Eschatology

Orthodox eschatology teaches that history will culminate in the bodily Second Coming of Christ, the general resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment. Heaven and hell are understood not as spatial locations but as two different experiences of the same reality — God’s eternal presence and love. The teaching on aerial toll-houses (telonia) is a contested topic within the tradition, with vigorous defenders and critics. Orthodox eschatology is fundamentally hopeful, oriented toward the transfiguration of all creation.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (with ROCOR-specific notes on the toll-houses debate)

The Second Coming of Christ (Parousia)

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed confesses: “He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose Kingdom shall have no end.”

Key Features of Orthodox Teaching

Bodily and visible: Christ will return in his glorified human body, visibly and unmistakably: “This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The parousia is not a spiritual metaphor but a concrete, historical-eschatological event.
Unexpected: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). Orthodox theology discourages date-setting and apocalyptic speculation.
Preceded by signs: The Fathers speak of signs preceding the Second Coming, including the preaching of the Gospel to all nations (Matthew 24:14), widespread apostasy, the appearance of the Antichrist, and cosmic disturbances. However, there is significant patristic diversity on the interpretation of these signs, and the Orthodox Church has not dogmatically defined a detailed eschatological timeline.
The Antichrist: Orthodox tradition teaches that a personal Antichrist will appear before the Second Coming — not merely a spirit or tendency but a specific individual who will oppose Christ and deceive many (2 Thessalonians 2:3–12; 1 John 2:18). St. John of Damascus summarizes: “It should be known that the Antichrist will come… He is a man who will receive the whole working of Satan, and God will permit this” (John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.26, “Concerning the Antichrist”; trans. NPNF II/9).

Pomazansky summarizes the dogmatic teaching: Christ will come again to earth visibly, in glory, to judge the living and the dead and to establish His eternal Kingdom (Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, ch. 10, “Christian Eschatology,” sections “The signs of the Second Coming of the Lord” and “The second coming of the Son of Man”; trans. Rose).

The Resurrection of the Body

The Dogmatic Teaching

The bodily resurrection of the dead is a non-negotiable dogma of Orthodox Christianity:

“I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come” (Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed).
At the Second Coming, all the dead will be raised — both righteous and unrighteous (John 5:28–29; Acts 24:15).
The resurrection body will be the same body that died, but transformed and glorified — incorruptible, immortal, and spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:42–44). It will be a real body, not a phantom or purely spiritual entity: Christ himself rose bodily, ate and drank, and was touched by the disciples (Luke 24:39–43).
The resurrection is not the liberation of the soul from the body (Platonism) but the reunification of body and soul in an incorruptible state. Death (the separation of body and soul) is unnatural; the resurrection is the restoration of the natural psychosomatic unity of the human person.

Patristic Teaching

St. Athanasius: Christ’s resurrection is the guarantee and firstfruits of the universal resurrection. Because the Logos dwelt in a human body and raised it from death, all human bodies will share in that victory (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 21–26).
St. Gregory of Nyssa: The resurrection body will be the same body, reconstituted by God from its own elements, but freed from all the consequences of the Fall — disease, corruption, the passions (Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection [De anima et resurrectione]; trans. NPNF II/5).
St. Maximus the Confessor: The resurrection represents the final overcoming of the five cosmic divisions (male/female, paradise/inhabited world, heaven/earth, intelligible/sensible, God/creation), achieving the cosmic recapitulation that Adam failed to accomplish (Maximus, Ambiguum 41).
St. John of Damascus: “We believe in the resurrection of the dead. For there will be a resurrection of the dead, and by resurrection we mean a resurrection of bodies. For resurrection is a second standing of that which has fallen” (John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.27, “Concerning the Resurrection”; trans. NPNF II/9).

The Final Judgment

The Universal Judgment

At the Second Coming, Christ will judge all humanity — “the living and the dead” (2 Timothy 4:1):

The judgment will be according to each person’s deeds, words, and even thoughts (Matthew 12:36; Romans 2:6; 2 Corinthians 5:10).
The criterion of judgment is love and mercy, as taught in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31–46): “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”
The judgment is not arbitrary but revelatory: it reveals the true state of each person’s soul — their orientation toward or away from God.
Christ is the judge “because he is the Son of Man” (John 5:27) — he judges as one who has shared human nature and knows it from within.

