Is Hell Eternal? The Last Judgment, Apokatastasis and Annihilationism in Orthodox Teaching

Few questions press on a believer as hard as this one: if God is love, can hell be forever? Some answer that everyone will be saved in the end. Others answer that the wicked will simply cease to exist. The Orthodox Church gives a different answer from both. This article sets out the evidence from Scripture, the Fathers and the councils.

Two things must be said at the start. The Church teaches that there is a Last Judgment and an eternal punishment. She also teaches that God "will have all men to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:4), that hell is not a torture chamber that God built for the pleasure of punishing, and that Christians are to pray for everyone. The Orthodox answer holds both without surrendering either.

In brief

Scripture speaks of eternal fire and eternal punishment in the same breath as eternal life (Matthew 25:46). The earliest Christian writers, from St Ignatius and the Martyrdom of Polycarp to St Irenaeus, St John Chrysostom and St Gregory the Theologian, say the same. Many Orthodox writers explain the fire as God's own love, experienced as torment by the unrepentant; St Isaac the Syrian writes that those in hell are "tormented with the scourgings of love." Origen proposed that all creatures, even the demons, might be restored; the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) condemned him by name, and anathemas the Church has received reject the proposition that the punishment of the wicked has an end. Annihilationism, taught by Jehovah's Witnesses and some evangelicals, answers the question the other way and is also not the faith of the Church. The Church prays for all and hopes in God's mercy, but she does not teach that all will be saved.

Thesis: The Orthodox Church teaches that hell is real and eternal, that it is the unrepentant person's own refusal of the love of God, and that universal salvation and annihilation are both false.

What Scripture says plainly

The New Testament does not leave the matter in doubt. In the parable of the Last Judgment the King says to those on his left, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41), and the chapter ends: "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal" (Matthew 25:46).¹ The Greek uses one adjective for both: kolasin aionion, zoen aionion. If the punishment has an end, so does the life.

Christ speaks of the place "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark 9:44), echoing Isaiah 66:24. The rich man in the parable of Lazarus is "in torments" and is told that "between us and you there is a great gulf fixed" (Luke 16:23, 26). Daniel foresees an awakening "some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel 12:2). The Apocalypse speaks of those who worship the beast, whose "torment ascendeth up for ever and ever," who "have no rest day nor night" (Revelation 14:11), and of the devil, who "shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever" (Revelation 20:10).

What the earliest Christians and the Fathers say

The earliest writers after the apostles did not soften these words. St Ignatius of Antioch warns that a man who corrupts the faith "shall go away into everlasting fire."² When the proconsul threatened St Polycarp with fire, he answered that it "burns for an hour, and after a little is extinguished," while his judge was "ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment, reserved for the ungodly."³ St Irenaeus, about 180, writes that the punishment of those who despise the Word "is increased; being not merely temporal, but rendered also eternal," and that those to whom the Lord says "Depart from me" will be "damned for ever."⁴

St John Chrysostom, preaching on Matthew 25, notes that the Lord does not say the fire was prepared for the lost: "I, says He, prepared the kingdom for you, but the fire no more for you, but for the devil and his angels; but since you cast yourselves therein, impute it to yourselves." He speaks of "the deathless punishment."⁵ St Gregory the Theologian distinguishes two fires: "I know a cleansing fire which Christ came to send upon the earth," and "also a fire which is not cleansing, but avenging," the last of which is "the unquenchable fire which is ranged with the worm that dies not but is eternal for the wicked." He adds that "some may prefer even in this place to take a more merciful view of this fire," and goes on without taking up the invitation.⁶

The Orthodox confession of the seventeenth century says the same. The Synod of Jerusalem (1672), under Patriarch Dositheus, states in its eighteenth decree: "We believe that the souls of those that have fallen asleep are either at rest or in torment, according to what each has done," though "neither their enjoyment nor condemnation are complete" until the resurrection, when each receives "the completion of either enjoyment or of condemnation."⁷ The same synod says that God "equally wills the salvation of all" and that "for those who through their own wicked choice, and their impenitent heart, have become vessels of dishonor, there is justly decreed condemnation." The condemnation is theirs; God is not its author.

