Morbidity and Eschatology
I have been reading Matthew (in the Bible) lately, and recently came across some of the parables on the kingdom of heaven. I suppose that got me thinking about death and "the end" a little bit. I daresay I am fairly unique amongst Lutherans for some of these views, but perhaps not.
I tend to take Jesus more literally when he talks about people being "not dead, but asleep." The Greek influence of the concept of the soul undoubtedly plays a part in Christian thinking, but there wasn't much talk of such a thing in ancient Israel. For me, a key concept of salvation and what we touch on every week in the Apostle's Creed is "the resurrection of the body." Why is such a thing important if your soul lives on elsewhere? I believe we are indeed our bodies, though we will be gloriously changed on the Last Day. I also believe that eternal judgment is not redundant, the Bible says everyone will be judged once and for all. I believe this will happen at the end of history when Christ comes again, when all the sheep and the goats will be divided up (see Matthew 25). I've always thought the apparent shock of "the goats" to be nonsensical if the dead have known all along what their fate will be. And yes, you could argue that this pertains to only those who are living at the end, but I take it to mean everyone who ever lived. To borrow a term from science fiction, I think people will be "in stasis" until the Last Judgment when we will all be raised in the twinkling of an eye and find out, all together, what is going to happen.
I also think that eternal life is a gift from God, made possible through faith in Jesus. I do not believe eternal life pertains to hell, but that there will be a time of punishment and then simply annihilation. Just as God utterly forgets our sin, we will all forget the unrepentant in the hereafter. I think we'll remember that people existed and impacted our lives in some way, but we won't remember the details or experience grief that they are not around. Luther touched on total annihilation himself; I tend to think that hellfire is eternal, but the punishment is transitory. Basically, giving people a chance to recognize that they didn't devote themselves to the right things in life before they cease to exist. Granted, I am no theologian, but I believe these things make sense and are consistent with what is written in Scripture.
(x-posted to
lutherans, MySpace)
I tend to take Jesus more literally when he talks about people being "not dead, but asleep." The Greek influence of the concept of the soul undoubtedly plays a part in Christian thinking, but there wasn't much talk of such a thing in ancient Israel. For me, a key concept of salvation and what we touch on every week in the Apostle's Creed is "the resurrection of the body." Why is such a thing important if your soul lives on elsewhere? I believe we are indeed our bodies, though we will be gloriously changed on the Last Day. I also believe that eternal judgment is not redundant, the Bible says everyone will be judged once and for all. I believe this will happen at the end of history when Christ comes again, when all the sheep and the goats will be divided up (see Matthew 25). I've always thought the apparent shock of "the goats" to be nonsensical if the dead have known all along what their fate will be. And yes, you could argue that this pertains to only those who are living at the end, but I take it to mean everyone who ever lived. To borrow a term from science fiction, I think people will be "in stasis" until the Last Judgment when we will all be raised in the twinkling of an eye and find out, all together, what is going to happen.
I also think that eternal life is a gift from God, made possible through faith in Jesus. I do not believe eternal life pertains to hell, but that there will be a time of punishment and then simply annihilation. Just as God utterly forgets our sin, we will all forget the unrepentant in the hereafter. I think we'll remember that people existed and impacted our lives in some way, but we won't remember the details or experience grief that they are not around. Luther touched on total annihilation himself; I tend to think that hellfire is eternal, but the punishment is transitory. Basically, giving people a chance to recognize that they didn't devote themselves to the right things in life before they cease to exist. Granted, I am no theologian, but I believe these things make sense and are consistent with what is written in Scripture.
(x-posted to
lutherans, MySpace)