The following article is reprinted here as the first portion of our reply to the heretical teaching of "natural immortality." The presence of this teaching, together with certain Rosicrucian ideas, was very much in evidence in the heretical book, The Soul After Death, by the late neo-Gnostic philosopher Fr Seraphim Rose. Our response to this heresy will be composed of three articles. After the response to this heresy, we will also discuss the confused and malicious polemic of Fr Alexy Young about "soul sleep."
Deep in the "heart and reins" of every human being there is a shadow of an ancient memory: "I remembered the days of old" and "Thy works from the beginning." (Ps.76) It's the memory of a destiny unfulfilled, for God "made man for incorruption," that is, to share in His immortality, "to be an image of His own eternity. Nevertheless, through the envy of the devil came death into the world." (Wisdom 2:23) The memory is not immortality itself, even though the evil one strikes that old chord in man to convince us that we are immortal. And we have continued to respond to it - ever since Adam was deluded about being immortal and becoming godlike without God, and his true destiny was cut short.
Immortality in man doesn't come from an immortal soul but from the lifegiving and transfiguring flesh of the Resurrected Lord. "For God is Life by nature, and because He became One with His flesh, He hath made it lifegiving." (St. Cyril of Alexandria) The idea that the soul is immortal in itself (by its own nature) is pagan and not found in the Holy Scripture or in the writings of the saints.
The soul is no more immortal by nature than the body is. Surviving death doesn't make it immortal. "My soul hath cleaved unto the ground; quicken me according to Thy word." (Ps.118) But God does not permit the soul to be dissolved by death, for "He knoweth whereof we are mode, He hath remembered that we are dust." (Ps.102). "He created not death; neither hath He pleasure in the destruction of the living." (Wis.1:13) Thus, the soul survives the grave and "the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God" (Wis.3:1), awaiting the true immortality, the resurrection of the whole man, body and soul, to incorruption.
The Holy Scripture calls the whole man "flesh," identifying him as a creature forever, in every way, in every function of body and soul. But it also uses the word to underscore the oneness of man's created nature, even to the extent of saying "flesh" when it means the soul.
The whole man is flesh. "My flesh crieth out for the living God. (Ps.83) "The Word became flesh." (John 1:14) Contempt for the "flesh" is not Christian, it is the influence of pagan dualism on Latin Christianity.
The term "immortal soul" or "immortality of the soul" is rare in the prayers and services of the Orthodox Church. It doesn't appear at all in the burial and memorial services. And when it is used in a very small number of places, it is understood to mean "by grace." But references to the salvation of the whole man, "of our souls and bodies," to incorruption," or to "resurrection," are found everywhere. These are the words that are used by our Lord and the Scriptures. They are the words of revelation and they speak to the complete human creature about his destiny and the works of God in his behalf.
Immortality of the soul is not a religious concept but a philosophical one that implies self sufficiency and self-existence, the opposite of the Church's careful and equivocal use of the term. The word "soul" also means one thing in the Church and quite another outside. She uses words and language just as she uses commonplace things such as water, wheat, wine, and oil and transforms their content and purpose.
Therefore, when the Fathers wrote eloquently about the soul and ascribed immortality to it, they also said "by grace." If we read the Fathers superficially, we will certainly misunderstand their language and style which belonged to their Hellenistic environment, and to the pagans and heretics, too, whom they were usually addressing or answering. A careful study of the Fathers reveals a more analytical, perhaps, but nonetheless biblical view of man that is in essential agreement with Moses, David, and the prophets. While the Fathers exalted the soul as the spiritual part of man, they also clearly regarded it as an aspect of the created nature of man and, therefore, like everything created, dependent on the grace of God for its being. By itself, the soul is neither complete nor functional, much less a self-existent entity.
The Lord told us that when a man dies, he "sleepeth."(Matt.9:24) The soul rests in the life sustaining and loving hand of God. And even though the soul's mental faculties were capable of heavenly heights, without the instrument of the body, they are stilled. For "his spirit shall go forth, and he shall return to his earth. In that day all his thoughts shall perish." (Ps.145). Some of the soul's operations are even centred in the body. So the true immortality is in the restoration of the whole man, body and soul, when "the dead in Christ shall rise...to meet the Lord in the air..." (1Thess.4:18)
In the mystery of creation, God made a "vessel" in man to receive the gift of the love and immortal life of the Holy Trinity. The vessel is the image of God. "And God made man. According to the image of God He made him." (Gen.1:27) From the beginning, man was made permanently in the "image" with a reasoning mind, free will, and self-rule or power over himself. The Lord blew "the breath of life" into Adam's face, imparting to him the grace of the Holy Spirit. With "the breath of life" man would grow in grace, ascending from glory to glory, to the perfection of his creation in the "image." In this way, he would receive the likeness of God, that is, he would participate in the life of the Holy Trinity and be immortal and godlike by grace.
