The Horror of Hell: St. Gregory Palamas on God's Retributive Justice Contra Hyper-Therapeuticism

The notion that God’s justice is exclusively restorative or, as it were, therapeutic, is being hailed by some as the Orthodox understanding of God’s justice. In this view, God never imposes a non-rehabilitative penalty. All penalties are necessarily rehabilitative, and so to understand justice as retributive is to misunderstand God fundamentally. God, being merciful, cannot be conceived as operating according to a mode of justice that excludes the objects of His justice from being thereby healed through the application of said restorative justice. Justice is never imposed, so the view goes, without mercy as its principle aim or telos. Of course, this notion is false, and is a travesty as regards its being touted as the teaching and preaching of the Church. Although it is true that God’s justice can and often does include a therapeutic and even merciful aspect, as when He limits the extent of Adam’s sin by imposing mortal limits to man (a mercy not available to Satan), it is not exclusively so, for God is holy, and those who refuse to repent of their sin and follow Christ in faith and holiness of life will be eternally condemned according to the principles of God’s retributive justice.

Some may try to oppose the full position of the Church by appealing to the many instances in which God’s mercy is demonstratively present in His just judgments. But one cannot prove that one thing, X, is not there by showing that some other thing, Y, is there, and so this critique assumes a false dichotomy. No amount of proving X can ever in principle disprove Y, which in the present case is to say that, short of universalism, no number of examples of God’s merciful judgements will prove that God never judges retributively. This critique can therefore be dismissed altogether.

Another attempt at opposing the full teaching of the Church may attempt to bind retributive justice to some passibility in God, say a passion of wrath, or more generally to a law which would act as a force controlling God’s freedom, and then seek to tar and feather retribution by associating it with what is necessarily condemned, i.e. that God is passible. Of course, this attempt at invalidating God’s holy and just retribution, by ascribing passion to it, would also have the necessary consequence of ascribing passion even to God’s mercy, for if God’s wrath must be understood as a passion, then nothing in principle discludes mercy from that same ascription. Since God, however, is axiomatically impassible, both in His mercy and in His wrath, and retributive justice is present in the Scriptures alongside His mercy, then the concept of retributive justice must refer to an impassible reality in God, i.e. the inexorable opposition and necessary incompatibility between God and sin. Not compelled by either some passion of wrath or even His own law, God freely upholds His lawful justice, for it accords implicitly with His holy nature.

As discussed in a previous study and as will shown more explicitly below, justice is the sword of the sinner falling on his own head, the pit he digs and into which he falls, the snare he lays and by which he finally entraps himself. God is a just Judge, and His judgment seat is a dread Judgment Seat. It is not only the throne of the Healer, and so if God only uses justice medicinally, then everyone must be healed because God does nothing without justice. Hyper-Therapeuticism, the belief that God’s justice is exclusively therapeutic in nature, would thus necessitate the heresy of universalism. Since universalism is unequivocally denied, as shown here and here, if the judgment, i.e. the justice, of God does not heal everyone, then it cannot be exclusively therapeutic. For unless one succumb to a false dichotomy, it must also be able to function retributively. God, then, being impassible, and not saving everyone, His justice is and must be both medicinal and retributive, where the nature of each case being the factor which elicits one or the other divine response. 

Before turning to Scripture, it is necessary to recall that retribution is a word that derives from the Latin retributio, which refers to recompense or repayment. It is composed of the prefix re- plus tributum, and so means to pay again or pay back. Tributum is also found in such words as tribute, tributary, contribute, distribute, etc. Retribution therefore simply refers to repayment of something owed, whether for good or ill. Moving onto the Bible’s own testimony, retribution is also a biblical concept, and means simply repayment or recompense, even to restore. The Hebrew terms, such as שׁוּב, shûwb;  שָׁלַם, shâlam, נָתַן, nâthan, and, to a lesser extent, גְּמוּלָה, gᵉmûwlâh and גְּמוּל, gᵉmûwl, and still others in the Hebrew and Greek, are so common and flexible in the original languages that rather than their general meaning it will be more necessary to see them in their context. Not only the words, then, but the context in which they appear will show the retributive nature of God’s justice. The Scriptures’ holistic testimony states:

From the Pentateuch

-And He repays (shâlam) those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay (shâlam) him to his face. (Deuteronomy 7:10)

-If I whet My glittering sword, And My hand takes hold on judgment, I will render (shûwb) vengeance to My enemies, And repay (shâlam) those who hate Me. (Deuteronomy 32:41)

