ST. ISAAC THE ASSYRIAN (JAN. 28TH)

St. Isaac, the Bishop of Nineveh in the Assyrian Church of the East, and Universally Accepted Father of the Church in the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, and the Anglican Churches

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

Introduction

In Vladimir Lossky’s essential defense of Eastern apophatic theology in "The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church," he points out that the only way to see the divergencies within Orthodoxy's seemingly self-contradictory and innately mysterious theological schema is through a lens developed by a saint who originates within a non-Byzantine Church, a Bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East. In the axial chapter entitled “The Way of Union,” he shows that only in the writing of St. Isaac the Assyrian (AD 613 - 700) can all the opposing dogmas and intuitions of the Church Fathers be tied together, and only within this vision can a true "Consensus Patrum" arise, preserving the ultimately loving nature of God and showing how Heaven and Hell are the same thing. 

St. Isaac's Teaching

There is nothing more scandalous to the Protestant mind than two ideas found within St. Isaac's writings: 1) The idea of an ultimate Apokatastasis, a Great Reconcilation, at the End of Days, and 2) The idea that the glory of heaven and the fires of hell are two differing receptions of the same thing - God holding us forever in His ultimate and inextinguishable love being experienced according to the soul's orientation toward God. Those who willingly accept God's love experience God's grace as light, life and endless communion with the Holy Trinity and the Saints and Angels, experiencing God's grace internally. Those who have rejected God and are set against His love experience it as fire, isolation, and torment, experiencing God's grace externally. These two ideas hold together, however, without contradiction in the Scripture, and they also make sense of the Church's experience with the uncreated and miraculous glory of God, the Shekhinah Glory of the Old Testament, which appears from time to time in the lives of God's holy ones. 

St. Isaac the Assyrian says -

"I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. Nay, what is so bitter and vehement as the torment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is more poignant than any torment. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways. It torments sinners, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend. But it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability." (The Ascetical Homilies I.72)

"'Sin, hell and death do not at all exist with God, for they are events, not persons.' There will be a time when sin will not exist. Gehenna is the fruit of sin; it had a beginning in time, but its end is not known. (Discourses 26)

“Paradise is the love of God, wherein is the enjoyment of all blessedness, and there the blessed Paul partook of supernatural nourishment. When he tasted there of the tree of life, he cried out, saying “Eye hath not see, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Adam was barred from this tree through the devil’s counsel.

“The tree of life is the love of God from which Adam fell away, and thereafter he saw joy no longer, and he toiled and labored in the land of thorns. Even though they make their way in righteousness, those who are bereft of the love of God eat in their work the bread of sweat, which the first-created man was commanded to eat after his fall. … But when we find love, we partake of heavenly bread, and are made strong without labor and toil. The heavenly bread is Christ, Who came down from Heaven and gave life to the world. This is the nourishment of the angels. The man who has found love eats and drinks Christ every day and hour and hereby is made immortal. “He that eateth of this bread,” He says, “which I will give him, shall not see death unto eternity.” Blessed is he who eats the bread of love, which is Jesus! He who eats of love eats Christ, the God over all, as John bears witness, saying, “God is love.”

“Wherefore, the man who lives in love reaps life from God, and while yet in this world, he even now breathes the air of the resurrection; in this air the righteous will delight in the resurrection. Love is the Kingdom, whereof the Lord mystically promised His disciples to eat in His Kingdom. For when we hear Him say, “Ye shall eat and drink at the table of my Kingdom,” what do we suppose we shall eat, if not love? Love is sufficient to nourish a man instead of food and drink.” (The Ascetical Homilies I.46, pgs. 357-358)

Summary

St. Isaac's vision of reconciliation does not mean “universal salvation,” but that all things will be made new and will reflect God’s life and light. There is a great difference between hoping that those who seek God and His virtue in this life under the handicap of false religion or a lack of opportunity to hear the Gospel will be reconciled at the Last Day, and believing everyone will be forcibly saved, as some universalists would like us to imagine, and thus instating a theological “reverse uno card” upon the flawed premises of Calvinism. God does not overcome our free will in this life, due to His love, so how would He force our salvation in the second life, after the Resurrection? In the end, God will right all wrongs, wipe every tear from our eyes, and start anew, co-creating unimaginably beautiful worlds with His Saints and Angels in an infinite future, filled with life and new artistry. Those who side with Him, eternally growing in grace and knowledge, will be like Him, in a renewed Heavenly Council, and will serve God as innumerable ages role and billions of universes pass into the life-giving and refining grace of the fire of Christ’s face! In this, there is hope of salvation and reconciliation for all, confidence in God’s good intentions, and profound desire to see the salvation of all mankind. 

The Last Judgment, Anonymous Engraving, Netherlands, c. 1558, Metropolitan Museum of Art