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Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Fr. Thomas Hopko interview with Kevin Allen ~Toll Houses: After Death Reality or Heresy?





Transcript

Kevin Allen: Today is “Ask Father Thomas Hopko Day,” our segment where we ask esteemed Dean Emeritus, lecturer, and writer, Father Thomas Hopko, your questions. To send us a question to ask Fr. Thomas, please send them to illuminedheart@ancientfaithradio.com .
Fr. Tom, welcome back to the program.
Fr. Thomas Hopko: Thank you. Good to be with you again.
Kevin Allen: Let’s jump right in, as we normally do. There are actually a lot of good questions on this program, so I am very excited about that, and will enjoy talking about them.
Father, the first one comes from Nick, a parishioner at Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Nick writes:
Fr. Thomas, there has been a lot of debate in Orthodoxy on the teaching of the aerial tollhouses. It seems that most Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) websites, support this teaching. On the other hand, Bishop Lazar (Puhalo) of the Orthodox Church of America, among others, has condemned the teaching as a heresy.
Would you say, Fr. Tom, that this teaching is a heresy of the Orthodox faith? Father, before you answer that question straight away, maybe you could position it by explaining to our listeners, in case they don’t know, what the concept of the aerial tollhouses is.
Fr. Thomas Hopko: Sure. Maybe I could begin with a commercial. If the listeners are interested in what I think about this subject, having studied it and read the various authors on the subject, there are four hours, or more, on CD from St. Paul’s Greek Orthodox Church in Irvine, California, where I gave a retreat on this subject. These CDs are also available from Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, which also helped in the project, and sells these CDs in their bookstore. Basically, I spoke generally about the issue of the Lord Jesus Christ’s death and then what happened to death after he died, and then what happens, we believe, as much as we can say, when a person dies.
The controversy has to do with the process of dying, or some people call it after death, meaning after biological death. I have read Seraphim Rose, and I have read Bishop Lazar Puhalo. There are others: Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) wrote a book on this subject. Vasilios Bakogiannis, an archimandrite from Greece, also did. There is another one, Nikolaos Vassiliadis, a very good book on the subject.
Kevin Allen: The Mystery of Death.
Fr. Thomas:There are plenty in Jordanville, The Soul After Death. Fr. Michael Azkoul wrote a vitriolic condemnation of Seraphim Rose’s interpretation and called it a neo-gnostic heresy. And of course, the struggle between Bishop Lazar, who at the time was in the ROCOR, and Fr. Seraphim Rose, got so bad that they broke, and I think Bishop Lazar, who was not a bishop at that time, went into the Serbian Church. It is a terrible, terrible controversy. Terrible.
But quickly, I would just say that my opinion is that this teaching about tollbooths, and the aerial part of it is another story, but the teaching is that when a person dies they have to answer for their lives, and when they die all the demons in hell attack them to try to get them to hang onto their sins and their passions and their vices and their demons. In other words, the teaching is that the evil angels attack a person at the moment of death when a person is dying, and of course, according to Scripture, the good angels come also to be with the just.
My opinion is that the teaching is that when the person dies, a huge battle, the last battle, in a sense, is to see whether a person really does believe in God and accepts the grace of God and the forgiveness of God, or whether they cling to their demons, cling to their sins and passions. This is a kind of classical teaching in Christianity. C.S. Lewis speaks about it in his own way. The Roman Catholic Church developed it with some kind of purgatory teaching, which is not the same as the Orthodox one at all.
What is the Orthodox one? It is a very old teaching, and you will find the teaching about tollhouses in practically every Church Father. You find it in St. John Chrysostom. You find it in John of the Ladder. The first development of it was in St. Cyril of Alexandria. The teaching was, and is, as far as I understand it, that when you die, you have to let go of, and be delivered from, and purified from, whatever sins and demons are holding you.
St. Cyril of Alexandria began by speaking of the senses—the sins of your eyes, ears, nose, touch, and your mind—and what you hold on to, and you have to get through these things. It was not originally a punishment. The demons weren’t punishing you for the sins that you had committed. It was rather they were trying to get you to hang onto them, not to repent of them.
And then the teaching was that we who are alive pray for the people who are dying so that they would really be forgiven and accept the forgiveness of Christ, because when one dies, since Christ is risen and glorified, the person enters into the presence of Christ, and that constitutes a kind of a judgment. Is one with God or against God? Do they want to be in the Kingdom or do they want to go to hell? Do they love virtue, or do they love vice?
This got really developed through the centuries, and in the year 1000, I believe, in Constantinople, a woman named Theodora had a vision in which she said there were, I think, 20 of these particular demons. They were called tax collectors, by the way, because tax collectors were considered very evil, as John Chrysostom said. They were exacting things from people and trying to keep them enslaved to them by holding them in their power.
In any case, what developed was the idea that there are 20 or 22 of these, I have them written down somewhere, and what they are is simply a list of all the sins and vices: Gluttony, pornea, sloth, pride, vanity, sexual sins of several kinds are listed, things like sorcery, witchcraft. Every possible sin you can think of is there, under a heading.
The idea is you have to be delivered from these and go through them in order to enter the Kingdom of God. The teaching is that the holier you are before you die, the more you are delivered from these vices and demons before you die, the easier your death is. Although the demons still attack you, you have already somehow been victorious over them. As it says in the Book of Revelation, you have conquered, you are purified, already.
The teaching is that really holy people, for example the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, she just slid right through, they didn’t even touch her, they had nothing on her. In fact, one of the Greek writers, Nikolaos Vassiliadis, claimed that the Theotokos didn’t even go through the tollbooths. I disagree with him on that, because everybody has to face these vices. Going through is just a rhetorical way of speaking.
In other words, you have to be free of these things, and nobody is exempt from it. The freer you are, and the more purified you are before you die, the more holy is your death. But the teaching was that just about every human being is caught by something or other. Even some of the greatest saints may have been somehow needing, still, some purification, catharsis, deliverance and forgiveness in order to enter God’s Kingdom.
However, the bad part of it in Orthodoxy, in my opinion, is that it was taken literally, like there are actual aerial spaces in the sky, and that the disincarnate soul somehow travels through space, and each of these spaces are ruled by certain demons. The term “aerial demons” comes from the Bible, it is in the letter to the Ephesians, the aerial phantoms, the spirits of the air, and it was a definite idea in the ancient world that the demons are somehow flying around through the air. I like to joke and say nowadays you can tune them in on computers and television sets.
But the idea is that our world is filled with these demonic powers that attack us. This became very literally taken. Then it got connected to time, for instance, that on the first day you are in this place, the second day you are in that aerial phantom, and then you go through that. And there is even the icon that showed the flaming fire of God coming forth from his throne. On some modern Russian icons that was even transformed into a kind of image of the tollbooths, with all these demons.
Then the idea got to be that you weren’t being prayed for to get delivered from these demons and purified from these sins, but the claim became that you are being punished. That is what happened in the Roman Church. The idea was that in each tollhouse you have to get punished for the sins that you have committed under that particular category. Well, I don’t think that is the Orthodox teaching.
My opinion, to sum it up, is that it is a very classical traditional Orthodox allegorical teaching that began to be too literally interpreted, and therefore got deviated in various ways, so that you get to the point where a guy like Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo) just about denies the doctrine totally and claims that praying for the dead is just an act of love and whatever happens when you die, you die and that’s it.
I honestly believe that is not the traditional teaching. The traditional teaching is that you have to enter into the presence of Christ and be purified and delivered and forgiven whatever sins you are hanging on to. The allegory is that these are named, the point being that the more we are purified before we die, the better off we are. When a person does die, we who are still alive on earth pray for them that they would be making it through, so to speak, that their death would be a purification from their sin, that they would accept the risen Christ and they would accept his grace and his forgiveness, and that they would enter into Paradise.
I think it is very wrong, personally, to put some kind of time frame on this, or to think about it in terms of earth time, or to think about it in terms of earth/space. I don’t think it has anything at all to do with time or space. It is simply a spiritual, poetical, allegorical way of speaking about the last temptations that strike a person when they are passing through the process of dying. That is how I understand it.
Kevin Allen: Are we not, though, Father, begging this question, and it is on my mind, and I am sure it is on others, as well, and let me pose it this way: Christ died to save us from our sins. Do we accept that as an act which has efficacy upon our ultimate destiny, or not?
Fr. Thomas: Yes, of course we do. That’s the Gospel. That’s the Christian faith, that Christ has forgiven us, that Christ has purified us, that Christ has been victorious over the demons. The question, however, remains forever, do we accept it? Do we want it? And so, when we are alive on earth we pray to God every day, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass. Deliver us from the evil one.” We say that in the Lord’s Prayer several times a day, because we want to accept the salvation of God.
Death is the final moment of truth, whether we really do that or not. So we are praying, and we also don’t only pray that for ourselves, we pray that for each other. You could pray for me, you could say, “Lord Jesus, please help Fr. Tom to accept your forgiveness, to accept salvation, to enter into Paradise. Don’t let him surrender to the devil. Don’t let him be enslaved by Satan. Give him your strength to conquer.”
What we believe is that as long as we are still alive on earth we can still pray, and as long as the final judgment has not yet taken place and the end of the world has not taken place, we can continue to pray for everyone. And we should remember, by the way, that God is not up there sitting around wondering if we are going to pray or not. God knows whether we have prayed, and our prayers are taken into the divine activity from before the foundation of the world. God heard our prayers before we said them.
The whole providence of God is connected without our prayer for each other and it is a clear scriptural teaching that the prayer of the righteous man has great effect and power with the Lord, and that we can pray for each other, and we can ask God’s grace for each other. So that is what we do, and we do it especially at the moment of death. We do it when a person is dying, and then when they actually die, when they are dead, when their soul and their body are separated, and their life is taken by God and their body turns into a stinking corpse, we can continue to pray. We never stop praying. We never stop hoping.
