Reasons not to be Eastern Orthodox #237: "Aerial Toll Houses"

The Scriptures say a lot of things. The question is what those things mean. There's no prohibition of taking certain things metaphorically that can't be understood literally. That being said, I don't think the purpose of the Bible was to reveal "spiritual reality". Rather, it was to reveal our dependence on God, and his love and will for us (note the trinitarian structure).

 

I've always thought of the toll houses not as a literal trial, which would be heresy - God hands down that verdict with no appeal at the instant you die - but a folkloric description of the particular judgement when you're told everything you did wrong.

Purgatory expressed in a different way, and no, I'm not trying to be a latinizer. Thank you for the point I emphasized in the quotation above - thus understood, this is not heresy.

P.S. Toll House cookies (biscuits) were named for a Toll House inn or restaurant in America that invented them. I've always heard them called simply chocolate-chip cookies.

 

Have you read that story correctly I wonder. I think Father John Whiteford needs to read it again and discover that it was actually Lazarus that went to the 'Bosom of Abraham', not to any kind of purgatory. It was 'Dives', The Rich Man, who was the thirsty one, still treating Lazarus as if he was a mere lacky, born to wait on him hand and foot and serve his every need, in hell. Also there is no mention whatever of repentance concerning Lazarus. His only qualification for being ''in the bosom of Abraham" was that he was poor and bad things happened to him on earth.

Luke 16:19-31.
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its not a dogma

 

More of a nonsensical, theological dog's breakfast really.
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Strictly speaking in Eastern Orthodoxy, aren't only the seven councils? Though there's more, undefined, that is: for example, I can't see someone denying the nature of the Eucharist remaining Orthodox.

 

I agree if one thinks your soul is up for grabs by demons in a literal trial right after you die, vs. God handing down an immediate verdict when you die and the angels and demons doing theater to explain in detail what you did wrong, so you have crystal-clear understanding of that verdict, for either your eternal joy or eternal grief.

In that case, prayer for the dead can only help them if they are in the upper, temporary part of the afterlife, hades, in the waiting room for heaven, if you will. Then again, I acknowledge that much of this board doesn't believe in prayer for the dead.

 

I think perhaps the dead don't need our prayers. We are more likely the subject of theirs, since they that were in the church on earth, are in a much better position, (in heaven) to petition on our behalf. Not that that should be necessary since we have an advocate, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins.
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The classic Protestant position; I respect that. But as long as it's clear you can't pray someone out of hell, pray someone unrepentant into heaven, or earn your way into heaven, I accept prayer for the dead as part of the same package, from the same source, as scripture and the sacraments. Also per 2 Maccabees 12:39-48, which Protestants consider part of the Apocrypha.

 

Indeed we do. However, though we do not consult such sources in the formulaion of doctrine, we read them for examples of life and instruction in manners. Such respect for the departed and concern for their welfare is the height of good mannerly behaviour on behalf of the fallen, as the passage itself relates.
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@Tiffy, so you're saying that prayer for the dead is acceptable after all?

 

"Acceptable" in Anglicanism, yes.
That does not necessarily imply "effectual."