Having discussed Isaac’s major mystical themes, we must now dedicate the remaining time of our lecture to his eschatological insights. These constitute the integral part of his mysticism and are entirely based on the notion of God as love, which shapes the whole of Isaac’s theology and mysticism into a coherent system.

The teaching on the destiny of man after death became an object of Isaac’s special attention in the three concluding chapters of Part II: XXXIX, XL and XLI.

            The course of discussion in Chapter XXXIX begins with the question of the purpose for the establishment of Gehenna. Isaac emphasizes that God does nothing out of retribution: even to think this way about God would be blasphemous.[1] This opinion is all the more unacceptable as God had foreknowledge about man’s future sins and falls even before the creation of man, but still created him.[2]

            Even worse is the opinion that God allows people to lead a sinful life on earth in order to punish them eternally after death. This is a blasphemous and perverted understanding of God, a calumny of God: 

If someone says that He has put up with them here on earth in order that His patience may be known - with the idea that He would punish them mercilessly, such a person thinks in an unspeakably blasphemous way about God, due to his infantile way of thinking: he is removing from God His kindness, goodness and compassion, all the things because of which He truly bears with sinners and wicked men. Such a person is attributing to God enslavement to passion, supposing that He has not consented to their being chastised here, seeing that He has prepared them for a much greater misfortune, in exchange for a short-lived patience. Not only does such a person fail to attribute something praiseworthy to God, but he also calumniates Him.[3] 

            It is in the context of the notion of God’s kindness, goodness, compassion and mercy that Isaac’s ideas concerning the final outcome of human history is to be understood. This outcome, Isaac claims, must correspond to the majesty of God, and that the final destiny of the humans should be worthy of God’s mercifulness. 

I am of the opinion that He is going to manifest some wonderful outcome, Isaac claims, a matter of immense and ineffable compassion on the part of the glorious Creator, with respect to the ordering of this difficult matter of Gehenna’s torment: out of it the wealth of His love and power and wisdom will become known all the more - and so will the insistent might of the waves of His goodness. It is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out when He created them - and whom nonetheless He created.[4] 

            Isaac gradually leads his reader to the idea of non-eternity of the Gehenna’s torments. To confirm this idea, Isaac refers to Theodore of Mopsuestia’s teaching on the torment that is not unending,[5] and to Diodore of Tarsus’ ideas that torment will last only a short time, whereas the blessing is for all eternity, and that ‘not even the immense wickedness of the demons can overcome the measure of God’s goodness’.[6] It is noteworthy that Isaac does not think that the idea of the end of torment leads to laxity and the loss of the fear of God. Quite the contrary, this idea, according to him, causes love of God in a person, and repentance that comes out of the measureless mercy of the Creator. The notion of God as a careful father gives birth in a person to a filial love for, and adherence to Him, whereas the notion of God as a chastiser can only cause a slavish fear and dread before Him.

            All afflictions and sufferings which fall to everyone’s lot are sent from God with the aim of bringing a person to an inner change. Isaac comes to an important conclusion: God never retaliates for the past, but always cares for our future. 

...All kinds and manner of chastisements and punishments that come from Him, Isaac suggests, are not brought about in order to requite past actions, but for the sake of the subsequent gain to be gotten in them... God is not one who requites evil, but He sets aright evil... If this were not the case, what resemblance does Christ’s coming have with the deeds of the generations which were prior to it? Does this immense compassion seem to you to be a retribution for those evil deeds? Tell me, if God is someone who requites evil, and He does what He does by means of requital, what commensurate requital do you see here, O man?[7] 

            The idea of love contradicts the idea of requital, Isaac insists. Besides, if we are to suppose that God will punish sinners eternally, this would mean that the creation of the world was a mistake, as God proved to be unable to oppose evil, which is not within His will. If we ascribe requital to God’s actions, we apply weakness to God.[8] In fact, all of God’s actions are mysteries that are inaccessible to human reasoning. Gehenna is also a mystery, created in order to bring to a state of perfection those who had not reached it during their lifetime: 

...In the matter of the afflictions and sentence of Gehenna, there is some hidden mystery, whereby the wise Maker has taken as a starting point for its future outcome the wickedness of our actions and willfulness, using it as a way of bringing to perfection His dispensation wherein lies the teaching which makes wise, and the advantage beyond description, hidden from both angels and human beings, hidden too from those who are being chastised, whether they be demons or human beings, hidden for as long as the ordained period of time holds away.[9] 

Thus, Gehenna is a sort of purgatory rather than hell: it is conceived and established for the salvation of both human beings and angels. However, this true aim of Gehenna is hidden from those who are chastised in it, and will be revealed only after Gehenna is abolished.

