What should Christians expect when they die?
We often answer that question by moving immediately to heaven, resurrection, or final judgment. Each belongs to the Christian hope, but moving too quickly can cause us to overlook a beautiful early Christian picture of the righteous between death and resurrection.
Their bodies rest in the earth, but their lives continue. They enjoy blessings already before them while looking forward to greater blessings still to come. Their expectation is itself part of their happiness.
An early third-century Christian work traditionally attributed to Hippolytus describes it this way:
The righteous have lived there from the beginning. They are no longer ruled by necessity, but continually enjoy the sight of the blessings before them. They delight in expecting other blessings, always new, considering what is coming better than what they presently see.
That place brings them no toil. There is neither oppressive heat nor cold nor thorns. The faces of the fathers and the righteous are always smiling as they await the rest and eternal revival in heaven that will follow this place. We call it Abraham’s bosom.
Attributed to Hippolytus, Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe 1, c. AD 200–235
What a remarkable image to carry when we think about death.
The righteous are already enjoying themselves. They are together, at rest, and looking forward. Their present happiness does not diminish their anticipation, and their anticipation does not prevent them from enjoying the present.
They are blessed, and they know more blessing is coming.
This passage does not answer every question about the intermediate state. It does not tell us everything the righteous are doing, precisely what they see, or how they experience the passage of time. It does not, by itself, say that a never-ending succession of new blessings continues throughout eternity. Its immediate horizon includes the resurrection and the heavenly life that follows Hades.
But it gives us the original image: present enjoyment joined with confident expectation of something better.
Other ancient Christian writers help us extend that image. Irenaeus speaks of God always teaching and humanity always learning. Origen imagines discovery and instruction after death. Gregory of Nyssa, recording his dialogue with Macrina, describes souls becoming continually larger through the blessings they receive. Gregory the Great pictures satisfaction that continually renews desire.
These writers are not all describing the same stage of the afterlife, nor do they agree on every detail. Taken together, however, they allow us to construct a compelling Christian vision of the human journey.
God gives.
We receive.
Receiving enlarges us.
Enlargement prepares us to receive more.
There is always something better ahead.
Life in a World of Conflict
We are born into a world in which death is already operating.
Creation points us toward a God who exists and possesses extraordinary power. Paul says that God’s invisible reality and eternal power can be perceived through what has been made.
But the goodness of God is harder to establish by observing nature alone.
We encounter beauty and abundance, but we also encounter disease, violence, predation, natural disaster, suffering, and death. Creation reveals tremendous power, but the world as we presently experience it does not always explain the moral character of the power behind it.
This is why our confidence in God’s goodness must rest on more than our observation of nature. We look to Jesus Christ, to his compassion, his self-giving love, his willingness to enter human suffering, and his victory over death. Through Jesus, we learn to trust the character of the God whose power we recognize in creation.
That trust develops in hostile surroundings.
The New Testament describes a world in which the devil deceives and tempts, people harm one another, and our own desires pull us away from what we know is good. The devil does not possess unlimited authority, but he is pictured as an active enemy who prowls, accuses, tempts, and destroys.
The conflict also reaches into our inner lives. Paul describes it with painful honesty:
I delight in the law of God within myself, but I see another law operating in the members of my body, fighting against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin working within me.
Romans 7:22–23
We recognize the struggle.
We can sincerely desire patience and still speak cruelly. We can know that generosity is good while fearing to give. We can resolve to change and then discover how deeply an old habit has taken hold. We can condemn selfishness in someone else while defending it within ourselves.
The body itself is not evil. God created human beings as embodied creatures, and the Christian hope includes the body’s resurrection. The body belongs to our complete humanity.
Nevertheless, our present embodied lives are marked by mortality, weakness, and disordered appetite. Hunger can become gluttony. Sexual desire can become lust. The instinct for self-preservation can become selfishness. The desire for security can become greed.
Nor does sin arise only from physical appetite. Pride, resentment, envy, vanity, and self-deception also take root in the mind. We are influenced by the world around us, attacked by spiritual powers, and divided within ourselves.
