”The 500th anniversary of the Reformation for the Orthodox Church is not a special reason for joy, because that was another division in the Church” – Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) said. Although it concerned the relationship between Luther and the Western Church, its reference became the Orthodox Church, in which Luther sought primary teaching and ecclesiology. The proof of this was the Leipzig dispute, during which the primacy, liturgy, structure of the Church, the teaching of justification and purgatory, Luther confronted with the teaching of the Orthodox Church. If Luther saw in the Orthodox Church a framework for his reform, why did he not decide to convert to the Eastern Church? Karmires, emphasizing Luther’s great knowledge of the Orthodox Church, claims, however, that it had only a superficial character, lacking empirical knowledge. He also concludes that Luther neither wanted nor accepted Orthodoxy because of his affection to the mentality of the Western Church and to scholastic theology as well.

The author presents a sketch of the history of concepts and imaginative geography of the lands located in the hereafter: earthly and heavenly Paradise, Purgatory and Heaven. He reaches back to the origins of these images in ancient Eastern cultures, the culture of Antiquity, and patristic writings. He traces their development throughout the Middle Ages to the time of Dante, whose La Commedia sanctioned the separation of the hereafter into topographically located Hell, Purgatory and Paradise.