Is the fire by which the wicked will be punished a consuming fire?
Between the Magazine and the Readers
Question:
Is the fire by which the wicked will be punished a consuming fire, or is it the painful torment of conscience because they did not attain bliss and did not enjoy Christ as the righteous do?
Answer:
Since human actions involve both body and soul, the whole human being—body and soul—is rewarded or punished for them. He who goes to bliss enjoys it in both his body and his soul. And he who goes to the lake burning with fire and brimstone is tormented in both his body and his soul.
The torment of conscience is a torment of the soul only, and not of the body along with it. This would mean that the body is not punished, although in most cases it was the principal agent in sin.
Is the adulterer, for example, who defiled his body with the pleasure of sin, not to have his body punished? And is the reckless person who neglected fasting and indulged excessively in food, drink, wine, and stimulants also not to have his body punished? And he who struck and who killed, who insulted, and who walked in the various lusts of the flesh—does his body also remain far from torment?!
What then is the punishment of the body? Is it the torment of fire? And the weeping and gnashing of teeth?
Scripture has mentioned the punishment of fire—the unquenchable fire, the eternal fire, the lake burning with fire and brimstone. What then is this fire?
The first truth you should know is that the body will be tormented by fire. The second truth is that this fire does not annihilate the body; rather, it remains despite being burned by it. It will be tormented by it, but not destroyed.
Therefore, the sinful body must be tormented, and the punishment cannot be limited to the soul alone, whether as the torment of conscience, or the pain of separation from Christ, or the pain of deprivation from the Kingdom, and separation from the assembly of the holy angels, or the pains of the soul in its self-contempt and its imagining of its falls, and remembering the ugliness of the sin it committed.
No; all these are torments of the soul only, and the body must share with it in the punishment. For we are not souls only, and our bodies will rise on the Day of Judgment to receive their recompense.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – Al-Keraza Magazine – Fifth Year – Issue Eleven – 14-12-1974.
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