We also live under necessity.
We must eat, sleep, work, find shelter, care for our health, and protect ourselves and the people who depend upon us. Satisfying a need today rarely prevents it from returning tomorrow. Our bodies become tired, sick, injured, and old. Much of life is spent maintaining bodies that are continually moving toward death.
Yet we experience real blessings here.
We love and are loved. We discover truth. We receive forgiveness. We experience friendship, beauty, worship, and moments when the presence of God seems near. We watch children grow, see people change, and discover that acts of charity can bring meaning into places of suffering.
The difficulty is that we often demand too much from a present blessing. We want a relationship, achievement, possession, or experience to provide all the happiness and security we will ever need. Then, when the blessing changes or passes away, we feel that goodness itself has abandoned us.
Christian hope teaches us another way to receive.
We can be grateful for what God has placed before us while recognizing that it is not the completion of our story. We can enjoy today without demanding that today become eternity.
Death Does Not Finish the Human Story
Several early Christian writers described death as a temporary separation of soul and body, followed eventually by their reunion in resurrection.
Irenaeus, writing in Lyon in Roman Gaul around AD 180, grounded this expectation in the journey of Jesus himself. His larger argument was directed against Christians who wanted the soul to pass immediately beyond the created order without waiting for bodily resurrection.
He wrote:
Some people who are considered orthodox disregard the proper order by which the righteous advance. They do not understand that there are different stages through which believers are prepared for incorruption. Instead, they hold heretical ideas because they do not know the arrangements God has made for our resurrection.
Christ himself did not rise above the Father. Neither is a disciple above his teacher. If anyone therefore refuses to accept the resurrection as it was revealed through Christ, that person does not know how the Lord himself rose from the dead.
The Lord went away into the region beneath the earth, into the place where the souls of the dead were. Afterward he rose bodily, and following his resurrection he was taken up.
It is therefore evident that the souls of his disciples, for whose sake the Lord underwent these things, will also go after death to the invisible place assigned to them by God. They will remain there until the resurrection, awaiting that event.
Then they will receive their bodies again. They will rise completely, meaning bodily, just as the Lord arose, and in this condition they will come into the presence of God.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.31.1–2, c. AD 180
For Irenaeus, Jesus establishes the pattern.
Jesus died. He entered the region of the dead. He rose bodily. Those who belong to him will follow the same course.
Death does not end the disciple’s existence. The soul continues in the invisible place appointed by God while the body awaits restoration. The intermediate state is real, but it is not the completion of human existence because the resurrection of the body is still ahead.
Tertullian, writing from Carthage in North Africa during the early third century, described a similar sequence. He objected to the idea that the faithful dead bypass Hades and immediately enter the highest heaven:
With us, the lower regions are not believed to be a bare cavity or some open sewer beneath the world. We understand Hades to be a vast and deep place within the interior of the earth, hidden within its own depths.
We read that Christ spent three days in the heart of the earth, meaning in the inward recesses hidden within the earth and enclosed beneath the lower depths.
Although Christ is God, he is also man. According to the Scriptures, he died and was buried. He therefore fulfilled the law of human death by remaining in Hades in the condition of one who had died.
He did not ascend into the heights of heaven before descending into the lower parts of the earth. There he made the patriarchs and prophets participants in himself.
You must therefore understand Hades to be a region beneath the earth. If Christ went there, and if he did not ascend into heaven until after he had descended there, how can anyone suppose that the souls of the faithful deserve a treatment greater than that of Christ and ascend immediately to heaven without waiting in Hades?
Tertullian, On the Soul 55, c. AD 210
Tertullian’s description is more forceful and more physically specific than Irenaeus’s. His larger argument contains details that later Christians would debate. But the basic sequence is clear: death, existence in Hades, resurrection, and the life that follows.
The earliest writers did not treat the separation of soul and body as the final Christian hope.
Humanity was created for embodied life.
