Resurrection or Heaven as the ultimate promise?

[mack]

How ministers conduct funerals and the ultimate nature of the hope to which they point.

[eeyore]

Sheol or Hades is the place of the dead (Strong's concordance) but our God is a God of the living.

God is there too.  "If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there." - Psalm 139:8 (NASB)

i don't really like talking about stuff i know little about, but there seems to be good sheol and bad sheol, both a "holding place" until the resurrection. 

[eeyore]

How ministers conduct funerals and the ultimate nature of the hope to which they point.


true, but although they’re differences in escatological beliefs among christians, it still doesn’t change the underlying substance of their hope. one way or another, they still believe that sin/evil/death will be done away with and in the end God will be victorious. i still don’t know if this topic is as controversial or as consequential as wright would have us believe.

Wright wants us to avoid a truncated, personal, individualized gospel (which owes too much to 18th century evangelicalism) and to return to Paul's vision of a general resurrection which has begun in Christ but which is cosmic in scope.

this seems typical of wright’s objective and i think that evangelicalism could use a good dose of his wider perspective. sometimes, however, i think there’s a danger in it too. christianity *is* a very personal, very relational religion, and i don’t think i’m saying that just because i’m biased by the flavour of christianity i was introduced to. moreover, one may lose the idea of individual responsibility when the scope becomes cosmic. who cares about a small cog in a very grand plan?

a few days ago, i was trying to understand the “new perspective on paul” (for the ten billionth time) and i could see some places where the new perspective leads to a better understanding. however, there were other places when, imho, the traditional understanding was the only reasonable interpretation.

i got the flu and my mind is a bit off. i guess i’m saying that the wider perspective shouldn’t trump a personal perspective either? a balance of the two would lead to a good understanding?

[mack]

I don't think  that Wright denies that Christianity is a very personal, very relational religion or that Luther was correct in how he applied Paul to the theological questions that arose in the late Middle Ages. He is also quite clear that what distinguished Jesus and Paul from the second temple Judaism of their time was their rejection of Jewish ethnic nationalism. Their focus was indeed personal and individual, and because personal and individual,  potentially universal.

That said, we are drawn up into Christ as individuals in our baptism, not in order simply to remain individuals but in order to be incorporated into the Body of Christ and to find our vocation within the horizon of the Kingdom of God. This is the area in which the evangelical paradigm of salvation is deficient, I think. It focuses too much about the rapture of individuals from an earth doomed to destruction and not enough about sharing joyfully in new heavens and a new earth - the whole of creation set right. 

That difference is pastorally quite significant.

The wider perspective shouldn’t trump a personal perspective either? a balance of the two would lead to a good understanding?

Might the former encompass the latter? That is what Wright is claiming. Luther's gospel needs to be understood as a dimension of Paul's.

[mack]

A typical pastoral problem these days is to be asked after the funeral some question like,  "Where is my mother?"

The New Age answer is something like, "Don't worry,  she has gone on to the next level."

One possible Christian answer is, "In Heaven". But that begs the question,  "Where is heaven and what can you tell me about it?" which leads easily to angels, clouds, harps and jokes about St. Peter's at the pearly gates -  not to mention cream cheese commercials. But this is to invite skepticism, and perhaps the conclusion that Christian hope is just silly wish projection.

I prefer something simpler like, "Those who love the Lord are with the Lord. She is asleep in Christ, awaiting  the day of resurrection." Then we might look at 1Thess 4:13-18. 

Or take the question of what it means to be "saved". Does it mean "not going to hell"? Is Wright not pointing us to a better, fuller richer hope?  

[mack]

Here is the WCF on the subject:

CHAPTER XXXII. Of the State of Man After Death, and of the Resurrection of the Dead.

I. The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls (which neither die nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies; and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two places for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.

II. At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed: and all the dead shall be raised up with the self-same bodies, and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.

