There
appears to be a huge misconception surrounding the issue of the afterlife in
the Christian tradition. Which I was only made aware of in a conversation with
my sister and her son. It is common practice to teach children in Sunday school
that when people on Earth die their souls are immediately sent to heaven, to
live in God’s everlasting kingdom, however somewhere along the way this greatly
oversimplified belief has crept into mainstream Christianity. Despite being
unbiblical, and almost gnostic (including the Catholic doctrine of particular
judgement) as neither my nephew who is four, nor my sister who is twenty nine
knew the Orthodox teaching on life after death.
I appreciate
that the reason this simplified teaching is given to young children, as there
are several aspects to the right teaching that they just won’t understand, and
it is therefore valid to give them a watered down explanation. The problem
arises when years on they have not been taught the orthodoxy. Part of the
reason is that many children who attend church services when they are young
become more secularised as they get older, and therefore have no interest in
correcting this fundamental mistake. An even more worrying part of the issue is
that it is very rare that people who do not study theology as a discipline will
ever encounter the correct teaching, as it is rarely mentioned in services or
made clear in texts that are accessible to the average churchgoer.
So what is
the orthodox teaching? And how does it differ from what much of the population
have grown up believing? The most crucial difference is that when people on
earth die, they do NOT ascend to heaven immediately, instead they are dead “The living know that they will die, but
the dead know nothing; they have no more reward…” Ecclesiastes 9:5. Dead
in the most literal way as death is the result of our sin, which as humans, we
all possess. “For the wages of sin
is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”
Romans 6:23. The eternal life comes at the end of time, during the second
coming; at this point the dead will rise up to be judged by the Father. The
reason this has to be the case, just from a logical aspect is because; if when
we died our soul went to heaven, we would be leaving our bodies behind. This
would mean that the body and the soul are separate entities (dualism), which
would therefore mean that Christ’s human body and divine soul were separate
entities (nestorianism). Which would negate the purpose of Jesus as the
suffering God and deny the hypostatic union between God and man. Instead the
orthodox belief is that we do not have
souls but that we are our soul.
Furthermore what would be the point in a “Judgement day” if we were all judged
immediately after death? Unless we concede that God’s mind can be changed which
it can’t as God is immutable. “For I am the LORD, do not change…” Malachi 3:6.
Luke 23:43 does not help the issue of this misrepresentation “Truly I tell you,
today you will be with me in Paradise.” This passage is rife with issues. The
biggest is that on an earthly level it does not cohere to the chronology, Jesus
did not ascend on the day of his death; he is taken into the crypt. If he did
go to heaven this would negate the significance of ‘the end of his mortal
life’. The most obvious explanation of this passage is that, because koine (the
language of the original New Testament) does not use punctuation and has been mistranslated.
It should therefore read “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in
Paradise”. Note the word “paradise” rather than Heaven as the two are not
interchangeable.
When Jesus dies, three days later he is resurrected,
resurrect does not mean “reborn” or “revived” or even “brought back from the
dead”. Resurrection means to rise from death into eternal life. While Jesus is
in the crypt he too has died the mortal death and remains in the ‘soul sleep’
for this time. When Jesus raised Lazarus he does not resurrect him, Lazarus was
dead and Jesus returned him to life but he will die again. Jesus on the third
day has been resurrected as Christ; the exalted Lord. The resurrection is the
victory of Christ over sin and death, this emphasis cannot be understated it is
of paramount eschatological significance. When Christ is risen he becomes the
last man, he marks the beginning of the end. This is the first man to defeat
death and he is the man who will return at the end of time to resurrect
humanity into eternal life, whereby all humanity will be exalted through the
light of Christ and will share in the victory over death.
There are two points from here that are problematic; the
first is ‘Is the Kingdom of God that comes after the end of time in heaven or
on an exalted Earth?’ Revelation speaks of a “New Jerusalem” which is to become
God’s kingdom after the end of time “Then I say a new heaven and a new earth,
for the old heaven and the old earth had passed away” Revelation 21:1. Does
this mean that there is no distinction between the two anymore? This seems to
suggest that we won’t ever go to heaven but will instead live in a paradise on
earth. The biblical evidence seems to suggest that when people die they do not
go to heaven which is the mainstream belief; and in fact the case is quite the
opposite. At the Messianic age heaven will come down to earth and we will be
utterly united with God, who lives among us in the New Jerusalem that exists as
a ‘heaven on Earth.’ “See, the home of God is among
mortals. He will dwell
with them…” Revelation 21:3. Many of the New Testament references to
what many call heaven are translated as “paradise” which preludes to the
joining of God’s two kingdoms in this eschatological period. New Jerusalem is,
in essence a reversal of the fall and thus return to Eden, which was also an
earthly paradise.
The real theological issue is ‘what is the
role of Jesus Christ in the period after the end of time?’ If every human has
been exalted to eternal life where sin and death no longer exist, what is the
place of Jesus? Christ is the mediator between God and man, but after all
humanity has been made perfect through God’s judgement and we are then utterly
united with God then surely having a mediator between man and God is a
restriction on our unity with our heavenly Father? 1Corinthians 15:28 “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also
be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God
may be all in all.” John Calvin argues that Christ holds an earthly
office which is made redundant after the eschatological event and only hinders
our relationship to the Father. It is made clear that human offices such as
governments and kingdoms will be annihilated as these are mere substitutes for
God’s rule. “Then the veil will fall and we shall see the glory of God without
hindrance, as he reign in his kingdom. Christ’s humanity will no longer stand
in the middle, keeping us from the final view of God” Calvin’s institute (on
1Corinthians 15:27) but can Christ, who
is God’s son and the risen Lord, the one who has led us to salvation and died
for us be simply swept aside? Does this idea not raise issues of
neo-nestorianism and open up a mode of tri-theism or even Arianism? Calvin
would say that this is the way it has to be in order to have an uninhibited
connection to God, as Christ’s unity is dissolved in the light of the redeemed
humanity, this is because the incarnation is only necessary due to humankind’s
sin, when we become exalted by the eschatological event Christ will hand back
his earthly authority to his father.
“For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of
command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet. And
the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will
be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and
so we will always be with the Lord.” – 1Thessalonians 4:16-17