The body rests, but it will rise.
A Place Called Abraham’s Bosom
The work attributed to Hippolytus describes Hades as containing distinct regions for the righteous and unrighteous dead. The righteous are conducted toward the right, into a place of light associated with Abraham’s bosom. The unrighteous are kept elsewhere, with the reality of coming judgment before them.
The description of the righteous deserves to be heard in its fuller setting:
Hades is a place within the created world, a region beneath the earth into which the light of this world does not shine. Since the sun does not shine there, darkness must continually remain in that place.
This region has been appointed as a place of custody for souls. Angels are stationed there as guardians, distributing the temporary conditions appropriate to each person’s conduct.
Within this region there is a particular place set apart, a lake of unquenchable fire into which no one has yet been cast. It has been prepared for the day determined by God, when righteous judgment will be pronounced upon everyone.
The righteous and unrighteous are presently kept in Hades, but not in the same place. At the entrance stands an archangel with an army of angels. After the souls have passed through the gate, they do not all continue along the same path.
The righteous are guided toward the right hand, into a region of light. There the righteous from the beginning have lived.
They are no longer ruled by necessity, but continually enjoy the sight of the blessings before them. They delight in expecting other blessings, always new, considering what is coming better than what they presently see.
That place brings them no toil. There is neither oppressive heat nor cold nor thorns. The faces of the fathers and the righteous are always smiling as they await the rest and eternal revival in heaven that will follow this place.
We call this place Abraham’s bosom.
Attributed to Hippolytus, Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe 1, c. AD 200–235
The precise authorship of this work has been debated, and it circulated under more than one name. It is safest to treat it as an early third-century Christian description traditionally associated with Hippolytus.
The uncertainty surrounding the author does not erase the passage. The text still shows us how an ancient Christian imagined the condition of the righteous between death and resurrection.
They are conscious.
They recognize one another.
They experience fellowship with the fathers and the righteous.
They enjoy the blessings already visible to them.
They are free from oppressive conditions.
They are awaiting resurrection and the life that follows.
And their faces are smiling.
No Longer Ruled by Necessity
One phrase stands at the center of the passage:
They are no longer ruled by necessity.
Our present lives are governed by needs that continually return.
We eat, but hunger returns. We sleep, but tiredness returns. We recover from one illness and remain vulnerable to another. We work to secure our lives, but nothing we accumulate can prevent death.
Necessity also affects our relationships. Fear of scarcity encourages competition. Fear of rejection encourages pretense. Fear of death can make us cling to people and possessions as though we could make them permanent through force of will.
The righteous in Abraham’s bosom are pictured as released from these pressures. There is no oppressive heat or cold. There are no thorns and no exhausting labor. Their happiness is not threatened by the bodily necessities that dominate earthly existence.
The passage does not answer every question about temptation or moral development after death. It does not explicitly explain whether every possible struggle has ended. We should not force it to say more than it says.
But nothing in the description suggests that the righteous remain exposed to the same environment of bodily weakness, spiritual hostility, and fear that governed their earthly lives.
They have entered rest.
That rest does not make them empty or inactive. They see, recognize, enjoy, anticipate, and wait. Their lives have not stopped. A different kind of life has begun.
The Happiness of Anticipation
The righteous do not merely endure the delay before resurrection. They delight in expecting what is coming.
Their anticipation is itself part of their blessedness.
We already know that expectation can produce happiness. Before a journey, we imagine the places we will see. Before a reunion, the thought of being together begins to bring joy before the meeting occurs. Sometimes the weeks of anticipation become part of the treasured experience.
But our anticipation is fragile.
Plans can fail. People can disappoint us. The future can arrive in a form we did not expect. Even when everything goes well, the visit ends, the journey becomes a memory, and we return to ordinary life.
The righteous in Hades await something God has promised.
They do not wonder whether death will defeat them because they have already passed through death and discovered that their lives continued. They do not wonder whether Christ’s promise is stronger than the grave because they now inhabit the world that was previously hidden from them.