Particular Judgment vs. Final Judgment

Orthodox theology distinguishes between:

Particular judgment (chastnyi sud): At the moment of death, each person undergoes a preliminary judgment that determines their interim state until the general resurrection. The righteous experience a foretaste of blessedness; the unrighteous experience a foretaste of torment. This is not the final state but an anticipation of it.
Final (universal/general) judgment (vseobshchii sud / poslednii sud): At the Second Coming, after the resurrection of all, Christ will render the definitive and irrevocable judgment. This is when the final state of each person (and of creation as a whole) will be determined.

The relationship between the two judgments:

The particular judgment establishes a provisional condition; the final judgment establishes the definitive condition.
The prayers of the Church for the departed (memorial services, pannikhidy, the liturgical commemoration of names at the Proskomedia) are predicated on the belief that the interim state can be affected by the prayers and love of the living. This is why the Orthodox Church prays for the dead.
After the final judgment, however, there is no further change: the state of blessedness or suffering becomes permanent.

Pomazansky teaches that after the particular judgment the souls of the departed are in a state of blessedness or torment according to their deeds, but “do not feel either complete blessedness or complete torment”: the full recompense follows only the general resurrection and the Last Judgment (Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, ch. 10, “Christian Eschatology,” section “The fate of man after death”; trans. Rose).

Heaven and Hell in Orthodox Understanding

Not Places but Experiences

One of the most distinctive features of Orthodox eschatology is the teaching that heaven and hell are not spatial locations but two different experiences of the same divine reality:

God’s love and presence fill all of creation. After the final judgment, all will stand before God — both the righteous and the unrighteous.
For the righteous, who have cultivated love for God and neighbour in this life, the experience of God’s infinite love will be paradise — unending joy, communion, and theosis.
For the unrighteous, who have rejected love and turned away from God, the experience of the same divine love will be torment — not because God punishes them externally, but because they experience love as fire, as an unbearable reality that exposes and burns their self-centredness.

This teaching is rooted in the Fathers:

St. Isaac the Syrian (7th century): “Those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. For what is so bitter and vehement as the punishment of love?… It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love… acts in two ways: it torments sinners, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties” (Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies, Homily 28; trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery — the homily is numbered differently in other editions).
St. Mark of Ephesus (1392–1444): At the Council of Ferrara-Florence, Mark delivered two homilies (Ferrara, 1438) against the Latin doctrine of purgatory, denying any temporal purgatorial fire or third intermediate place: a purifying fire “we do not find either in the Scriptures or in the prayers and hymns for the dead.” He affirmed that the departed are aided by the Church’s prayers and Liturgies, and referred the “fire” of 1 Corinthians 3:13–15 to the proving fire of the Last Judgment, not to a present purgation (Mark of Ephesus, First Homily: Refutation of the Latin Chapters concerning Purgatorial Fire).
Kallistos Ware (1934–2022): Metropolitan Kallistos (Timothy Ware) articulated this teaching accessibly for modern readers: “Hell is not so much a place where God imprisons humans, as a place where humans, by misusing their free will, choose to imprison themselves” (Ware, The Orthodox Church, rev. ed. [London: Penguin, 1993], p. 262; earlier editions read “man… chooses to imprison himself”). In the same passage Ware adds, citing St. Isaac, that even in hell the wicked are not deprived of the love of God, but experience that love as suffering.

Hell as Self-Exclusion

Hell is not God’s revenge or retribution but the self-exclusion of the person who has refused communion with God and neighbour.
God does not desire anyone’s damnation: “God wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).
The “fire” of hell is not a created punishment imposed from without but the uncreated fire of God’s love experienced as torment by those who have made themselves incapable of receiving it.
This understanding preserves both God’s universal love (he does not become a torturer) and human freedom (people genuinely choose their orientation).

