Exactly! Thanks Nicholas, since I was thinking the exact same thing. Here's his response and mine s well:

James Kelley's Response
Note: James Kelley of OrthodoxPatristics.com has responded to his initial challenge to dialogue/debate as follows. We await a fuller response:

"Dear Jay,

God is love, but a love which “seeketh not its own.” This notion of a love delivered from all necessity is in a sense incomprehensible to man, since it would have to be lived to be believed. However, all of Orthodox theology is there to guide seekers into a transfiguration into the Light which is God’s glory or love. Andrea is right, I believe, to say that hell is to be understood antinomically, as I am suggesting “love of God” is to be understood.

I am too busy readying a book for publication to read and respond to your post on nicene truth. I’m sure you’ve got some valid concerns about the Orthodox conception of salvation and damnation. I’ve already stated my understanding of the Orthodox position, and I have also outlined the theological presuppositions which explain why I belive in this manner. Just quoting Scripture or Fathers who seem to indicate that sinners will burn in hell (maybe you do more, I don’t know) does not provide me or anyone else with a set of presuppositions which would convince anyone to accept your overall theological mindset. Why should we apostatize and accept Papal claims or the filioque, much less a God who has a postiive intent to work evil? Quotations are only as good as the presuppositions which provide a context for meaning. I’ve stated what the Orthodox epistemolgy and presuppositions are, and there is little else I can do but co-labor with God in prayer and fasting.

Glory be to the One God in Trinity,
The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!"

Jay's Reply:

What needs to be said in response to this, other than to ask whether Orthodox Dogmatist, Fr. Pomanansky has a 'purified nous,' when he writes in complete agreement with me in his Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, saying:

"However, these opinions are not to be confused with dogmas, in the precise meaning of the word. There are some private opinions of certain Fathers and teachers which are not recognized as being in agreement with the general catholic faith of the Church, and are not accepted as a guide to faith. (As an example of such "private opinions," one may take the mistaken opinion of St. Gregory of Nyssa that hell is not everlasting and that all — including the demons — are to be saved in the end. This opinion was rejected decisively at the Fifth Ecumenical Councilas contradicting the Church's "catholic consciousness," but St. Gregory himself is still accepted as a saint and as a Holy Father in the Orthodox Church and his other teachings are not questioned."

Unfortunately, I think that is the most you are going to hear. While not intentional, he has brushed aside all the quotes you provided. I'm in these types of discussions all the time where the issue has the opponent's credibility on the line, and they would rather dodge the question or not respond rather than admit they were wrong. Admitting you are wrong is a tough thing to do, but sometimes we have to admit it and pick our self back up.

Well, I do have respect for Orthodox separated brothers. I do not consider them heretical.

But there are several Biblical quotations that indicate Hell is eternal. Check Mark 9:38-48 and Luke 3:7-18 where fire is mentioned as unquenchable.

Thanks

They are our separated brethren until they consistently oppose and attack the Catholic Faith in full knowledge and in continual bad will. Then they are heretics. That's dogmatic.

jay

I know there are great similarities between the Greek and Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholicism, so if he was describing purgatory, why not give it that name? Changing the name doesn't change the place.

I'm not entirely sure the reason why, but I guess there are a few reasons.

The biggest reason (I think) is that purgatory is a dirty word outside of Catholicism, admitting it makes one suspect of Papism. Further, at this point in history, to admit purgatory is what they were talking about would be seen as admitting Catholicism was right and Eastern Orthodoxy was wrong.

So the Orthodox don't believe in an eternal hell?

God Bless,
Michael

They do, but from what I have read and experienced they don't like to think/talk about it. They range in opinion from what an average Catholic would think, all the way to the notion that you have to be really, really, really, really bad to get sent there.

