On Palm Sunday, Pastor Brian Hamer delivered as theology-rich a sermon as I have ever heard, so much so that I requested a written copy—while he was still delivering it. (Apologies to the other congregants.) Among the many interesting points made in his homily, a couple particularly stood out for me. One was that the earthquake, darkening of the sun, etc., that occurred upon Jesus’ expiration were signs of a primordial chaos returning. The one through whom all things were made—and are sustained—is dead! And so order collapses.
Pastor Hamer also alluded to the peculiarly Matthean episode of the resurrection of the saints, whose tombs are knocked open with the rattling of the earth. Theologically this affirms Jesus’ death not as his defeat but rather death’s. It also explains, as Pastor Hamer sees it, why “dead” saints are described as only “sleeping”—not because they will one day be made alive, but because only Jesus can be said to have ever truly died.
Could that be—that only Jesus can be said to have ever truly died, and that everyone else sleeps until the end of history, when body and soul are reunited and judged? Can Jesus be the only one to truly know what death is?
Is that, perhaps, what hell is? Real, total death, as opposed to the repose of the body that occurs upon the cessation of heart and brain functions?
I admit to being a bit of a heretic on this point—an undogmatic one, to be sure. I have trouble accepting body/spirit dualism. I believe in a more holistic conception of the human person. Neither the body nor the spirit can live without the other. (Which is why I also believe that prayer to the saints is futile.) As Jacques Ellul has written:
A familiar example of the mutation to which revelation was actually subjected is its contamination by the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul. . . . In Jewish thought death is total. There is no immortal soul, no division of body and soul. Paul’s thinking is Jewish in this regard. The soul belongs to the “psychical” realm and is part of the flesh. The body is the whole being. In death, there is no separation of body and soul. The soul is as mortal as the body. But there is a resurrection. (The Subversion of Christianity)
And before him:
And ye, in putting them [the departed souls] in heaven, hell and purgatory, destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection . . . And again, if the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good a case as the angels be? And then what cause is there of the resurrection? (William Tyndale, An Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, 1530)
[S]o the soul after death enters its chamber and peace, and sleeping does not feel its sleep. (Martin Luther, Commentary on Genesis)
In fact, there’s a wonderful study of Luther’s understanding of the flesh/spirit distinction, as one of orientation away from or toward God, and not as separate “parts,” as it were, in Matt Jenson’s The Gravity of Sin. While Jenson concentrates on Luther’s “holistic anthropology” as it relates to total depravity, original sin, and justification, I don’t see how it does not also relate to the Reformer’s view of “soul sleep,” as some have termed it.
“Flesh,” then, is not the physical body (which would betray a discomfort and even a denunciation of materiality), but the “old” or “external” man in toto who is turned away in hostility to God. In turn, “spirit” is not the non-substantial part of a person, but the “new” or “internal” man in toto who is friends with God.
I wonder, too, if we are meant to take the Matthean episode of the resurrected saints released from their tombs after Jesus’ resurrection as historical in the first place, as it describes an eschatological event, and may be the Gospel writer’s weaving of theology into the Passion narrative to mine the depth of its meaning for all men.
Questions, questions. We await final answers, just as the first disciples did. And then there’s Easter. And all questions become moot, all voices go mute, in the presence of those nail prints.
April 2nd, 2010 | 1:30 pm
Anthony,
I just wanted to note that, for us Catholics at least, there is nothing heretical about your point about mind body dualism. Read Thomas Aquinas’ “My Soul is Not Me,” which is a fantastic rebuttal to the point of view that the soul is the self, and the body at best incidental and at worst positively sin inducing.
April 2nd, 2010 | 1:47 pm
Mr.Sacramone, regarding Platonic body/soul dualism, please go back and read ON THE SQUARE entry (2/18/10). Michael Orsi quotes Protestant theologian Thomas G. Long on this subject. You might find his a understanding a resolution to your “undogmatic” point of view.
April 2nd, 2010 | 2:16 pm
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April 3rd, 2010 | 7:57 am
The way I think of I think of it is like this: After we die and our body dissolves, everything about us–our DNA, our memories, our personality, our essential identity, even our consciousness– is remembered in the mind of God. Then at the resurrection, we are all remade. While having a new body without the limits of the old, we are also still who we were. There are texts that do say we will be “with” Christ immediately after we die–what Jesus said to the thief on the cross, Paul’s yearning–and I think the state I describe, being preserved in His mind, would correspond to being “with” Him. What would this be like to experience? To sleep, perchance to dream. The interval between death and the resurrection, of course, would seem quite short, just as when we sleep, we do not experience the tedium of the hours we were asleep, but the day comes soon.
April 3rd, 2010 | 8:36 am
Anthony , you are right regarding the theological density of the homily.Makes you think. I have a question about this soul/body dichotomy and it may sound stupid and maybe it is.The Creed says “we believe in the resurrection of the body”, my take on that is that we believe in the resurrection. I don’t think that most people make a distinction and they do believe, when they think of it, that what ever that entails is beyond their understanding. Now my question, I know of many cases where ones’ body is obliterated, whether in war or some dreadful accident, in these cases there is no body to speak of so when you say that the idea of a soul/body split is problematic for you you must be speaking of the self in total in some way that I don’t understand. I to have no dogmatic position on this and maybe i’m to dense to get the answer, could you explain.
April 3rd, 2010 | 8:50 am
I would recommend Adrienne von Speyer (sp?), the friend of Hans Urs von Balthasar for what happened after Jesus died on the cross. To deal successfully with the complicated issues raised by Our Lord’s passion and death in a Palm Sunday homily is perhaps a bridge too far; i.e., not recommended.
April 3rd, 2010 | 11:19 am
I owe a debt to my old agnostic epistemology professor for elucidating the topic for me. He described the spirit/body relationship in functional terms.