The Question of Eternal Duration

The question of whether hell is eternal in the sense of never-ending is a matter of some tension in Orthodox theology:

The dominant tradition affirms the eternity of hell, based on Christ’s words about “eternal punishment” (kolasis aionios, Matthew 25:46) and the consistent teaching of the Ecumenical Councils.
Apokatastasis (universal restoration/salvation), associated with Origen and, in a modified form, with St. Gregory of Nyssa, was condemned in connection with Origenism at the Council of Constantinople II (553). [Disputed: the fifteen anti-Origenist anathemas do not appear in the council’s official acts; Richard Price argues they were approved by the assembled bishops before the council’s formal opening, at Justinian’s instance (Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009, 2 vols.); other scholars trace the condemnation to Justinian’s edict and the local synod of Constantinople in 543, leaving the conciliar status of the anathemas uncertain.]
Some modern Orthodox thinkers (e.g., Met. Kallistos Ware, David Bentley Hart) have argued that universal salvation is at least a legitimate hope, if not a certainty, within Orthodox theology. Others (e.g., various ROCOR theologians) strongly reject this position as incompatible with the patristic and conciliar consensus.
The prevailing Orthodox pastoral approach is to take the possibility of eternal damnation seriously (as a real consequence of rejecting God) while entrusting the final outcome to God’s inscrutable mercy and refusing to pronounce definitively on who, if anyone, is in hell.

The Toll-Houses (Telonia): A Contested Teaching

The Teaching

The doctrine of the aerial toll-houses (vozdushnye mytarstva / telonia) is a traditional Orthodox teaching about what happens to the soul immediately after death:

After death, the soul ascends through the air toward heaven.
Along the way, it encounters a series of toll-houses (mytarstva) — usually numbered at twenty — each presided over by demons who represent specific categories of sin (e.g., slander, envy, lust, murder, sorcery, etc.).
At each toll-house, the demons “accuse” the soul of sins in that category, presenting evidence. The soul’s guardian angel presents its good deeds and repentance as a defence.
If the soul’s good deeds and repentance (and the prayers of the Church) outweigh its sins at a given toll-house, it passes. If not, the demons seize it and drag it to hell (provisionally, pending the final judgment).
The teaching is often linked to the account of the death of St. Theodora (10th century), narrated in the Life of St. Basil the New (also called the Younger), a long Byzantine vita written by Basil’s disciple Gregory in tenth-century Constantinople, which describes her soul’s passage through the toll-houses in vivid detail (critical edition and translation: Sullivan, Talbot, and McGrath, The Life of Saint Basil the Younger, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 45, 2014).

Sources

The toll-houses teaching appears in various patristic and liturgical sources, though its status and interpretation are debated:

St. Cyril of Alexandria (attrib.): “At the departure of the soul, there stand on one side the hosts of heaven and on the other the powers of darkness… If the soul has been faithful and walked uprightly, the angels receive it… but if it has lived in sins, the dark powers seize it” (Cyril of Alexandria [attrib.], Homily on the Departure of the Soul [Homilia XIV, De exitu animi, PG 77:1074–1090]). [Disputed: the homily is transmitted among Cyril’s works in Migne without question, and Orthodox defenders of the toll-houses cite it as Cyrillian; modern scholars such as Stephen Shoemaker regard the attribution as doubtful and the homily as a later pseudonymous composition.]
St. John Chrysostom: Chrysostom attests the Church’s prayer for the departed: “Not in vain did the Apostles order that remembrance should be made of the dead in the dreadful Mysteries” (Chrysostom, Homilies on Philippians 3; trans. NPNF I/13). The frequently quoted passage about the soul needing “many prayers, many helpers” to pass “the powers and world-rulers of this air” comes from a homily on death and consolation transmitted under Chrysostom’s name and read liturgically in the East, but judged spurious by modern critics.
Liturgical prayers: Several prayers in the Orthodox funeral service and memorial services petition God to deliver the departed soul from the toll-houses and the accusations of demons. The prayer at the moment of death (Canon at the Departure of the Soul) explicitly asks for safe passage through the toll-houses.
St. Macarius of Alexandria (4th century, attrib.): A homily attributed to Macarius on the souls of the departed describes the soul’s ascent, its encounter with demons, and the commemorations of the third, ninth, and fortieth days (PG 34:385 ff.). The authenticity of the attribution is disputed: important Vienna manuscripts assign the text to a monk named Alexander.