The blessing before them strengthens their confidence in the blessing still ahead.
There is a difference between wanting more because we despise what we possess and wanting more because what we possess has taught us to trust the giver.
The first form of desire consumes gratitude. Nothing is ever enough because every present good is measured against something absent.
The second form grows from gratitude. We receive something good, recognize its goodness, and become more eager for the continuing generosity of the one who gave it.
This is the possibility opened by the passage attributed to Hippolytus:
Enjoyment that sustains expectation.
Expectation that deepens enjoyment.
The righteous enjoy the present because it is good, and they welcome the future because they know the goodness of the giver.
Origen: Paradise as a School for Souls
Origen, the Christian teacher associated with Alexandria in Egypt, supplied another way of imagining how life after death could include continuing discovery and joy.
Writing around AD 220–230, he proposed that paradise would be a place of instruction. He did not claim that every detail had been revealed with certainty. His repeated use of phrases such as “I think” and “we should suppose” shows that he was offering a theological proposal.
He wrote:
Some such desire, I believe, was expressed by the person who said, “I am torn between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”
He knew that when he returned to Christ, he would understand more clearly the reasons for the things that happen upon the earth. He would learn about humanity, the soul, the mind, the work of the Spirit, and the grace of the Holy Spirit given to believers.
He would understand the judgment of divine providence concerning each individual thing. He would learn that nothing happening to human beings occurs merely by accident or chance, but according to a plan so carefully ordered that it does not overlook even the hairs of our heads.
In the present life, this providential order remains a subject of investigation. Then it will be more completely revealed.
We should therefore suppose that considerable time may pass after death while the reasons for the things belonging to this earth are explained to those who are worthy. Through understanding these things and receiving the grace of fuller knowledge, they may experience indescribable joy.
Origen, On First Principles 2.11.5, c. AD 220–230
Origen continues:
I think, therefore, that all the saints who depart from this life will remain in a place Scripture calls paradise. It will be a place of instruction, a classroom or school for souls.
There they will be taught about everything they saw on earth. They will also receive knowledge concerning the things that will follow in the future.
During their earthly lives, they received certain indications of future things, although they saw them only through a mirror and in a dim way. These things will be revealed more clearly and distinctly to the saints at their proper time and place.
If someone is pure in heart, holy in mind, and more practiced in understanding, that person may progress more quickly. Passing through the different dwelling places, the soul will come to understand what occurs in each place and why it occurs.
In this way the saints continue their progress, following the one who passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, who said, “I desire that where I am, they may also be.”
Origen, On First Principles 2.11.6, c. AD 220–230
Origen is not giving us another description of Abraham’s bosom identical to the one attributed to Hippolytus. His account includes its own cosmology, stages of ascent, different dwelling places, and continued instruction.
Its value for our question is more specific.
Origen believed that death would not bring discovery to an end. Questions carried through this life could begin to receive answers. Events that seemed meaningless might be placed within a larger providential order. Knowledge would bring joy, and every new understanding could disclose more of the wisdom of God.
Paradise becomes a place of discovery.
The faithful know truly, and then they learn more.
Irenaeus: God Always Has More to Teach
Irenaeus gives us one of the strongest ancient parallels to the idea that God’s future blessings cannot be exhausted.
His immediate subject is humility.
He is opposing teachers who claim to possess complete knowledge of God’s hidden mysteries. Irenaeus argues that creatures should not be ashamed to admit that some things remain known only to God. Human beings cannot exhaust the meaning of creation, Scripture, or God himself.
Then he carries that humility into the world to come:
Even with respect to creation, there are some things whose knowledge belongs only to God, while other things fall within the range of human understanding.
Why, then, should anyone complain if, while investigating the Scriptures, which are entirely spiritual, we are able through the grace of God to explain some questions but must leave others in the hands of God?
This will be true not only in the present world but also in the world that is coming, so that God will always be teaching and humanity will always be learning what God teaches.
