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Joe Carstairs
2025-06-05 21:02:50 +01:00
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title: Surprised By Hope
description:
I've been working on my resurrection doctrine. Here's where I've got to.
pubDate: 2025-05-02
content: |
A couple of months ago, I was chatting to my friend Neil on the way home from
church, and in that conversation, I confessed to him that I had no idea what
happens to people after they die.
This might come as a surprise to some people who know me. Lots of people have
solid ideas about what happens to people after they die. For different people,
those ideas are very different. Here in Scotland, many people believe that death
is a final end. Many more believe that death marks a physical, and perhaps also
a spiritual, reunion with the rest of the universe, as the matter of your body
begins to be slowly digested and recycled: hence why ever more people are opting
to be cremated rather than buried in one piece. Other minorities believe in an
immortal soul that goes to some other place - be it heaven, hell, purgatory,
nirvana or reincarnation. I belong to the Christian community, which is supposed
to have clear answers on these questions passed down from ancient times, and
people who know me know that I think hard about doctrines. So it may be a
surprise that amongst all the convictions which people have all around me, and
amongst all my own convictions on other topics, I hadn't the faintest clue what
happens to people after they die.
If you are surprised, let me surprise you some more: I am of no fixed opinion on
a whole range of really important philosophical and theological topics, from the
existence of the soul to the purpose of sex, from the nature of the sacraments
to the metaphysics of the mind. But late last year, I set myself some New Year's
resolutions to address some of these questions. Not, by any means, to decide
once and for all the end of the matter: just to form a well-informed opinion.
Sometimes staying quiet isn't good enough: I'm aiming to rectify my silence on
these topics, because I think these topics are too important to ignore.
And one of the issues I picked out was this very issue: what happens to people
after they die? To that end, Neil recommended me a book by the conservative
Anglican theologian, Tom Wright, called _Surprised By Hope_, published in 2007,
at which point I was just learning to spell.
As a result of this book, I feel I understand what the Christian orthodoxy is,
and feel able to treat that view as my working assumption.
Wright defends traditional Christian orthodoxy. He claims that his view is
orthodox, and I'm roundly convinced that it is. When I wrote down in bullet
points what his view amounted to, I found that I had more or less re-written
half the Nicene Creed.
- Jesus Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate.
- On the third day, he rose from the dead.
- He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
- He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
- His kingdom will have no end.
- We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Amen. That's pretty much it. All that I need to stress, to avoid under-stating
Wright's view, is that he specifically thinks that physical creation, including
our bodies, will be transformed into a new kind of physicality, including new
kinds of physical bodies for you and me, and that the 'world to come' means that
heaven and earth - which he regards as God's physical space and our physical
space - will be united.
He contrasts this orthodox view with several views common today amongst
Christians, some of which have even been muddled up with the traditional
orthodoxy:
- 'Jesus was raised to new life, spiritually, like a ghost.'
- 'Jesus literally ascended into the sky, as if he had an invisible jetpack: and
that's where he is now.'
- 'The Christian hope is that we will go to be united with God in heaven after
we die.'
- 'The Christian hope is that we will be snatched up to heaven at the rapture
and taken to a resurrection life there.'
- 'The Christian hope is that we will experience God's eternal life temporarily
before we die.'
- 'Jesus won't really judge anyone, because he loves everyone, and because he's
meek and lowly, not judgy.'
- 'The world will be redeemed through the work of the Church.'
- 'Only God can ever make a difference to the sinful state of the world, so the
only works we should care about now are "saving souls".'
I am happy to admit that I have often been guilty of most of these heresies. The
only ones I've never been tempted by are the 'rapture' view, and the thing about
the invisible jetpack.
Wright has not definitively put any of these ideas to rest for me. _Surprised By
Hope_ is just not that kind of book. It's not a treatise. It's actually quite
light on substantial argument in favour of Wright's position. Wright's main
achievement for me, isn't to convince me that he's right, but that his position
is a good starting point, a good place from which I should need to be convinced.
He does this chiefly by showing that his view is the consensus view of the New
Testament. (He claims to be showing it is the consensus view of 'the early
Church', but he never presents much evidence outside the New Testament, so I'm
being charitable by restricting his claim to the New Testament authors.) Say
what you like about Scriptural authority; if Mark, Matthew, Luke, John and Paul
all were convinced something was apostolic teaching, you'd better well take it
seriously.
If you want convincing, take a look for yourself. Some of the key New Testament
texts are John 5; Acts 17:30-32, 24:14-16; 1 Cor 15, 16:22; 2 Cor 4-5; Rom 6, 8;
Col 3:1-4; Eph 1:10; 1 Thess 4:14-18 and of course Rev 21-22.