The Debate: Two Orthodox Positions

The toll-houses have been the subject of significant controversy, particularly in the 20th century and especially within ROCOR and Russian Orthodox circles. The doctrinal status of the teaching should be stated plainly at the outset: the toll-houses have never been dogmatically defined by an Ecumenical Council. The teaching is a theologoumenon — a theological teaching with substantial support in hagiographic and liturgical tradition, but without conciliar definition — and Orthodox Christians in good standing are found on both sides of the debate.

Position 1: The Toll-Houses as a Real Experience of the Soul

Defenders of the teaching include:

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov (1807–1867): Devoted a long section of his “Homily on Death” to the toll-houses, assembling the patristic and hagiographic testimony and treating the teaching as the received doctrine of the Church (Ignatius Brianchaninov, “Homily on Death” [Slovo o smerti], Collected Works, vol. 3). St. Theophan the Recluse (1815–1894) likewise taught the toll-houses while insisting the imagery be understood spiritually; Rose devotes a section of his book to Theophan’s interpretation (Rose, The Soul After Death, ch. 6, section “The Teaching of Bishop Theophan the Recluse on the Aerial Toll-Houses”).
Fr. Seraphim Rose (1934–1982): The ROCOR hieromonk wrote The Soul After Death (1980), the most influential modern defence of the toll-houses teaching. Rose argued that:
- The toll-houses are a consistent and ancient teaching of the Orthodox Church, attested in patristic, hagiographic, and liturgical sources.
- They describe a real experience of the soul after death, not merely an allegory — though Rose himself denied that the toll-houses are physical places, treating the imagery of booths and ledgers as figurative.
- The toll-houses are not “earning salvation by works” but describe the soul’s encounter with demonic accusation, in which the prayers of the Church and the mercy of God play the decisive role.
- Rose characterized wholesale rejection of the teaching as a symptom of modernism and rationalism — a polemical judgment which his critics reject.
  (Seraphim Rose, The Soul After Death, ch. 6, “The Aerial Toll-Houses”)
The ROCOR Synod of Bishops (1980): At its session of 19 November / 2 December 1980, the Synod reviewed the polemics between Rose and Deacon Lev (later Archbishop Lazar) Puhalo. It censured Puhalo’s theory of the soul’s post-mortem “sleep” and noted the presence of the toll-houses in the lives of the saints and liturgical texts, but it did not formally define or endorse the toll-house doctrine, and it ordered both parties to end the dispute (decision published in Orthodox Life, no. 1, 1981).

Tradition note: The strong defence of the toll-houses teaching is particularly characteristic of ROCOR and of traditional Russian Orthodox circles shaped by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, the St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, and Fr. Seraphim Rose. It is less prominent in Greek Orthodox theology and should not be presented as a pan-Orthodox consensus.

Position 2: The Toll-Houses as Imagery Not to Be Taken Literally

Critics and skeptics of a literal reading include:

Fr. Thomas Hopko (1939–2015): Hopko, dean emeritus of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, called the toll-houses “a very classical traditional Orthodox allegorical teaching that began to be too literally interpreted.” He affirmed that the soul’s final struggle with sin and demonic claims is real, but denied that the toll-houses are literally “in the air,” sequential, timed, or necessarily twenty in number, and he cautioned against treating hagiographic and homiletic material as dogmatic definition. He equally rejected the opposite extreme of branding the teaching a heresy (Hopko, “Toll Houses: After Death Reality or Heresy?,” interview, The Illumined Heart, Ancient Faith Radio, recorded 22 February 2012; cf. his lecture “Life after Death: The Teaching about the ‘Toll Houses,’” Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration, 2006).
Archbishop Lazar (Puhalo): The most vocal opponent, Puhalo has argued since the late 1970s that the toll-houses as commonly presented are rooted in Gnostic and pagan cosmology and are incompatible with genuine patristic eschatology (Puhalo, The Soul, the Body and Death, Dewdney, BC: Synaxis Press, 1980). His own counter-positions were censured by the ROCOR Synod in 1980 (see above) and have been criticized in turn.
A mediating position — Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos): Vlachos accepts the patristic and liturgical testimony but interprets the toll-houses as, on the one hand, the soul’s own unsatisfied passions which “stifle” it after death, and, on the other, the demons who have gained mastery over the passionate person — a real spiritual event, but not a celestial customs geography, and emphatically not a purgatory (Hierotheos Vlachos, Life After Death, Levadia: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1995).
The argument from patristic diversity: Critics note that there is no single consistent patristic account of the toll-houses. The number of toll-houses varies in different sources; many major Fathers (e.g., Athanasius outside the Life of Anthony, Gregory the Theologian, Maximus) do not discuss them; and the most detailed accounts come from hagiographic sources and homilies of disputed authenticity rather than from dogmatic definitions.

The Current State of the Debate

The toll-houses have never been dogmatically defined by an Ecumenical Council. They are not part of the Creed or any conciliar definition; their status is that of a theologoumenon.
They are present in Orthodox liturgical texts and in the widespread tradition of the Church, especially its Russian expression.
The Orthodox Church has not officially resolved the debate; both positions are held by Orthodox Christians in good standing.
The core teaching on which defenders and most critics converge is that the soul after death encounters the consequences of its earthly life, that the demons seek to claim it on the basis of unrepented sin, and that God’s mercy, the intercessions of the saints, and the prayers of the Church are decisive. The disagreement concerns how literally to take the imagery of aerial stations, accusers, and accounts.

Pomazansky’s dogmatics handbook represents a moderate traditional position: he includes the toll-houses as part of the Church’s teaching on the particular judgment, while warning, with Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, that “all the sensual, earthly images by which the Particular Judgment is presented in the form of the toll-houses, although in their fundamental idea they are completely true,” must be accepted as “only the weakest means of depicting heavenly things” (Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Part II, ch. 10, addendum “On the question of the ‘toll-houses’”; trans. Rose).

Prayer for the Dead

Orthodox eschatology is inseparable from the Church’s prayer for the departed:

The Church prays for the repose of the dead at every Liturgy (the Proskomedia, the Litany for the Departed), at memorial services (pannikhida, parastas), and on special commemorative Saturdays (Soul Saturdays / roditel’skie subboty): Meatfare Saturday (two Saturdays before Great Lent begins), the second, third, and fourth Saturdays of Great Lent, and Trinity Saturday before Pentecost, to which Russian practice adds St. Demetrius Saturday in late October (per the rubrics of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion).
These prayers are predicated on the belief that the interim state of the soul (between death and the final judgment) can be affected by the prayers and love of the living Church.
The Orthodox Church does not teach “purgatory” in the Roman Catholic sense — a distinct place of punishment and temporal satisfaction for sin. Rather, the prayers of the Church invoke God’s mercy upon the departed soul and ask for the remission of sins.
The efficacy of prayer for the dead is grounded in the communion of saints: the Church is one body that includes both the living and the dead, and love expressed in prayer transcends the boundary of death.

The Age to Come

Orthodox eschatology culminates not in the mere survival of individual souls but in the transfiguration of all creation:

“Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5). The material cosmos will be renewed, not annihilated — transformed by the same divine energy that raised Christ from the dead.
The new heaven and new earth (2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1) are the eschatological fulfillment of creation’s purpose: to be permeated by God’s glory and to become the dwelling place of God with humanity.
The Kingdom of God, which the Church already anticipates in the Eucharist, will be fully manifest.
The saints will participate fully in the divine life (theosis), seeing God “face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12), and the whole creation will share in the “glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

As St. Maximus teaches, the final state of creation will be the fulfillment of God’s original purpose: the union of all things in Christ, the overcoming of all division and fragmentation, and the cosmic liturgy of creation glorifying its Creator (Maximus, Ambiguum 41; Mystagogy).