Kevin Allen: Father, let me ask you this. Let’s say I have a friend who is in a hospital dying, and he has never been baptized, and he wants to be baptized, and I don’t have time to go get a priest, what do I do? I’m a layman.
Fr. Thomas: You don’t need a priest to baptize.
Kevin Allen: How do I do that?
Fr. Thomas: Get some water, and say, “The servant of God,” and say his or her name, “is baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
But let’s make another scenario. Suppose you have a friend who has never been baptized, and he says, “Please baptize me.” And you say, “Okay, I’m going to run and get some water.” While you are gone the guy dies. Is it too late? Does he go to hell? Some people would say, “Yes, God arranged for him never to get baptized so he could send him to hell because he is among the damned.” That would not be the Orthodox teaching.
St. Gregory the Theologian said a long time ago that desire would count before God as the baptism, itself. He spoke about the baptism of desire, the baptism of fire. In other words, God is not an ogre, and He is not a machine, pagan-type God, saying, “Not baptized; go to hell.” You could be baptized, chrismated, and serve the Divine Liturgy and go to hell. John Chrysostom said hell would probably be filled with guys wearing porphyria [purple], the stole—pastors.
So let’s be more serious about our God, but let’s be more serious, also, about the reality of our struggle, and our salvation. You just can’t say, “I believe in Jesus; I’ll go to heaven.” That’s just plain stupid. Devils believe. You have to believe, you have to prove it, you have to be delivered from the evil one, you have to accept forgiveness. You have to fall and get up again. And then you have to make it through death. And the death has to be a martyria. It has to be a witness to the victory of Christ. And in the process of dying, it is no picnic. Every demon in hell is out to get your soul, and that is what is behind the allegory of the tollbooth.
Kevin Allen: Again, I am still struggling with one thing you just said about the baptism of desire. Are we getting then, a little too close for comfort with those who want to reduce everything to faith alone, faith alone, faith alone, faith alone?
Fr. Thomas: I would say, and forgive me for saying this, but, faith is great, except it isn’t alone. How can a person say, “I have faith in God, but I’m going to stick with my demon of sodomy” or “I’m going to stick with my demon of greed, but I believe in Jesus. Oh yeah, he saved me, he died on the cross for me”? That’s just blasphemy.
So faith is not alone. But I would say, if a person wanted to speak that way, I would say, okay, say faith alone, as long as you admit that real faith is proven by what a person does, and as long as you agree that, according to Scripture, the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Prophets, the New Testament writings, the Apocalypse, all say that we are going to answer on the day of judgment, kata ta erga, according to our works. Not according to what we claimed.
And even our works won’t save us, if they are not done for the love of God and the love of the neighbor. Jesus said that in the Sermon on the Mount. He said that on the Day of Judgment, many will come to him and say, “We cast out demons in your name, we prophesied in your name, we did miracles in your name (we talked on the radio in your name),” and he will say, “I never knew you, depart from me, you evil-doer.”
Kevin Allen: Ouch.
Fr. Thomas: Yeah, sure, because why? Because we are doing it out of vanity, we are doing it out of pride, we are doing it out of judging people whether they are baptized or not baptized. We are getting involved in all kinds of stuff that is not our business, and we are not loving God with all our mind, soul, heart and strength, and loving our neighbor, including our worst enemy, as ourselves, and being ready to die for them any moment, and to pray for them until our last breath. If that kind of love is not in us, we are not going to be saved. Period. That is the teaching of Scripture.
Kevin Allen: But that’s a scary thing.
Fr. Thomas: Well, Scripture is terrifying. I mean, Scripture is terrifying.
Kevin Allen: (laughter) Nobody wants to read it anymore, huh?
Fr. Thomas: Well, you can say that again. I can give a plain sermon on the New Testament and people will say, “Man, you’re tough, Father.” I say to them, “I’m not tough, I’m just reading the New Testament. I’m just reading what is said there.”
And on this issue, two things are clearly said. You cannot have faith and love without showing it in actual deeds. But it is also said that deeds may be done, even in the name of Jesus, without real love for God. So either one of those will not save you. You have to have both, together. In other words, Jesus said, “I was hungry, you gave me food, I was thirsty, you gave me drink.” You actually have to do those acts.
In the first letter of John, the apostle says, “Let us not love in word only, but let it be in deed and in truth, erga and alētheia. It has to be done in truth, in reality, and in actual act. Erga means work, act, or deed.
So, on the one hand, a person cannot say, “I love God, I believe in God,” but they never help the poor, they never do anything for anybody. On the other hand, a person can say, “I gave my body to be burned and I worked miracles in Christ’s name.” And the Lord may also say, “Yes, you did it, but you didn’t really love. It wasn’t really done from love. It was done out of vanity and pride.”
What would make more sense than to say to a person that you can’t just say you love someone, you have to show it in what you do, and then in the next sentence to say to the person that, however, what you do had better really be from love, and not from vanity, or pride, or judging others? That is so simple. That is not even paradoxical. That is just saying two truths that are both true. There is nothing really super-duper mystifying about that.
Kevin Allen: What does this all say, Father, about the sacraments? You mentioned, which got us off on the tangent, which is a good tangent, by the way, the baptism in the hospital room, and you go to get the water, your friend dies, and you say that he was baptized by intention.
Fr. Thomas: Wait a minute, I didn’t say that. Gregory, the Theologian said that God may honor that intention.
Kevin Allen: Okay, he may honor that intention.
Fr. Thomas: Yes, I didn’t say it. But I wouldn’t even say about him that, if he did get baptized, that he was saved. Because I could say that baptism was not done, really, it was only done as a last-ditch hope for magic, that if a person really thought that if you were sprinkled with water you would get to go to heaven, and that would be blasphemous. It is certainly a teaching of our Church that you could be baptized and go to hell, and also not be a member of the Orthodox Church and be saved. That’s a clear teaching of the Bible and the saints. Again, it may sound paradoxical, but it’s not paradoxical at all. I think it’s only paradoxical for people whose god is not the real God, but is a god that they are making up, according to their fallen human minds.
Kevin Allen: Father, there are evangelicals who are listening out there, and they are saying, “You know what? These Orthodox, they have no idea whether they are saved or not, even if they have lived a righteous life, and they have spent all their time on their face prostrating, and tears, and everything else.” What you are saying is, you never know.
Fr. Thomas: Yes, I would say that is absolutely true, and the evangelical is completely and totally wrong. But I would say the evangelical is right if their answer to the question, “Are you saved?” is “Yes, absolutely, as far as God and the blood of Christ,” but to say that I can be saved, simply by saying that I accept Jesus as my savior, is blasphemous.
Kevin Allen: So you are making a distinction between the efficacy of the atonement from God’s perspective versus the appropriation of that from our perspective.
Fr. Thomas: Yes, and I wouldn’t even call it a perspective. I would simply say the reality is that the whole world, including Mao Tse Tung, Bin Laden, and everybody else are saved, as far as Jesus Christ is concerned, because he did it for absolutely everybody on the Cross. But I would also say that the only way that that salvation becomes ours is when we accept it, and believe it, and give ourselves over to the grace of God. No one can save themselves by their own works.
If you take the text of Ephesians that everybody loves to quote, and happily, I am sitting here at my desk, so I will just find it and read it. “By grace you have been saved through faith. This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not because of your works, that any man should boast, for we are God’s workmanship,” poiēma in Greek, “created (made in Christ Jesus) for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).
So it’s not by our works that we are saved, but once God saves us, he saves us for good works. He saves us to actually do good things. And we cannot say that we believe in him and not do good things. And if we can’t do good things, and don’t do good things, at least we should repent over it, and not say that we don’t need to. We should repent over it and say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
That is a clear teaching of our saints. On their death beds, they all said, “Pray for me. Pray for me that I would really accept the salvation of my Christ.” But to say, “Yeah, I’m going to heaven, and you will, too, if you accept Jesus as your savior.” That is so awful. It is so horrid, that you don’t even want to say it. It gives you the creeps to say such a thing.
Kevin Allen: It would sure put a lot of preachers out of business.
Fr. Thomas: Good! (laughter)
Kevin Allen: (laughter)
Fr. Thomas: If they are preaching that, they are in the business of Satan.
Kevin Allen: Ouch. Okay.
Fr. Thomas: They are not in the business of God if they are preaching that.
Kevin Allen: We’re going to get emails on this one, Father.
Fr. Thomas: I mean, Jesus Christ, himself, said in St. John’s Gospel, “The one who believes in me,” and that is a singular participle, “will do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do because I go to the Father.” So the causality of Jesus being glorified and going to God, the Father, and sending the Holy Spirit means that there will actually be human beings whose faith and grace in Jesus means they have actually performed more works than Jesus, himself, did when he was on the earth. That is in the Bible. Read the Bible.
I would make two suggestions to the whole world if I could. And if could command it, I would command it. I would say to people, “Throw away all your theological presuppositions, as much as you can, and sit down, and pray to God to illumine your mind and heart, and then read through the entire New Testament, slowly, three times, before you have another theological discussion in your life.” Read through it carefully, slowly, with prayer, and then see what you come up with.
Kevin Allen: Father, we got a very interesting dialogue going on the tollhouses and on thanatology, the soul after death. I want to close and make sure when I quote this, Father, that you are in agreement, because for Nick Muzekari, who has been very interested in getting your response on this, I am going to end with a quote from St. Macarius of Egypt on this whole issue of tollhouses that we have been speaking of. He is one of them who has written on it. He writes:
When the soul abandons the body, a certain great mystery is enacted. If the deceased has departed unrepentant, a host of demons and rejected angels and dark powers receive that soul and keep it with them. The completely opposite happens with those who have repented. For near the holy servants of God, there are now angels and good spirits standing by, surrounding and protecting them, and when they depart from the body the choir of angels receives their souls to themselves, to the pure eon.
Fr. Thomas: Yes, that is fine, but I would say, let’s be careful. We have four different Gospels, and we have hundreds of different saints. I could imagine a person coming to Macarius and saying, “Macarius, what about a person who, one part of him loves Christ and wants to be with him, but still is caught by these demons, and they are hanging on to him. What about that?” And he would say, “Oh, that death would be a terrible conflict. Let’s pray for that person to make it through so that they ultimately would be purified.” I think that’s what he would answer.
Kevin Allen: Fair enough. Fr. Thomas, we need to end on that. We sure appreciate you coming on and talking with us today.


