Many people know that the Orthodox do not believe in Purgatory, but they do not know precisely what their afterlife-paradigm is. Orthodoxy teaches that both Heaven and Hell are experiences of God’s grace, because the reward of Heaven and the punishment of Hell are identical. The afterlife is essentially an experience of God’s energy which only differs upon how the soul responds to God.
To understand this, we must build upon the foundation of how the East and West differs upon the idea of merit. Then we will proceed to what role merit plays in the afterlife.
Why the Orthodox View of Merit Disallows For Purgatory. Orthodox theology does not view Christ’s atoning work in the cross as somehow incomplete in its application to the believer. Christ provides us with infinite merit and only our willingness to, by the grace of God, experience His grace acts as a mitigating factor against enjoying His atoning work. Unlike the Roman Catholic view which explicitly teaches that our sufferings in Purgatory pay God back for injustice done in our earthly lives (what Roman Catholics call “the temporal effects of sin” which require atonement and the applying of merits of others through prayers), the Orthodox view of merit does not allow for this.
Our merits actually belong to Christ and they are ours by a faith that works in love (i.e. includes works). These merits are in a sense transformative, we do not acquire as assets but they are essentially synonymous with our sanctification. We do not need to attain to more merits per se to avoid damnation, rather, we need to avoid turning away from Christ by “backsliding” or even forfeiting our own Theosis. We need to continue on our path, or ladder, to salvation.
Because Orthodox Catholicism, like Roman Catholicism, teaches there is no repentance after death, there is no more opportunity to change how one lives–give alms, partake in sacraments, etcetera and thereby tap into Christ’s infinite merit–after death. Hence, man cannot do anything to have his own sins atoned for after death. This explicitly contradicts the Roman Catholic view, which in part allows for one’s own suffering to pay God back for injustice done.
The State of the Soul After Death. Saint Augustine is consistent with Orthodox thought when he speculated about the possibility that there are men who die in a stage of incomplete sanctification. This is because Orthodox Christianity teaches that everyone including the Theotokos has incomplete sanctification! The saved are experiencing an eternity of being sanctified by God, ever more in holiness, a process that never can be exhausted due to God’s infinite greatness.
Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos wrote in Life After Death:
[T]he memorial services and prayers of the Church also benefit the righteous and those who have lived a saintly life. This is a central teaching of our Church. St. Mark [of Ephesus] affirms that the prayers of the Divine Liturgy show that ‘the power of these prayers and especially of the mystical sacrifice goes through to those enjoying blessedness from God.’ This appears in the prayer in the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: ‘Also we offer to thee this reasonable worship on behalf of those forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and every righteous person who has died in faith [, especially for our most holy, most pure, most blessed, glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary].’…So, the prayers of the Church reach all, both sinners and the righteous, but they work differently, according to the spiritual condition which each had reached in this life…A man’s perfecting is incomplete. Man is always susceptible of improvement in his spiritual condition. This movement will continue in the age to come. Therefore, when through repentance a person enters the stage of purification but because of death cannot complete the purification and reach illumination, this can be done through the prayers of the Church. That is, there will be an endless increase in participation in the purifying, illuminating, and divinising energy of God (Pg. 187-189 in First Edition translated by Esther Williams).
Now, the above obviously cannot be taken to mean that those who are canonized saints are suffering after death–far from it. Rather, Orthodox believe that the afterlife is a spectrum between sublime enjoyment of God and the supreme torture of His presence. Our state of sanctification essentially decides where we fall on this spectrum. The saints enjoy God and will increasingly enjoy Him. Those who have not repented experience sufferings, liable to have these increase apart from the prayers of the Church. Those who faithless are eternally damned as they cannot change their way of thinking.
At first, this sounds profoundly unbiblical and a modern-era innovation. Permit us to make the Biblical, and then traditional, case for this doctrine.
The Orthodox Doctrine on the Afterlife in the Scriptures. The basis for the Orthodox doctrine is the Scriptural teaching that “God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). He “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim 6:16) and the exposure to the Light is experienced differently by men, depending on their level of sanctification in this life (John 3:19-21). As we can see in the icon at the top of the article, the light is terrifying to the apostles but not to Elijah and Moses. Imagine how this plays out for eternity.