Many people believe that "image" and "likeness" are the same thing. God said, "Let us make man according to our image and likeness." (Gen.1:26) But God is telling us that "His will included two things, image and likeness. But Creation has received one [the image]. This likeness then, depending on our own disposition, has the potential to indwell within us." (St. Gregory of Nyssa) In the next verse, "According to the image of God He made him" (v.27), "likeness" is not mentioned. The consensus of the Fathers says that the image and the likeness are closely related but very different. The "image" in man is created. The likeness is the uncreated indwelling of the Holy Spirit whose energy mystically works the deification of man. "The image was made in me, but the likeness I must earn." (St. Gregory of Nyssa) "The potentiality of the image is the likeness; active in the pursuit of virtue and good works, the image, thus, comes into the likeness of God through the excellence of its comportment." (St. Basil the Great) "The phrase 'according to His image' clearly refers to the side of his nature which consists of mind and free will, whereas 'according to His likeness' means likeness in virtue so far as that is possible." (St. John of Damascus)
While Adam didn't lose the image in the fall, it became badly damaged, a broken vessel. He lost what was not made part of him: the very object and destiny of his creation: "the breath of life" and the likeness of God, which a broken vessel was not able to contain, as it were. The image is in us, albeit a distorted reflection in a cracked mirror.
What is the image of God? First, we must be wary of rationalistic answers that define abstract attributes of a deity but ignore that God the "Word became flesh." Rationalism tends to identify the "image" in man with its own notion of a "true," immaterial man and abstract ideas about reasoning and other disembodied attributes. It ignores the integrity of man's makeup as God created him. This is the dualism of Hellenistic philosophy and its influence on western theology. Deep down, it rejects the man of flesh that God made. Thus, rationalism recoils from the teaching of the Holy Scripture and of the Fathers that man's creation in the image of God was possible because of the Incarnation.
The Holy Scripture and the Fathers answer the question, "What is the image of God," in a radically different way:
The Son "is the express image" of God (Heb.1:3), and Christ is the Prototype of man's creation. It means that we are images of the Image. "Man beholds the Father's Image which is God the Word, whose image man has become." (St. Athanasius) God made "neither the soul alone nor the body alone, but both together in His image." (St. Gregory Palamas). St. John Chrysostom says we are wade "in the image of Christ, for this then is what it means to be in the image of the Creator."
Rationalism cannot admit the possibility that God created man from a Prototype which came later in time, because all things must conform to human logic and fit in its tiny grasp. Thus, it argues, "A prototype must always come first in time." But time is part of Creation and only one of its dimensions. God is uncreated and not limited by the laws of Creation. He knows all of time just as He knows all the dimensions of His Creation. And before time and Creation, the divine plan existed. "If Christ is the Prototype for man," rationalism asks, "why didn't He come before Adam?" The Holy Scripture answers, "We are conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be firstborn among many brethren," the Son of Man among men. (Rom.8:29)
To understand the image of God created in us, we don't need philosophical abstractions. St. Irenaeus says, "When the Word of God became flesh, He showed forth the image truly, since He became Himself what was His image." In other words, when Orthodox Christians are asked what the image of God in man means, our answer should not merely be a list of attributes - reason, freedom, free will, etc. We cannot answer correctly without pointing to Jesus in the Gospels as the model and fulfillment of the image of God in us - just as we surely answer, "Jesus," when we're asked who is the Messiah. He is the Living Image of God in the flesh, and before Him all definitions and abstractions fail.
He is a Person because He is the "express image of the Father." So we are persons because we are images of His Image. We know His Image from the Gospels because they fill the image of a real Person in a way that abstract or isolated attributes cannot. And the meaning of our own personal creation in the image of God is visible, at work in the real-life examples of Jesus' unselfish love, kindness, wisdom, courage, patience, longsuffering, mercy, compassion, meekness, directness, self-denial, truthfulness, sinlessness, righteousness, faithfulness, constancy, guilelessness, honesty, humility, freedom from the slavery of "things," charity, and many more too numerous to be contained here.
They reveal an image of God in man that is tangible and relevant to humanity. If, therefore, the image described here seems oddly human, we need to remind ourselves that God became man and walked among men. But to all who met and heard Him and were touched by Him, Jesus' qualities seemed oddly divine, and unprecedented in men. Either way, they illumine for us the mystery of One Personal Image, "the mystery which has been hid from ages and generations, but now is made manifest to His saints.. the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you."(Col.1:26).
In our own days, this need is becoming as critical as it was even in the early centuries. Christians are being systematically deluded by their spiritual leaders with false rhetoric about Orthodoxy's role in the ecumenical movement and the union of Christianity. As you've read here before, the false shepherds are far beyond Christian ecumenism but no one wants to recognize it. They're "at the gate" of a "unity in diversity" with all religions in which they all admit equal truth, validity, and respect in each other. To advance this antichrist idea, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has proposed the study of Hellenistic philosophy because it offers "common values" to be used as "a basis of unity." (More on this in a future issue.)
The following articles by Dr. Alexander Kalomiros develop themes that are related to those touched on here. This complete issue is intended to help Orthodox Christians separate the errors and delusions of pagan Hellenistic philosophy from the truth of Christ.
©George S. Gabriel, Copyright 1989