As the apostle said, when other things have passed away, these three will remain: faith, hope, and love.
Faith in our Master will remain firm, continually assuring us that there is one true God and that we should love him forever because he alone is our Father.
Hope will also remain, because we will continually expect to receive more and more from God and to learn from him.
We will continue expecting more because God is good, because his riches have no limit, because his kingdom has no end, and because his instruction can never be exhausted.
If we therefore leave certain questions in the hands of God, we will preserve our faith without injury and continue without danger. All Scripture given to us by God will be found harmonious. The parables will agree with the clear passages, and the passages whose meaning is clear will help explain the parables.
Through the many different expressions of Scripture, one harmonious melody will be heard within us, praising in hymns the God who created everything.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.28.3, c. AD 180
Irenaeus is not describing Hades here. He is describing the relationship between the infinite God and the finite creature, both now and in the coming world.
His conclusion is extraordinary.
God will always teach.
Humanity will always learn.
We will continually expect to receive more because God’s riches cannot be exhausted.
This is the larger theology that helps us interpret the image in Hippolytus. The righteous can enjoy what is before them while expecting something better because the giver remains greater than every gift already received.
Their future remains open because God remains inexhaustible.
Macrina: Blessing Enlarges the Recipient
In the late fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa recorded a dialogue with his sister Macrina as she approached death.
Gregory had been grieving the death of their brother Basil. When he arrived to see Macrina in Pontus, in what is now Turkey, he found her weak and near death. She responded to his grief by leading him through an extended discussion of the soul, death, purification, resurrection, and the goodness of God.
We should read the work carefully. We do not possess a transcript written as they spoke, nor do we possess a theological treatise written directly by Macrina. Gregory composed the dialogue and placed the teaching in the voice of the sister he honored as “the Teacher.”
Whether every argument preserves Macrina’s exact language or reflects Gregory’s literary development of their conversation, he deliberately presents this vision through the woman he regarded as his spiritual teacher.
In one remarkable passage, Macrina describes intelligent beings as vessels created to receive the blessings of God:
You do not yet understand the purpose toward which every part of God’s ordering of the universe is moving. Everything must be brought into harmony with the divine nature according to the wise design of the Creator.
Intelligent beings came into existence so that the riches of divine blessing would not remain without recipients.
The wisdom that created everything fashioned souls as living vessels possessing free will. They were made capable of receiving God’s blessings and of becoming continually larger as the stream of goodness flows into them.
This is what participation in divine blessing accomplishes. It makes the person receiving it larger and more capable.
The capacity to receive becomes an actual increase within the recipient. The person does not remain the same size after receiving from God.
The fountain of blessing flows without ceasing. The recipient’s nature finds nothing useless in what it receives. Everything entering the soul becomes part of its enlargement.
The soul therefore becomes more eager to receive the higher nourishment and more capable of containing it.
Both grow together: the capacity nourished by the abundance of blessings and the supply of goodness that continues to flow in proportion to those expanding powers.
No limit can be found that would bring this growth to an end.
Gregory of Nyssa, placing this teaching in the voice of Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection, c. AD 380
Gregory then has Macrina connect this enlargement of the soul with death and the restoration of the body:
With such a future before us, why are you angry that our nature advances toward its goal along the path appointed for it?
We cannot complete this journey unless the weight that presently burdens the soul is first removed. Nor can we enter the purity suited to our true nature unless we are cleansed from the attachment we formed during life toward what is earthly and corruptible.
But if your attachment to the body causes you sorrow, and if separation from this beloved companion fills you with pain, do not despair.
You will see this bodily covering, which death now dissolves, woven together again from the same elements. It will not return with its present grossness and heaviness. Its composition will be restored in a more refined and glorious condition.
The body you love will be returned to you with a brighter and more beautiful form.
Gregory of Nyssa, placing this teaching in the voice of Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection, c. AD 380
This is one of the clearest ancient expressions of the idea we are exploring.
God pours blessing into the person.
The person receives and enjoys it.