The damned’s experience of God’s light is not like Moses’, whose face was radiant, but rather something perceived as terrifying (Ex 20:19, 33:20). Being that Heaven is dwelling with God (Rev 21:3) where we see His face (Rev 22:4) and He is the only form of light (Rev 21:23), to those who hate God this will be eternal torture. Saint Peter seems to take this for granted when he warns in Acts 3:19, “Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the face of the Lord.”
The Scriptures explicitly state that the damned suffer in God’s presence (Rev 14:10) and that they “will suffer eternal punishment from the face of the Lord” (2 Thes 1:9, Saint Jerome’s translation of the passage into Latin verifies the fathers understood the literal rendering of the Greek as correct). Because the Light of God’s face is terrifying, the damned are said to hide themselves “from the glory of His majesty” (Is 2:21) and that they will call “to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sits on the throne'” (Rev 6:16).
As we can see in the preceding, the Scriptural basis for the Orthodox doctrine is abundantly clear. Heaven and Hell are uncreated realities, because God’s face is what lays behind both of them. Because God’s face is uncreated, then Heaven and Hell are likewise the same. The Western idea, that Heaven is a created reward and Hell is a created punishment is entirely missing from the Scriptures. It is simply a Western presupposition. The question is whether this is simply another blogger giving a private interpretation of the Scriptures or whether the view put forward here has been elucidated by the fathers of the Church.
The Orthodox Doctrine on the Afterlife in Church History. Most of the early church fathers did not make explicit comments about the afterlife other than reiterating the literal descriptions of fire and worms that we find in the Scriptures. What is not always clear is whether they believed that there were literal fires and worms. Surely some did. Saint Irenaeus and Papias appeared to believe that there would be literal food in heaven. Eusebius, in his Ecclesiastical History, credits Papias with beginning this undercurrent of thought amongst some of the earlier fathers:
To these [Papias’ books] belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth. I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures.
For he appears to have been of very limited understanding, as one can see from his discourses. But it was due to him that so many of the Church Fathers after him adopted a like opinion, urging in their own support the antiquity of the man; as for instance Irenæus and any one else that may have proclaimed similar views (Book 3, Chapter 39, Par. 12-13).
A belief that Heaven has “a material form” with created things as rewards is contrary to the view that God is the reward in Heaven and He is uncreated. And, if the Heavenly reward in immaterial and uncreated, then it stands to reason that so are the punishments of Hell. Other, later, church fathers recognized this. For example, Saint Chrysostom in his comments on 2 Thes 1:9 exhibited a belief that the Heavenly reward is the same as the punishment for the damned: “‘From the face of the Lord,’ he [Paul] says. What is this?…His coming only to some indeed will be Light, but to others vengeance.”
Other, Orthodox fathers elaborated upon the thought we find in Chrysostom’s observation:
Those, therefore, who cast away by apostasy these forementioned things, being in fact destitute of all good, do experience every kind of punishment. God, however, does not punish them immediately of Himself, but that punishment falls upon them because they are destitute of all that is good. Now, good things are eternal and without end with God, and therefore the loss of these is also eternal and never-ending. It is in this matter just as occurs in the case of a flood of light: those who have blinded themselves, or have been blinded by others, are for ever deprived of the enjoyment of light. It is not, [however], that the light has inflicted upon them the penalty of blindness, but it is that the blindness itself has brought calamity upon them: and therefore the Lord declared, He that believes in Me is not condemned,
John 3:18-21 that is, is not separated from God, for he is united to God through faith. On the other hand, He says, He that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God;
that is, he separated himself from God of his own accord. For this is the condemnation, that light has come into this world, and men have loved darkness rather than light. For every one who does evil hates the light, and comes not to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that does truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that he has wrought them in God
(Saint Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V, Chap 28, Paragraph 2).
The fire prepared for the torment of the devil and his angels, is divided by the voice of the Lord, so that after this there might be two powers in it: one that burns, and another that illumines: the tormenting and punishing power of that fire is reserved for those worthy of torment,; while the illumining and enlightening power is intended for the shining of those who rejoice. Therefore the voice of the Lord Who divides and separate the flame of ire is for this: that the dark part might be a fire of torment and the unburning part a light of enjoyment (St. Basil, Homily on Psalm 28).
When the holy and heavenly fire comes to dwell in the souls of the former, as says one of those who have received the title of Theologian*, it burns them because they still lack purification, whereas it enlightens the latter according to the degree of their perfection. For one and the same fire is called both the fire which consumes and the light which illuminates (Saint John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 28, Par 51).