III. The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ, be raised to dishonor; the bodies of the just, by his Spirit, unto honor, and be made conformable to his own glorious body.

So how would this temporary hell that the WCF posits be altered after the Day of Judgment when such souls are rejoined to "dishonourable" bodies?

My guess is that Wright would say that the notion of the natural "immortality of the soul" is  unBiblical -  Greek rather than Hebrew which is why the Apostle's Creed stresses the "resurrection of the body" rather than the eternal existence of the human soul.  What is a disembodied soul, anyway? Or a hell full of them - "where they remain in torments and utter darkness"?

Can data exist without a hard drive or some sort of  storage capacity? Or, bereft of God's Being, do such former existences just evaporate into non-being, nothingness, like the blip on the screen when the off button is pressed?

It seems to me that the symmetry that the WCF insists on here is related to the symmetry of "double predestination" in Chapter 3. But if we follow L.F. on predestination then we can also move towards asymmetric outcomes after death.

  

[eeyore]

i like what you wrote and i agree with much it. the question in my mind is, how badly in need of correction is the "average christian" (if there is such a thing)? the picture you painted is certainly bleak and i've no doubt that some fall into this category, but evangelicals are a diverse group and i just wonder if this is the case across the board.

i like the answer you gave with respect to the whereabouts of the dead mother - it's primarily relational in nature, but not exclusively so. i'm not sure if i'm looking at the church with rose-coloured glasses, but i'd like to think that many would give answers similar to your own.

with respect to the question of being saved, prior to being a becoming a christian, i did attend quite a number of evangelistic meetings and there weren't predominately of the armageddon-fire-and-brimstone variety. it's worth noting, however, that Jesus spoke more on hell than anybody else and He didn't make it out to be a nice place.

that being said i'm not sure about the immortality of soul either. there's stuff about the devil/beast/false prophet being tormented day and night forever and ever. i'm not sure about human beings being tormented eternally. if memory serves, there was a debate about this among some evangelical theologians a few years ago about that, but i'm not sure if that was ever resolved.

[The Penguine]

Mack: My guess is that Wright would say that the notion of the natural "immortality of the soul" is  unBiblical -  Greek rather than Hebrew which is why the Apostle's Creed stresses the "resurrection of the body" rather than the eternal existence of the human soul.

I'm inclined to agree with the three of you on the "immortal soul" being more a Greek idea than Hebrew.  Hell, as the waiting room before judgement however, is spoken of by Jesus too many times for me to dismiss. 

Mack: Or, bereft of God's Being, do such former existences just evaporate into non-being, nothingness, like the blip on the screen when the off button is pressed?  

I don't think this necessarily applies because of Psalm 139:8 which says "If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!" because there is no place where God is not.

Eeyore: that being said i'm not sure about the immortality of soul either. there's stuff about the devil/beast/false prophet being tormented day and night forever and ever. i'm not sure about human beings being tormented eternally.

After the judgement, then I think "the soul that sinneth, it shall die".   Jesus always said to choose life as opposed to death, not as opposed to "life in eternal hell" "or life separated from God".  Rev. says the devil/beast/false prophet are tormented for ever but it doesn't say people are.  There is a very compelling argument against "those who worship the beast" being tormented for ever at:  http://www.zianet.com/maxey/reflx45.htm  Everyone else who is not resurrected to eternal life experiences the second death.  Their punishment is forever because after their soul is dead, there is no coming back.  Of course, we are not judges of who will be saved or not.  Only God sees the heart; we can just pray for people.

[mack]

it's worth noting, however, that Jesus spoke more on hell than anybody else and He didn't make it out to be a nice place.

True. So how do we interpret that language? That is also, it seems to me, a question that applies to the apocalyptic language what Jesus uses. Is it to be taken literally as pointing to the catastrophic end of the space/ time continuum, or is it a particular kind of Jewish rhetoric/ literary genre which points to the birth pangs of the Messianic "age to come"? How to interpret the Book of Daniel, for example, which Jesus alludes to "'the Son of man coming of the clouds" etc. ? We can either go the way of Hal Lindsay, or we can agree with Wright that language is being used metaphorically and poetically.