Source:

http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/illuminedheart/toll_houses_after_death_reality_or_heresy
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Monday, June 18, 2018

Aerial Toll-Houses




Aerial Toll-Houses

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An Iconographic depiction of the Toll Houses
The teaching of Aerial Toll-Houses regards the soul's journey after its departure from the body, and is related to the particular judgment. In its most general form, it refers to the idea that after death, the demons attempt to find a basis for taking the soul to Hades, while the angels defend the soul, taking the reason in the righteousness of the reposed person. Whether the soul is finally seized by the demons, or taken to heaven depends on the state of the soul at death and the intercession (prayers) of the living. In either case, the soul then experiences a foretaste of what it can expect after the final judgment. According to Fr. Thomas Hopko, the teaching of the Toll Houses is found in virtually every Father of the Church.[1] One of the first mentions of the doctrine can be found in the prayer of St. Eustratius, 3rd century Martyr. Nevertheless, it is traditionally considered that Apostle Paul spoke about toll houses in his epistles (Eph 6:12-13)[2].

Patristic evidence

In the life of St. Anthony the Great, he saw a vision of souls rising towards heaven and some being stopped by a large demon and cast down. Likewise St. Bede recorded certain visions of a Celtic Saint who saw a soul arising and fighting off demons with the help of angels and his reposed wife's soul.
In the Philokalia, St. Diadochos of Photiki (ca 400 – 486 a.d.) states:
"If we do not confess our involuntary sins as we should, we shall discover and ill-defined fear in ourselves at the hour of our death. We who love the Lord should pray that we may be without fear at that time; for if we are afraid then, we will not be able freely to pass by the rulers of the nether world. They will have as their advocate to plead against us the fear which our soul experiences because of its own wickedness. But the soul which rejoices in the love of God, at the hour of its departure, is lifted with the angels of peace above all the hosts of darkness. For it is given wings by spiritual love, since it ceaselessly carries within itself the love which 'is the fulfilling of the law' (Rom. 13:10)."[3]
In the Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Theophilus of Antioch (who reposed in 412 a.d.) we find:
"The same Abba Theophilus said, "What fear, what trembling, what uneasiness will there be for us when our soul is separated from the body. Then indeed the force and strength of the adverse powers come against us, the rulers of darkness, those who command the world of evil, the principalities, the powers, the spirits of evil. They accuse our souls as in a lawsuit, bringing before it all the sins it has committed, whether deliberately or through ignorance, from its youth until the time when it has been taken away. So they stand accusing it of all it has done. Furthermore, what anxiety do you suppose the soul will have at that hour, until sentence is pronounced and it gains its liberty. That is its hour of affliction, until it sees what will happen to it. On the other hand, the divine powers stand on the opposite side, and they present the good deeds of the soul. Consider the fear and trembling of the soul standing between them until in judgment it receives the sentence of the righteous judge. If it is judged worthy, the demons will receive their punishment, and it will be carried away by the angels. Then thereafter you will be without disquiet, or rather you will live according to that which is written: “Even as the habitation of those who rejoice is in you.” (Ps. 87.7) Then will the Scripture be fulfilled: “Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Isaiah 35.10).
"Then your liberated soul will go on to that joy and ineffable glory in which it will be established. But if it is found to have lived carelessly, it will hear that terrible voice: "Take away the ungodly, that he may not see the glory of the Lord." (cf. Isaiah 26.10) Then the day of anger, the day of affliction, the day of darkness and shadow seizes upon it. Abandoned to outer darkness and condemned to everlasting fire it will be punished through the ages without end. Where then is the vanity of the world? Where is the vain-glory? Where is carnal life? Where is enjoyment? Where is imagination? Where is ease? Where is boasting? Riches? Nobility? Father, mother, brother? Who could take the soul out of its pains when it is burning in the fire, and remove it from bitter torments?" [4]
St. Mark of Ephesus wrote:
"But if souls have departed this life in faith and love, while nevertheless carrying away with themselves certain faults, whether small ones over which they have not repented at all, or great ones for which – even thought they have repented over them – they did not undertake to show fruits of repentance: such souls, we believe, must be cleansed from this kind of sin, but not by means of some purgatorial fire or a definite punishment in some place (for this, as we have said, has not been handed down to us). But some must be cleansed in they very departure from the body, thanks only to fear, as St. Gregory the Dialogist literally shows; while others must be cleansed after the departure from the body, either while remaining in the same earthly place, before they come to worship God and are honored with the lot of the blessed, or – if their sins were more serious and bind them, for a longer duration – they are kept in hell [i.e., Hades], but not in order to remain forever in fire and torment, but as it were in prison and confinement under guard." [5]

