1 Corinthians 15: 12-19
LIFE AFTER DEATH
What are some of the popular notions about life after death? Let’s look at a few and then see what Scripture says about the afterlife. What are we as Christians to expect?
Atheist/Materialist: Neil deGrasse Tyson, when asked about death, says, “We feed worms and the cycle of life goes on.” This is otherwise known as annihilation. When you die, you are simply dead and cease to exist forever. This is more disturbing it appears on the surface, for when one dies, not only does the self cease to exist, but the entire Universe ceases to exist. If you die, it is as though the cosmos never was. From this point of view it’s not hard to see how a man who hates his own life has little difficulty ending a few dozen other lives on his way out, because when he dies, so does the entire universe, so what does it even matter? As the atheist/materialist view denies all divine accountability or community, it is the most dangerous, morally speaking.
Agnostica: The agnostic view says Who knows? We’ll see. This is also a favorite way to avoid the reality of death altogether. The agnostic is one who lives trying not t think about death as much as possible.
As agnostics are at least willing to entertain the possibility of life after death, they are less likely to completely discount the possibility of some kind of divine judgment.
Go to Heaven: This the most common view. If you live in a western culture, you live in a Christianized worldview. Whether somebody believes or not, they still incorporate by osmosis the foundations of Christendom. We ought to spell it Christendumb, for it is that set of unexamined and unchallenged cultural ideas that make up what most people are likely to think. In the whole world, most people believe that we have souls that outlive our bodies at the point of biological death. The common Christendumb view is that our souls float up to Heaven where we receive halos, wings, and harps and spend an unimaginative eternity on puffy white clouds just strumming away. That is the “Heaven” of cartoons and, quite frankly, most pagan religions. If not clouds, it’s a great banquet hall, or hunting grounds, or golf courses, if you’re Scottish(but not Presbyterian).
R.I.P. Rest in Peace until judgment day. This is the predominant Judeo/Christian view. We may not know details, but we are promised a resurrection and final judgment at the end of history.
I think of this like a game of Monopoly that you lose early on. While everyone else continues to play, you go into the other room and watch the game. Later, you get called back into the room and everybody tallies up their wins and losses.
HEBREW AFTERLIFE
What is the Jewish/Old Testament view of the afterlife? As there are different kinds of Jews, there are different ideas.
The Pharisees were first to elaborate on resurrection the dead based on readings from the prophets and psalms. They believed in a general resurrection of the dead at the end of time when Messiah comes to judge the world. This view was widespread in Israel prior to the time of Jesus.
The Sadducees were simple materialists, no unlike modern, so-called devout followers of science. All justice, peace, mercy, and grace were worked out in the here and now. There are no souls without bodies or bodies without souls. They go together and when the body dies, the soul fades out with it.
The Old Testament references Sheol, which is literally the depths of the ocean or sea. It is the place to which all that makes up a person departs upon death. It was not Hell, as we think of it, but simply a waiting place—not unlike the “bosom of Abraham”—until God should raise people up for judgment.
GREEK AFTERLIFE
The Greco/Roman worldview contributes much to the Christian, New Testament worldview. For the Greeks, unlike the Jews, our bodies simply did not matter. They were simply soul cages and Greek spirituality involves finding liberation and release from the flesh to pure “spirituality.”
The mythology is highly=developed. We inherit from them Hades, which is not Hell, but like Sheol—the underworld and place of departed souls. English translators of Scripture have been too free in turning Hades into Hell. Even our Apostles’ Creed, which reads “He descended into Hell” is rightly “He descended into Hades,” which is not the same thing at all.
To go to Hades is simply to be truly dead. Greeks had worse places, like Tartarus, where the Titans were bound in a prison (or pit) for eternity.
There were also better places, like the Elysian Fields, which was a heavenly realm for those who had earned the right to be there.
CHRISTIAN VIEW
The New Testament/Christian view owes elements to all of the above, but we ultimately have a very different worldview than the Jews or ancient pagans.