I'm inclined to say that Jesus' uses strong language on the subject of hell because procrastination is a great human  temptation. 'If you think you will  get an infinite number of 'second chances' on the other side of death', says Jesus,  'you are deluding yourself.' NOW is the acceptable day of salvation.

i'm not sure about human beings being tormented eternally. if memory serves, there was a debate about this among some evangelical theologians a few years ago about that, but i'm not sure if that was ever resolved.

This was the gist of OUR big heresy trial in the 19th century. The Rev. D.J. Macdonnell, minister of St. Andrew's King Street in Toronto, made some extemporaneous remarks doubting eternal punishment and speculating on the possibility of some sort of purgatorial repentance - which got picked up by the papers. After two years grinding its way through the church courts, the upshot is that he agreed at the 1877 Assembly in Halifax to affirm what the WCF said on the subject with a proviso like "notwithstanding my doubts and perplexities on the subject."  The effect was to cut people some slack from the Confession since there were no further prosecutions.

"If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!"

Again it is a question of how language is to interpreted. We can agree with the Psalmist that there is no place where God is not, without being committed to specific details about the furniture of 'heaven' or the temperature of 'Sheol.' 

"To sum up, the four figures present in the scene of Revelation 14:9-11 complement one another in describing the final destruction of the apostates. The 'unmixed' wine of God's fury poured out in full strength suggests a judgment resulting in extinction. The burning sulphur denotes some degree of conscious punishment that precedes the extinction. The rising smoke serves as a continuous reminder of God's just judgment. The suffering will continue day and night until the ungodly are completely destroyed."


This sounds like the right approach.

[mack]

Here's how George Monro Grant made the point to Agnes Maule Machar (daughter of the minister of St. Andrew's, Kingston, in whose manse Queen's University was hatched.)   

"My feeling now is that the minds of the Lord was to confine the thoughts of men to present duty and the necessity of immediate repentance, and to take away from them the terrible subtle temptation to postpone, which is the most dangerous of all temptations; that he therefore spake absolutely, and that we are bound to have regard for his awful words and warnings; but that when we go so far as the shut out all hope, or positively declare that the conscious suffering of the wicked shall be eternal as God Himself, we import into His words more than they really contain. " Principal Grant, p. 159.

I note that my memory was playing tricks on me when I used the phrase, "Those who love the Lord will be with the Lord."  Grant was more Calvinist that that. His actual line was "Those who ARE the Lords, will be with the Lord."

[eeyore]

I'm inclined to say that Jesus' uses strong language on the subject of hell because procrastination is a great human  temptation. 'If you think you will  get an infinite number of 'second chances' on the other side of death', says Jesus,  'you are deluding yourself.' NOW is the acceptable day of salvation.

i agree with you on the importance of proper interpretation. it’s just that when people start interpreting things poetically and metaphorically, the meaning and/or strength of the original intent is often lost and i worry about this.

i’ve been recently reading up on npp and following some of the debate. i’m sure this has biased me somewhat on the issue of hell/heaven. i’ve seen some npp advocates reinterpret paul to such an extent that, imho, the gospel is lost.

wright does an excellent job shedding light on many issues and pointing out places in our faith where we need to do some work (even much work), but in the end i think he’s a reformer not a revolutionist. some of his followers, however, throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. i think we should be wary of this on the issue of hell/heaven and other issues as well.

[Stercus Tauri]

I hate to interrupt a serious and scholarly discussion, but I was delighted to see a newspaper obituary the other day where the writer quoted Mark Twain: "Go to Heaven for the climate, or to hell for the company".

OK - get serious again now.

[mack]

I am reminded of James Joyce's line about "the prospect of spending an eternity of bless in the company of the Dean of Studies".