Isaac insists that the love of God for His creatures does not change because of the changes that happen with them.[10] From very eternity, God is one and the same in what belongs to Him by nature: ‘there exists with Him a single love and compassion which is spread out over all creation, a love which is without alteration, timeless and everlasting’.[11]

            According to Isaac, the state of turning away from God is unnatural, and God will not permit those who withdrew from Him to remain in this state for ever: He will bring to salvation all those who have fallen away. But this salvation will not be accepted by force: they will turn to God by their own free will when they reach the state of maturity. The purpose for which God brought creatures into the world remains the same regardless of the way which they have chosen for themselves, for sooner or later they will be brought to this aim. Hence the necessity for Isaac of the final salvation of those who have fallen, including all sinners and demons: 

...It is clear... that demons will not remain in their demonic state, and sinners will not remain in their sins; rather, He is going to bring them to a single equal state of perfection in relationship to His own Being - in a state in which the holy angels are now, in perfection of love and passionless mind. He is going to bring them into that excellency of will, where it will not be as though they were curbed and not free, or having stirrings from the Opponent then; rather, they will be in a state of excelling knowledge, with a mind made mature in the stirrings which partake of the divine outpouring which the blessed Creator is preparing in His grace; they will be perfected in love for Him, with a perfect mind which is above any aberration in all its stirrings.[12] 

            All those who have fallen away from God will eventually return to Him because of the temporary and short torment in Gehenna that is prepared for them in order that they purify themselves through the fire of suffering and repentance. Having passed through this purification  by fire, they will attain to the angelic state. 

Maybe they will be raised to a perfection even greater than that in which the angels now exist; for all are going to exist in a single love, a single purpose, a single will, and a single perfect state of knowledge; they will gaze towards God with the desire of insatiable love, even if some divine dispensation (i.e. Gehenna) may in the meantime be effected for reasons known to God alone, lasting for a fixed period, decreed by Him in accordance with the will of His wisdom.[13] 

            God cannot forget any of His creatures, and for everyone their proper place is prepared in the Kingdom of heaven. But for those who are unable to enter immediately into the Kingdom, the transitory period of Gehenna is established: 

No part belonging to any single one of all rational beings will be lost, as far as God is concerned, in the preparation of that supernal Kingdom which is prepared for all worlds. Because of that goodness of His nature by which He brought the universe into being and then bears, guides and provides for the worlds and all created things in His immeasurable compassion, He has devised the establishment of the Kingdom of heaven for the entire community of rational beings - even though an intervening time is reserved for the general raising of all to the same level. And we say this in order that we too may concur with the magisterial teaching of Scripture. Nevertheless Gehenna is grievous, even if it is thus limited in its extent: who can possibly bear it? For this reason the angels in heaven rejoice at a single sinner who repents.[14] 

            If a genuine righteousness were required of humans, then only one in ten thousand would be able to enter the Kingdom of heaven, continues Isaac. This is why God gave people repentance as a remedy, for it can heal a person from sin in a short time. Not wishing that human beings perish, God forgives everyone who repents from his whole heart. God is good by nature, and He ‘wishes to save everyone by all sorts of means’.[15]

            Isaac was quite resentful of the widespread opinion that the majority of people will be punished in hell, and only a small group of the chosen will delight in Paradise. He is convinced that, quite the contrary, the majority of people will find themselves in the Kingdom of heaven, and only a few sinners will go to Gehenna, and even they only for the period of time which is necessary for their repentance and remission of sins: 

