In John 3:19-21, Christ overtly identifies the nature of divine judgment:
"And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God” (Jn. 3:19–21).
So, Christ's judgment is overtly identified as divine Light. This is why Orthodoxy doesn't hold to a dualistic view of the afterlife, wherein we are sent to one of two physical locations—heaven or hell. Instead, heaven or hell is our subjective experience at our posthumous encounter with Christ (or divine Light, à la the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor), who is—of course—immutable. If God is immutable, he cannot change from divine love in an anthropomorphized manner (i.e., as we understand it through familiar social analogies in our finite state). Fr. Thomas Hopko puts it this way:
"[I]t is precisely the presence of God’s mercy and love which cause the torment of the wicked. God does not punish; he forgives. . . . In a word, God has mercy on all, whether all like it or not. If we like it, it is paradise; if we do not, it is hell. Every knee will bend before the Lord. Everything will be subject to Him. God in Christ will indeed be 'all and in all,' with boundless mercy and unconditional pardon. But not all will rejoice in God’s gift of forgiveness, and that choice will be judgment, the self-inflicted source of their sorrow and pain" (Foreword in Sergei Bulgakov, 'The Orthodox Church,' xiii).
So, understanding the judgment of Christ as Light (which is what he himself identifies it as) is key here. For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–395) explains this subjective phenomenon from the plague of darkness in Exodus, even while the Hebrews still experienced this darkness as Light:
"It was not some constraining power from above that caused the one to be found in darkness and the other in light, but we men have in ourselves, in our own nature and by our own choice, the causes of light or darkness, since we place ourselves in whichever sphere we wish to be” ('The Life of Moses,' 2.80).
So, God does not change nor have shifting mood swings and is therefore categorically not actively meting out his wrath as we popularly and anthropomorphically understand it. Instead, he is immutably divine love, mercy, and forgiveness, and the experience of wrath is one of self-condemnation and incompatibility with divine Light, much like when Christ, in his compassion, said to Paul on the road to Damascus, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads [spikes]" (Acts 26:14). The act of persecuting Jesus therefore has the experience of "wrath" built into it, but it is self-inflicted since God is immutably love—the divine Light.
Great post. I sometimes wonder if heaven and hell are experiences of our encounter of Christ starting in this life.
Posted by: HartmannKent | November 13, 2014 at 06:37 PM