Ancient afterlife beliefs

  Hope vs Justice 6: the case of Silouan the Athonite In this post, I’ll present the case of an anecdote about Silouan the Athonite (1866-1938) reported by his student Sophrony of Essex (1896-1993) quoted in the paper ‘Dare we Hope for the Salvation of All?’ written by Kallistos Ware (1934-2022) which can be found here: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/dare-we-hope-for-the-salvation-of-all.pdf It was particularly characteristic of Staretz Silouan to pray for the dead suffering in the hell of separation from God... He could not bear to think that anyone would languish in “outer darkness.” I remember a conversation between him and a certain hermit, who declared with evident satisfaction, “God will punish all atheists. They will burn in everlasting fire.” Obviously upset, the Staretz said, “Tell me, supposing you went to paradise, and there looked down and saw somebody burning in hell-fire—would you feel happy?” “It can’t be helped. It would be their own f...

  Hope vs Justice V: the case of 2 Esdras In this post, I’ll provide the text of most of the chapters 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the book 2 Esdras [1] , which is an Apocalyptic work that presents a series of visions attributed to the Jewish Prophet Esdras (but the text itself is generally considered to have been written far later). I decided to quote this text because its content is an extreme inversion of the other texts I quoted in the previous series about this topic, especially the second and third posts [2] I made about this topic. While in the case of those texts, I quoted texts in which the prayers of the saints on behalf of the ‘lost souls’ were answered, this text is extremely harsh on that kind of ‘hope’. Indeed, we have Esdras having a hard time to accept the idea that most souls will be eternally damned only to see his hope being crushed.   2 Esdras Chapter 6 (staring from verse 35) Third dialogue (source: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Esdras%20...

   Two famous passages of Isaac of Nineveh's First Part and their translation In this post, I'll discuss two passages of Isaac of Nineveh's  First Part (or 'First Collection')  as they appear in an Italian and an English translation. Excerpt from Homily 27 The Italian translation reads: “ Io dico, infatti, che anche quanti saranno castigati nella geenna, saranno tormentati dalle piaghe dell’amore. Le piaghe che provengono dall’amore, cioè quelle di quanti sentono di aver mancato nell’amore, sono dure e amare! Più dei tormenti che vengono dal timore! La sofferenza che sibila nel cuore perché si è mancato all’amore è più acuta di tutti i tormenti che vi possono essere. È assurdo pensare che i peccatori nella geenna saranno privati dell’amore per il Creatore. L’amore, infatti, è figlio della conoscenza della verità, che noi confessiamo che sarà concessa all’universo intero. Ma l’amore, con la sua forza, agisce in modo duplice: tormenta coloro che han...

Isaac of Nineveh on ‘compunction’ The following quotes from the First Part and Third Part of discourses of Isaac of Nineveh, when not otherwise specified, are my own translation from the Italian translation of Sabino Chialà [1] . So, I take responsibility of errors in the English rendering of the quotes. In the seventh discourse of the Third Part , Isaac of Nineveh (fl. 7 th century) writes: “My Lord, you didn’t mould me like a vase of a ceramist, which once is broken cannot be restored anymore and cannot regain anymore the smoothness that it had once new. But, in your wisdom, you moulded like an object of gold or silver, which once it is blackened, it regains the colour of the Sun and becomes again shining thanks to that refiner which compunction is, and, by means of that crucible which is conversion [2] , it is brought back to the condition of its former condition. In you there is the artisan that purifies and renews our nature. I defiled the beauty of the baptism and I am dirty, ...