Dear Jay Dyer,
Thanks for your posting about this and quote from II Clement. I am Eastern Orthodox and have heard that there are theories that while Hell is eternal, God due to His transcendance might find a way to free people condemned to it. I made a post asking about this (viewtopic.php?f=70&t=170075) that I invite you to. I am not advocating a particular position, or ascribing one to the Orthodox Church (and AFAIK, the Orthodox Church hasn't considered one to be infallible dogma).
My main questions are:
(A) Why is it said that people can't repent after their deaths? Didn't the rich man in the Parable of Lazarus repent or regret his sin of rejecting Lazarus?
(B) Although the Catholic Catechism teaches that there is a Last Judgment that can condemn to Eternal Punishment, does this exclude the possibility that God, due to his transcendance of time and his omnipotence, could find a way to free people out of Hell?

Let me get to your post as well. It was interesting to hear that St. Maximus taught a version of "apokatastasis" that differed from Origen's. I also understand your quotation from St. Clement of Rome:
That is, anti-Christian sinners are punished in unquenchable fire. But this passage doesn't show whether those sinners couldn't be saved out of the unquenchable fire at some point by the omnipotent God.

Rather, the quotation that I have trouble with in II Clement shows up in the following passage in Chapter 8, where it says:


It looks to me like the passage that you cited by St. Cyprian could run somewhat counter to the one above in II Clement. St. Cyprian appears to reason that the punishment will be eternal because life after death is eternal, and Cyprian says that "weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual." So whereas II Clement denies that the "power of repenting" continues into the afterlife, Cyprian appears to say that the person will still be alive and could in fact grieve and pray, but their prayer will be ineffectual, and so their grief will lack "the fruit of repentance".

This is an eleven-year old thread. JayDwyer hasn't posted in ten years. As for myself, I've been over this topic too many times to be excited about trying again.

You just don't get posts like that OP these days.

O tempora! O mores!

Maybe it is a situation where the Catholic Catechism is simple and clear enough (in this case that there is no repentance in the afterlife) that people don't need clarifying on what the position is. And maybe the question of how or why there is no repentance in the afterlife does not have an easy, clear answer, because either (A) there is no post-mortem repentance but we are dealing with a situation unfamiliar to us (the afterlife) so it's hard to explain, or (B) because there theoretically could be regret and repentance in the afterlife (since the righteous regret their mistakes, and since the rich man in the parable regretted his mistakes).

If you are burned out over the question, would you like to consider Question 1 (viewtopic.php?f=70&t=170075&p=2813606#p2813606) on my thread instead, Obi-Wan?

There is no repentance in the afterlife because God doesn't grant the necessary grace. Whether that is because He chooses not to do so or because He cannot do so without causing a logical contradiction is a matter that can be debated. (Note that it is not a slight on God's omnipotence to say that He cannot work a contradiction.)

I don't see what the importance is of the fasting vs. almsgiving vs. etc. controversy is. I think it only becomes an issue if you regard them as absolutes rather than as counsels for various people at various times--a lot like alleged contradictory passages in Proverbs, for example.

What might the argument be that post-mortem repentance is an incoherent concept? Not asking for proof that it is, of course. Just wondering what that argument might even look like. I've not come across it before.

Thanks for replying, Obi-Wan. I will put my response to you about Question 1 (alms vs. prayer) onto the other thread.

Good idea. I should have put mine there too.

Obi-Wan,
You write:

Supposing that repentance or regretting one's mistakes requires God's grace, then:
(A) Regarding the righteous in heaven and purgatory who have repented, are illumined and do have grace, why wouldn't they continue to regret their mistakes and turn their hearts (ie. "repent") from the mistakes?
(B) Regarding the wicked in hell, supposing that they continue to support their past wickedness, what are we to make of the rich man who wanted to come back and warn his brothers? Doesn't it appear that he himself regretted his mistake? If the wicked "weep" in hell and endure the Final Judgment, wouldn't they realize that what they did was wrong, and wouldn't such realization lead to regret?

And by a logical contradiction preventing them from getting the grace, do you mean the potential contradiction that a person could be condemned and in hell for their unrepented mistakes, yet also be given grace in hell to repent? That is, on one hand, the person fails to repent in his lifetime, undergoes the Final Judgment and is given an Eternal Punishment, yet on the other, in general God has the ability to give people the grace and power to repent, whereas for God to choose to give them the power to repent would undermine the finality of this Judgment and the Eternality of the Punishment? I think that perhaps this is not really a full logical contradiction though. In the secular world, a convict could use up their appeals so that the judgment against them is Final, and they could get a Life sentence, and yet they could show repentance for their mistakes and be paroled, even with the Judgment not being overturned. So being given a Final Judgment and being given an Eternal Punishment are not necessarily a contradiction with in fact being delivered of suffering the eternal punishment for eternity if there is an intervening factor, such as repentance.