The blessing changes the person by enlarging the capacity to receive.
The enlarged person becomes capable of receiving more.
The next blessing does not erase the former blessing. It builds upon it. What was previously received becomes part of the person’s expanding capacity for God.
The soul does not move forward because the previous blessing failed. It moves forward because the previous blessing succeeded.
It awakened a greater capacity to recognize, desire, and receive goodness.
Resurrection: Humanity Restored and Enlarged
The righteous in the intermediate state have not yet received the completion of embodied human life.
Death has separated what God created to exist together. Resurrection heals that separation.
Macrina defines resurrection this way:
Resurrection is the reconstitution of our nature in its original form.
In the form of life created by God, there was no aging or infancy, none of the sufferings arising from our present weakness, and no bodily affliction. It is reasonable to believe that God was not the creator of these conditions. They entered human life with corruption.
When our nature is restored to its original form, it will be delivered from everything that became attached to it through corruption.
Gregory of Nyssa, placing this teaching in the voice of Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection, c. AD 380
Paul describes the transformation:
What is sown is perishable, but it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, but it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, but it is raised in power. It is sown as a natural body, but it is raised as a spiritual body.
1 Corinthians 15:42–44
The sequence moves from corruption to incorruption, weakness to power, and dishonor to glory.
A spiritual body does not mean an unreal body. It means a body transformed and brought fully under the life-giving power of the Spirit.
The resurrected body no longer moves toward death. It no longer burdens the human person through disease, deterioration, exhaustion, or disordered appetite. Soul and body are reunited, but their relationship has been healed.
At resurrection, we do not become less human.
We become human in a form closer to what God intended humanity to be.
Judgment belongs to this transition as well. The Christian hope does not make our conduct irrelevant. The New Testament repeatedly says that every person, including the Christian, will answer for how he or she has lived.
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each person may receive what is due for what was done through the body, whether good or evil.
2 Corinthians 5:10
Everything hidden will be brought into the light. Evil will be exposed. Faithfulness will be revealed. Wrongs will not disappear into history without an answer.
For the righteous, judgment also includes vindication. The God who saw every hidden act of love, every resisted temptation, every sacrifice, and every suffering endured in faithfulness will reveal the truth.
Resurrection and judgment therefore mark a tremendous transition in human existence.
In Hades, the righteous enjoy rest, fellowship, and anticipation while separated from their bodies.
At resurrection, the whole human person is restored. The body is returned, healed, transformed, and made capable of participating in life without corruption.
Human joy is not reduced.
Its capacity is greatly enlarged.
Resurrection Does Not Exhaust the Future
Resurrection is a decisive restoration, but it does not exhaust the goodness of God.
The resurrected person possesses a greater capacity for life, knowledge, communion, and joy. Yet even glorified humanity remains created, while God remains infinite.
No created mind can reach the end of God’s wisdom.
No created person can exhaust his beauty.
No experience can contain the entirety of his goodness.
This is where Irenaeus’s vision of God always teaching and humanity always learning becomes important. Resurrection is not the moment when God has nothing further to disclose. It brings the human person into a condition better suited to receive.
The resurrection of the body can therefore be understood as another great enlargement.
The person becomes more fully alive and therefore more capable of participating in the life of God.
Gregory of Nyssa: The Desire to See More
Gregory of Nyssa developed this vision further in The Life of Moses.
Moses repeatedly encounters God, but every encounter draws him further. He receives what God reveals, yet what he sees awakens a still greater desire. His progress does not end because the God toward whom he moves has no boundary.
Gregory writes:
The divine nature is unlimited, so it cannot be completely grasped. Nothing can measure it, and no boundary can be found around it.
Therefore, the desire of the person who seeks God does not stop after one discovery. Every good that the soul receives produces a desire for a still greater good.
The soul continually moves forward. Every step already completed becomes the beginning of another ascent.
The person rising toward God never stops beginning again. The desire for the good continually expands with every new participation in it.