The fire and the love of God

Orthodox writers have long insisted that God is not the author of the sinner's loss. Chrysostom's "impute it to yourselves" and the Jerusalem decree say so. Many Orthodox today put it by saying that the same love of God is joy to those who love Him and torment to those who refuse it. The "fiery stream" that issues from the throne of God in Daniel 7:10 is the scriptural root of the river of fire that Byzantine images of the Last Judgment show flowing from beneath Christ's throne into hell.⁸

The best-known statement is St Isaac the Syrian's. In Wensinck's English translation of the Syriac text, he writes: "Also I say that even those who are scourged in Hell are tormented with the scourgings of love. Scourgings for love's sake, namely of those who perceive that they have sinned against love, are more hard and bitter than tortures through fear." He adds: "It is evil for a man to think that the sinners in Hell are destitute of love for the Creator."⁹ A passage like this can be read as saying that hell is only a state of mind. It says the opposite: the scourgings of love are harder, not softer, than the tortures of fear. He does not say the sinner is annihilated or that he is restored, and elsewhere he writes plainly of hell: "Hell is the fruit of sin; at some time or other it had beginning; but its end is not known."

In the short treatise before it, Isaac writes: "Sin is the fruit of will. There was a time, when it was not. And there will be a time, when it will not be." Universalists cite that line, but Isaac speaks there of the end of sin, which every Christian hopes for in the age to come, and says of hell only that its end is "not known." He does not state a doctrine of apokatastasis here. A "Second Part" of his writings, identified by Sebastian Brock in a Bodleian manuscript in 1983 and accepted as Isaac's by most specialists, voices more openly the hope that Gehenna will not be endless (chapter 39 above all).¹⁰ The Church honors Isaac as a teacher of prayer and repentance; she has never received that hope as her teaching.

The image of love as fire explains how the fire burns. It does not deny that it burns, and it does not make the Scripture's fire and worm "only metaphor." No one is sent there who has not first refused the love of God.

Apokatastasis: Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and the Fifth Council

Apokatastasis means "restoration." The word appears once in the New Testament, in Peter's sermon on "the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets" (Acts 3:21). In Peter's own sermon the promise is set beside the warning that "every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people" (Acts 3:23). Later the word came to mean the view that all rational creatures will finally be saved.

Origen (died about 254) wrote in On First Principles that the end will be like the beginning. He framed what he wrote as a question: "These subjects, indeed, are treated by us with great solicitude and caution, in the manner rather of an investigation and discussion, than in that of fixed and certain decision." He suggests that "the goodness of God, through His Christ, may recall all His creatures to one end, even His enemies being conquered and subdued," and says "the end is always like the beginning." Of the demons he leaves the answer to the reader: whether they "will in a future world be converted to righteousness" is "a result which you yourself, reader, may approve of."¹¹ (The Greek original of this work survives only in pieces, and the text above is from the Latin of Rufinus, a translator whose faithfulness has long been disputed.)

St Gregory of Nyssa goes further in one work. In On the Soul and the Resurrection, a dialogue in which his sister "the Teacher" speaks, he writes that "God will be all in all," and then: "He that becomes all things will be in all things too; and herein it appears to me that Scripture teaches the complete annihilation of evil."¹² Some scholars read this, and other passages, as a doctrine of universal restoration. Ilaria Ramelli's The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (Brill, 2013) argues that restoration of all is an early Christian doctrine, and Michael McClymond's review in Theological Studies (2015) objects that it does not address the early non-universalists.¹³ The Church venerates Gregory as a saint and has never condemned him; she has also never taught what some read in him.