Liturgical Evidence

In both the Greek and Slavonic Euchologion, in the canon for the departure of the soul by St. Andrew , we find in Ode 7: "All holy angels of the Almighty God, have mercy upon me and save me from all the evil toll-houses."
Likewise, in the Canon of Supplication at the Parting of the Soul in The Great Book of Needs are the following references to the struggle of a soul passing through the toll-houses:
"Count me worthy to pass, unhindered, by the persecutor, the prince of the air, the tyrant, him that stands guard in the dread pathways, and the false accusation of these, as I depart from earth." (Ode 4, p. 77).
"Do thou count me worthy to escape the hordes of bodiless barbarians, and rise through the aerial depths and enter into Heaven…" (Ode 8, p. 81).
"[W]hen I come to die, do thou banish far from me the commander of the bitter toll-gatherers and ruler of the earth…" (Ode 8, p. 81).
In the Octoechos, there are many references to the Toll Houses:
"When my soul is about to be forcibly parted from my body's limbs, then stand by my side and scatter the counsels of my bodiless foes and smash the teeth of those who implacably seek to swallow me down, so that I may pass unhindered through the rulers of darkness who wait in the air, O Bride of God." Octoechos, Tone Two, Friday Vespers
"Pilot my wretched soul, pure Virgin, and have compassion on it, as it slides under a multitude of offences into the deep of destruction; and at the fearful hour of death snatch me from the accusing demons and from every punishment." Ode 6, Tone 1 Midnight Office for Sunday
In the Saturday Midnight Office, the prayer of St. Eustratius, contains the following:
"And now, O Master, let Thy hand shelter me and let Thy mercy descend upon me, for my soul is distracted and pained at its departure from this my wretched and filthy body, lest the evil design of the adversary overtake it and make it stumble into the darkness for the unknown and known sins amassed by me in this life. Be merciful unto me, O Master, and let not my soul see the dark countenances of the evil spirits, but let it be received by Thine Angels bright and shining. Glorify Thy holy name and by Thy might set me before Thy divine judgment seat. When I am being judged, suffer not that the hand of the prince of this world should take hold of me to throw me, a sinner, into the depths of hades, but stand by me and be unto me a savior and mediator..." [6]

The Number of the Toll Houses

The most detailed version of the toll-houses occurs in a vision of Gregory of Thrace, apparently from the 10th century. The demons accuse the soul at each toll-house of sins. In some cases the demon might accuse the soul of sins that they tempted her with, but it didn't comply with, or of sins that she repented for, and in that cases one of the angels, the one which was the persons guardian angel, speaks for the person, saying that those are lies, and that payment is not necessary, taking the soul to the next toll-house. If a person has unrepented sins, and does not have enough good deeds and prayers of the living to pay for them, the demons of the corresponding toll-house grab him, and take him to hades to await the final judgment. This vision recounts the toll-houses in the following order:
  • At the first aerial toll-house, the soul is questioned about sins of the tongue, such as empty words, dirty talk, insults, ridicule, singing worldly songs, too much or loud laughter, and similar sins.
  • The second is the toll-house of lies, which includes not only ordinary lies, but also the breaking of oaths, the violation of vows given to God, taking God's name in vain, hiding sins during confession, and similar acts.
  • The third is the toll-house of slander. It includes judging, humiliating, embarrassing, mocking, and laughing at people, and similar transgressions.
  • The fourth is the toll-house of gluttony, which includes overeating, drunkenness, eating between meals, eating without prayer, not holding fasts, choosing tasty over plain food, eating when not hungry, and the like.
  • The fifth is the toll-house of laziness, where the soul is held accountable for every day and hour spent in laziness, for neglecting to serve God and pray, for missing Church services, and also for not earning money through hard, honest labor, for not working as much as you are paid, and all similar sins.
  • The sixth toll-house is the toll-house of theft, which includes stealing and robbery, whether small, big, light, violent, public, or hidden.
  • The seventh is the toll-house of covetousness, including love of riches and goods, failure to give to charity, and similar acts.
  • The eight is the toll-house of usury, loan-sharking, overpricing, and similar sins.
  • The ninth is the toll-house of injustice- being unjust, especially in judicial affairs, accepting or giving bribes, dishonest trading and business, using false measures, and similar sins.
  • The tenth is the toll-house of envy.
  • The eleventh is the toll-house of pride- vanity, self-will, boasting, not honoring parents and civil authorities, insubordination, disobedience, and similar sins.
  • The twelve is the toll-house of anger and rage.
  • The thirteenth is the toll-house of remembering evil- hatred, holding a grudge, and revenge.
  • The fourteenth is the toll-house of murder- not just plain murder, but also wounding, maiming, hitting, pushing, and generally injuring people.
  • The fifteenth is the toll-house of magic- divination, conjuring demons, making poison, all superstitions, and associated acts.
  • The sixteenth is the toll-house of lust- fornication, unclean thoughts, lustful looks, unchaste touches.
  • The seventeenth is the toll-house of adultery.
  • The eighteenth is the toll-house of sodomy: bestiality, homosexuality, incest, masturbation, and all other unnatural sins.
  • The nineteenth is the toll-house of heresy: rejecting any part of Orthodox faith, wrongly interpreting it, apostasy, blasphemy, and all similar sins.
  • The last, twentieth toll-house is the toll-house of unmercifulness: failing to show mercy and charity to people, and being cruel in any way.


Are They Literal?

Many of the Orthodox who accept the doctrine of the toll-houses do not take the form or all the teachings from the vision of Gregory literally. Thus for example Fr. Thomas Hopko maintains that one should not try to associate a particular time after death to the process, nor should one take the toll-houses as being literally "in the air," or necessarily twenty in number. Likewise, he makes no mention in his argument for them of the doctrine of bargaining for sins (which is similar in some ways to the Latin doctrine of merits). Instead, his description, drawing on St. John Chrysostom and the Fifty Homilies of St. Macarius of Egypt, among others, takes the toll-house encounters to describe the attempt of the demons to assault the soul with its own vulnerability to sin, or to entice it away from God, and describes passing through the toll-houses as the purification of the soul.[7]. St. Theophan the Recluse likewise said that what the demons are seeking is "passions," and suggested that, although the toll-houses are often depicted as frightening, the demons might equally well try to entice the soul by appealing to one of its weaknesses. Some others go so far as to say that the demons and angels are metaphors for the sins and virtues of the soul.

