B Standaert Bible on Death

Some Biblical Thoughts on Death and Life after Death

Fr. Benoît Standaert, O.S.B.

In the Bible, the most frequent understanding of what happens after death is that once physical death has occurred, there is only death and life is no more. In Psalm 115, for example, we read,

The dead do not praise the Lord,
nor do any who go down into silence.
But we will bless the Lord
from this time on and forevermore (17-18).

This understanding of death is also found in the writings of the Sages such as Qoheleth or Ben Sira and also in the famous prayer of King Hezekiah, a contemporary of the Prophet Isaiah:

For Sheol cannot thank you;
death cannot praise you;
those who go down to the Pit cannot hope
for your faithfulness.
The living, the living, they thank you,
as I do this day;
fathers make known to children
your faithfulness (Isaiah 38:18-19).

That realism has its strength. It is the actual life that counts; now is the time to praise the Lord, to give thanks, to enjoy the covenant with the living God. Organize your life in such a way that you may praise the Lord to the very end. There is a subtle paradox: you will die, but your children will have learned from you how to praise the Lord, and so there will be praise of the Lord from now on and forever! With the Flemish mystical author John of Ruusbroec, we may say, “Those who do not praise the Lord here, will remain mute eternally!” (“Die God hier niet en loven, sullen ewiglyk stom bluven.”)

Speaking and thinking of a resurrection after death occurred during the Persian period (from the middle of the sixth to the end of the fourth century B.C.E.) and during the Greek period. This was polemical language used to shock and scandalize the Greeks with their sophisticated culture and way of thinking. Note that this way of thinking is neither Semitic or Greek. It came from Persia and was never completely adopted by the Jewish tradition. It expresses a great trust in God, who was able to create something from nothing and thus can recreate the dead by raising them from nearly nothing to new life. God’s love of life is stronger than violence and death.

Biblical texts indicate two major ways in which this peculiar faith was expressed: “resurrection” as something that happens to an individual, for example, to a devout person who was martyred. God does not allow his friend who observes the Law of the Sabbath to be killed and totally lost in death. Through the power of his Spirit, the Almighty will raise him up to a new and eternal life. “Resurrection” is also understood as something that takes place at the end of the world (eschatology) when all who have died will rise again, some for eternal salvation, others for everlasting damnation (Daniel 12).

This second understanding of resurrection appears in apocalyptic texts such the Book of Daniel or the Books of Enoch. The notion of a collective resurrection can already be found in the vision of Ezechiel (chapter 37) but was not universally adopted by the Jews of the second century before our era. The community of Qumran and other Apocalyptic circles integrated the Persian idea of resurrection in their reading Daniel and the Books of Enoch, as did the Pharisees of Jesus’ time. The Sadducees, on the other hand, strenuously opposed belief in a resurrection..

When we follow the later rabbinical tradition (which is that of the Pharisees), we find that some rabbis exercised more caution in using the strange language of resurrection. In the Talmud bSanhedrin, for instance, the rabbis engage in a long discussion pro and contra. In the end, they conclude that this is an open question. In the prayerbooks, however, we find it stated without hesitation: “God is the God who rises up the dead. And the one who does not believe this will not have any part in the life of the coming world.” In contemporary Judaism, you may find masters who do profess a kind of immortality of the soul or even a form of reincarnation, but who refuse the language of resurrection.

An explicit statement that faith in the resurrection of the body is not at all rooted in Judaism can be found in the famous Pittsburg Platform of 1885: “We reassert the doctrine of Judaism that the soul is immortal, grounding the belief on the divine nature of human spirit, which forever finds bliss in righteousness and misery in wickedness. We reject as ideas not rooted in Judaism, the beliefs both in bodily resurrection and in Gehenna and Eden (Hell and Paradise) as abodes for everlasting punishment and reward.”[1] In the American branch of liberal Judaism, any allusion to the resurrection was removed from the prayerbooks as early as 1857. The European branch kept the traditional prayer forms but interpreted them as “immortality of the soul.”

Christian Assumption of Faith in the Resurrection

There is only one passage in the Gospels where we hear Jesus engaging in an argument about the resurrection. This occurs in the Gospel accounts of his discussion with Sadducees, a group of thinkers concentrated in Jerusalem near the Temple, who said there was no resurrection at all (Matthew 22:23-33, Mark 12:18-27, and Luke 20:27-38. See also Acts of the Apostles, 23:8).

The story is well known. According to the Law of Moses, a brother had to marry his departed brother’s widow to give offspring to his brother. Seven brothers married their widowed sister-in-law and died, and then she also died without bearing any children. What will happen at the so-called “resurrection”? Who of the seven will have her as his wife?

Jesus replied,

Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? For when people rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is God not of the dead but of the living; you are quite wrong (Mark 12:24-27).

In other words, you are wrong on two counts: the way you understand how we will share in the resurrection and your denial of the fact of resurrection. We find the same double argument in 1 Corinthians 15, but Paul, the Pharisee, deals first with the fact of resurrection and then with the form or manner of sharing in the resurrection. It is interesting to note that Jesus does not refer to his own resurrection from the dead!

With regard to the manner of resurrection, there are many ways of speaking about what will happen after death: continuity, discontinuity, immortality, reincarnation, resurrection. The strongest model is the one putting the accent on discontinuity by speaking of resurrection as an act of God. “You do not know the power, the dynamis of God!” The act of God in resurrection transforms us totally. We become “Like angels in heaven.” Do not try to imagine what that might look like.