In 553 the Fifth Ecumenical Council met at Constantinople. The eleventh of the fourteen anathemas (canons) adopted by the council says: "If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, as well as their impious writings... let him be anathema." Two further sets are printed with its acts. Fifteen anathemas against Origen's teaching begin: "If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema." The nine anathemas of the Emperor Justinian come from his edict against Origen of 543, sent to Patriarch Mennas for a local synod; the last reads: "If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema."¹⁴

{{strong: The Fifth Ecumenical Council condemned Origen by name, and the Church has treated the teaching that the punishment of the wicked and of the demons is only temporary as a heresy.}} Honesty requires one qualification. The question of where the fifteen anathemas come from is open. Henry Percival, the translator, wrote in an excursus: "That Origen was condemned by name in the Eleventh Canon of this council there seems no possible reason to doubt," but on whether the Council itself adopted the fifteen anathemas he judged that "it would be the height of rashness to give a dogmatic answer." Some assign them to a local synod at Constantinople in 543; Hefele, who held that view, admitted "no strong and decisive proof." Others point to a statement in the acts that "many others had been anathematised after death, also even Origen."¹⁵ The scholarly question is real. The verdict does not depend on it. The Council in Trullo (692), in its first canon, says the fathers of 553 "synodically anathematized" Origen, Didymus and Evagrius, who "brought back again the circlings of certain bodies and souls." The Church's rejection of universal restoration rests on Scripture, the Fathers, that conciliar reception and the confession of Jerusalem (1672), not on the number of a canon.

The hope that is allowed and the teaching that is not

The Church prays for the dead and for all people, and saints have prayed with tears for the lost. The Russian elder St Silouan the Athonite once answered a hermit who said that atheists "will burn in everlasting fire": "Love could not bear that," and then, "We must pray for all."¹⁶ Kallistos Ware begins his well-known essay "Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?" with that story. A prayer that no one be lost, and a private trust that God's mercy may be greater than we can see, are not the teaching of the Church. Prayer for all is a duty. To state that all will be saved is to claim knowledge that God has not given, against what Christ said in Matthew 25 and what the Church has confessed since.

The distinction is old. Saints are honored without every sentence of theirs becoming dogma, as the site's article Can the Church Fathers Disagree? explains. The pastoral warning is Christ's own: "strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew 7:14).

Annihilationism

A second answer says that the wicked do not suffer forever but cease to exist. The Jehovah's Witnesses teach it in their own form: "God has set death, not torment in a fiery hell, as the penalty for sin," and "the idea of eternal torment is repugnant to God."¹⁷ Among evangelicals, John Stott "tentatively defended annihilationism" in Evangelical Essentials (1988), as Christianity Today put it, and Edward Fudge's The Fire That Consumes argued for "conditional immortality."¹⁸ Their strongest texts speak of destruction: God "is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28), the wicked are "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord" (2 Thessalonians 1:9), and Paul says of enemies of the cross, "whose end is destruction" (Philippians 3:19).

The Orthodox answer begins with the texts. The same Gospels that say "destroy" say "their worm dieth not." Revelation does not describe a moment of burning but a "torment" with "no rest day nor night." The rich man in Luke 16 is conscious. Matthew 25:46 sets "everlasting punishment" against "life eternal." The early Fathers read "destruction" as ruin, as the loss of the good for which man was made, and not as the end of being; Irenaeus, who wrote that souls "endure as long as God wills that they should have an existence and continuance," also wrote that the lost are "damned for ever."¹⁹

Annihilationists sometimes cite Irenaeus's first sentence. The Orthodox, like Irenaeus, hold that no creature is immortal by nature: life and continuance are gifts of God. But Irenaeus also says that God bestows "perpetual duration" so that even souls "should henceforth endure," and the Church has never taught that He takes the gift back. Some evangelical writers say that the Council of 553 also condemned annihilationism; the anathemas speak of punishment that is "only temporary" and of restoration, not of annihilation by name. The Church's rejection of annihilation rests on Scripture and the consensus of the Fathers, and it is firm.

