Review of Lazar Puhalo’s Gehenna: The Nature of Hell, According to the Orthodox Christian Church (Dewdney: Synaxis Press, 2012), 204 pages. Available HERE.
Eschatological judgment and reward has been back on the table for theological discussion in a renewed way over the past decade. Increasingly, those who had not carefully investigated the Orthodox tradition (ancient and recent) are looking for solid resources that include the primary writings. Archbishop (ret.) Lazar Puhalo has done us the service of providing such a resource in his book, Gehenna: The Nature of Hell, According to the Orthodox Christian Church.
After a prologue citing St Anthony the Great on the unchanging goodness of God, Archbishop Lazar Puhalo launches Gehenna with a clear purpose statement:
The intent of this volume is to examine the actual Orthodox doctrine about the nature of hell, and touch upon the nature of the heavenly kingdom which is spoken of as the reward of the faithful. The intention is to free Orthodox people from those ideas of hell which make God himself immoral, which attribute to Him the serious sins of savage cruelty, vengeance and malice. The responsibility for our tragedy and the recompense for our free choice to follow Christ, ignore or renounce Him, lies with us, not with God (p 3).
In chapter 1, “Intent: Roots of the Problem,” Vladika Lazar initially problematizes the doctrine of hell, identifying the roots of the difficulty in confusion regarding the biblical texts, literalism around metaphorical imagery, imported errors (from Western theology to Zoroastrianism) and especially from the idolatry of folk religion.
Biblically, he unpacks the issues involved in the conflation of hades with gehenna (hell) and paradise with heaven. Further, he hints at the common misidentification of heaven and hell as two places or destinations. Rather, according to the Orthodox tradition, God Himself is the holy fire of divine love—light and warmth to those who love Him, pain and destruction to those who oppose Him—yet, one and the same fire (6-7).
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