is that in an evaluation in response to a
request for funding, I recently found a polemical writer reacting
to a collection of scholarly papers, based on years of meticulous
study and Patristic exegesis, as mere "sermonettes."
Many scholars have come to lack even the basic experience in
research by which they might identify the authentic. Thus it is
that I wish to preface the present little book with a warning to
the dilettante and to the amateur scholar. There are here no
inadequacies. There is here no modern scholar. In this little work
by Professor Cavarnos, we find a study as studies should be: work
drawn from the Fathers, scholarship shaped by the Patristic mind,
and commentaries richly adorned with Patristic references.
Dr. Cavarnos exhibits in his writing the
tell-tale sign of a good Patristic scholar: it is abundantly
evident in his rich use of citations from primary sources that he
reads the Fathers and reads them thoroughly. Trained in
philosophy, he organizes, explains, and juxtaposes his primary
citations in such a way as to present the Patristic witness with
great clarity. He derives from the Fathers that catholicity in
thought which makes them speak as from one mouth and as with one
voice. To the proud dilettantes, who can but expound on what they
do not adequately know, Cavarnos is a formidable challenger. His
writing does not contain the pride which is necessary to their
kind of theology; nor, to be sure, do their Writings admit of the
humility of a scholar who uses his talents to present and offer
the words of the Fathers, rather than juggle them in a game
of philosophical and theological prestidigitation.
If we have been heavy-handed and a bit harsh in
dealing with much modern theological thought, it has been for the
purpose of focusing the reader's attention on the unique
scholarship which we find in this little book on the afterlife.
After all, such scholarship really is threatened—it really is increasingly rare. Increasingly rare, too,
as we have said, are those who can even recognize, today, an
authentic piece of Patristic scholarship. In such circumstances,
we are obliged to be blunt, to be strong in our statements, and
perhaps to be at times hyperbolic in our expression—not in the interest of polemics, but as a device for
commanding the attention of a Christian world which is being
lulled into a harmful spiritual stupor.
There is a special quality in Professor
Cavarnos' writings, beyond that of authenticity, which in turn
challenges the modern believer, or demi-believer, as we have
suggested. Our recognition of this quality is no personal
laudation of the author as such, for it issues forth from the
power of his sources themselves. From the Patristic and
Scriptural references which Cavarnos has collected with such
assiduity, there flows forth that "theology of facts"
that so vibrantly enlivened the writings of the early Christian
Fathers. If one rises above the merely scholarly and its
aforementioned limitations, he senses as if with some hidden
intuitive faculty that what he is reading of the afterlife is not
the result of frivolous speculation or personal presumption, but
just what it is: a description rendered by those who saw, and
then wrote about, the life after death. This quality permeates
Professor Cavarnos' writings. It is a quality bestowed upon any
writings that authentically reflect the Patristic experience. And
it is a quality which deeply affects the modern doubter or
demi-believer.
It is a particular personal privilege to
publish this book under the aegis of our monastery's publication
program, which, though only several years old, has produced some
six titles (four independently and two in conjunction with the
Holy Cross Orthodox Press in Brookline, Massachusetts) of some
popularity. In my own scholarly career, there have been several
people who deeply affected me with the breadth of their
scholarship and intellects. In the area of history and religious
thought, two among those still living stand out particularly in
my mind: Professor Cavarnos and the renowned Church historian and
medievalist, Professor Jeffrey Russell of the University of
California. The latter was a mentor; the former was not. But both
have given me a vision of honest scholarship which has been
sustained in contemporary times. At a time when belief in God is
waning, Professor Russell has produced an exhaustive study of the
devil that has received attention even in the popular press. His
study of the devil has led many back to an understanding of God;
for, what more quickly leads one to God than a belief in the
existence of the devil? Dr. Cavarnos has likewise kept alive an
understanding of the Byzantine mind and Orthodox spirituality
that is almost gone in our dark days. In both of these men one
finds that light which shines in darkness and a vision of true
scholarship anchored in the enlightenment of the Christian
Fathers and an inner knowledge of Jesus Christ. Dr. Cavarnos has
supplied us with much Patristic and Scriptural material not found
in his original Greek edition of this book. We are very happy to
add this material, which eloquently expands on the various themes
put forth in the work. For any inadequacies in our publication,
we take full responsibility, assuring the reader again that these
are not the fault of the author, as his fine work will
immediately make apparent to the reader. To the extent, then,
that our own shortcomings will be readily visible, we apologize
to the reader and ask for the author's forbearance.
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