Now, it is one thing to say (as the Orthodox authorities who have examined such questions invariably say) that one must be careful not to read the Orthodox texts on the other world and life after death in too literal or earthly a manner, since that reality is in many obvious ways very different from earthly reality; but it is quite something else to “sweep away” all these texts and deny that they refer to anything at all in an outward way, and are nothing but “allegories” and “fables.” The Orthodox literature on this subject describes it rather matter-of- factly as it appears to the person undergoing such experiences, and the Orthodox Church and faithful have always accepted these descriptions as corresponding faithfully to reality, even while making allowances for the peculiar, other-worldly nature of this reality.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that no Orthodox writer has ever been so dogmatic in describing the nature of this other-worldly reality as the present critic is in denying it altogether. This is not a sphere for categorical assertions. St. Paul, in describing his own spiritual experiences in the most general terms, is careful to say “whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot telclass="underline" God knoweth” (II Cor. 12:2). St. John Chrysostom in his interpretation of this passage shows the same caution in saying: “Were only his mind and soul caught up, while the body remained dead? Or was the body also caught up? This cannot be said for certain. If the Apostle Paul himself, who was caught up and was vouchsafed so many and such unutterable revelations, did not know this, how much less do we know it.... And if anyone should say: How is it possible to be caught up out of the body? I will ask him: How is it possible to be caught up in the body? The latter is even more difficult than the former, if one is to examine it according to reason and not submit oneself to faith” (Homily 26:1 on II Corinthians, in Volume 10:1 of his Works in Russian, Saint Petersburg, 1904, p. 690).
Similarly, St. Andrew the Fool for Christ, in describing his state during his own experience of heaven, says: “I saw myself as if without flesh, because I did not feel the flesh.... In appearance I was in the body, but I did not feel the weight of the body; I felt no natural needs for the course of the whole two weeks when I was caught up. This leads me to the thought that I was out of the body. I do not know how to say for sure; this is known to God, the Knower of hearts” (from his complete Life by Nicephorus, quoted in Bishop Ignatius, vol. III, p. 88).
Such Orthodox authorities, then — an Apostle, a great Father, a Saint of the most exalted life — all regard it as at least possible to speak of an experience of heaven as occurring “out of the body”; and it is certainly clear from their words that such experiences, whether they are “in” or “out” of the body, have something bodily and outward about them — otherwise there would be no need to speak of the “body” at all in connection with them. In this book we have tried to describe such experiences as simply as possible in the language of the Orthodox sources themselves, without attempting to give a precise definition of this state. Bishop Theophan the Recluse, in his commentary on St. Paul’s statement in II Corinthians 12:2, says perhaps as much as need be said on this subject: “Within or in the depths of the world that is visible to us is hidden another world, just as real as this one — whether spiritual or finely material, God knows; what is certain is that in it the angels and saints dwell.... He (St. Paul) cannot say whether he was caught up in the body or out of the body; this, he says, God alone knows. Evidently, for us this knowledge is not necessary.... A great precision in these details is not required, and it cannot be expected that anyone should say something absolutely certain when the Apostle Paul himself is silent” (Bishop Theophan, Commentary on the Second Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, Moscow, 1894, pp. 401-3).
Probably every Orthodox reader of the “other-worldly” elements in the Lives of Saints is to some extent aware that the nature of this world and these experiences is not to be precisely defined; the way they are expressed in these sources is exactly the most appropriate and accurate way they can be expressed in the language of this world. The attempt to dismiss these experiences as “allegories” or “fables,” and to define precisely the fact that they cannot occur as stated, has no justification in Orthodox teaching and tradition.
3. Does the soul “sleep” after death?
The critic is so opposed to the activities of the soul in the other world, especially after death, such as are described in numerous Lives of Saints, that he ends by teaching a whole doctrine of the soul’s “repose” or “slumber” after death — a device which renders all these activities simply impossible! He states: “In the Orthodox understanding, at death, the soul is held to be assigned to a state of repose by an act of the Will of God, and enter into a condition of inactivity, a sort of sleep in which it does not function, hear or see” (6:3-9, p. 19); the soul in this state “can know nothing at all, nor remember anything at all” (6:2, p. 23).
Even among the heterodox, such a doctrine of “soul-slumber” is to be found in our times only in a few of the sects which are far from historical Christianity (Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists); how astonishing it is, therefore, to find it here proclaimed so categorically as Orthodox! If one or two early teachers in the Church (Aphraates of Syria, St. Anastasius of Sinai), as the critic claims, did perhaps teach such a doctrine in an unambiguous way, it is abundantly clear that the Orthodox Church herself never followed them, but in its Divine services, in the works of its great Fathers, in its ascetic treatises, and in its Lives of Saints has taught so clearly that the soul is active and “awake” after death that one is justly appalled at the radicalness of the critic’s teaching.
The critic himself seems to waver in his idea of what the “sleep” of the soul means, sometimes defining it in terms of an exalted “hesychast” vocabulary that somewhat softens its radicalness; but at least he is consistent in saying that the supposed “sleep” of the soul after death makes absolutely impossible any “outward” experiences of the soul. And as long as he continues to speak of death as a state of “inactivity” in which the soul “can know nothing at all, nor remember anything at all,” it is clear that for him the word “sleep” does have a meaning that is more than metaphorical.
There would be little point in searching in the Fathers for specific “refutations” of this doctrine, for it was seldom taken seriously enough in the Church to require a specific refutation. In Chapter Ten above we have cited the teaching of St. Ambrose that the soul is “more active” when freed from the body after death, St. Abba Dorotheus’ statement that the soul “remembers everything at its exit from this body more clearly and distinctly once freed from the earthliness of the body,” and St. John Cassian’s teaching that the soul “becomes yet more alive” after death; and similar statements could be found in many Fathers. But such citations are only a small part of the Orthodox evidence that refutes the theory of “soul-slumber.” The whole Orthodox piety and practice of prayer for the dead surely presupposes that souls are “awake” in the other world and that their lot can be alleviated; the Orthodox calling on the saints in prayer, and the saints’ response to this prayer, is unthinkable without the conscious activity of the saints in heaven; the immense Orthodox literature on the manifestations of saints after death cannot simply all be cast away as “fables.” If the critic is right, then the Church has certainly been “wrong” for quite a few centuries.