I have studiously avoided online debates regarding an eternal hell and the punishment of the wicked. I do not plan to change that avoidance with this article. However, I believe that hell is important within Christian believing, though not for the purpose that most imagine. The famous dictum of St. Silouan is worth noting:

“Keep your mind in hell and despair not.”

Most discussions of hell (online and elsewhere) become entangled in its supposed juridical character. Hell, in this view, is a place of punishment. It is the pronouncement of justice. The cry for justice, it is suggested, requires hell as an answer.

I recall the words of St. Isaac of Syria:

“We know nothing of God’s justice, only His mercy.”

With that in mind, I will leave the juridical framework for heaven and hell for others to ponder. For myself, I know only God’s mercy.

The Psalmist says it well:

“Lo, if I descend into hell, Thou art there.”

How can the Psalmist say such a thing? It is only possible because the Psalmist himself has stood in that very place. He speaks of what he knows and what he has seen. And this conversation that he has with Christ (“Thou”) is spoken to us because we, too, have been there, or, we are there, now.

If we lay aside the juridical framework of hell for a moment, and consider it in terms of being and existence (an ontological framework), then hell becomes the name of our non-existence. It is our non-existence in its relative separation from God.

Consider this quote:

In our tradition, when the human being stands in front of God, he invariably sees himself as dust and ashes. This death then is the existential realization or experience of the fact that he is a speck of dust. Indeed, he is a speck of dust with whom God has fallen in love madly, to which he bows, which he becomes. Nevertheless, all human beings of all times, all who have ever lived and all who will ever live, amount precisely to nothing. (From The Life of Our Fathers, Fr. Silviu Bunta.)

St. Athanasius makes a similar point in his De Incarnatione. Our nature, he holds, is rooted in nothingness. We exist only as gift. Apart from God we begin to move towards the nothing from which we came. That movement, ontologically speaking, can be described as hell. It is from hell that we turn to God in repentance. Consider this:

…metanoia or “repentance,” comes down to the manner in which one relates to his/her life, or more acutely, to how one relates to his/her powerlessness, suffering, and death. With metanoia this relationship switches from being sustained and governed by the ego to being sustained and written by Christ’s life and death. (Bunta, Ibid.)

This repentance is imaged for us in the icon of Christ’s Descent into Hades that is commonly displayed at Pascha. In it, Christ rescues Adam and Eve from their bondage in hell. The icon is not a historical depiction as such. But it shows the action of Christ in His Pascha. Adam and Eve are the whole of humanity. St. Silouan wrote the poem, “Adam’s Lament.” It is Adam’s cry from Hades.

Where art Thou, O Lord? Where art Thou, my Light? Why hast Thou hidden Thy face from me?
Long is it since my soul beheld Thee,
and she wearies after Thee and seeks Thee in tears. Where is my Lord?
Why is it that my soul sees Him not? What hinders Him from dwelling in me?

This hinders Him: Christ-like humility and love for my enemies art not in me. God is love insaturable, love impossible to describe.

Understood in this way, hell (or Hades), is a necessary part of understanding the human condition. It is the emptiness of our condition revealed by the fulness of God who alone is true Being. Hell is the nakedness of our condition that we seek to avoid at all costs – creating disguise after disguise that can never hide that nakedness.

In Christ, we see God-become-man voluntarily enter that nakedness. Naked on the Cross before the eyes of all, “He turned not His face from the spitting and the shame.” (Is. 50:6)He did not refuse the alienation we imposed upon Him so that He might go to the very place of our alienation to bring us home.

“[God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God.” (2Cor. 5:21)

“God became man, so that man might become god.” St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione

The truth of our existence is found in God Himself, in our union with Him. In Him, with Him, and through Him, we are created for paradise, for the fullness of being that is God Himself.

The iconography of the Orthodox faith makes clear that Christ’s entrance into our world is an entrance to a human condition that “rhymes” with hell. In the icon of Christ’s nativity, His birth is pictured as taking place in a cave (and that was certainly the case, though it was used as a “stable”). In the icon, the cave is depicted in a manner that copies the “cave” of Hades that can be seen in the Descent into Hades icon associated with Pascha. That same depiction can traditionally be seen in the icon of Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan, where the waters of the Jordan are “hell.” So St. Paul tells us that those who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into His death.

On a certain level, such revelations can seem abstract and distant. My baptism was 65 years ago. More immediate are daily struggles and an inevitable decline in health. None of these things seem to sink to the level of “hell.” But avoiding hell is not the point. Rather, it is recognizing the “hell” that is already present in the emptiness and death of the human condition. It is also the empty place of humility. But, with the Psalmist, we recognize that “Christ is there.” (“Lo, if I descend into hell, Thou art there”).

In Vespers, we enter this place and begin to pray:

Lord, I call upon Thee, hear me.
 Hear me, O Lord.
Lord, I call upon Thee, hear me.
Receive the voice of my prayer, when I call upon Thee.
Hear me, O Lord.
Let my prayer arise,
 in Thy sight as incense,
and let the lifting up of my hands
 be an evening sacrifice.
Hear me, O Lord.

Later, we continue:

Bring my soul out of prison Thy I may give thanks unto Thy name…

… Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice.

Where are we standing when we offer this hymn (a composite of verses from Psalms 140, 141, 129, and 116 )? Clearly, we are standing in the depths of hell – the “prison” (the Hebrew word would be better translated as “dungeon”). Significantly, as the Psalm and its verses are being sung, the priest comes out of the altar, censing the Church and the people. As we lift our voices from the place of darkness, Christ enters into our midst. He comes to save. When this hymn is completed, the doors of the Holy Place are opened, and the priest enters again with incense and light, while we sing the hymn, “O Gladsome Light.” It is our deliverance.

This “liturgy” is repeated again and again in our daily lives. To my mind, it has been the model of priesthood – to meet people in the various prisons of the soul, in the levels of hell within the heart, and to preach the gospel. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” Christ comes to us.

A difficult part of the spiritual life is to recognize the darkness for what it is and allow Christ to enter. Too often, we flee the darkness into places of make-believe, the various neuroses that we falsely treat as a refuge. We should never mistake our neuroses for God. This is a difficult discipline.

In the Divine Liturgy, just before the service begins, the altar is censed while these verses are quietly spoken:

In the tomb with the body,
In hell with the soul, yet as God,
In paradise with the thief,
On the throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
Wast Thou, O bountiful Christ, filling all things.

Just so. Follow Christ…everywhere, through everything. He is there.