“When did I see You hungry, or thirsty, or naked, or imprisoned….In that you had not done it to the least of these My brethren, you have not done it to Me” (Matthew 25:44,45)
In my first year of seminary I discovered volumes of a Russian Orthodox layman, Nicolai Berdyaev in the shelves of our library. I devoured them because I found him addressing so many spiritual questions that were on my own mind. He had a way of getting to the core of so many problems that any serious Christian—indeed, every moral human being—ought to be mulling over in his or her lifetime before passing on to another realm. One topic he explored that should be challenging us all is the focus on social welfare that our Lord put so radically in the above parable found in Matthew 25.
Berdyaev stated that all of us ought never to rest content while evil persons suffer in Hades. We are gifted with moral consciences, and they are intensified by the Holy Spirit within our souls. We are made to be filled with the love of Christ. That affection for all human beings regardless of their virtue or lack of it ought to stir us to anguish over their situation of separation from the heavenly Father. Berdyaev wrote: “Moral consciousness began with God’s question: ‘Cain, where is your brother Abel?’ It will end with another question on the part of God: ‘Abel, where is your brother Cain?’”
Put another way, who can say that he or she will be capable of enjoying paradise content with having accomplished all that was possible while on earth as long as there are those who were exiled to wherever it may be or whatever state of existence may happen to befall those who spent their lives in sin? Of course it may be argued that the same chapter in Matthew speaks of a clear separation between sheep and goats. How to reconcile these apparently conflicting predictions of the end of time? We might comment that if freedom has any meaning, it must allow us real choices and not what would be a game that the Lord plays with us, ending as an object lesson and permitting all who ever lived a free pass to paradise.
Or we can say that love will always trump justice. If God is love as we are told in the Johannine writings, surely He will find some way to express that love and apply it to all human beings. These comments are found in the writings of our Church teachers and argued over time and time again. And yet the struggle for universal salvation will go on, with at least some reluctant to accept a general definition of truth, justice and love that affects the outcome either or both ways. Some, like the brilliant third century theologian Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, plead for mercy for the sinners in Hades. They have the feeling that the love of the Holy Trinity will so infiltrate the souls of the most hardened of sinners, including Satan himself, that at the end there will be a glorious reconciliation of all of them with the saints and “good angels,” because the Divine Majesty demands it.
The Church has rejected such theology not because she has any less mercy and compassion, but on the basis of freedom—both angelic and human. If free will means anything, it has to take into account the option of rejecting grace, love and the will of the Almighty. In other words, is it possible to say “No” to the Lord’s plan for the restoration of all creation and living things? Put another way, the God of love can do no other than to pour out His love onto all beings. For most, it will be a warm welcome way to praise the Holy Trinity for all eternity. For others, it will be like the blazing heat of the desert against which one can only try to shield the eyes and try to survive by ignoring God’s brilliant presence.