It is totally false to think that the sinners in Hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is a child of the knowledge of truth, and is unquestionably given commonly to all. But love’s power acts in two ways: it torments sinners, while at the same time it delights those who have lived in accord with it (Saint Isaac the Syrian, Homily 84).
God is fire…this flame at first purifies us from the pollution of passions and then it becomes in us food and drink and light and joy, and renders us light ourselves because we participate in His light (Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Discourse 78.)
[T]his division and separation of that fire will be when absolutely everyone will pass through it: the bright an shining works will be manifest as yet brighter, and those who bring them will become inheritors of the light and will receive the eternal reward; while those who bring bad works suitable for burning, being punished by the loss of them, will eternally remain in fire and will inherit a salvation which is worse than perdition, for this is what, strictly speaking the word “saved” means — that he destroying power of fire will not be applied to them and they themselves be utterly destroyed (Saint Mark of Ephesus, Homily 1 on Purgatory).
Saint Mark of Ephesus also commented that “eternal fire and unceasing punishment…is light for those worthy of vision of it” (Life After Death, p. 191-192).
*This is a reference to St. Gregory Nanzianzus, who in Oration 40, Par. 36 conceptually parallels St. John of the Ladder but seemingly does not equate the “heavenly fire” with the illumining light:
And now he asks that the Light and the Truth may be sent forth for him, now giving thanks that he has a share in it, in that the Light of God is marked upon him; that is, that the signs of the illumination given are impressed upon him and recognized. One light alone let us shun — that which is the offspring of the baleful fire…He Himself is anagogically called a Fire. This Fire takes away whatsoever is material and of evil habit…He gives us even coals of fire to help us. I know also a fire which is not cleansing, but avenging…which He pours down on all sinners, mingled with brimstone and storms, or that which is prepared for the Devil and his Angels.
While Gregory Nanzianzus’ quote shows that there was not an early consensus on the interpretation of Heaven and Hell that is most popular among Orthodoxy today, it is clear that what Orthodoxy does teach is ancient and can be found in a second century source, such as Ireaneus.
Conclusion. If we can sum up this article, allow us to simply say that Orthodoxy teaches that Heaven is an eternity of enjoying the radiance of God, because we are being conformed into His Light. The pure of heart will see God simply because they want to. They are literally willing their own salvation, perpetually, by the grace of God.
Hell, is an eternity of the exact opposite. It is an eternity of an obstinate will, that cannot change, which resists conforming to that Light and therefore burns from it.
Man’s merit (or lack thereof) is simply is to what degree he is participating in the life of God via Theosis. Hence, merit (or lack thereof) does not deserve Heaven or Hell as a matter of strict retribution, but rather it simply coincides where on the “spectrum” of God’s Light the soul will be after death. The volition of the soul decides whether the experience of Light is joyful or joyless.
For Saint Mark of Ephesus, the preceding view of the afterlife made the idea of Purgatory incomprehensible. So, even if the thoughts explicitly referred to in the preceding are not explicitly held by every Orthodox Christian, they are certainly part of the undercurrent of Orthodox thought. This makes their opposition to a literal Purgatory more understandable.
Orthodox Christian Theology 
As a Catholic, I would never use the word “atonement” in regards to purgatory. As I teach as a Catechist, Christ sacrifice fulfilled our salvation once and for all according to Hebrews 10. So there’s nothing to be atoned for in that matter. All those in purgatory are assured salvation not damnation. I would use the word penance or another variation of root of purgatory—“purging” of the stain of our sin on earth in accord to Augustinian concupiscence, which I would argue to quote Augustine to support a position without a proper examination of the role concupiscence is a little premature. Such a reflection of purging is reflected in 1 Cor. 3.
I do, however, think we’re running into a bit of semantics issue between east and west theological language.
The term merit in Catholicism is commonly misunderstood. In the past, i.e. when Catholic encyclopedia was printed, it mentioned the so-called condign merit and congruous merit. Those two no longer appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. But this does not mean the Church changed the teaching on merit.
