The Afterlife, Part 1: Sources for Our Speech

Some other thoughts also: 



The Afterlife 2: Justice


The Afterlife 3: Resurrection 


The Afterlife 4: Vision

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I would like to begin this series of posts on the afterlife by noting the major difficulties we face in constructing a Christian theological understanding of what happens when we die. I hope to outline the issues with our sources, as well as the topics which are easy to consider and those which are not. Again, as I said in my last post, I'm going to attempt a fairly thorough and honest engagement with the issues involved (at least, as I see them) in order to begin the process of shedding my fear of speaking about such controversies in the open. I'm also counting on my readers to bring up those issues which they are concerned about, whether those issues are in my posts or not. My presentation will be necessarily idiosyncratic, particularly without any engagement from others. But, I can promise that any feedback I receive will shape my posts as this series goes on.

Now, there are any number of difficulties about articulating a theology of post-mortem existence. But I believe the primary problem we face involves the question of sources. How does one find out what the afterlife is like? Who's going to tell you that isn't dead? I'll deal with this in another post, but I'd like to point out another way that I hope will inform our way.

On a purely speculative level, I think one of the most obvious ways any of us can decide what we think about life after death is by asking ourselves what we think about human beings and the world in general. What is a human being? What are we made of? What is the world and its make-up? This approach can help when sources fail.

We see this approach coming up in various Greco-Roman philosophies in the ancient Mediterranean. The natural philosopher Heraclitus believed that all matter was in a state of constant change. The body is only composed of the elements surrounding it, and it, too, will change at the time of death. The body, therefore, did not require respect after death because it was no longer held by any personality. On the other hand, Heraclitus was less sure about what happened to the soul at death because he wasn't sure that human beings had anything like a soul. He wavered back and forth on what happened to the human personality after death. Yet, his views seemed to be largely based on his take on the entire universe.

This trend continues in other philosophers. Plato's concepts of post-mortem soul migration and (possible) ascent to Divine Life depend on his understanding of human nature and the make-up of the universe. Similarly, Aristotle's thoughts on the afterlife rest on his reasoning about the nature of the soul, derived from observations of plant, animal, and human life. For Aristotle, we can only speak about the soul in terms which rely on what we have observed about our life in the body. So, he believes it is to make any sort of conclusion about the soul existing independently of the death of the body. The list could go on.

I think this approach to questions about the afterlife is generally correct. Our understanding about life after death will always relate to our understanding of human beings and the whole world. After I lay some groundwork in my first couple posts, I will likely head in this direction in order to flesh out the discussion. However, there is something rather distinctive about Christian theological speech and affirmation. It doesn't depend on an understanding of human nature or the universe which lacks information. We have distinct sources, and we have ideas which are not wholly derivatives of theoretical speculation or bare observation. This statement is not to deny that our understanding of the afterlife is influenced by various ideas derived from philosophy or science. It is simply to note that we have other things to work with.

What I am saying is that a Christian theological anthropology and cosmology is first of all distinctive because it draws deep from the classic Christian sources. I consider the main sources of theology, at the least, to include the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, informed and bounded about by the normative theological tradition embodied in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene creed, and the Chalcedonian definition, as well as the theological interpretations and writings of the Church Fathers and all later theologians throughout Christian history. There are, to be sure, other ways of framing a theological discussion of the afterlife, but I think what I have outlined here is a bare minimum for starting such a discussion.

The most primary of the sources is the Bible because theology is, essentially, considering matters as they have been revealed, i.e. in the perspective provided by Scripture (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.1). Now, that is all well and good, but the difficulties I mentioned at the beginning of this post are most acute here. There are major difficulties in using the Bible to talk about the afterlife because the Bible doesn't really talk about life after death as much as we think it does, and it tends not to answer the questions we want to hear answered.

The Old Testament is notoriously silent and mysterious when speaking on the afterlife. The direct witness to something like physical resurrection, for example, only occurs in Daniel 12:1-3:

At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. There shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation until that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness shall shine like the stars forever and ever.

Other than this passage, there are no clear references to the afterlife or resurrection which are not very vague or open to interpretation (see 2 Samuel 12:14-23, for instance).

The new Testament presents us with another problem entirely. Quite suddenly, the New Testament gives a clear witness to and proclamation of resurrection. Indeed, the central message of New Testament (the resurrection of Jesus) is entirely dependent on a prior belief in general resurrection. That is, the New Testament everywhere assumes that God will, at some unknown point in time judge the whole world "in righteousness" and raise the righteous from their graves (and, quite often, the NT also affirms the wicked shall be raised). Yet, what the New Testament rarely comments on is what happens after death but before resurrection. In the words of Tom Wright, the New Testament is concerned more with "life after life-after-death" than with "life-after-death."

The reason I bring up these difficulties is that many of the questions and assumptions current in our popular culture have little to do with either the Bible or the mainstream theological tradition. So, the average person seems to have a number of assumptions regarding the geography of Heaven (or Hell, for that matter). Yet, most will be hard-pressed to point out where or whether these ideas originate in the Bible or in Christian theology. It often seems to me, in conversation, that the most people cobble together what they believe about the afterlife (particularly about Hell) from some mix of Greek myths, Dante's Inferno, what they can remember of Jonathan Edwards's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and some horror film.

Beyond hellish geography, we could list a number of other ideas which come up in discussion of the afterlife: what happens immediately after death, how God punishes the wicked or rewards the good, what role do angels have, do "All Dogs Go To Heaven," etc.

We all need to engage in an act of discipline, myself included. Let us purge some of these ideas from our minds before we start our main discussion. Don't assume that we know what the afterlife looks like. And, above all, be ready to be surprised by our reading and discussion of the sources. They don't look the way any of us would imagine them to look, and they aren't going to answer all of our questions. But, they will tell us what we need to know.