Controversy

Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, censing an icon of Fr. Seraphim (Rose)
. There is disagreement in certain circles regarding the status of this teaching within the Orthodox Church. Some, including Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo) of Ottawa, consider this teaching controversial, even false (describing it as gnostic or of pagan origin). These accusations were later declared to be wrong by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church Abroad.[8] The traditional proponents of the teaching argue that it appears in the hymnology of the Church,[9] [10] in stories of the lives of saints (for example, the Life of St. Anthony the Great, written by St. Athanasius the Great, the life of St. Basil the New, and St. Theodora), in the homilies of St. Cyril of Alexandria[11] in the Discourses of Abba Isaiah,[12] the Philokalia, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, and the Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church by Blessed Justin Popovich. Several contemporary Church figures speak about toll-houses.[13] [14] [15] [16] Secondly, not a single Church Father ever wrote even one sentence expressing doubt about this teaching (which is present in its most general form in the Church since at least fourth century), although their discussions of the topic are always about general struggles with "tax-collector" demons, lacking the details present in Gregory's vision (apart from one pseudo-Makarian story which also mentions numerous toll-houses and a bargaining over sins at each one). Thirdly, some of the greatest modern authorities of the Orthodox Church, such as St. Ignatius Brianchaninov[17] and St. Theophan the Recluse,[18] insisted not only on the truthfulness, but on the necessity of this teaching in the spiritual life of a Christian.

Reference

  1. Jump up ↑ Fr. Thomas Hopko on the Toll-houses, http://audio.ancientfaith.com/illuminedheart/hopko_tolls.mp3
  2. Jump up ↑ Word On Death by St Ignatius Brianchaninov (in Russian)
  3. Jump up ↑ Philokalia, Volume I, p. 295
  4. Jump up ↑ The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, translated by Benedicta Ward, p. 81-82)
  5. Jump up ↑ First Homily: Refutation of the Latin Chapters concerning Purgatorial Fire, by St. Mark of Ephesus. Qtd. In "The Soul After Death, p 208f)
  6. Jump up ↑ See The Unabbreviated Horologion or Book of the Hours, ed. Fr. Laurence Campbell (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1995), p. 34, and The Great Horologion (Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1997), p. 48
  7. Jump up ↑ Fr. Thomas Hopko on the Toll-houses, http://audio.ancientfaith.com/illuminedheart/hopko_tolls.mp3
  8. Jump up ↑ January 27, The Recovery of the Holy Relics of our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom, Troparion 1, Ode 5 of Orthros: "Grant me to pass untroubled through the host of noetic satraps and the tyrannic battalion of the lower air in the hour of my departure..."
  9. Jump up ↑ Parakletike, Friday Vespers, Second Mode: "When my soul is about to be separated violently from the members of the body, then, O Bride of God, come to my aid; scatter the counsels of the fleshless enemies and shatter their millstones, by which they seek to devour me mercilessly; that, unhindered, I may pass through the rulers of darkness standing in the air."
  10. Jump up ↑ St. Cyril of Alexandria Ephesi praedicata depoito Nestorio, ACO.14(52.405D) as referenced by Lampe, G.W.H., A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1961, p.1387
  11. Jump up ↑ The Twenty-nine Discourses of our Holy Father Isaiah, Volos, 1962, p. 37 (in Greek): "[Live] every day having death before your eyes, and concerning yourselves with how you will come out from the body, how you will pass by the powers of darkness what will meet you in the air, and how you will answer before God..."
  12. Jump up ↑ The Taxing of Souls by Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos)
  13. Jump up ↑ Answer to a Critic, Appendix III from The Soul After Death by Father Seraphim Rose of Platina
  14. Jump up ↑ Vid. Ephraim, Elder, Counsels from the Holy Mountain, St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery, Arizona, 1999, pp. 436, 447.
  15. Jump up ↑ Cavarnos, Constantine, The Future Life According to Orthodox Teaching, Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, Etna, California, 1985, pp. 24-26.
  16. Jump up ↑ A Word on Death, chapter "Aerial toll-houses"
  17. Jump up ↑ What is spiritual life, and how to obtain it, chapter "Perfect preparation for the Mystery of Repentance"

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https://orthodoxwiki.org/Aerial_Toll-Houses
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St. Dorotheus ~ Soul and its passions





   Not only is the soul the opposite of unconscious and unfeeling when it departs from the body: its sinful passions reveal themselves in all their hidden strength. “For the soul,” writes St. Dorotheus of Gaza, “wars against this body with the passions and is comforted, eats, drinks, sleeps, talks to and meets up with friends. But when it leaves the body it is left alone with the passions. It is tormented by them, at odds with them, incensed at being troubled by them and savaged by them… Do you want an example of what I am saying to you? Let one of you come and let me lock him up in a dark cell, and for no more than three days let him not eat nor drink, nor sleep, not meet anyone, not singing hymns or praying, not even desiring God, and you will see what the passions make of him. And that while he is still in this life. How much more so when the soul has left the body and is delivered to the passions and will remain all along with them…”


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http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/articles/214/death-toll-houses/
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DEATH AND THE TOLL-HOUSES ~ Written by Vladimir Moss