By the device of grace the majority of humankind will enter the Kingdom of heaven without the experience of Gehenna. But this is apart from those who, because of their hardness of heart and utter abandonment to wickedness and the lusts, fail to show remorse in suffering for their faults and their sins, and because these people have not been disciplined at all. For God’s holy Nature is so good and compassionate that it is always seeking to find some small means of putting us in the right, how He can forgive human beings their sins - like the case of the tax collector who was put in the right by the intensity of his prayer,[16] or like the case of a woman with two small coins,[17] or the man who received forgiveness on the Cross.[18] For God wishes for our salvation, and not for reasons to torment us.[19] 

            Earthly life is given to everyone as a time of repentance. It is enough for a man to turn to God with a request of forgiveness, and his sins will immediately be forgiven.[20] The token of this forgiveness is the Incarnation of the Word of God, Who, when all of creation had abandoned and forgotten God, came down to earth in order to redeem humankind and the whole universe by His death on the Cross.

The teaching on universal salvation, which is so explicitly preached by Isaac the Syrian, evokes an unwilling question: what is the sense of the whole drama of human history, if both good and evil are ultimately to be found on an equal footing in the face of God’s mercifulness? What is the sense of sufferings, ascetic labour and prayer, if sinners will be sooner or later equated with the righteous? Besides, how far do Isaac’s opinions correspond to the Christian tradition and to the teaching of the Gospel, in particular, to the Parable of the Last Judgment, where the question concerns the separation of the ‘sheep’ and the ‘goats’?

First, in speaking about the absence of any middle realm between Gehenna and the Kingdom of heaven, Isaac does not deny the reality of the separation of the sheep from the goats, and he even explicitly refers to it. But his attention is directed far beyond this separation, for he does not regard it as final and irreversible. The Last Judgment is a reality which Isaac recommends one to ponder over every day. However, his main point is that the present life is a time when the separation actually takes place, and the Last Judgment will only reveal that spiritual state which was reached by a person during his life. Thus, the Parable should not be understood as a dogmatic statement concerning the final destiny of the righteous and sinners, but as a prophetic warning against not having and manifesting love for one’s fellow humans during one’s earthly life.

Secondly, Isaac warns that the torment of Gehenna is terrible and unbearable, even though it is limited in time. Gehenna is a reality that is in no way denied by Isaac. But he understands it in the context of the Gospel’s message about God’s unspeakable love and boundless mercy. For Isaac, God is primarily a householder making those who worked only one hour equal to those who have borne the burden of the whole day.[21] A place in the Kingdom of heaven is given to a person not on the basis of his worthiness or unworthiness, but rather on the basis of God’s mercy and love towards humankind. The Kingdom of heaven is not a reward, and Gehenna is not a requital: both are gifts of the merciful God ‘Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’.[22]

Thirdly, the eschatological ideas of Isaac correspond to the teachings of the ancient Fathers, such as Theodore of Mopsuestia, Diodore of Tarsus and Gregory of Nyssa.[23] But it would not be just to say that he simply borrowed the ideas of his predecessors and inserted them into his own writings. Isaac’s eschatological optimism and his belief in universal salvation are ultimate outcomes of his personal theological vision, whose central idea is that of God as love. Around this idea the whole of his theological system is shaped.

            Finally, the theological system of Isaac the Syrian is based on the direct experience of the mystical union of an ascetic with the love of God. This experience excludes any possibility of envy of other human beings, even to those who have reached a higher spiritual state and thus have a chance of receiving a higher place in the Kingdom of heaven. Moreover, the experience of unity with God as love is so full of delight in itself that it is not for the sake of any future reward that a person prays, suffers and toils in ascetical labours: in this very suffering, in this very prayer and ascetical labour, the experience of encounter with God is concealed. The reason for prayer, bearing afflictions and keeping the commandments is, therefore, not one’s striving to leave other human beings behind and to obtain a place in the age to come that is higher than theirs. The sole reason for all ascetical toils is the experience of the grace of God which a person acquires through them. An encounter with God, a direct mystical experience of the divine love which one receives during one’s lifetime is, for Isaac, the only justification for all struggles and efforts.