You can also try convincing yourself that this is coherent with the Old
Testament hope, by looking at Isa 11, Dan 7, Ps 2, and having another look at
the assumptions behind Paul's behaviour in Acts 24:14-16.
The only significant problem texts I've found for Wright's view are 2 Cor 4-5
and Rev 21-22. In 2 Cor 4-5, Paul seems to plainly assert that we will have to
leave the body in order to face the judgement seat of Christ, and which makes no
apology for the assertion that, even though Christ has reconciled us to God, we
will still have to face judgement for our deeds - which seems to justify the
infamously un-Biblical doctrine of purgatory. If you assume that Paul's writings
express a completely consistent view, however, you will have routes out; in
particular, you could look at the language of Rom 6 and 8. Large chunks of
Paul's letter to the Romans also suggest, if taken out of context, that we will
have to leave our bodies behind, and that even those reconciled through Christ
will face judgement for their deeds - except that key verses contradict both of
those views. Clearly, that's not what Paul meant in Romans; so, you might argue,
it's not what he meant in 2 Cor either: provided you assume that Paul's writings
present a consistent view. (If Paul changed his mind, no explanation is
necessary why Rom and 2 Cor seem to be inconsistent: they could actually be
inconsistent in that case.)
Meanwhile, in Rev 21-22, John has a vision of a 'new heaven and a new earth, for
the first heaven and the first earth had passed away'. This directly contradicts
Wright's emphatic insistence that God's new creation will be continuous with the
first. For Wright, this isn't an academic detail, it's needed in order to give
us a motive to care for the world we've currently got. Without continuity, he
fears we'd be right to join those who are content with trashing the natural
environment because the whole thing's going to end up in fire and brimstone
anyway. Yet this piece of Revelation seems to permit exactly that.
If you were to defend Wright against Revelation, you might point out that
Revelation is a literal description of a vision John had, and is therefore not
in every detail an accurate picture of the future, but a metaphor, an image of
the future. (Fine, but if the wholesale replacement of heaven and earth is a
metaphor, what is it a metaphor for? If the literal future is continuity, why
not describe a vision of continuity?) And you may also assume that the entire
Bible is consistent on the matter of God's ultimate future, and on that
assumption, bring your analysis of the rest of the New Testament to bear.
Whatever you do with the problem texts, it seems clear to me that the
overwhelming weight of Biblical evidence favours the traditional orthodox
position over any of the alternatives. Given that, I'm happy to take it as a
starting point as I continue to think about what happens to people after they
die.
So, I may go back to Neil now, and say - maybe not quite yet 'I have an
opinion' - but at least 'I know what my working assumptions are.' I know what is
the orthodox Christian view: that is, the consensus view of the relevant
experts. The consensus view of relevant experts is generally a good place to
start.
I still have plenty of concerns, though. Here are my top three quandaries on
this topic now.
Firstly, it would be rather unsettling if the orthodox Christian vision for
God's ultimate future popped entirely into existence after the Ascension. The
apostles say that their teaching was given to them by the Holy Spirit - but are
we going to trust our entire doctrine on the future to what a small number of
men claim was told to them by an invisible being behind closed doors? If the
view of the New Testament authors is trustworthy, then it at the very least
needs to cohere very well with the Old Testament. The New Testament hope should
be woven deep into the Old Testament promises. I find Genesis, Daniel, Isaiah
and the Psalms promising, but I've only gotten skin-deep into comparing these
texts to the New Testament: I'd like to go both deeper into these texts, and
broader across the Old Testament.
Secondly, I want to hear the opposition in their own words. Wright very openly
admits that his view is currently a minority opinion even within Christianity,
despite being Christian orthodoxy. Given that is the case, it's reasonable to
expect the opposition to have some good arguments on their side. Wright has not
presented any strong arguments from opposing views, which makes me suspect not
that there are no good arguments, but that he has omitted to cover them in his
short and accessible book. And if there really are no strong arguments against
the traditional view, then we should expect powerful explanations as to why so
few people accept what apparently they should.
Thirdly, I have residual concerns from the metaphysics of mind. I recall from my
undergraduate days that continuity is a major concern amongst the relevant
experts. I think a minority of them even claim that the person who goes to sleep
and the person who wakes up again are completely distinct people who just so
happen to time-share the same body. If continuity is a major problem, then it is
a major problem for resurrection doctrine, too, which even in the New Testament
is compared to a kind of sleep, admitting that there is some kind of
discontinuity between the old body and the resurrection body. Add to this the
easily observable fact that many Christian bodies have rotted and are no longer
suitable for re-animation: their new bodies will have to be physically
discontinuous as well as mentally discontinuous with their old bodies. If I will
be given a new body, is it metaphysically plausible that the person who inhabits
that body will be the same 'me' that inhabits this body, now?
Much love all. As always, answers on a postcard please.