Imagine yourself as a disembodied soul. Unless being so is to live in sensory deprivation, you see, hear, touch, communicate, etc. Whether the instrumentality for these senses is a body like that which we currently enjoy or not, to see is the functional equivalent of having an eye. To hear, the functional equivalent to having an ear, and so on. So, the duality, insofar as there is one, is primarily conceptual. In practice, when ever on has a functioning soul, one has some type of body, and the converse.
April 3rd, 2010 | 12:45 pm
“Neither the body nor the spirit can live without the other.” The Apostle Paul suggests an interim period between “falling asleep” and the resurrection of the dead in 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 (v.8: “Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” – this is a secondary desire to being resurrected and “whole” in the transformed body) and in Philippians 1:20-24. These two passages are referenced by the CCC to support an understanding of an interim period in which the souls of the righteous are with Christ prior to the eschaton. I recommend Ben F. Meyer’s “Did Paul’s View of the Resurrection of the Dead Undergo Development?” in Critical Realism and the New Testament for complete argumentation on this score.
April 4th, 2010 | 12:07 am
Just a quick comment on your question whether “only Jesus experienced death?”
If it were true that he did and that all mankind sleeps until the final judgment, and that this sleep can be termed the “first death,” then it follows doesn’t it that the second death is also a sleep (only this time in the Lake of Fire).
For myself I prefer to imagine that we die as does everyone else. That our death (that is the death of the elect) is called sleeping because we wake, nevermore to die again. The reprobate die and though there may be some kind of awareness of things (according to the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man) it is a real death since after the final judgment they are returned to the same state forever.
April 4th, 2010 | 8:59 pm
Since this thread has enlightened me with perspectives I hadn’t been aware of before, I’d like to offer two quotes it reminded me of in reciprocal gratitude.
First, regarding Jesus being the only one to ever truly experience death, here’s a view on that experience that reflects the spiritual dimension of His unique suffering, from Jeffrey R. Holland’s April 2009 address, “None Were With Him:”
“With all the conviction of my soul I testify that He did please His Father perfectly and that a perfect Father did not forsake His Son in that hour. Indeed, it is my personal belief that in all of Christ’s mortal ministry the Father may never have been closer to His Son than in these agonizing final moments of suffering. Nevertheless, that the supreme sacrifice of His Son might be as complete as it was voluntary and solitary, the Father briefly withdrew from Jesus the comfort of His Spirit, the support of His personal presence. It was required; indeed it was central to the significance of the Atonement, that this perfect Son who had never spoken ill nor done wrong nor touched an unclean thing had to know how the rest of humankind—us, all of us—would feel when we did commit such sins. For His Atonement to be infinite and eternal, He had to feel what it was like to die not only physically but spiritually, to sense what it was like to have the divine Spirit withdraw, leaving one feeling totally, abjectly, hopelessly alone.”
Second, about the state of the soul and body after death, these two explications from the Book of Mormon flesh out the discussion thus far:
11 Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection—Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, yea, the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life.
12 And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.
13 And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of the wicked, yea, who are evil—for behold, they have no part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord; for behold, they chose evil works rather than good; therefore the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their house—and these shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and this because of their own iniquity, being led captive by the will of the devil.
14 Now this is the state of the souls of the wicked, yea, in darkness, and a state of awful, fearful looking for the fiery indignation of the wrath of God upon them; thus they remain in this state, as well as the righteous in paradise, until the time of their resurrection.
Alma 40:11-14
10 O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster; yea, that monster, death and hell, which I call the death of the body, and also the death of the spirit.
11 And because of the way of deliverance of our God, the Holy One of Israel, this death, of which I have spoken, which is the temporal, shall deliver up its dead; which death is the grave.
12 And this death of which I have spoken, which is the spiritual death, shall deliver up its dead; which spiritual death is hell; wherefore, death and hell must deliver up their dead, and hell must deliver up its captive spirits, and the grave must deliver up its captive bodies, and the bodies and the spirits of men will be restored one to the other; and it is by the power of the resurrection of the Holy One of Israel.
13 O how great the plan of our God! For on the other hand, the paradise of God must deliver up the spirits of the righteous, and the grave deliver up the body of the righteous; and the spirit and the body is restored to itself again, and all men become incorruptible, and immortal, and they are living souls, having a perfect knowledge like unto us in the flesh, save it be that our knowledge shall be perfect.
2 Nephi 9:10-13
Happy “Resurrection Day,” everybody!
April 6th, 2010 | 4:18 am
To Michael Currie:
Even if you are blown to bits, your constituent atoms will continue to exist. Even if those atoms get sucked into the birth of a new star and turned into heavier elements, they will still exist. God knows the exact location and history of every atom in the universe! He is omnipotent too, and so for Him, remaking our bodies out of the space dust that remains at the end of time will be easy-peasy.
That’s how I think of it, anyway!
April 6th, 2010 | 11:43 am
@Anonymous Bookaholic “God knows the exact location and history of every atom in the universe! He is omnipotent too, and so for Him, remaking our bodies out of the space dust that remains at the end of time will be easy-peasy.”
For both you and Michael Currie, I am sure it is true God does know the location and history of every atom but resurrection isn’t gonna be like that. (Do you just take the atoms existing at death? ten minutes before death? in the prime of life? You get into all sorts of silly blind alleys that way, e.g. What if someone loses his legs and bleeds to death a day later. Are his legs part of the resurrected body? Is the missing blood?)
No, we will be given new bodies, not just the cranky broken down ones some of us have. The slaughtered unborn will have new bodies as well as those who in this life are or become physically or mentally disabled. It is not for us to know this side of the resurrection exactly what our new bodies will be like.
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