DEATH AND THE TOLL-HOUSES

Written by Vladimir Moss
DEATH AND THE TOLL-HOUSES
It is decreed that men should die once, and after that the judgement.
Hebrews 9.27.
     The Orthodox tradition on the judgement of the soul after death, and the passage of the soul through the “toll-houses”, was summarized by St. Macarius the Great as follows: “When the soul of man departs out of the body, a great mystery is there accomplished. If it is under the guilt of sins, there come bands of demons, and angels of the left hand, and powers of darkness that take over that soul, and hold it fast on their side. No one ought to be surprised at this. If, while alive and in this world, the man was subject and compliant to them, and made himself their bondsman, how much more, when he departs out of this world, is he kept down and held fast by them. That this is the case, you ought to understand from what happens on the good side. God’s holy servants even now have angels continually beside them, and holy spirits encompassing and protecting them; and when they depart out of the body, the hands of angels take over their souls to their own side, into the pure world, and so they bring them to the Lord…
     “Like tax-collectors sitting in the narrow ways, and laying hold upon the passers-by, so do the demons spy upon souls and lay hold of them; and when they pass out of the body, if they were not perfectly cleansed, they do not suffer them to mount up to the mansions of heaven and to meet their Lord, and they are driven down by the demons of the air. But if whilst they are yet in the flesh, they shall with much labour and effort obtain from the Lord the grace from on high, assuredly these, together with those who through virtuous living are at rest, shall go to the Lord…”
     The first major exposition of this tradition in modern times was Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov’s Essay on Death in the third volume of his Collected Works. St. Barsanuphius of Optina called this Essay “indispensable” in its genre”. In recent years this teaching has been challenged by OCA Archbishop Lazarus (Puhalo). Although refuted both by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose and by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Puhalo’s thesis continues to be received doctrine in HOCNA and elsewhere, and elicits passionate support on Orthodox list-forums. It may be useful, therefore, to review some of the major arguments.
Is the Toll-House Teaching Gnostic?
     The idea that the toll-house teaching is Gnostic is refuted by the support given it by many Holy Fathers. A very large body of evidence in favour of the toll-houses from scriptural, patristic, hagiographical and liturgical sources was amassed by Rose in the book alluded to above. According to Puhalo, however, many of these sources are either apocryphal (e.g. St. Cyril of Alexandria’s Homily on the Departure of the Soul from the Body) or influenced by Egyptian Gnostic ideas (e.g. the Homilies of St. Macarius the Great, quoted above) or the products of western heretical concepts concerning Divine justice, purgatory, etc. (e.g. the stories in St. Gregory the Great’s Dialogues or the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English Church and People). 
     Since the present writer is not competent to discuss questions of textual authenticity, the rest of this article will be based on authorities and writings whose authenticity has never been questioned - in Orthodox circles, at any rate.
     St. Athanasius the Great writes in his Life of Saint Anthony that one night the saint received “a call from on high, saying, ‘Anthony! Rise, go out and look!’ He went out therefore – he knew which calls to heed – and, looking up, saw a towering figure, unsightly and frightening, standing and reaching to the clouds; further, certain beings ascending as though on wings. The former was stretching out his hands; some of the latter were stopped by him, while others flew over him and, having come through, rose without further trouble. At such as these the monster gnashed with his teeth, but exulted over those who fell. Forthwith a voice addressed itself to Anthony, ‘Understand the vision!’ His understanding opened up, and he realized that it was the passing of souls and that the monster standing there was the enemy, the envier of the faithful. Those answerable to him he lays hold of and keeps them from passing through, but those whom he failed to win over he cannot master as they pass out of his range. Here again, having seen this and taking it as a reminder, he struggled the more to advance from day to day in the things that lay before him.”
     Anthony’s disciple, Abba Ammonas, spoke of the power of the Holy Spirit enabling us to pass all “the powers of the air” (Ephesians 2.2) after death: “For this is the power which He gives to me here; it is this, again, which guides men into that rest, until he shall have passed all the ‘powers of the air’. For there are forces at work in the air which hinder men, preventing them from coming to God.”
   The theologian Nikolaos P. Vasileiades writes: “After his death poor man Lazarus ‘was received up by the angels’ (Luke 16.22). Angels, however, accompany not only the souls of the just, but also those of evil men, as the divine Chrysostom comments, basing his words on what God said to the foolish rich man: ‘Fool, this night will they require thy soul from thee’ (Luke 12.20). So while good angels accompanied the soul of Lazarus, the soul of the foolish rich man ‘was required by certain terrible powers who had probably been sent for this reason. And the one (the rich man) they led away ‘as a prisoner’ from the present life, but Lazarus ‘they escorted as one who had been crowned’. St. Justin the philosopher and martyr, interpreting the word of the psalm, ‘Rescue my soul from the sword, and this only-begotten one of mine from the hand of the dog; save me from the mouth of the lion’ (Psalm 21.21-22), comments: By this we are taught how we also should seek the same from God when we approach our departure from this life. For God alone can turn away every ‘evil angel’ so that he may not seize our soul.
  “Basil the Great relates that the holy martyr Gordius (whose memory is celebrated on January 3) went to martyrdom not as if he was about to meet the public, but as if he was about to hand himself over into the hands of angels who immediately, since they received him as ‘newly slaughtered’, would convey him to ‘the blessed life’ like the poor man Lazarus. In another place, the holy Father, with reasons (at that time men used to be baptized at a great age), said: Let no one deceive himself with lying and empty words (Ephesians 5.6); for the catastrophe will come suddenly upon him (I Thessalonians 5.3); it will come like a tempest. There will come ‘a sullen angel’ who will lead away your soul which will have been bound by its sins; and your soul will then turn within itself and groan silently, for the further reason, moreover, that the organ of lamentation (the body) will have been cut off from it. O how you will wail for yourself at that hour of death! How you will groan!
     “The Lord’s words: ‘The ruler of the world cometh, and has nothing in Me’ (John 14.3) are interpreted by St. Basil as follows: Satan comes, who has power over men who live far from God. But in Me he will find nothing of his own that might give him power or any right over Me. And the luminary of Caesarea adds: The sinless Lord said that the devil would not find anything in Him which would give him power over Him; for man, however, it is sufficient if he can be so bold as to say at the hour of his death that the ruler of this world comes and will in me only a few and small sins. The same Father says in another place that the evil spirits watch the departure of the soul more vigilantly and attentively than ever enemies have watched a besieged city or thieves a treasury. St. Chrysostom calls ‘customs-officers’ those ‘threatening angels and abusive powers’ of terrible appearance, meeting whom the soul is seized with trembling; and in another place he says that these ‘persecutors are called customs-officials and tax-collectors by the Divine Scripture’.
     “In that temporary state [between the death of the body and the Last Judgement] the just live under different conditions from the sinners. According to St. Gregory the Theologian, every ‘beautiful and God-loving’ soul has scarcely been parted from the body when it experiences a ‘wonderful’ inner happiness because of all the good things that await it in endless eternity. For this reason ‘it rejoices’ and goes forward redeemed, forgiven and purified ‘to its Master’ since it has left the present life which was like an unbearable prison. On the other hand, the souls of the sinners are drawn ‘to the left by avenging angels by force in a bound state until they are near gehenna’. From there, as they face ‘the terrible sight of the fire’ of punishment, they tremble in expectation ‘of the coming judgement’ and are already punished ‘in effect’ (St. Hippolytus). For the whole time that they are separated from their bodies they are not separated from the passions which had dominion over them on earth, but they bear with them their tendency to sin. For that reason their suffering is the more painful (St. Gregory of Nyssa).”
     Visions of the passage through the toll-houses are common also in the Lives of the Celtic saints. Thus we read about St. Columba of Iona that “one day he suddenly looked up towards heaven and said: ‘Happy woman, happy and virtuous, whose soul the angels of God now take to paradise!’ One of the brothers was a devout man called Genereus, the Englishman, who was the baker. He was at work in the bakery where he heard St. Columba say this. A year later, on the same day, the saint again spoke to Genereus the Englishman, saying: ‘I see a marvelous thing. The woman of whom I spoke in your presence a year ago today – look! – she is not meeting in the air the soul of a devout layman, her husband, and is fighting for him together with the holy angels against the power of the enemy. With their help and because the man himself was always righteous, his soul is rescued from the devils’ assaults and is brought to the place of eternal refreshment.’”
     Coming to our own age, we have mentioned the witness of the holy Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov and Elder Barsanuphius of Optina. Still closer to our time is St. John Maximovich (+1966), who writes: “Many appearances of the dead have given us to know in part what happens with the soul when it leaves the body. When it no longer sees with its bodily eyes, its spiritual vision is opened. This frequently occurs even before actual death; while seeing and even conversing with those around them, the dying see that which others do not. Leaving the body, the soul finds itself among other spirits, good and evil. Usually it strives towards those which are more akin to it, but if while still in the body it was under the influence of certain spirits, it remains dependent upon them when it leaves the body, no matter how unpleasant they might prove to be at the encounter.
