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I. Between the “Already” and the “Not Yet”
cism, yet in the direction suggested mainly by the thought of the Areopagetic writings in which eschatology is notoriously absent. Lossky did refer at several points in his work to the future eschato- logical state but he hastened to explain that this state is already pres- ent in the saints who, being already deified, enjoy the light of the Resurrection and have nothing essential to expect from Christ’s sec- ond coming. Quoting St Symeon the New Theologian, he wrote that the Parousia will not occur for the saints: “for those who always walk in the light, the Day of the Lord will never come, for they are already with God and in God.”13
This kind of eschatology leans too heavily on the side of the “al- ready”—at least for a certain class of believers—taking away or mar- ginalizing two basic aspects of Christian eschatological faith: the eagerness of the expectation of the Parousia, which marked so viv- idly the experience of the first ecclesial communities (Rev 6:1; 22:17, 20), and the longing for the resurrection of the body which will be granted only in the future. Laying too much stress on and content- ment with the present state of the saints’ union with God and their experience and manifestation of the divine light can lead to the posi- tion that the future Parousia will not affect the saints ontologically (that it will not add anything essential to them, but only to the rest of the world), and that their bodies even in their present state of cor- ruption and death exist in perfection, not being in need of liberation from the bondage of death. In such a view of eschatology, corruption and death lose their tragic character and the future bodily resurrec- tion is deprived of ontological significance for all human beings and creation.
This weakening of the longing for the Parousia has not been limited to theology; it has permeated also the religious life of the Christian communities, including the Orthodox Church. The wide- spread identification of the human being with its soul, which in the Platonic view prevailing among Christians is immortal, contributes to the diminution of the longing for the resurrection of our bodies and, thus, for the eschatological Parousia. The prayer maranatha (the
13 V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 2005), p. 233. Cf. also his Orthodox Theology: An Introduction (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978), p. 118.
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