This prompts me to say that while I agree that "Descent into Hades" is
better
than "descent into hell," neither of these is the traditional name for
the
Savior's Resurrection icon. The traditional name of the icon of the
Savior
rising from Hades and freeing the souls of the righteous of the OT is
"Resurrection" or "Anastasis" and not the 19th-century name "Descent
into Hades," which is
currently widespread. As examples, I offer the following Resurrection
icons
bearing the title "Anastasis" dating back 700-1,200 years--Monastery of
Hora,
Constantinople; **Osios Loukas, Delphi, Greece;** **Nea Moni, Chios,
Greece;**
the cave churches of Cappadocia, Asia Minor; Monastery of Daphne near
Athens;
almost all of the 70 or more Byzantine churches (from the 1Oth-13th
century)
in Kastoria, Greece; Mystras, Greece; St. Nicholas Orphanos,
Thessalonica,
Greece; numerous examples in Serbia. The title "Descent into Hades" was
not used
in the Church until recent centuries, the modern era, when the western
style
"Resurrection" and other western religious paintings had gained
widespread
popularity among the Orthodox along with Augustinian theology, and the
traditional
resurrection icon was foolishly relegated to an image of descent only.
The
western style Resurrection painting is the unscriptural composition of
Christ
carrying a banner of the cross and wearing a loin cloth while He is
suspended in
the air over an empty tomb, and the soldiers look on in abject horror.
There is a problem calling the Orthodox icon merely a descent into
Hades,
descent being only the first half of the Savior's salvific and
triumphant
destruction of Hades and death. It is like saying, as Thomas Aquinas
and Roman
Catholic theology hold, that His death and burial alone are salvific,
and His
resurrection took place only as proof of His divinity. In the Orthodox
icon,
however, the figure of the Savior is actually ascending while drawing
upward the
forefathers Adam and Eve by the hand. All of the people in the icon are
in an
upward motion, and the figurative locks and bars and chains already lie
strewn
about and destroyed by the rising Savior Who has trampled down the
doors. His
descent into Hades did not shatter death's doors. He did not "break and
enter" in
order to penetrate the realm of Hades. He was happily received by Hades
on
the first day, but with His third-day arising, He broke out of Hades,
violently
shattering its restraints and power. It has become an unfortunate dogma
declared by some of Greece's Old Calendarist Synods that the so-called
"Descent into
Hades" icon is NOT TO BE CALLED "ANASTASIS" BUT "DESCENT INTO HADES,"
and the
title "Resurrection" belongs to the western style composition. These
groups
have ignored the fact that the western style composition also parallels
the
western dogma of salvation.
---George S. Gabriel
---George S. Gabriel
VARIOUS WRITINGS
There is a reason why the Greek Old Calendarists that I referred to (in
particular the Matthewites but some others also) ascribe orthodoxy to
the western
composition, e.g. the Renaissance and post-Renaissance western painting
of
Christ's Resurrection. The reason is found in the "Pidalion," the Greek
Book of
Canons compiled by St. Nikodemos of Athos around the late 1700s and the
present
English edition, the "Rudder." In the lengthy footnotes in the
introduction to
the Canons of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, one finds anti-orthodox
commentary that says the Orthodox icon it calls the "Descent into
Hades" is not the
true Resurrection icon and favors the western painting as the correct
representation of the Lord's third-day arising. The Matthewites decree
that the
"Descent to Hades" is the proper icon only for Holy Saturday, since, as
they claim,
the hymns of the vesper/Liturgy of Holy Saturday sing of the Lord's
descent to
Hades. The Matthewites decree, therefore, that the proper icon for the
Sunday
of Pascha itself and the forty-day Paschal period is the western
composition.
The Matthewite practice is transfixed by an incorrect name of the icon
and by
the spurious comments in the Pidalion, ignoring the simple fact that
all the
hymns of Holy Saturday morning without exception, sing of His arising
from
Hades as well. And since the vesper/Liturgy of Holy Saturday morning is
actually
vespers of Pascha and its hymns are entirely resurrectional, it would
not have
a different festal icon than Pascha Sunday would have.
The comments in the spurious footnotes even mention the "renaissance"
painting as correct over and against the "Byzantine" painting. The same
anti-orthodox footnotes uphold the icons of the Holy Trinity and God
the Father as
dogmatically correct and incumbent upon the faithful for veneration.
