Page 118 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
non-being, even while accepting the immortality of the soul.
There is no contradiction here. He is not concerned with the
survival of a part, but with the existence of the human being
as a whole. As Justin Martyr puts it with striking simplicity:
“When the harmony is dissolved, the soul leaves the body and
the human being is no more.”
For this reason, the Fathers do not seek the solution to
death in the immortality of the soul, but in the Incarnation
and the Resurrection of Christ—realities that include the body
and restore the human being in its entirety. Anyone reading
On the Incarnation must see that its central concern is not the
immortality of the soul, but the victory over death through the
risen Christ.
Thus, the immortality of the soul is not denied—but nei-
ther is it sufficient. It does not solve the problem of death.
If it did, then the resurrection of the body would be un-
necessary. Indeed, even Christ Himself would become super-
fluous. If immortality were already secured by nature, what
would salvation add? What would the Incarnation accom-
plish? Such a view empties the Gospel of its very content.
The third and most decisive qualification, therefore, is this:
human immortality is not grounded in the nature of the soul,
but in the Resurrection of Christ.
There are, however, even deeper reasons for this position.
The immortality of the soul, if understood as natural, be-
longs to the order of necessity. It does not arise from freedom
or relationship. Even those who are in hell, the Fathers remind
us, continue to exist—but their existence, precisely because it
is deprived of communion, is a form of death.
Hell is not simply a place of punishment; it is a mode of
existence marked by the absence of personal relationship with
God. It is the state expressed in the terrible words: “I know you
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