-Vengeance (naqam) is Mine, and recompense (shillêm); Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them. (Deuteronomy 32:35)

From the Histories

-If anyone sins against his neighbor, and is forced to take an oath, and comes and takes an oath before Your altar in this temple, 23 then hear from heaven, and act, and judge Your servants, bringing retribution (shûwb) on the wicked by bringing his way on his own head, and justifying the righteous by giving him according to his righteousness. (2 Chronicles 6:22-23)

From the Prophets

-According to their deeds (gᵉmûwlâh), accordingly He will repay (shâlam), Fury to His adversaries, Recompense (gᵉmûwl) to His enemies; The coastlands He will fully repay (shâlam; LXX ὑπεναντίος, hypenantíos). (Isaiah 59:18; cf. Colossians 2:14; Hebrews 10:27)

-Because the plunderer comes against her, against Babylon, And her mighty men are taken. Every one of their bows is broken; For the LORD is the God of recompense (גְּמוּלָה, gᵉmûwlâh), He will surely repay (shâlam). (Jeremiah 51:56)

-And as for Me also, My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense (נָתַן, nâthan) their deeds on their own head. (Ezekiel 9:10)

-"But as for those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense (nâthan) their deeds on their own heads," says the Lord GOD. (Ezekiel 11:21)

-"Because you did not remember the days of your youth, but agitated Me with all these things, surely I will also recompense (nâthan) your deeds on your own head," says the Lord GOD. "And you shall not commit lewdness in addition to all your abominations. (Ezekiel 16:43)

-Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: "As I live, surely My oath which he despised, and My covenant which he broke, I will recompense (nâthan) on his own head. (Ezekiel 17:19)

From The Gospels

-Then He will answer them, saying, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:45-46)

-Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth--those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. (John 5:28-29)

From the Epistles

-Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay (ἀνταποδίδωμι, antapodídōmi) with tribulation those who trouble you, (2 Thessalonians 1:6)

-Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay (ἀποδίδωμι, apodídōmi) him according to his works. (2 Timothy 4:14)

-Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary (hypenantíos) to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. (Colossians 2:14)

-But a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries (hypenantíos). (Hebrews 10:27)

-Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:28-29)

-For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay (antapodídōmi)," says the Lord. And again, "The LORD will judge His people." (Hebrews 10:30; cf. Deuteronomy 32:35-36)

From Revelation

And I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. 5 "For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. 6 "Render (ἀποδίδωμι, apodídōmi) to her just as she rendered (ἀποδίδωμι, apodídōmi) to you, and repay (διπλόω, diplóō) her double (διπλοῦς, diploûs) according to her works; in the cup which she has mixed, mix double for her. 7 "In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow; for she says in her heart, 'I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow.' 8 "Therefore her plagues will come in one day--death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her. ... 20 "Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her!" 21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, "Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore. (Rev 18:4-8, 20-21)

As has been made abundantly clear, to deny that God acts retributively not only denies that God keeps His own Covenant word, but also denies a pervasive theme and logic of the whole of God’s word. In short, if justice is not retributive, then it is quite simply not justice. Justice is thus retributive, and also restorative, for the Biblical notion of restoration does not disclude retributive, non-therapeutic repayment.  This is to say that the concept of restoration also includes that, unless an evil man repents, God will justly restore to him his evil as a just retribution. Therefore, although some assert a distinction between restoration and retribution, it ends up being a distinction without a difference, for to assert that there are two types of justice, retributive and restorative, amounts to the same thing and points to the same principle.

The Biblical position regarding the certain presence of retributive justice having been conclusively demonstrated, in order to know that this Biblical teaching is also preserved in its plain retributive sense in the Fathers, although an exhaustive study of their teaching on the issue is not possible here, it will be sufficient to look at St. Gregory Palamas’ unambiguous teaching on the subject. In many ways he sums up both the theoretical and the practical wisdom of the Fathers, and so his letter written to the nun Xenia will positively exemplify the Patristic consensus and so prove decisive for the matter at hand. He writes:

True life - the life that confers immortality and true life on both body and soul - will have its origin here [i.e. earth], in this place of death. If you do not strive here to gain this life in your soul, do not deceive yourself with vain hopes about receiving it hereafter, or about God then being compassionate towards you. For then is the time of requital and retribution, not of sympathy and compassion: the time for the revealing of God's wrath and anger and just judgement, for the manifestation of the mighty and sublime power that brings chastisement upon unbelievers. Woe to him who falls into the hands of the living God! (cf. Hebrews 10:31) Woe to him who hereafter experiences the Lord's wrath, who has not acquired in this life the fear of God and so come to know the might of His anger, who has not through his actions gained a foretaste of God's compassion. For the time to do all this is the present life. (St. Gregory Palamas, To the Most Reverend Nun Xenia, The Philokalia, Vol. 4, paragraph 16, pgs 298-99)