Eschatology in Russian Orthodox Piety

Russian Orthodox tradition has particular eschatological emphases:

Intense awareness of death and judgment: Russian Orthodox piety is marked by a vivid awareness of death, reflected in the practice of frequent pannikhidy, the reading of the Psalter over the deceased, the custom of the sorokoust (forty-day memorial cycle), and the strong tradition of praying the akathist for the departed.
The toll-houses in popular piety: The toll-houses have had a strong hold on Russian popular piety, reinforced by widely read hagiographic texts and by the influence of Seraphim Rose’s work in ROCOR and beyond.
Eschatological sobriety: The Russian monastic tradition (especially the tradition of the startsy / elders) counsels preparation for death and judgment as a central spiritual practice: “Keep death before your eyes at all times” (cf. the Ladder of Divine Ascent of St. John Climacus, Step 6).
Hope in the Resurrection: Despite the sobriety, the dominant tone of Orthodox eschatology is paschal joy: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.” The Paschal celebration — the most important liturgical event of the year — is the ultimate expression of Orthodox eschatological hope.

References

Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation. c. 318.
Brianchaninov, Ignatius. “Homily on Death” (Slovo o smerti). In Collected Works, vol. 3. St. Petersburg, 1860s.
Cyril of Alexandria (attrib.). Homily on the Departure of the Soul (Homilia XIV, De exitu animi) [PG 77:1074–1090]. [Authenticity debated; regarded as pseudonymous by Stephen Shoemaker and other modern scholars.]
Gregory of Nyssa. On the Soul and the Resurrection (De anima et resurrectione). c. 380. Trans. NPNF II/5.
Hierotheos (Vlachos), Metropolitan. Life After Death. Levadia, Greece: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1995.
Hopko, Thomas. “Toll Houses: After Death Reality or Heresy?” Interview, The Illumined Heart, Ancient Faith Radio, recorded 22 February 2012. Cf. his lecture “Life after Death: The Teaching about the ‘Toll Houses,’” Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration, Ellwood City, PA, 2006.
Isaac the Syrian. The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian. Trans. Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Boston, 1984; rev. ed. 2011.
John Chrysostom. Homilies on Philippians. Trans. NPNF I/13.
John Chrysostom (attrib.). Homily on death and consolation containing the “powers of the air” passage. [Transmitted under Chrysostom’s name; judged spurious by modern critics.]
John Chrysostom (attrib.). Paschal Homily.
John Climacus. Ladder of Divine Ascent. 7th century.
John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. c. 743. Trans. NPNF II/9.
Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke, 1957.
Macarius of Alexandria (attrib.). Homily on the departure of the souls of the righteous and sinners [PG 34:385 ff.]. [Attribution disputed; Vienna manuscripts assign the text to a monk Alexander.]
Mark of Ephesus. First Homily: Refutation of the Latin Chapters concerning Purgatorial Fire. Ferrara, 1438.
Maximus the Confessor. Ambigua; Mystagogy. 7th century.
Pomazansky, Michael. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Translated by Seraphim Rose. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1984.
Price, Richard. The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553: With Related Texts on the Three Chapters Controversy. 2 vols. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009.
Puhalo, Lazar. The Soul, the Body and Death. Dewdney, BC: Synaxis Press, 1980.
Rose, Seraphim. The Soul After Death. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1980.
Sullivan, Denis F., Alice-Mary Talbot, and Stamatina McGrath, trans. The Life of Saint Basil the Younger. Dumbarton Oaks Studies 45. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2014. [The Life of St. Basil the New, by his disciple Gregory, 10th century, including the account of St. Theodora’s passage through the toll-houses.]
Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Decision of 19 November / 2 December 1980 on the toll-houses dispute. Published in Orthodox Life, no. 1 (1981).
Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New edition. London: Penguin, 1993.
Council of Constantinople II (553). Canons and Anathemas.