This is the true vision of God: never becoming satisfied in the desire to see him. By looking at what can presently be seen, the soul continually rekindles its desire to see more.
No boundary can stop its growth toward God because no limit can be found in the Beautiful. Increasing desire for the Beautiful is never brought to an end by satisfaction.
Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses 2.231–239, c. AD 390
This is not specifically a description of Hades. Gregory is describing the soul’s movement toward God and using Moses as the pattern.
But his explanation helps us understand how complete enjoyment and continuing growth can belong together.
The soul does not abandon one blessing because it proved inadequate. The blessing reveals a goodness still greater than the soul could previously comprehend.
Every arrival becomes another beginning.
Gregory the Great: Satisfied While Still Desiring
A later Christian writer expressed the relationship between satisfaction and desire with particular clarity.
Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome at the end of the sixth century, considered how the angels could already behold God while still desiring to behold him.
Scripture says that the angels continually see the face of God. It also says that they desire to look into the mysteries of salvation. Gregory asks how both statements can be true.
He answers:
The angels both see God and desire to see him. They thirst to behold him, and they behold him.
If they desired to see God but never received what they desired, their desire would contain anxiety without fulfillment. Such anxiety would be a form of suffering, and suffering cannot belong to perfect blessedness.
But if we say that the angels are satisfied by the vision of God, we must also consider whether satisfaction might produce weariness or disgust.
Therefore, so that desire contains no anxiety, they are satisfied while they desire. And so that satisfaction produces no weariness, they continue desiring while they are satisfied.
They desire without suffering because fulfillment accompanies their desire. They are satisfied without boredom because their satisfaction continually kindles further desire.
This is how we too shall be when we reach the fountain of life.
We shall experience thirst and satisfaction together. There will be no painful need in our thirst and no weariness in our satisfaction.
Even while thirsting, we shall be satisfied. Even while satisfied, we shall continue to thirst.
We shall see God, and this vision will be the reward of our labor. After the darkness of this mortal condition, we will rejoice as we draw near to his light.
Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job 18.91, c. AD 590
Gregory is describing heavenly blessedness broadly rather than the intermediate state.
His contribution is to explain how enjoyment and continuing desire can coexist without contradiction.
In our present experience, desire can hurt because something good is absent. Satisfaction can also decay into boredom because we become accustomed to what we possess.
Gregory imagines desire freed from absence and satisfaction freed from boredom.
The blessed possess what they love, but possessing it does not exhaust its beauty. Enjoyment continually awakens deeper enjoyment.
A Christian Vision of the Human Journey
These sources do not give us one uniform map written by a single author.
Hippolytus describes the righteous in Hades.
Origen imagines paradise as a school for souls.
Irenaeus says that God will always teach and humanity will always learn.
Gregory of Nyssa presents human beings as vessels enlarged through receiving divine blessing.
Gregory the Great explains how satisfaction and desire can remain alive together.
By bringing these passages into conversation, we can construct a coherent Christian vision of the human journey.
We begin in a world where blessing is experienced amid conflict. We contend with spiritual enemies, social pressures, bodily weakness, disordered desires, suffering, and death. Through Christ, we learn to trust the goodness of God even when that goodness cannot be read clearly from every event in nature.
At death, the body returns to the earth and rests. The conscious soul enters the invisible place appointed by God. In the early Christian picture we have examined, the righteous are released from many of the bodily necessities and hostile conditions of the present world. They enter fellowship with the righteous, enjoy the blessings before them, and delight in what remains ahead.
At resurrection, the human person is restored as an embodied being. The body is not merely returned in its former weakness. It is transformed. Corruption gives way to incorruption, weakness to power, and mortality to immortality.
Judgment brings every human life into the light. Evil is exposed, faithfulness is revealed, and the righteous enter more fully into the life God has promised.
Yet even resurrection does not exhaust the riches of God.
The whole person has been restored and enlarged, making a deeper experience of life possible. The blessed continue receiving from the God whose instruction, goodness, and beauty have no limit.