That's not a "supposing." That's a statement of fact. Anything else is Pelagian.

a) In Purgatory, they are still turning their hearts. In Heaven, their hearts have turned and are fixed on God. Jesus doesn't simply set us free from the punishment for our sins; He sets us free from our sins, so that they no longer have a hold of us and we need no longer repent because there is nothing left to repent of.
b) I wouldn't draw too many conclusions about the state of the afterlife from the story of the rich man and Lazarus. That's not its point.

As far as a logical contradiction goes, no, that's not what I meant. It's possible that something about the condition of a soul after death could make it unable to change, just as angels cannot repent. I don't know that to be the case, and I don't even remember where I read it if I read it at all and didn't just make it up, but that's the sort of thing I had in mind.

Obi-Wan,

Regarding the souls in purgatory (A), if they are still turning their hearts, then it suggests that they are still repenting, which in turn suggests that repentance does happen in the afterlife, but is restricted to those in Purgatory. Also, regarding those in heaven, I understand the idea that Christ takes away a person's personal guilt for a sin, but it seems to me that a righteous person would still wish that the sinful act that they performed had not occurred. They would continue to have their desire that they didn't commit the act and continue the act of keeping their heart turned from the bad did that they committed. If a person confesses on earth and receives absolution, they still repent of their act I think, even though they no longer carry personal guilt for it, and then when they die, supposing that their soul became frozen into a fixed state as you suggested as a possibility (I heard that Catherine of Siena compared the soul in the afterlife to a fallen tree), then their soul would be fixed into that state of repentance for the absolved sin.

Regarding whether those in hell can regret their mistakes (B), I don't think that you've really addressed the case of the Rich Man. But my aim is not to "stick" you in the thread discussions either, so here I will note that it looks like there are alot of Catholic writers saying that people in hell regret their mistakes.

A Dominican website has this Q&A that lists regret as a pain in hell:


Catholic Straight Answers notes:

http://catholicstraightanswers.com/does-hell-exist/

The Straight Answers entry seems to treat remorse as synonymous with repentance, talking about people who don't repent in their lifetimes: "If a person does not repent of mortal sin, does not have any remorse, and persists in this state, then that person’s rejection of God will continue for eternity. In a sense, people put themselves in hell."

Wikipedia refers to the Catholic church's views on hell and quotes Isaac of Nineveh, who is venerated in the Chaldean Catholic Church as a saint:

Combining the the two paragraphs in Wikipedia's entry, the idea seems to be that the person regrets their sins but refuses to combine it with turning to God's forgiveness.

I suppose that at this point if I had to make sense of this issue and justify what II Clement says, in light of Cyprian's claim that repentance in hell is ineffectual, I would say that Cyprian and II Clement are talking about different kinds or usages of repentance. I would have to distinguish the times when Catholic writers say that you can repent in the afterlife from the times that they say that you can't. The Orthodox Church seems to be less dogmatic about these kinds of things though and I suppose that it would probably just be okay with theologians disagreeing with eachother. But my goal isn't to conclude that II Clement is wrong, either.

Michael Pakaluk in On Needing God tries to distinguish the regret in hell from repentance by proposing that it was only the regret that takes the form of self-blame:

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/1 ... g-on-hell/
Pakaluk didn't really explain what he means by self-blame as different from repentance though.

Tracy Finke suggested in her book Embracing Catholicism and repeated in her book Confirmed Catholic (both quoted in the box below) that the person wishes that he hadn't made the mistake for the purely pragmatic reason that it caused him to go to hell: But I don't know if this explanation about the regret in hell is correct. Sister Faustina's answer seems to imply that the person does have remorse of conscience and doesn't mean it just as a pragmatic phenomenon. It seems like people in hell who are alive there for eternity could figure out that what they did was immoral.