Reasons not to be Eastern Orthodox #237: "Aerial Toll Houses"

Where does St. John Chrysostom say that the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is only a parable, and that we shouldn't take it to provide insight on what the dead actually experience? He doesn't. No father does. All of them take it to be a clear description of what happens at death, especially for the wicked. No father suggests that the dead cannot see, since they are dead and have no eyes, as you asserted. None. If you wish to dispute that, start providing the contrary references.

 

It seems to me, Fr. John, that the core of your case rests on the infallibility of the Church. If my interpretation of your argument is right, then you're not going to have a lot of success convincing Anglican's on that basis - we simply don't agree with you. Our position is moderated - the Church (as a collective body of all the churches in the episcopate) will not fall into major heresy, but it can still be wrong from time to time, especially when only one part of the Church holds the contested view (e.g. the EO church). To further compound that, in my short time on this forum it seems to me that the most frequent posters on this forum not only reject that the Church is infallible, but are actually quite eager to criticise the Anglican church for perceived failings - so any appeal on that basis is really going to fall on deaf ears.

Liberated from the burden of the Church never doing any wrong, I cannot see how your argument with respect to Aerial Toll Houses specifically could be persuasive. What is your argument on the basis of scripture?

If there is none then perhaps I could be convinced the idea of Aerial Toll Houses is a useful device of fiction (I'm not convinced, I actually think its problematic for a number of reasons, I'm just saying I could be convinced), but I cannot be convinced without doubt that it is a real phenomenon. I think C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters are great fictional devices, but I'm not going to start running around pretending there's actually a demonic civil service tasked with tempting people.

 

Are you suggesting that a person can be in a state of redemption by God's grace, and still be carted off to hades until the Judgment? If so, how do you justify this position from either Scripture or the very early church writings? But if not, I fail to see what point you tried to make with this post and a clarification might be helpful.

 

St. John Chrysostom refers to the story as a “parable” in his discourses on wealth. An older translation is in the public domain and a newer edition has been published by SVS Press. The point of the parable, according to the Fathers, regards the dangers of wealth.

As for the rest, I am an epistemological and scientific realist, and it is the modern scientific worldview that I assume (provisionally) to be true when considering the contemporary application of biblical texts. Whatever remains of the person following physical death is causally inert: in talking about “souls” we are not discussing items in the spatiotemporal universe as we know it. To speak of irreducibly physical acts applying to non-physical entities is metaphorical at best. The Scriptures give us some guardrails, but not much else.

 

My problem with this whole debate is that a lot of EO theologians and writers reject the toll houses but we have the good father telling us that it has to be true or else the church is wrong. I am not EO but this confuses me a good bit

 

Any theory of interpretation should be able to produce falsifiable predictions of what we should expect to find in the data (the Scriptures, in this case). The aerial toll house theory implies that there is some temporal interval as well as uncertainty between the death of a person and his/her arrival in the "place" where he/she will await the final realization of their permanent state in anticipation of the Last Judgment. What we find are statements such as "Today you will be with me in Paradise", "To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord", and, if we take the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus as telling something about the matter, it's clear that Lazarus is taken immediately to "Abraham's bosom". Such examples can be multiplied. The theory makes testable predictions that can be falsified. Without supporting evidence, it is a relic of an outdated medieval view that conflates the spiritual and physical worlds, nothing more.

 

Father, the problem with all of these patristic quotes is that none of them say this place of trial will be in the atmospheric/temporal space "above us". I don't think you appreciate how much of a stumbling block the "air" piece of the aerial toll-houses is. If this trial place was supernatural, then okay, although all the theological issues would need to be discussed then. But just the physicality, the conflation of the physical and supernatural, is where almost everyone (including the EO crowd, I'd imagine) will check out.