     “For two days the soul enjoys relative freedom and can visit its favourite places on earth, but on the third day it makes its way towards other realms. At this time it passes through a horde of wicked spirits, who obstruct its path and accuse the soul of various sins by which they themselves had deceived it. According to revelations, there are twenty such barriers, so-called ‘toll-houses’. At each stop the soul is tested as to a particular sin. Passing through one, the soul comes upon the next, and only after successfully passing through them all can the soul continue its way, and not be thrown straightway into hell. These demons and their trials are so horrendous that the Mother of God herself, when informed by Archangel Gabriel of her imminent repose, entreated her Son to deliver her from those demons and, in fulfillment of her prayer, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared from Heaven to take the soul of His Most Pure Mother and carry it up to Heaven. The third day is terrifying for the soul, and it is especially in need of prayer.
     “Once having safely passed through the toll-houses and having bowed down before God, the soul spends the next thirty-seven days visiting the heavenly habitations and the chasms of hades, not knowing where it will find itself, and only on the fortieth day is it assigned its place of waiting until the resurrection of the dead. Some souls find themselves with a foretaste of eternal joy and blessedness, while others – in fear of eternal torments, which will begin in earnest after the Dread Judgement. Until that time, changes in the state of the soul are still possible, especially through offering for their sake the Bloodless Sacrifice (commemoration at the Divine Liturgy), and likewise through other prayers.”
     Descriptions of the passage of souls through the toll-houses are to be found in the Orthodox literature of many ages and nations. Such universality is in itself a witness against the idea that the toll-house tradition is Gnostic.
To Whom Belongs the Judgement?
    Puhalo also argues that the toll-house tradition is heretical on the grounds that it implies that the judgement of souls after death is not God’s but the demons’. Moreover, it is very close, he claims, to the papist doctrine of purgatory. For “the difference between the purgatory myth and that of the aerial toll-houses is that the one gives God satisfaction by means of physical torment, while the other gives Him His needed satisfaction by means of mental torture.”
     To discuss the role of justice and its satisfaction would take us too far from the theme of the toll-houses. Therefore suffice it to say that while all judgement of souls is in the hands of God, He often uses created beings as the instruments of His justice, just as a judge might use lawyers for the prosecution and defence, or a king might use an executioner. Thus we think of the avenging Angel who slew all the first-born of Egypt, and of the Archangel Michael’s destruction of the 185,000 warriors of Sennacherib. And it is not only good angels who carry out His will in this way: the other plagues of Egypt were “a mission performed by evil angels” (Psalm 77.53). We are not tempted to think, in these cases, that God has lost control: He is simply executing His will through created instruments.
     Similarly, we should not think that God is not carrying out His own judgement when he allows the soul to be tested at the toll-houses. Here God is revealing His judgement on a soul through the agency, on the one hand, of demons, who, like counsel for the prosecution, bring up all the evil things that the soul has thought or done, and, on the other hand, of the good angels, who, like counsel for the defence, bring up its good deeds. Moreover, insofar as it is the good angels who encourage men to good deeds, and the demons who incite them to evil, this procedure actually reveals to the soul the hidden springs of many of his actions on earth.
     Thus there is no contradiction, contrary to Puhalo’s assertion, between the demons’ testing souls at the toll-houses and the final judgement of sinners being delivered by God Himself, Who “cuts them off from the Holy Spirit”. Of course, God has no need for a detailed examination of our thoughts and deeds; it is we who, in accordance with His justice, are required to come to a full consciousness of them. For the Lord Himself said: “Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account of in the day of judgement” (Matthew 12.36). Sinners who fail the searching test of their conscience at the toll-houses are indeed cut off from the Holy Spirit, and their souls are “cast into prison” (Matthew 5.25), the prison of hades, of spiritual darkness and excommunication from God, until the final judgement of soul and body together on the last day. Thus while angels accuse and excuse, it is God alone who delivers the final verdict; He alone decides the soul’s destiny.
     Moreover, in His mercy God often “tips the balance” in favour of the sinner when the demons appear to have won the case. Thus in the Life of St. Niphon, Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, we read: “With his clairvoyant eyes the Saint saw also the souls of men after their departure from the body. Once, standing at prayer in the church of St. Anastasia, he raised his eyes to heaven and saw the heavens opened and many angels, of whom some were descending to earth, and others were ascending bearing to heaven many human souls. And he saw two angels ascending, carrying someone’s soul. And when they came near the toll-house of fornication, the demonic tax-collectors came out and said with anger: ‘This is our soul; how do you dare to carry him past us?’ The angels replied: ‘What kind of sign do you have on this soul, that you consider it yours?’ The demons said: ‘It defiled itself before death with sin, not only natural ones but even unnatural ones; besides that, it judged its neighbour and died without repentance. What do you say to that?’ ‘We will not believe,’ said the angels, ‘either you or your father the devil, until we ask the guardian angel of this soul.’ And when they asked him, he said: ‘It is true that this soul sinned much, but when it got sick it began to weep and confess its sin before God; and if God has forgiven it, He knows why: He has the authority. Glory be to His righteous judgement!’ Then the angels, having put the demons to shame, entered the heavenly gates with that soul. Then the blessed one saw the angels carrying yet another soul, and the demons ran out to them and cried out: ‘Why are you carrying souls without knowing them? For example, you are carrying this one, who is a lover of money, a bearer of malice, and an outlaw.’ The angels replied: ‘We well know that it did all these things, but it wept and lamented, confessed its sins, and gave alms; for this God has forgiven it.’ But the demons began to say: ‘If even this soul is worthy of God’s mercy, then take and carry away the sinners from the whole world. Why should we be labouring?’ To this the angels replied: ‘All sinners who confess their sins with humility and tears receive forgiveness by God’s mercy; but he who dies without repentance is judged by God.’”
     This shows, on the one hand, that the demons are essentially powerless, and on the other, that such authority as they possess over souls is ceded to them by the souls themselves when they willingly follow their enticements. For the Lord said: “He who sins is the servant of sin” (John 8.34), and therefore of him who is the origin and instigator of sin, the devil. If the demons have power even in this life over those who willingly follow their suggestions, what reason have we for believing that these souls do not continue in bondage after their departure from the body? However, if we resist sin and the devil in this life, they will have no power over us in the next. For, as St. Anthony says: “If the demons had no power even over the swine, much less have they any over men formed in the image of God. So then we ought to fear God only, and despise the demons, and be in no fear of them.”
The Toll-Houses and Purgatory
     But if the judgement of souls after death is not in any real sense a judgement by the devil, as opposed to God, much less is it a purging of souls in the papist sense. At most, the fear experienced on passing through the toll-houses can to some extent purify the soul. That this is admitted by the Orthodox Church is shows by the following reply of St. Mark of Ephesus to the Roman cardinals on purgatory: “At the beginning of your report you speak thus: ‘If those who truly repent have departed this life in love (towards God) before they were able to give satisfaction by means of worthy fruits for their transgressions or offences, their souls are cleansed after death by means of purgatorial sufferings; but for the easing (or ‘deliverance’) of them from these sufferings they are aided by the help which is shown them on the part of the faithful who are alive, as for example: prayers, Liturgies, almsgiving, and other works of piety.’
     “To this we answer the following: of the fact that those reposed in faith are without doubt helped by the Liturgies and prayers and almsgiving performed for them, and that this custom has been in force since antiquity, there is the testimony of many and various utterances of the Teachers, both Latin and Greek, spoken and written at various times and in various places. But that souls are delivered thanks to a certain purgatorial suffering and temporal fire which possesses such (a purgatorial) power and has the character of a help – this we do not find either in the Scriptures or in the prayers and hymns for the dead, for in the words of the Teachers. But we have received that even the souls which are held in hell and are already given over to eternal torments, whether in actual fact and experience or in hopeless expectation of such, can be aided and given a certain small help, although not in the sense of completely loosing them from torment or giving hope for a final deliverance. And this is shown from the words of the great Macarius the Egyptian ascetic who, finding a skull in the desert, was instructed by it concerning this by the action of Divine power. And Basil the Great, in the prayers read at Pentecost writes literally the following: ‘Who also, on this all-perfect and saving feast, art graciously pleased to accept propitiatory prayers for those who are imprisoned in hell, granting us a great hope of improvement for those who are imprisoned from the defilements which have imprisoned them, and that Thou wilt send down Thy consolation’ (Third Kneeling Prayer at Vespers).
     “But if souls have departed this life in faith and love, while nevertheless carrying away with themselves certain faults, whether small ones over which they have not repented at all, or great ones for which – even though they have repented over them – they did not undertake to show fruits of repentance: such souls, we believe, must be cleansed from this kind of sins, but not by means of some purgatorial fire or a definite punishment in some place (for this, as we have said, has not at all been handed down to us). But some must be cleansed in the very departure from the body, thanks only to fear, as St. Gregory the Dialogist literally shows; while others must be cleansed after the departure from the body, either while remaining in the same earthly place, before they come to worship God and are honoured with the lot of the blessed, or – if their sins were more serious and bind them for a longer duration – they are kept in hell, but not in order to remain forever in fire and torment, but as it were in prison and confinement under guard.
