tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19364700.post4497859823799910055..comments2023-07-26T04:54:13.903-07:00Comments on Robin's Readings and Reflections: The Rich Man and LazarusTerrell Clemmonshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17367926808246409525noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19364700.post-10008912020744197422008-08-02T16:32:00.000-07:002008-08-02T16:32:00.000-07:00I skimmed with interest N.T Wright´s thoughts abou...I skimmed with interest N.T Wright´s thoughts about the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Very interesting!<BR/> <BR/>The first book about Orthodoxy I ever read, before Kallistos Ware, dealt---in the very first chapter---with this parable, seeking to explain it in ¨the simplest possible way.¨ The book was Life After Death by a scholar in Greece, also a Bishop, named Hierotheos Vlachos. An excerpt from the book is reproduced on the website pelagia.org, or more directly at: http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b24.en.life_after_death.01.htm<BR/> <BR/>Although accepting the post-mortem-state hypotheses, he acknowledges that the parable also contains a social dimension which he has not time to delve. What I found interesting about Vlachos´s exegesis was the distinction between hades and hell. ¨As we see, the parable is not about life after the Second Coming of Christ, but about the life of the soul between a person's death, when his soul leaves his body, and the Second Coming of Christ.¨<BR/> <BR/>Vlachos says that we see here the rich man in Hades, not hell, an intermediate place before the second coming, in which he had a foretaste of the second coming but could not participate in it. This ¨great gulf¨ is a subjective state, he continues, contrasting it with purgitory. Later in the book the debates between the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox at the ¨ecumenical¨ Council of Florence in the 14th century, in which these subjects were debated, is reviewed and partially reproduced. <BR/> <BR/>Hades has no ontological existence, though, according to Vlachos. ¨Light has two properties, illuminating and caustic. If one person has good vision, he benefits from the illuminating property of the sun, the light, and he enjoys the whole creation. But if another person is deprived of his eye, if he is without sight, then he feels the caustic property of light. This will be so in the future life too, as well as in the life of the soul after it leaves the body. God will also love the sinners, but they will be unable to perceive this love as light. They will perceive it as fire, since they will not have a spiritual eye and spiritual vision.¨ <BR/> <BR/>I find it very interesting that the idea just put forth by Bishop Vlachos in his commentary on The Rich Man and Lazarus is not that far removed from many protestant universalisms, including that of George Macdonald (see The Princess and the Curdie and The Day Boy and the Night Girl, for example), although not called universalism by Vlachos. But it was also this book Life After Death which, ironically, woke me up to the reality of hell and it contains a polemic against the doctrine of the restoration of all things.<BR/><BR/>Although this may not represent the final word either---, if there were more communication among the various Bishops we might have it figured out sooner rather than later, the importance of which seems to be at the heart of this parable. <BR/> <BR/>Patrick PhillipsUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06333038432787296407noreply@blogger.com