 

The tradition of the Church is that it is possible that a person could be in a state of repentance, but without having brought forth the fruits of repentance (such as someone who repents just prior to death), and that such a person would not immediately enter into the presence of God. This doesn't mean that they are carted off to a place of torment by the demons. In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, both are in Hades (the abode of the dead), but both are not experiencing the same thing. Lazarus was brought there by the angels. The fathers teach that prior to the resurrection, all the righteous of the Old Testament were in the same state.

 

Of course it is a parable, but it is not *just* a parable. It is a parable that describes the reality of what happens after death. All the Fathers interpret it this way. None of them interpret it as you do.

What in science has disproven anything in the parable? Has some scientist developed a scope capable of peering into the spiritual realm? No. Again, you are an Empiricist with a little God slapped on top. This is not the view of spiritual realities you find in Scripture... not by a long shot.

 

Which Eastern Orthodox Theologians reject the toll houses, exactly? There are a few writers of little note who have rejected them. Most of those who say anything negative about the toll houses will say that they shouldn't be taken in an overly literalistic way... but I have not encountered very many people who ever have. They are one image among many that point to a spiritual reality, but the image is not the reality itself.

 

The aerial realm is everything that is above the ground, and below heaven. All of these quotes talk about these encounters happening after death. If they don't happen in the aerial realm where do you suppose that they do take place? And if you don't think angels and demons actually occupy particular places at particular times, I suggest you review the book of Daniel, and in particular the references to an angel being delayed by opposition from a demon in Daniel 10.

Also, what do you suppose St. Paul had in mind when he spoke of the Devil as the prince and power of the air?

 

I think the question you have to consider, if you will only allow that the Church could fall into minor errors, is whether or not the Church has always held that it was infallible. A good place to begin your study would be St. Cyprian of Carthage's Treatise on the Unity of the Church.

 

You are of course welcome to claim that it is more than "just a parable", but what is asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

The ancient world conflated the physical and spiritual realms in ways that are no longer tenable. I don't think it should be necessary in the 21st century to recapitulate the whole history of Western philosophy and the birth of modern science. And I am no more an "Empiricist" than I am a "Jehovah's Witness"; I am an epistemological and scientific realist, and as such I assume the reality of the non-physical world, in precisely those terms. As @Stalwart continues to point out, the conflation of the physical and supernatural realms is one of the main problems with the "aerial toll houses" legend.

 

I am a member on an Orthodox forum. Most are skeptical of it over there. They cite a lot of sources. I cited one here on the first page

 

You have yet to show how anything in science has disproven anything I have said. You could just as easily say that science has made faith in God untenable, as argue that it disproves the reality of demons and angels, or their interaction with men.

 

The Orthodox Forum hardly is a bastion of recognized Orthodox Theologians. And David Bentley Hart is hardly an Orthodox Theologian. He is a scholar, who happens to formally be a member of the Orthodox Church, but he is not Orthodox by an Orthodox perspective, nor even orthodox in the broad sense of the term as it is used by other Christians. See for example https://fatherjohn.blogspot.com/2019/12/david-bentley-hart-and-marcionism.html

And Fr. Michael Pomazansky did not deny the reality of Toll Houses at all
http://orthodoxinfo.com/death/tollhouse_pomaz.aspx

He said that they were not a matter of dogma, and here he was using the term "dogma" in the sense of an officially defined doctrine, such as the doctrine of the Trinity. But he also did not consider the teachings about the dormition of the Virgin Mary to be a matter of dogma, but there is no question that the Church has particular views on that question, which are expressed in our services, as well as in any Orthodox Catechism.

 

Nope but they cite other theologians and works

 

The way I understand Orthodox teaching on the soul after death is that is tried before entering its final resting place awaiting the final judgement. The state of the soul can be changed though by intercession of the church.

 

Such as who and what?

 

Yes, but not that a person who died without repentance could be prayed into heaven. The Church teaches that those who die in a state of repentance, but who have not brought forth the fruits of repentance go to hades, just as Lazarus did in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, but we do not believe that they go there to suffer for some period of time to pay off the penalties for their sins, but that they grow in grace, and are benefited in some way by the prayers of the Church, and that they will ultimately be saved.