Objections

"Aionios means 'age-long,' not 'eternal.'" The Greek adjective can refer to an age. But in Matthew 25:46 one adjective qualifies both life and punishment. The Church has never read the life of the saints as ending after an age, and Jesus gives no sign that one half of the sentence means less than the other. In Revelation the devil is tormented "for ever and ever" (20:10), and the same phrase is used of God, who "liveth for ever and ever" (4:9), and of Christ, who "shall reign for ever and ever" (11:15).

"Gregory of Nyssa and Isaac are saints. Aren't they proof the Church allows universalism?" They show that the Church honors holy men without making every opinion dogma. Gregory's most hopeful passages are in a dialogue and are disputed by scholars; Isaac's best-known work says only that hell's "end is not known," and the hope of his Second Part was never received as the Church's teaching. The council that condemned Origen, and the anathema against saying that the punishment of the wicked "is only temporary," are received by the same Church that venerates them.

"God wills the salvation of all, so how can anyone be lost?" God does will it, and the Orthodox confession says so ("equally wills the salvation of all"). But He wills it of free persons, and love does not coerce. The question is whether a creature may refuse Him to the end, and the Church answers that he may. See also How Can a Loving God Judge People in Hell?, Hell: When the Love of God Becomes Torment and Did Paul Teach Universal Salvation?

What we can say confidently

• Scripture speaks of everlasting fire and everlasting punishment, with the same adjective used of eternal life (Matthew 25:46).
• The earliest Christian writers and the Fathers quoted here teach that the punishment of the wicked is eternal.
• The Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) condemned Origen by name, Trullo (692) confirmed that it condemned his teachings, and the anathemas printed with its acts reject the restoration of the demons and of the impious.
• The Orthodox Church prays for all, hopes in God's mercy, and does not teach that all will be saved.
• St Isaac the Syrian presents hell as the torment of love refused, and says its end is "not known"; he does not teach annihilation.
• Annihilationism, as taught by Jehovah's Witnesses and some evangelicals, is not the Church's teaching.

What remains disputed

• Historians dispute whether the fifteen anathemas against Origen came from the Council of 553 itself or from a synod of 543.
• Scholars dispute how far Gregory of Nyssa meant what some read in him, and how Isaac the Syrian's "Second Part" should be read.
• The details of the soul's passage after death, including aerial toll houses, are a pious opinion and not dogma; see the site's article Are Orthodox Christians Required to Believe in Aerial Toll Houses?

Conclusion

The Orthodox faith asks us to hold two things that the modern mind finds hard to hold together: that God desires the salvation of every person, and that a person can refuse Him forever. The Church does not resolve the tension by a doctrine of universal salvation, which would take freedom away from love, or by annihilation, which would take the dignity of a person away from the lost. She keeps the warning of Christ, prays for everyone, and trusts that the Judge of all the earth will do right. See also the Orthodox guide to the last things and Why Orthodoxy.