We inherit both Sheol and Hades, places of the departed dead. We also inherit Tartarus and Gehenna, which is the word rightfully-translated as Hell.
For the Chrisitan, death is always spiritual death, separation from God, the source of all life, joy, and love. To be apart from all that is to be dead. To be apart from God is to be in Gehenna, a remote place of fiery torment. Apart from God-to be separated from God—there can only be torment and Hell.
Among Christians there remain differing ideas. One is annihilation until resurrection. This is the “rest in peace” view, and it is orthodoxy for Jews and Christians alike. At biological death, the saint “rests in peace” until the resurrection of the dead, at which point the mortal body is raised to immortality in a new, transformed, immortal body.
The image for this is Christ himself, who died true death only to be raised by the Father to his transformed, eternal, resurrected body. I personally don’t believe this view—though orthodox—is complete.
Here we need to say a few things about resurrection in general. The chief point is this: Resurrection is absolutely unprecedented prior to Christ. Yes, you’ll hear a lot people go on about pri9r mythological gods—Osiris, Mithras, etc.—whose gods present themselves to death only to be reborn, but these are not really comparable. For one, none of these figures is historical, nor do even their adherents claim as much. These gods were never men. They were all projections—personifications—of the seasons of the year by agrarian peoples. The gods that died and came back to life were pictures of the seasons and accounted for the ever-cycling life-force which comes with spring and dies with winter, etc.
Resurrection not the same thing as resuscitation. Lazarus was brought back to life by Jesus, but was brought back to normal mortality—a life that would again experience biological death.
Jesus’ resurrection was not a resuscitation, but a total transformation—something no one could have anticipated or imagined. He was raised not to his same excruciated state. He was not nursing wounds and bruises, but appeared as the Lord of life. He had flesh, but was not limited to it. He appeared and disappeared at will. He ate fish—even cooked fish—and demand that Thomas put his finger in the souvenir wounds in his wrists. We would do well to think of the risen Christ as multidimensional.
Be crystal clear: resurrection existed nowhere in imagination or myth prior to the Jesus story.
MORE DIMENSIONS
As I have criticized the orthodox Christian view, I really must support my position. I for one don’t believe in the RIP, annihilation-until-resurrection view because I think the Greeks got some things right that the Jews missed. Furthermore, I think Jesus supported this view. When he says:
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. —Matthew 10:28
I hear a clear distinction between body and soul. This even suggests a separation of body and soul.
As he is being crucified, Jesus promises the criminal on one side of him: Jesus answered him,
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”—Luke 23:43
If Jesus’ body would be in the grave for the next 40 hours, how could they be together “today” in Paradise?
In N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, he criticizes the idea that when Christians die, their soul goes up to Heaven. He rightly reminds us that the orthodox interpretation was always that at the resurrection, Heaven will come down to Earth. Scripture does indeed bear this out—that Heaven will be manifest on Earth—and aside from Jesus’ reference to “Paradise” to the rebel on the cross beside him, all references to Heaven are the same as “Kingdom Come.”
Finally, the clear hope for Christians is that we shall live a new life in a new flesh, as we too will be resurrected exactly as was Jesus. That means we will put on immortal bodies and live in the flesh in a new Heaven and new Earth. I take this to mean that in the plans of God there includes a new cosmos—or new cosmoses—not dominated by death, decay, and entropy.
We believe this as we believe that Jesus is the “firstborn of the new creation.”
ALL DEPENDS UPON RESURRECTION
Paul’s strong words in verse 19 give us our resolute, take-home idea:
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
Let’s have none of this patronizing nonsense that Christianity is “good for society” or “a basically valuable moral code.” No, because if Jesus is not raised, then we shall not be raised, and if we shall not be raised, all is vanity, all is loss, and Ecclesiastes is the end of the Bible. If we are not raised, all is death and meaningless despair.
But Jesus is raised! And what is more, like an ancient bridegroom preparing for his bride, he is making a place for us to be with him eternally.
John 14:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.—John 14: 1-3†