What happens when you die?

For those who may have come on this site from googling a specific phrase ("what happens when you die?"), here are some links to four posts where I discuss my thoughts on the afterlife more directly.

The Afterlife 1: Sources for Our Speech : basically, where my ideas about the afterlife come from.

The Afterlife 2: Justice

The Afterlife 3: Resurrection

The Afterlife 4: Vision

This below, the original post, mostly deals with the difficulty of talking about death in public when someone personally asks you the question: "What happens when (you, me, my aunt, my beloved mother, etc.) die?"

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There are several things I have noticed about being a budding scholar of religion and a developing minister in graduate school at Harvard Divinity School. One thing which happens frequently in conversation runs something like this:

"You're in school? Where at?"

"I'm at Harvard Divinity School?"

After this long pause, one of three responses will come quickly hurtling out of my new-found acquaintance's mouth.

• "Oh, that's nice!" (generally said in an overly cheerful tone, followed by a couple fleeting glances around me as they desperately look for another conversation partner, and, finally, a long awkward silence)
• "Oh....you know I used to attend/still attend/would like to attend...." This is the response where they let me know that they either consider themselves "a raging atheist," "spiritual, but not religious" or where they covertly inform me (in hushed tones, since it's Cambridge, Mass.) that they, too, are one of the devout few.
• "Oh! So what do you think about....."

I find these responses rather interesting because I've noticed that something about telling people you attend Divinity School seems to be the green light for them to let down their hair concerning religious identity and their level of comfort with faith issues. I bring all of this up, though, to lead into a rather interesting encounter I had recently which are related to my more general Divinity School generated conversations.

I recently met an individual who hit me up with a rather different religious question than I've received for some time. What I mean is that the types of questions I tend to get after I unveil myself as a Divinity School student are, in one sense, purely academic. They concern interesting religious issues in the news or in society, perhaps even a difficult theological problem. But, I rarely ever receive a question which is personal or of obvious, direct import to both myself and the person asking the question. This trend is what made my recent encounter so interesting.

He asked me something deceptively basic. "So, what do you think happens when you die?"

Now, for me, the afterlife is a rather tricky thing to talk about. It's not because I lack ideas or have some sort of doubtful angst in regards to my faith. Rather, the afterlife can be a difficult topic to speak about with someone you don't know because that person brings with them a great deal of ideas and, for lack of a better term, emotional and spiritual baggage. Whatever you say about the afterlife, they will directly apply to a family member or friend. For example, if I were an unabashed materialist and told them that I think we slip into an endless oblivion at death, I've just let them know I think Aunt Tilly isn't up walking on streets of gold, but I think she became worm food.

Further, when you are a rather traditional Christian like myself, some of your beliefs about the afterlife don't make for light conversation. For example, when we say the Nicene Creed every Sunday, we confess that Jesus "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." This confession, as you may imagine, carries some rather strong implications. Again, dear Aunt Tilly's fate might be less than positive.

As a result, I often think that it has become fashionable or customary for Christians to distance themselves from traditional theological concepts in order to appear more palatable to others. One doesn't wish to offend, after all. I've seen this trend particularly in this part of the country and at the school I attend, Harvard. But should we accept the category of "offense" when honestly queried concerning our beliefs?

I don't think so. One thing I had to come to terms with several years ago is the fact that my faith is offensive to others. In our culture, it often seems as if any genuine faith position will be offensive to someone, even if it is a fairly "inclusive" vision of the world or lacks that bedeviling and irritating "certainty" which is supposed to be so terrible about traditional forms of Christian faith. It seems clear, then, one's desire to be inclusive and non-judgmental doesn't seem to preclude the ability of others to find offense. Much more then, do we draw the ire of others when our faith is, in some sense, exclusive or even when we carry the barest amount of conviction in our beliefs.

So, if offense is not the category we should worry about (because we will always offend), what should we be concerned with when answering questions about our faith? I think telling the truth is the important category. An attempt to hide the actual details of our faith when honestly queried is simply an attempt to avoid the difficulty of being honest in the public square. Now, I do recognize the difficulties in speaking about this sort of thing (i.e. the afterlife) in public. You might look crazy, like someone who believes in elves or fairies. You might look like an angry, judgmental person (hardly the first impression anyone desires to give). But, what I think is more important is that avoiding the profession of your actual beliefs may make you "look" more palatable, but it will also make you dishonest, while you remain, in reality, unpalatable.

I think the actual issue we have with such topics is that we fear what it would mean to say them in public. In other words, we don't want to say something which will lead to our personal rejection on the part of our acquaintances, friends, or even our family.

I may be missing the point, and I would be interested to hear some people chime in who read this blog, particularly if they don't share my beliefs (for the sake of brevity, we'll just refer to the Nicene Creed). So, I'm inviting some commentary here. I'm looking for comments which deal with these questions:

1. When you ask someone about their faith, do you actually want to hear it? Or do you simply want to hear something palatable or attractive? Perhaps something unchallenging?
2. When you are queried concerning your beliefs (or lack thereof), do you edit yourself to avoid offending people? (e.g. do you give them the Disney version of the story?)
3. Is there some larger point we're missing here?

Finally, I would just like to signal that I notice I've hardly made a properly theological post on this site, despite my love for studying theology. So, I'm going to head in the direction signaled in this post by making a series of statements on the afterlife, that topic I most hate bringing up. View it as a type of spiritual discipline on my part, an attempt at putting to death that fear of rejection which I think underlies most hesitation to speak on religious issues with new acquaintances. For, I recognize that fear in myself, and I find it unacceptable.