Condign merit is merit in the strict sense and implies equality between the two parties involved. Thus when we work we merit our salary. Our salary is not a gift from our employer but it is something we truly deserve and the employer is under obligation to pay it – if they don’t then there will be injustice. The employer needs our skill to do the work and we need our salary to pay our bill – that is why we can say there is equality in both parties. Congruous merit, on the other hand, is called quasi merit or merit not in strict sense. The difference with the former is there is no violation of injustice when this merit is not granted. A good example in our daily life is giving tip to waiter after we dine in restaurant – it may be customary but we are not under obligation to do it (obviously not from the waiter point of view). Congruous merit depends on kindness of the giver who is not under any obligation to give. In short, condign merit is based on justice and congruous one is based on equity (that is the term used in Catholic encyclopedia).
Most of us confuse merit in our daily life, both condign and congruous ones, with merit in our relation with God. Catholic encyclopedia on merit says: “In applying these notions of merit to man’s relation to God it is especially necessary to keep in mind the fundamental truth that the virtue of justice cannot be brought forward as the basis of a real title for a Divine reward either in the natural or in the supernatural order. The simple reason is that God, being self-existent, absolutely independent, and sovereign, can be in no respect bound in justice with regard to his creatures. Properly speaking, man possesses nothing of his own; all that he has and all that he does is a gift of God, and, since God is infinitely self-sufficient, there is no advantage or benefit which man can by his services confer upon Him. Hence on the part of God there can only be question of a gratuitous promise of reward for certain good works. For such works He owes the promised reward, not in justice [of condign merit] or equity [of congruous merit], but solely because He has freely bound himself, i.e., because of His own attributes of veracity and fidelity.” Catechism of the Catholic Church Clause 2006 says: “Merit is relative to the virtue of justice, in conformity with the principle of equality which governs it” and clause 2007 says: “With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we receive everything from Him, our creator”. While Catechism mentions only of condign merit (which is merit in strict sense, anyway), it agrees with Catholic Encyclopedia that we do not deserve merit from God in the same way as we deserve our salary or tip from our employer or customer.
Thus when God rewards us (Scripture says He does in many verses) it is neither because He needs to meet justice (required in condign merit) nor equity (as in congruous merit) but because He freely bound Himself – the phrase used in Catholic encyclopedia. The Catechism of the Catholic Church clause 2008 expresses it in: “The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace.” Unfortunately, Mr. Tulia either intentionally or unintentionally try to portrait merits in Catholicism to be equal with merit in employer – employee relation, i.e. where a transaction or exchange of service is required; if you do this then you will get this from God, as if God needs or demands or our service, which is not Catholic teaching. Both condign and congruous merits are in Catholic teaching but they are not the same with the same terms used in our daily life. Clause 2009 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says: “The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness.” And “Our merits are God’s gifts.” In this sense there is hardly any difference between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox view, of the latter Mr. Tulia wrote “Our merits actually belong to Christ and they are ours by a faith that works in love (i.e. includes works).”
Coming back to our merits in praying for the dead, Mr Tulia (half) cited from Catholic encyclopedia that says: “Whether our works of satisfaction performed on behalf of the dead avail purely out of God’s benevolence and mercy, or whether God obliges himself in justice to accept our vicarious atonement, is not a settled question.” What that phrase means is whether our works of satisfaction performed on behalf of the dead merit condignly (the latter part) or congruously (the former part) is not yet decided by the Church – and it may be never decided, just like Mr. Tulia wrote “they [eastern Orthodox Christians] do not know precisely what their afterlife-paradigm is”. Mr Tulia freely took the second part because it fits well with his intention to present Catholic merits as the one that requires transaction. If there is such transaction, then those in purgatory will be there forever if nobody prays or perform indulgences for them. But Catholic teaching says those in purgatory will go to heaven – it neither depends on prayer nor indulgences. There is no transaction in Catholic teaching on merits, either condign or congruous ones. Catholic encyclopedia does not say “God is under obligation” but “God obliges Himself” or “God freely bound Himself”. God, our heavenly father, whenever He promised rewards for our good works (there are ample verses in Scripture saying so) will fulfill His promise. He obliged Himself to fulfill His promises is not the same with He is under obligation to do them.