Notes

1. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (1769 text) as served by this site's Bible reader, https://honestapologist.com/api/bible/connections/chapter?ref=MAT.25&v=kjv (and the same for other chapters). Greek words are from the SBL Greek New Testament, same address with v=sblgnt (Matthew 25:46; Acts 3:21).
2. St Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians 16, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0104.htm.
3. The Martyrdom of Polycarp 11, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0102.htm.
4. St Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.28.2, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103428.htm.
5. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Homily 79, trans. George Prevost, rev. M. B. Riddle, NPNF1 vol. 10, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200179.htm.
6. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40 (On Holy Baptism), section 36, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, NPNF2 vol. 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310240.htm.
7. Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem (1672), Confession of Dositheus, Decrees 3 and 18, in the translation of J. N. W. B. Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem (London, 1899), as adapted with modernized wording by Dennis Bratcher at https://www.crivoice.org/creeddositheus.html.
8. For example the eleventh-century Byzantine ivory of the Last Judgment from Constantinople, Victoria and Albert Museum A.24-1926, with "A river of fire descending from below Christ's feet ... leads to Hell," https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O94171/.
9. Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian), Mystic Treatises, trans. A. J. Wensinck from Bedjan's Syriac text (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1923), Treatise XXVI (p. 128) and Treatise XXVII (pp. 136-137), https://archive.org/details/IsaacOfNinevehMysticTreatises. Treatise XXVII corresponds to Homily 28 in the Holy Transfiguration Monastery edition (same title).
10. Isaac of Nineveh, "The Second Part," Chapters IV-XLI, ed. and trans. Sebastian Brock, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Scriptores Syri 224-225 (Louvain: Peeters, 1995), from Bodleian MS syr. e. 7; summary of the discovery and of scholarly readings of chapter 39 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_the_Syrian. The article does not quote the Second Part.
11. Origen, On First Principles 1.6.1-3, trans. Frederick Crombie, ANF vol. 4, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04121.htm.
12. St Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, trans. William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson, NPNF2 vol. 5, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2915.htm.
13. Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Leiden: Brill, 2013); Michael J. McClymond, "Origenes Vindicatus vel Rufinus Redivivus? A Review of Ilaria Ramelli's The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013)," Theological Studies 76, no. 4 (2015), pp. 813-826, https://theologicalstudies.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/7-McClymond-Origenes-Vindicatus.pdf (Ramelli's reply is in the same volume). Ramelli's thesis is given as McClymond's review summarizes it.
14. Second Council of Constantinople (553), the canons, "The Anathemas Against Origen" and "The Anathemas of the Emperor Justinian Against Origen," trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3812.htm.
15. Henry Percival, "Excursus on the XV Anathemas Against Origen," NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.biblestudytools.com/history/early-church-fathers/post-nicene/vol-14-seven-ecumenical-councils/06-second-council-of-constantinople/excursus-xv-anathemas-against-origen.html. On Justinian's edict of 543 and the synod under Mennas: "Mennas," Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10190a.htm. Council in Trullo (692), Canon 1, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3814.htm.
16. Kallistos Ware, "Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All? Origen, St Gregory of Nyssa and St Isaac the Syrian," in The Inner Kingdom (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2000), the final chapter; first published in Theology Digest 45:4 (1998); the opening, including the story of St Silouan told by Archimandrite Sophrony, is posted at https://www.clarion-journal.com/dare-we-hope-for-the-salvation-of-all-kallistos-ware/. I could read only the opening.
17. Jehovah's Witnesses, "Is Hell Real? What Is Hell According to the Bible?", jw.org, https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/what-is-hell/.
18. Robert A. Peterson, "Undying Worm, Unquenchable Fire," Christianity Today, 23 October 2000, https://christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/october23/undying-worm-unquenchable-fire.html (on the Evangelical Alliance report The Nature of Hell, 2000).
19. St Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.34.3-4, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103234.htm, and 4.28.2 (note 4).

Bibliography

Scripture

• The Holy Bible, King James Version (1769 text); The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition.

Fathers, councils and Orthodox confessions

• Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians; The Martyrdom of Polycarp; Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies. ANF vol. 1.
• Origen, On First Principles. ANF vol. 4.
• John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew. NPNF1 vol. 10.
• Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40. NPNF2 vol. 7.
• Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection. NPNF2 vol. 5.
• Second Council of Constantinople (553), with Percival's excursus; Council in Trullo (692), Canon 1. NPNF2 vol. 14.
• Synod of Jerusalem (1672), Confession of Dositheus.
• Isaac of Nineveh, Mystic Treatises, trans. A. J. Wensinck (1923); "The Second Part," Chapters IV-XLI, ed. Sebastian Brock (1995).

Orthodox and other scholarship

• Ware, Kallistos. "Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?" In The Inner Kingdom. 2000.
• Ramelli, Ilaria. The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis. Brill, 2013.
• McClymond, Michael. Review of Ramelli. Theological Studies, 2015.

Sources from the views discussed

• Jehovah's Witnesses, "Is Hell Real?" jw.org.
• Peterson, Robert A. "Undying Worm, Unquenchable Fire." Christianity Today, 2000 (reporting Stott, Fudge and the Evangelical Alliance).