The clarity of the foregoing affirmation of retributive justice is so vivid that it would require an incredibly dishonest form of sophistry in order to obfuscate and avoid its import. We are even instructed by the Fathers to meditate on the Last Things, which is to say not only heaven, but also death, the final judgment, and hell. Since hell is a reality, which is to say an eternal punishment and an endless chastisement, God’s justice necessarily includes a retributive dimension. For “the violation of the commandment of God’s commandment is the cause of all types of death, whether in this present life or in that endless chastisement” (ibid, 296). Describing the retributive horror of hell, the “unbearable and immeasurable chastisement, which is the second and final death” (ibid, 298), St. Gregory writes:

These torments of hell are inexpressible, and… even worse than they have been painted... they are unending. Heat, cold, darkness, fire, movement and immobility, binds, terrors, and the biting of undying beasts are all brought together into this single condemnation; but all of these things fail properly to convey the true horror of hell which - to use St. Paul’s words - “man’s mind has not yet grasped” (1 Corinthians 2:9). What, then, is this profitless, unconsoling and endless grief experienced in hell? It is the grief stirred up in those who have sinned against God when they become aware of their offences. There, in hell, convicted of their sins, stripped of all hope of salvation or of any improvement in their condition, they feel yet greater anguish and grief because of the unsought reproof of their conscience. And this itself, and the everlasting nature of their grief, gives rise to yet another form of grief, and to another dreadful darkness, to unbearable heat and a helpless abyss of despondency. (ibid, 314)

To conclude, since "the Lord is the God of recompense, He will surely repay" (Jeremiah 51:56), it is inescapable that God’s retributive and restorative justice is not exclusively therapeutic. God’s justice functions to heal, in some circumstances, but in others it is expressly but justly retributive, an "immeasurable chastisement." The grief produced by the knowledge of the reality of hell is in this life most salutary and beneficial (cf. ibid, 314), which is why we are instructed to meditate on it, and those who would seek to evade the retributive nature of God’s holy justice are deprived of this, and gravely misled, having a low view of sin and a low view of God’s holiness. They, moreover, cheapen the hope of heaven and the glory of God in saving man from that “dreadful darkness.” Hyper-Therapeuticism thus does not make the true God more palatable, it preaches a different God, sells fallen man an attractive but damning counterfeit, and thus departs from the saving teaching of the Church, undermining Her clear teaching about the eternal consequences of man’s life here on earth. It is thus that Christ exhorts, “Repent, and believe in the Gospel!” (Mark 1:15)

-Fr. Joshua Schooping

Against a Sophistry of Canons: Why the Anathema Against Universalism is Absolute

Following upon the previous article's discussion of the canonical grounding for universalism's condemnation, in order to still preserve universalism one may object and attempt a sophistry, asserting that the Church condemned Origen and Origenism as a unit, and that each item that is anathematized is, essentially, like a link in a chain such that if one link is removed, it is possible to replace that separated link into a new chain that is not anathematized. In other words, each item is not condemned in itself, but only in its relation to the other condemned items. This is to say that universalism is only false if you also hold with it that, say, the sun, moon, and stars are reasonable beings (an idea condemned in the Third Anathema); otherwise, universalism is possible. The methodology, then, entails that if you can take one anathema out from a unit of ten, then that one is now rendered hypothetically permissible as long as it is placed in some other uncondemned unit. But, the logic is no different than when one would take nine anathemas out of ten and then re-hypothesize them elsewhere, for as long as the unit of ten, the condemned chain, is broken, then those nine separated links are now hypothetically permissible for use by other chains in other units. But that would make the tenth permissible! In other words, every anathematized item of the unit is actually still unanathematized as long as they are each regrounded in some other uncondemned unit. They are only anathema if they are held together with the others as a whole. So, if nine out of the ten were made to form an entirely new unit, with a new tenth link, then this new unit would be able to distinguish itself from when it was among the ten. 