These footnotes
were not written by St Nikodemos but are among eighteen interpolations
and
alterations made in Pidalion after St. Nikodemos sent it to Venice for
printing.
St. Nikodemos wept bitterly when he saw the final books distributed
from
Venice. He was never able to correct the errors and to afford to print
a new
edition. The Life of St. Nikodemos charges that the Greek priest who
helped raise
the money for the production of the book and expedited its production
in Venice
was responsible for the interpolations and alterations in the text.
Unfortunately, all editions of the Greek Rudder reprinted since that
time have retained
these errors. A number of the Saint's other works were also
interpolated,
altered, and some were even blocked from printing. His book on
Confession
(Exomologitarion) was altered and printed as a virtual Greek
translation of the
Council of Trent's decrees and Latin doctrine on confession.
The western painting depicts the Roman soldiers gripped by horror and
fear as
they watch Christ arise from the dead. But in the Gospels no one saw
Him
arise. The soldiers were gripped by fear when they arrived after the
Resurrection
and saw the stone that sealed the tomb being moved by the invisible
angel. As
the anthem hymn of the Pl. Second Tone says, "The guards became as
dead," that
is, they fainted from fright.
Unfortunately, this picture of a solo figure rising from a grave with a
crusader's banner of the cross (and usually a cloth about His loins) is
seen in
modern Orthodox use as well. It is usually the choice Russian icon of
the
Resurrection, and it almost always is embossed on the metal covers of
the Greek
Gospel book used in the Liturgy.
This picture ignores the indispensible salvific work of His
Resurrection that
is taught by the Orthodox icon: the freeing of the souls of the dead
from the
shadowy existence of an eternal sheol or Hades, and the destruction of
the
eternal power of sin, death, and decay or corruptibility (Gk.
"fthora"). The
Orthodox icon provides our spiritual life and our eternal life that
remission of
sins has come to us through His Resurrection , i.e. the healing of our
sinful
condition, the overcoming of the eternal power of the parasites of
death and
decay in our members, and of the fear of death, Satan's primary power
of over
us. All this comes to us by Christ's Resurrection in the flesh.
Standing firmly
on this foundation, the Gospel calls men to the first resurrection, the
resurrection of our souls when we are yet in this life, and
consequently to the
second resurrection, that is, to the resurrection in the flesh unto
eternal life
and face-to-face communion with God in the flesh.
I'd like to call your attention to something that I have always thought
very
noteworthy in our beautiful Orthodox liturgical cycle--the first hymn
of the
first tone and first week of the Church's eight-week liturgical cycle
(octoehos) in the Saturday vespers (First Tone). After the fixed
vesperal recitations
and psalms, we chant, "Receive our evening prayers, O Holy Lord, and
grant unto
us remission of sins, for You alone have presented the resurrection in
the
cosmos." How striking is the indivisibility of the Incarnate Son of
God's
Resurrection in the flesh and the remission of sins or transfiguring of
our
condition! He alone remits our sins because he alone grants us His
resurrectional Body
and Blood as the antidote of eternal death and its consequences within
us
which are fear, self-centeredness of all kinds, decay, death, and the
power of
these to incline us away from God and to fixate us on our material
survival.
But if we think in a Latin manner that remission of sins is merely a
juridical action by a God satisfied that His justice has been fufilled
and the alleged
dishonor against His divine nature avenged by the death on the Cross,
then
certainly the Resurrection accomplished nothing more than proving
Jesus'
divinity. His Resurrection, therefore, was not necessary for the
destruction of sin
and death since it was God Himself Who decreed death punitively, as
Augustine
of Hippo says, "in His just wrath." Death needs only to be rescinded by
fiat
since the nature of the cosmos was not affected in any intrinsic manner
by the
fall of Adam. All that has befallen the cosmos and human life, in Latin
theology, is not an internal illness in creation but an external
imposition by divine
decree. There is no need, therefore, for a transformation of nature
from
within, when only a lifting of the divine sentence suffices. The
lifting of the
sentence of death, of suffering, and of sinfulness itself accomplishes
salvation, because in this scheme the juridical forgiveness of sins
equals salvation.