The other part that may raise confusion is the use of the word “atonement” in that phrase from Catholic Encyclopedia on purgatory “whether God obliges himself in justice to accept our vicarious atonement”. Did Christ already atone our sins on the cross? Thus Mr Tulia wrote “Orthodox theology does not view Christ’s atoning work in the cross as somehow incomplete in its application to the believer” as if in Catholicism His atonement is considered incomplete. Before we continue let me quote from Scripture: “He who honors his father atones for his sins (Sirach 3:3); “Water will quench a blazing fire. And almsgiving will atone for sins (Sirach 3:28)” and “For if he were not looking for the resurrection of those fallen, it would have been utterly foolish to pray for the departed. But since he was looking to the reward of splendor laid up for those who repose in godliness, it was a holy and godly purpose. Thus he made atonement for the fallen, so as to set them free from their transgression (2 Maccabees 12:44-45). If Mr Tulia decides to embrace Eastern Orthodoxy he should accept those two books as inspired (English translation from OSB or Orthodox Study Bible). In Colossians 1:24 Paul wrote “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church.” I leave this to Mr. Tulia to explain how Eastern Orthodoxy understands those verses. Now coming back to atonement in Catholic teaching. First the Catholic Church never teaches that Christ atonement on the cross is incomplete and therefore we need to supplement it. Catechism of the Catholic Church clause 615 says: “Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father” and clause 1992 says: “Justification has been merited for us by the Passion of Christ who offered himself on the cross as a living victim, holy and pleasing to God, and whose blood has become the instrument of atonement for the sins of all men.” How do we reconcile with our vicarious atonement for (venial) sins of those in purgatory as stated in Catholic encyclopedia? . To answer this question let’s look at similar situation with the word “save”. According to Scripture the title Savior is only given to Christ and to God. Yet this does not stop Paul from applying the verb “to save” to himself. In Romans 11:14 he wrote: “Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.” And in 1 Corinthians 9:22: “To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” According to 1 Tim 1:15 woman can be saved through child bearing, if she continues in faith, love, holiness and modesty. James 5:20 says “let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” All these verses certainly do not rob the title Savior from Christ, only He (and God) can save. Nobody can merit salvation for himself or for others yet those verses tell us that we can do it. Similarly, only Christ’ death on the cross atone our sins yet there are verses in the Bible, mentioned above, saying that we can also atone our sin. This is how Catholic teaching on merits can explain well – Clause 2008 of the Catechism: “The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.”
Mr Tulia wrote “This is because Orthodox Christianity teaches that everyone including the Theotokos [Mary] has incomplete sanctification.” If this is the teaching of Eastern Orthodoxy then it is close to that of Reformed church: sanctification is imperfect in this life (Berkhof: Systematic Theology, page 537, Westminster Confession of Faith 13.2)
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. In a few days the final article on this topic will come out, which I hope, you see how I apply RC imagery and views of merit (and atonement) as analogues to Orthodox doctrine.
Nevertheless, I would say that Orthodoxy does not teach that almsgiving or anything we do literally atones for sin. To be fair, though Saint Philaret is comfortable with the term satisfaction, the eastern tradition (which makes up the majority of Orthodox thought today, though Russia and Greece had some western-oriented thinkers) really does not have a strong, or firm view of the atonement when it comes to justice. The west, always has a justice-oriented view of the atonement.
The east has emphasized recapitulation, Christus Victor, and ransom (though with a non-literal view of a payment to Satan) and so when it comes to understanding almsgiving’s “Atonement” it is non-literal. In short, doing Christlike things conforms us to Christ. This includes suffering like Christ. So, it is not a matter of payment (it is not transactional), but synergistic. It is us realizing in ourselves what Christ has already done for us, by cooperating with the grace of baptism which puts us in union with Him and the Eucharist which physically indwells us with Him. So, we are not literally atoning for sins, but realizing the reality of the atonement.
Being that I am a layman, this may not be the best explanation, nor do I find it absolutely necessary to go to the mats and argue that it is the best one. It is legitimate to speak of salvation in transactional terms, because God Himself does. Orthodoxy tends to spiritualize everything. As I said in my first article on this topic, the west recently is allowing for the spiritualized applications for all these things, which to me, belies the idea that the Western way of explaining things is just a literal approach to Orthodox doctrine.
If it helps at all here is the July 8th teach of St Nicolai of Zica:
To contemplate the miraculous changing of bitter water into sweet water (Exodus 15):
1. How the thirsty Israelites in Marah came upon bitter water and were unable to drink it and the people began to murmur against Moses;
2. How God commanded Moses to place wood in the water and the water became sweet;
3. How this wood foreshadowed the Cross of Christ by which the bitterness of our life is transformed into sweetness;
4. How my entire being is but bitter water until I bring Christ Crucified into myself.