     “All such ones, we affirm, are helped by the prayers and Liturgies performed for them, with the cooperation of the Divine goodness and love for mankind. This Divine cooperation immediately disdains and remits some sins, those committed out of human weakness, as Dionysius the Great (the Areopagite) says in Reflections on the Mystery of those Reposed in the Faith (in The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, VII, 7); while other sins, after a certain time, by righteous judgements it either likewise releases and forgives – and that completely – or lightens the responsibility for them until that final Judgement. And therefore we see not necessity whatever for any other punishment or for a cleansing fire; for some are cleansed by fear, while others are devoured by the gnawings of conscience with more torment than any fire, and still others are cleansed by the very terror before the Divine glory and the uncertainty as to what the future will be. And that this is much more tormenting and punishing than anything else, experience itself shows…”
     Thus while St. Mark rejected the idea of a purging by fire as the cardinals understood it, he definitely accepted the notion of a purging by fear and the gnawings of conscience. Now the experience of the soul after death which Orthodox writers describe by means of the toll-house metaphor is certainly an experience which includes fear and the gnawings of conscience. We may therefore conclude that there is nothing heretical in the notion of the toll-houses – provided we remember that it is a metaphor and not a literal description of events.
Soul-Sleep?
     A third set of objections raised by Puhalo is based on the teaching that the soul when separated from the body cannot, by its nature, have such experiences as are attributed to it by the Orthodox teaching. For “the notion that the soul can exit the body, move about, have experiences, receive visions, revelations, wander from place to place, make progress or be examined and judged without the body, is essentially Origenistic, and is derived from the philosophies of the pagan religions of Greece and elsewhere… Old Testament anthropology, like that of the New Testament, never conceived of an immortal soul inhabiting a moral body from which it might be liberated, but always conceived a simple, non-dualistic anthropology of a single, psychophysical organism. And active, intellectual life or functioning of the soul alone could never be conceived in either Old or New Testament thought. For the soul to function, its restoration with the body as the ‘whole person’ would be absolutely necessary.” At the same time, Puhalo accepts that the soul has “some consciousness of future destiny, some hope”, and is “neither dead nor devoid of spiritual sensations”.
     The question arises: why should not the experiences that the Orthodox teaching attributes to the soul after death be accounted as “spiritual sensations”? We have seen, for example, that according to St. Basil the indolent soul after death “groans silently” because “the organ of lamentation (the body) will have been cut off from it”. So while it cannot lament in the way it did before, the soul still laments – in a disincarnate, bodiless way. Similarly, it sees without eyes and hears without ears. These “spiritual” experiences are certainly different from their analogues in the sensual world, but they are none the less real and vivid for all that.
    The difference between the spiritual and sensual senses is well illustrated by the following: “they used to tell a story of a certain great old man, and say that when he was traveling along a road two angels cleaved to him and journeyed with him, one on his right hand and the other on his left. And as they were going along they found lying on the road a dead body which stank, and the old man closed his nostrils because of the evil smell, and the angels did the same. Now after they had gone on a little farther, the old man said unto them, ‘Do ye also smell as we do?’ And they said unto him, ‘No, but because of thee we closed our nostrils. For it is not for us to smell the rottenness of this world, but we do smell the souls which stink of sin, because the breath of such is night for us.”
    It is not only angels who have these spiritual senses: to the degree that a man is purified he may also see, hear and smell spiritually even while in the body: “It came to pass that when the old man [St. Pachomius the Great] had said these thing to the brethren, the door-keeper came to him and said: ‘Certain travelers, who are men of importance, have come hither, and they wish to meet thee.’ And he said: ‘Call them hither.’ And when they had seen all the brotherhood, and had gone round all the cells of the brethren they wanted to hold converse with him by themselves. Now when they had taken their seats in a secluded chamber, there came unto the old man a strong smell of uncleanness though he thought that it must arise from them because he was speaking with them face to face; and he was not able to learn the cause of the same by the supplication which [he made] to God, for he perceived that that their speech was fruitful [of thought] and that their minds were familiar with the Scriptures, but he was not acquainted with their intellectual uncleanness. Then, after he had spoken unto them many things out of the Divine Books, and the season of the ninth hour had drawn nigh meanwhile, they rose up that they might come to their own place, and Rabba entreated them to partake of some food there but they did not accept [his petition, saying] that they were in duty bound to arrive home before sunset; so they prayed, and they saluted us, and then they departed.
     “And Abba, in order to learn the cause of the uncleanness of these men, went into his cell, and prayed to God; and he knew straightway that it was the doctrine of wickedness which arose from their souls and pursued these men, and having overtaken them, he said unto them, ‘Do ye call that which is written in the works of Origen heresy?’ And when they had heard the question they denied and said that they did not. Then the holy man said unto them, ‘Behold, I take you to witness before God, that every man who readeth and accepteth the work of Origen, shall certainly arrive in the fire of Sheol, and his inheritance shall be everlasting darkness. That which I know from God I have made you to be witnesses of, and I am therefore not condemned by God on this account, and ye yourselves know about it. Behold, I have made you hear the truth. And if ye believe me, and if ye wish to gratify God, take all the writings of Origen and cast them into the fire; and never seek to read them again.’ And when Abba Pachomius had said these things he left them.”
    Spiritual beings not only smell the spiritual condition of souls: they also see them – and their appearance depends on their spiritual state. Thus St. John the Baptist once appeared to St. Diadochus of Photike, and said that “neither the angels nor the soul can be seen” by the bodily senses insofar as they are “beings which do not have a shape”. However, he went on, “one must know that they have a visible aspect, a beauty and a spiritual limitation, so that the splendour of their thoughts is their form and their beauty. That is why, when the soul has beautiful thoughts, it is all illumined and visible in all its parts, but if bad ones, then it has no luster and nothing to be admired…”
     When the soul is separated from the body, it loses the use of its bodily senses, but by no means the use of its spiritual senses. On the contrary, they revive. For, as St. John Maximovich says, “When it [the soul] no longer sees with its bodily eyes, its spiritual vision is opened.” Again, St. John Chrysostom writes: “Do not say to me, ‘He who has died does not hear, does not speak, does not see, does not feel, since neither does a man who sleeps.’ If it is necessary to say something wondrous, the soul of a sleeping man somehow sleeps, but not so with him who has died, for [his soul] has awakened.” Again, St. John Cassian writes: “The souls of the dead not only do not lose consciousness, they do not even lose their dispositions – that is, hope and fear, joy and grief, and something of that which they expect for themselves at the Universal Judgement they begin already to foretaste… They become yet more alive and more zealously cling to the glorification of God. And truly, if we were to reason on the basis of the testimony of the Sacred Scripture concerning the nature of the soul, in the measure of our understanding, would it not be, I will not say extreme stupidity, but at least folly, to suspect even in the least that the most precious part of man (that is, the soul), in which, according to the blessed Apostle, the image and likeness of God is contained, after putting off this fleshly coarseness in which it finds itself in this present life, should become unconscious – that part which, containing in itself the power of reason, makes sensitive by its presence even the dumb and unconscious matter of the flesh?”
     Not only is the soul the opposite of unconscious and unfeeling when it departs from the body: its sinful passions reveal themselves in all their hidden strength. “For the soul,” writes St. Dorotheus of Gaza, “wars against this body with the passions and is comforted, eats, drinks, sleeps, talks to and meets up with friends. But when it leaves the body it is left alone with the passions. It is tormented by them, at odds with them, incensed at being troubled by them and savaged by them… Do you want an example of what I am saying to you? Let one of you come and let me lock him up in a dark cell, and for no more than three days let him not eat nor drink, nor sleep, not meet anyone, not singing hymns or praying, not even desiring God, and you will see what the passions make of him. And that while he is still in this life. How much more so when the soul has left the body and is delivered to the passions and will remain all along with them…”
     It follows that the ancient heresy of “soul-sleep”, which is here revived in a modern form by Puhalo in his polemic against the toll-houses, is false: the soul in its disincarnate form can indeed spiritually perceive angels and demons and feel “hope and fear, joy and grief” in their presence.
Conclusion
     The doctrine of the toll-houses, of the particular judgement of souls after death, is indeed a fearful doctrine. But it is a true and salutary and Orthodox one. Let us therefore gather this saving fear into our souls, in accordance with the word: “Remember thine end, and thou shalt never sin” (Sirach 7.36).
 
February 8/21, 1981; revised July 9/22, 2004 and November 14/27, 2007
 
source:
 
 
http://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/articles/214/death-toll-houses/
 
 
 
 
 
 
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