When one turns to the Church Fathers with these questions in mind, one thing that becomes apparent is that the Fathers did not find them pressing in the same way as we do today. Just as they took for granted that some will be eternally damned, so they assumed that there can be no repentance after death, at least of the thoroughgoing, “deep” kind that is essential to Christian life.
For the Christian, the union of our nature with Christ in His one Person, even that deified human nature that we receive in the Eucharist, unites us at this present moment with that pinnacle of history which is the Incarnation, and by it we are tied to our fathers and mothers of the old covenant.
