page_title: John Romanides
section_title: Heaven and Hell
hierarchical_section_title: John Romanides / Theology / Heaven and Hell
caption_attribution_description: Loose icon in Gelati monastery shows somewhat unusual picture of hell.
context_page_description: John Savvas Romanides was an Eastern Orthodox priest, author and professor who had a distinctive influence on post-war Greek Orthodox theology.
context_section_description: According to Romanides, the theological concept of hell, or eternal damnation is expressed differently within Eastern and Western Christianity. According to John S. Romanides, "the Frankish [i.e. Western] understanding of heaven and hell" is "foreign to the Orthodox tradition".
  According to Romanides, the Orthodox Church teaches that both Heaven and Hell are being in God's presence, which is being with God and seeing God, and that there is no such place as where God is not, nor is Hell taught in the East as separation from God. One expression of the Eastern teaching is that hell and heaven are being in God's presence, as this presence is punishment and paradise depending on the person's spiritual state in that presences. For one who hates God, to be in the presence of God eternally would be the gravest suffering. Aristotle Papanikolaou  and Elizabeth H. Prodromou  wrote in their book Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives from Orthodox Christian Scholars that for the Orthodox: Those theological symbols, heaven and hell, are not crudely understood as spatial destinations but rather refer to the experience of God's presence according to two different modes.
  The saved and the damned will both experience God's light, the Tabor light. However, the saved will experience this light as Heaven, while the damned will experience it as Hell. Theories explicitly identifying Hell with an experience of the divine light may go back as far as Theophanes of Nicea. According to Iōannēs Polemēs, Theophanes believed that, for sinners, "the divine light will be perceived as the punishing fire of hell".
  Other Eastern Orthodox theologians describe hell as separation from God. Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) speaks of "the hell of separation from God". "The circumstances that rise before us, the problems we encounter, the relationships we form, the choices we make, all ultimately concern our eternal union with or separation from God." "Hell is nothing else but separation of man from God, his autonomy excluding him from the place where God is present." "Hell is a spiritual state of separation from God and inability to experience the love of God, while being conscious of the ultimate deprivation of it as punishment." "Hell is none other than the state of separation from God, a condition into which humanity was plunged for having preferred the creature to the Creator. It is the human creature, therefore, and not God, who engenders hell. Created free for the sake of love, man possesses the incredible power to reject this love, to say 'no' to God. By refusing communion with God, he becomes a predator, condemning himself to a spiritual death (hell) more dreadful than the physical death that derives from it."
  According to Iōannēs Polemēs, the important Orthodox theologian Gregory Palamas did not believe that sinners would experience the divine light: "Unlike Theophanes, Palamas did not believe that sinners could have an experience of the divine light [...] Nowhere in his works does Palamas seem to adopt Theophanes' view that the light of Tabor is identical with the fire of hell."
caption: Icon of hell
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