The pattern continues:
God gives.
We receive.
Receiving enlarges us.
Our enlargement makes us capable of receiving more.
The blessing before us strengthens our confidence in the blessing still ahead.
Can This Life Begin Now?
Something of this pattern can begin before we die.
Gregory the Great explained why spiritual blessings differ from bodily pleasures:
Bodily pleasures often awaken strong desire before we possess them. But after they are obtained and consumed, satisfaction can quickly turn into weariness.
Spiritual pleasures work differently. When they are unknown, we may feel little desire for them. But once they are experienced, they awaken greater desire.
With bodily pleasures, appetite produces satisfaction, and satisfaction can produce disgust. With spiritual pleasures, appetite produces satisfaction, and satisfaction produces appetite.
Spiritual delights increase desire within the soul even while satisfying it. The more their sweetness is experienced, the more clearly the soul recognizes something worthy of greater love.
Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels 36.1, c. AD 591
We already know experiences that resemble this.
Learning to appreciate music enables us to hear more within it. Knowing another person more deeply can enlarge our capacity to love. Receiving forgiveness can make us more capable of extending mercy. Practicing charity can awaken us to needs we previously failed to notice.
A spiritual blessing does more than give us a pleasant moment. It can change the kind of person who receives it.
This is how we can begin practicing the life we hope to experience more fully after death.
We receive a moment of understanding and allow it to encourage further study.
We receive forgiveness and allow it to awaken a deeper desire for holiness.
We experience Christian fellowship and allow it to enlarge our love for people beyond our familiar circle.
We perform an act of charity and become more attentive to the suffering around us.
We encounter Christ by faith and desire to know him more.
Gratitude and expectation begin growing together.
This does not mean expecting every earthly circumstance to improve. Christian hope has room for grief, unanswered questions, physical decline, and days when joy is difficult to feel. Illness may worsen. Relationships may remain broken. Faithfulness may cost us something we wanted to keep.
Our confidence concerns the future revealed through Jesus.
His resurrection gives us reason to believe that suffering and death cannot determine the final condition of those who belong to him.
Because our future does not end here, we can receive a present blessing without demanding that it provide everything. We can mourn what passes away without concluding that all goodness has ended. We can remain attentive to our present responsibilities while trusting that the story continues beyond what we see.
This hope should also make us more generous.
If God’s future is abundant, we do not have to clutch every present possession as though it were our final opportunity for happiness. We can share our time, resources, knowledge, and attention.
The communion we anticipate among the righteous is something we can begin practicing now through patience, reconciliation, hospitality, and charity.
We prepare for the life of love by learning to love.
The Faces of the Righteous Are Smiling
Return once more to the original image.
The righteous are together.
They are no longer ruled by necessity.
They enjoy blessings already before them.
Their faces are smiling.
And the prospect of further blessing adds to their happiness.
It is a picture worth carrying when we think about death. It invites us to imagine a future in which gratitude and expectation no longer struggle against each other. What is present can be enjoyed fully, and what is coming can be welcomed without fear.
Resurrection belongs to that future as the restoration and transformation of the whole person. Judgment reveals the truth and sets creation right. Beyond that transition stands the inexhaustible God.
Irenaeus tells us that God will always teach and humanity will always learn.
Gregory’s account of Macrina gives us the image of recipients enlarged by everything they receive.
Gregory of Nyssa shows us every arrival becoming another beginning.
Gregory the Great describes satisfaction that keeps desire alive.
Together, these passages allow us to express a profound Christian hope:
We can be completely satisfied without reaching the end of God’s generosity.
That conviction can shape the way we receive this day.
We can notice what is good, give thanks for it, and allow it to enlarge our capacity for love. We can share what we receive rather than anxiously trying to secure every possible happiness for ourselves. We can face death without pretending to understand every detail of what lies beyond it.
And we can entrust what remains hidden to the God made known in Jesus Christ.
The blessing before us is worth enjoying.
The blessing ahead is worth anticipating.
God is not finished.
