HistoricalChristian.Faith

John of Damascus on the Intermediate State

Dates: c. 749 · Wikipedia
Summary: John of Damascus (c. 675–749), the last of the Greek Fathers, supplies in An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith the systematic anthropology that grounds a conscious intermediate state in the East. In Book II he defines the soul as "a living essence, simple, incorporeal … immortal, reasoning and intelligent," a substance that uses the body but is not dependent on it — so death does not extinguish the person but separates a still-living, still-rational soul. In Book III, on the Descent to Hades, he holds that Christ's deified soul went down to Hades and "freed those who had been bound for ages," bringing light to the dead and leading the captive just out — the Eastern counterpart to the Western "harrowing" of the secret receptacles.

Claims & evidence

The soul is a living, simple, incorporeal, immortal, rational essence

The soul, accordingly, is a living essence, simple, incorporeal, invisible in its proper nature to bodily eyes, immortal, reasoning and intelligent, formless, making use of an organised body, and being the source of its powers of life, and growth, and sensation, and generation, mind being but its purest part and not in any wise alien to it; (for as the eye to the body, so is the mind to the soul); further it enjoys freedom and volition and energy, and is mutable, that is, it is given to change, because it is created.

— An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book II, ch. 12 ("Concerning Man"), historicalchristian.faith. Because the soul is an incorporeal, immortal, rational substance that merely "makes use of" the body, it persists in conscious existence when the body dies — the metaphysical basis for a continuing, self-aware person in the intermediate state.

The soul's immortality is by grace, and its incorporeality is real (though not in God's absolute sense)

We understand two kinds of what is incorporeal and invisible and formless: the one is such in essence, the other by free gift: and likewise the one is such in nature, and the other only in comparison with the denseness of matter. God then is incorporeal by nature, but the angels and demons and souls are said to be so by free gift, and in comparison with the denseness of matter.

— An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book II, ch. 12, historicalchristian.faith. John guards the doctrine from misuse: the soul is immortal and incorporeal not autonomously but by the Creator's gift — so its survival of death is a divine endowment, not a native divinity.

Christ's deified soul descended to Hades and freed the souls bound there

The soul when it was deified descended into Hades, in order that, just as the Sun of Righteousness rose for those upon the earth, so likewise He might bring light to those who sit under the earth in darkness and shadow of death … And thus after He had freed those who had been bound for ages, straightway He rose again from the dead, shewing us the way of resurrection.

— An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book III, ch. 29 ("Concerning the Descent to Hades"), historicalchristian.faith. Hades is a real holding place of conscious souls "bound for ages"; Christ's separated (and deified) soul enters it and releases the captive just — the Eastern account of emptying the intermediate receptacle of the pre-Christian dead, paralleling Gregory's Western "kept back … until the Mediator was come."

Notes

• John of Damascus contributes the systematic anthropology the intermediate state needs: a soul that is a substance in its own right (immortal, incorporeal, rational) and therefore survives bodily death as a conscious agent. His Exposition became the standard dogmatic summary for the Christian East.
• Both quoted passages are firsthand from the Exposition (Book II ch. 12 and Book III ch. 29).
• His insistence that the soul is immortal "by grace" not "by nature" distinguishes the orthodox view from a Platonic doctrine of the soul's inherent, self-standing divinity — the survival of the intermediate state is the Creator's gift, not the soul's own property.
• His Descent-to-Hades teaching is the Eastern systematic form of the same event Western witnesses describe as the harrowing of the "secret rest of the fathers" (see Gregory the Dialogist).