Paul says the same in his First Letter to the Corinthians:

But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen and to each kind of seed its own body. . . . So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable (15:35-38, 42)

The contrast is immense!

With regard to the fact of resurrection, Jesus engages in a moment of lectio divina, holy, meditative reading of the Scriptures, in his response to the Sadducees. In synagogue services, he has heard how God, speaking to Moses, calls himself the God of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God does this four or more centuries after the death of the patriarchs. They still live for him! “He is God not of the dead but of the living; you are quite wrong.”

The answer Jesus give is pure theology, that is to say, it flows from his reflection on God’s own word to Moses in which God identifies himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses and thus implies that they are living, not dead. You ignore the dynamis of God, which is able to transform our bodies in the resurrection. And you ignore the Scriptures. Even in the Torah, the only Scripture that you Sadducees recognize, we see that the resurrection is affirmed by God!

We might also refer to Socrates’ understanding of what comes after death. In Plato's Apology, Socrates presents two main possibilities for what happens after death: death as a state of nothingness and death as migration to another place: In this scenario, the soul travels to a realm where it can converse with other deceased individuals, including great figures from the past. He focuses on the idea that death should not be feared, as either outcome he presents would be favorable. He then goes on to say, “But I know one thing as certain: God does not abandon someone who is just (dikaios), neither in this life nor in his death.” When Socrates says that he is sure of one thing, that God does not abandon his friend who is dikaios, never, not even in death, he too is making a purely religious argument:

The Belief of the First Christians

After the death of Jesus, his followers remembered that during his lifetime, Jesus revealed the nature of God by performing acts that illustrated the loving-kindness of God. The God of Jesus and the God we proclaim are the same: God is the One who elects the rejected. There is only one God, and this God always acts with pity and loving kindness and always chooses those whom everyone else has ignored. When God saw his friend, his faithful one, his dear and beloved Son rejected by everyone, he chose him by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand. We are witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus and therefore can now understand what comes after death.

However, we must recognize that the faith of contemporary Christians in “resurrection” is rather vague. In fact, many have doubts about it.

In recent times, there have been some witnesses to a meaningful understanding of resurrection. Saint Thérèse de Lisieux (1873-1897) said, “Je passerai mon ciel à faire du bien sur la terre. Je ne meurs pas, j’entre dans la vie” (I shall spend my heaven doing good on earth. I am not dying; I am entering life.)Others speak of a feast of light, a communion of all the saints, a sharing in glory, that is, a sharing in the glorious body of Jesus that was revealed in his Transfiguration (see Mark 9:2-13).

There is no major problem in adopting the language and metaphors of “resurrection” that are found in ancient Persian literature and in Islam. After all, the development of belief in the Jewish and Christian traditions also has its roots in early Persian anthropology.

For me a fundamental question could be this: If the Christian faith had initially been proclaimed in China or in Bantu Africa, where there is/was no terminology of “resurrection” available how would Christian faith in what comes after death be expressed in these cultures? To express our belief, we rely on the peculiar cultural language of “resurrection” that has come from Persia/Iran. Can the same faith be expressed in other cultures without using that peculiar terminology?

Two final comments on the teachings found in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians and in the Gospel of Luke.

Paul writes, “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52; cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:16).

Paul uses “we” in this passage to indicate that those who are united with him and his companions in the fellowship of the Church and the life of virtue in this life will share this transformation with him in a future life. He also explains the nature of this transformation when he goes on to say, “For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (v. 53). To ensure that a transformation will take place as a just reward then, there now needs to be a transformation that is the result of God’s free gift.

Those who in this present life are changed from bad to good are in the future promised the reward of this transformation.

Our justification, our spiritual resurrection, is God’s free gift to us. It is also by God’s free gift, God’s grace, that the transformation of those who have been justified will be made complete in the resurrection of the body, which will bring about a perfect glorification that will remain unchanged forever.

We are changed by the first resurrection when we heed the call to conversion and pass from death to life, from wickedness to righteousness, from unbelief to faith, from wicked deeds to a holy way of life. Because we have accepted the grace of conversion, the second death will have no power over us. As the Apostle John writes in the Book of Revelation, “ Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power” (20:6). In the same book we read: “Whoever conquers will not be harmed by the second death.” (2,11). Therefore, just as the first resurrection is constituted by the conversion of the heart, so the second death consists of everlasting torments.

Everyone who does not wish to be condemned to the eternal punishment of the second death, should hasten to become a sharer in the first resurrection while in this life. Those who are changed in the present life and pass from a wicked to a good life will then pass from death to life and will be changed from humble, lowly state to glory.

The Evangelist Luke has a slightly different view. As the Catholic exegete Jacques Dupont pointed out, Luke knew about both an individual and a communal judgment, but he did not propose a synthetical theory on how to articulate both visions of the beyond. When one of the two thieves crucified with Jesus asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his glory, Jesus says to him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, both are judged immediately after their death. The result is very nice for Lazarus, who reclines at table in the bosom of Abraham, but not for the rich man. “In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side (Luke 16:23).

Note:

[1] The text of this statement can be found by visiting https://www.ccarnet.org/rabbinic-voice/platforms/article-declaration-principles/