Now, even if one were to seek to wiggle out of such an absurdity, the attempt is yet to say that the condemnation of universalism is so bound up with the other anathematized items that, since universalism itself doesn’t necessarily depend on those other items, then universalism can safely be removed from consideration as a heresy as long as those other items are not held together with it as a unit. This is still false, however, for the simple reason that it specifically addressed each item in order to show that each item was false, and not only as a whole unit. But how can we be sure of this? One answer is the impossibility of the contrary. For otherwise one would be able to assert that one might keep any condemned idea as long as they can reground it somewhere else. One could, as a consequence of this way of reasoning about the canons, hold to every uniquely anathematized item from every council, as long as they did not hold them together in their units, but separated them out neatly into other, uncondemned units. This method reduces the Church Fathers to imbecility, is an affront to the integrity of the Councils, and stains the holiness of the Church.

To make this clearer, according to the objection’s sophistry one could hold to the idea that the sun, moon, and stars are reasonable beings (Third Anathema, mentioned above) as long as they maintain the anathema against their reasonableness and the other anathemas proper to their unit, and place the doctrine of their reasonableness on other grounds. But how can it be false in one place and true in another? One would have to assert that the sun, moon, and stars are both reasonable and unreasonable. Obviously that approach to the anathemas is ludicrous, destroying the integrity of the canonical tradition. Each idea was condemned uniquely, on purpose, in order to show that each unique idea is uniquely condemned. They cannot be removed and then rehabilitated in other systems, otherwise the individual anathemas are no anathemas at all; they are essentially transformed into menus of ingredients for the use of other units. One could even hypothetically hold that any and all anathemas are able to be rehabilitated on other grounds such that everything that is anathematized in one place is also not anathematized in another.

The problem, as has been shown, is that according to this logic all anathemas are potentially valid as long as a person can dislodge them from their respective unit and then reassert them on some other grounds. If there are ten anathemas, then at least nine of them, and maybe all ten, can conceivably be reintroduced in other systems and so escape the anathema. Therefore, when the idea of a temporary hell is specifically condemned, it is not really that a temporary hell is being condemned, it is only that a temporary hell is condemned if one asserts that together with the idea that the sun, moon, and stars are rational beings. This sort of sophistry is thus exposed as false and dangerous, and the objection against eternal condemnation that is based on it can and ought to be rejected and dismissed outright.

Thankfully, the methodology which seeks to bind the anathematized items found on numbered lists, binding them together in such a way that if a numbered item is removed from its list then it is usable elsewhere, is addressed explicitly in the Sentence of the Fifth Council, specifically in the 14th of fourteen Capitula. Although not absolute proof in itself, it provides clear evidence of how the Council Fathers generally conceive of enumerated condemnations. Condemning Nestorianism, it declares: 

If anyone therefore shall defend the aforementioned epistle and shall not anathematize it and those who defend it and say that it is right or that a part of it is right, or if anyone shall defend those who have written or shall write in its favour, or in defense of the impieties which are contained in it, as well as those who shall presume to defend it or the impieties which it contains in the name of the Holy Fathers or of the Holy Synod of Chalcedon, and shall remain in these offenses unto the end: let him be anathema.

The condemnation clearly includes defending even only a part, which in the Origenism case is to say a specific numbered item, among the anathemas, is anathema. In other words, they cannot be treated as such a unit that if a piece can be removed then it is possible elsewhere. Although this is not stated within the specific condemnations against Origen, it clearly demonstrates the mind of the Council, a principle that the methodology of “unitism” is false. But, the concluding remark in the anathemas against Origen speaks in a similar tone:

Anathema to Origen and to that Adamantius, who set forth together with his nefarious and execrable and wicked doctrine and to whomsoever there is who thinks thus, or defends these opinions, or in any way hereafter at any time shall presume to protect them.

It is “these opinions” which identify Origen(ism), and it is “these opinions” which are each anathematized. Referring to these items in the plural highlights their stand-alone diversity, not their unbreakable unity. Defending, or “in any way” even protecting, “these opinions” is anathema. To make this conclusively obvious, after the first anathema the very phrasing of each one begins and ends, “If anyone says or thinks… let him be anathema.” And so each one stands alone as a uniquely condemned item, for each has its own “if, then” logical structure, and so “these opinions” cannot in any way be treated as a chain of dependent reasoning built of excisable doctrines. And so, not only is the general methodology of reducing such lists to a unit false, and its intrinsic absurdity exposed, but within the specific list against Origen the very structure of each anathematized item necessitates that each item is uniquely condemned and forbidden as a public and as a private opinion or theologoumenon. Therefore, universalism (and annihilationism, since the punishment never ends) is absolutely condemned.

-Fr. Joshua Schooping