In the previous chapter, we discussed how Orthodox Christians, based on their experience (as they claim), testify that Happiness has arrived and been granted to us. That is, a person can already be Happy, live in the fullness of joy, freedom, and truth. However, there seems to be a contradiction – how can there be fullness (which implies wholeness) while death still exists, how can there be fullness of joy while there is objective irreversible separation (even for a moment)? All tales of Happiness fade and scatter before the fact of death! Do Orthodox Christians not understand this?! They do understand, but they know something! What exactly? That death no longer exists:
“Death has been destroyed by victory!” You might smile ironically:
“Poor things, they don’t notice obvious facts – people are still dying, cemeteries are not closing because people no longer die, but because there is no more room – new ones need to be opened…”. And the Church, seemingly ignoring this obvious fact, has not ceased for two thousand years to preach that death no longer exists?! Standing over the grave of the deceased, the Church in Easter Joy proclaims that death does not exist! What is the matter, what does the Church mean when it says that death has been destroyed, what does It understand by the word “death”? Let’s note something first.
Everything the Church says, It speaks from the perspective of eternity. All earthly, temporary things It views and explains in the light of God’s providence, which comes from Eternity and directs everything back there, and about the eternal It speaks in temporal-spatial categories, based on the imagery (which points to God and Eternity) of human experience in the creaturely world. See details about the Church’s theology in Part I.
In Part I, we discussed how the Lord, having created man in a state of innocence, placed him in Paradise (the best possible conditions; by the way, every person is in Paradise at every moment! – see God’s Providence in Part I.), where he was to grow into holiness, into deification, into Incarnation (which is possible with absolute, humble, loving self-giving of man to God). But man strayed, deviated from the direct path set by God, defined by the prohibition of knowing good and evil, and chose an “alternative” path to deification – self-deification. As soon as he stepped on this god-opposing, evil (evil-inspired) path – he immediately died, began to exist in non-being. The human hypostasis, instead of living Hypostasis (“eating” the hypostasis of another, which was restored in the Eucharist), started living (more precisely existing, because life is the communication in love with other hypostases) by surviving on nature (which was created from “nothing,” from “non-being”). Hypostasis, instead of defining, leading nature to deification, began to be defined by nature, which in the fall (wrong orientation of hypostasis) experienced a catastrophe (meaning literally: nature itself changed, became different – from spiritual became fleshly, from life-giving became death-bearing). But God-Love, who responsibly took such a turn of events into account (the possibility of dying), prepared salvation for man – clothed him in leather tunics, that is, in a perishable form of existence (into which He planned to dress Himself over time). Since hypostasis needed to be brought to repentance (to return to God), turned away from nature, on which it began to rely and by which it began to live, – to hypostatic being in communication with Others. And so that the human hypostasis would recognize its creatureliness, not self-sufficiency (enter a state of humility) and since hypostasis “mixed” with nature, to allow the hypostasis to recognize itself and be able to repent (seeing the changeability, perishability, unreliability of nature; and that it has no life), it was clothed in leather tunics. Leather tunics are a perishable form of existence, with abrupt metamorphoses (transformations). Since hypostasis needed to be awakened to life (to the desire for life, which became possible only in the New Covenant), hypostasis must go through a series of shocks, tangible changes in being, with which it “grew together”. Therefore, the Lord in His mercy broke this perishable form of existence into three stages, forms with tragic transitions from one form of existence to another (speaking of hypostases, not affirmed by the Holy Spirit, New Testament Pentecost). Thus, the first form of existence (I f.) is the uterine period (in the mother’s womb), the second form of existence (II f.) is after birth and until the grave, the third form of existence (III f.) is the afterlife “life”. This is a new path to ascension, revelation of hypostasis. People began to call the transition from II f. to III f. of existence the word “death”. To die means to cease to exist in some form of existence (in something) irrevocably. To die for someone means to cease to exist for them. (People sometimes say about the living that they are dead to them, meaning that in their lives those they consider dead do not exist, play no role). Thus, the transition from one form of existence to another is an ambiguous event: simultaneously death (cessation of existence in one form of existence) and birth (beginning of existence in another, into which the transition occurs). I die in I f. – I am born in II f.; I die in I f. – I am born immediately in III f. (when a child is killed in the womb – by abortion, or for other reasons there occurs a “separation” of the soul from the body; biological life in the mother’s womb is severed); I die in II f. – I am born in III f. With each transition from one form of existence to another, we lose something: in the womb – the environment (water), the umbilical cord…, in II f. – muscles, veins, that is, the umbilical cord of the earth and the environment… and we go to III f. of existence, more perfect than the second, by analogy (just as), as the second is more perfect than the first. (Inadequate analogy-parable: a rocket going into orbit – from launch until it exits the earth’s gravitational field, gradually gaining speed, it sheds something, loses, because if it does not want to let go, – it will not overcome the earth’s gravity). As in II f., freedom and opportunities for self-realization are “absolute” in relation to I f. of existence, similarly III f. of existence – is an exit beyond space and time, to face-to-face meeting with the Lord, – is more perfect than II f., as that (II f.), in turn, from I f…