It is quite true that the Hebrew scriptures are the least otherwordly of all religious traditions. Even the Greeks were more concerned with what happens in the afterlife than the Jews. It is my conviction, and, to some extent, my living experience, that as we grow spiritually, we come to the Lord in this life. We are set free from death while still in life, regardless of what external observers see happening to our bodies. From this perspective, what happens to us after the body passes is of much less concern.

"When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun." Who can say what adventures await your dear father? Mine died 30 years ago this Epiphany, when I was 19, and, being quite sinful myself, I dreaded his fate for several years. Then suddenly I was granted a very clear feeling of confidence and peace: my papa was okay.

Scripture requires interpretation, and there is no reason to believe miracles and holy visions ended at some point between the time of Jesus and the time scripture was put to paper. The Holy Spirit is still with us, guiding us. Wait and see.

†

In my day job I write software. I had older PCs which might have failed soon so I took a "virtual copy" of two of them inside a newer and bigger PC. Then I retired the older PCs. These virtual PCs have many advantages. The hardwae has been retired and new hardware is a host to a copy of the software that used to run on the old hardware.

I think the part of me made like God is made possible by the body I have. There is a hardware/software analogy here, helpful perhaps. The accumulation of much of the "I" that is me and the "we" that is us is clearly part of the image we bear. Suppose this software could be observed by a very competent observer and stored. Then the immaterial soul can now be thought of as the software than make me me and we us. The storage of our software can be anywhere our designer wants, ready to be reactivated at the designer's pleasure.

"If the soul is already somewhere while the body is at Oak Lawn Memorial Gardens under soil shaded by imaginary oaks, what point is there in messing around with the body at all, glorified or not?"

This is a difficult question, which even Aquinas discusses extensively and perhaps inconclusively. I would simply chime in with Justin Martyr, from "On the Resurrection": "For what is man but the reasonable animal composed of body and soul? Is the soul by itself man? No; but the soul of man. Would the body be called man? No, but it is called the body of man. If, then, neither of these is by itself man, but that which is made up of the two together is called man, and God has called man to life and resurrection, He has called not a part, but the whole, which is the soul and the body."

I do not think Heaven is supposed to be permanent. Our hope is resurrection. May you be re-united with your father eternally, some day.

"Fool! What you sow does not come to life unles it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, ..." 1 Cor 15:36-7 Read 1 Corinthians and you will see Russell's point made forcefully that we do not believe in the immortality of the soul but in the "resurrection of the body" as the creed states. When you believe in the immortality of the soul, resurrection because meaningless and death is merely a pleasant transition and can therefore be denied its true force. Then it's a short step to the idea that we have aleady been raised to new life in this life and that what we do in the body really doesn't matter and off we go to the Corinthian heresies!

New Testament scholar and Bishop N.T. Wright has written one of the best descriptions of death, immortality, resurrection of the body and heaven in his book "Surprised by Hope." Too many people have fallen prey to Greek and new age philosophy that wants to deny the reality of death and the meaning and power of resurrection.

Man is a body/soul composite which death sunders. The soul enters a new mode of existence alien to its natural locale.Even if the soul ascends to the contemplation of the Beatific Vision in utter rapture, it's state is incomplete, lacking it's proper subject: the human body. Perhaps this evil is expressed most poignantly by the Psalmist: " My soul descends into the depths of Sheol." But the immortality of the soul is not predicated on the body, rather the inverse.

N T Wright indeed has some thoughtful reflections on these matters, and that final image at the end of the Book of Revelation, of the new heavens and new earth -- and the the "new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God" so that "the dwelling of God is with men" --should raise some red flags concerning the "soul" just fluttering off to be with Jesus in the clouds. Why a new earth if our future is simply "in heaven"?

The idea of a future corporeal existence -- surely God's ultimate intent for us cannot differ greatly from his original -- is far more hopeful and exciting for me than that of the cartoonish figure decked out in wings, halo and white robe sitting on the edge of a cloud strumming a harp. With all due respect, if that's all it's going to be I don't wanna go there. But a new earth, freed of the burden of sin and with things to learn and explore, ahh, that's something I can look forward to ... and preach!

There is a set of cultural beliefs about heaven, hell, the soul, and the timing of what hapens when about death. Every culture has them, and they only partially reflect the dominant relgion of the place. In western civilization, we inherited a series of beliefs which is only partly scriptural, or even intelligently derived from scriptural clues. They are the default position in conversation even among many believers, unless we make a specific announcement we are being more precise. I would interpret the comments made to you as little more than polite assertions that God exists and loves us, and agree that they are pretty thin gruel.

I also believe some or all of us have default beliefs about souls or spirits that are biologically driven - a rather primitive, animist "there is an unseen world" attitude. I don't despise that foundation, I welcome it, but I note that it doesn't take us very far. It's good enough for everyday use. When facing actual death or danger our intellect cries out for more. (I believe that even intellect eventually has to throw up its hands and depend on revelation, but that's another story.)

Aquinas held that the event of the incarnation was decided by God ex post facto, that is, in view of Adam's sin. Duns Scotus argued that God in creating the world had included in that decision the incarnation of His Son. I lean towards Duns Scotus. God enfleshed in a definitive sense completes creation, and creation has no ultimate value for us separate from it. And Catholics argue that this enfleshment of God is not only eternal, but that we humans are one with this eternal enfleshment, and why the gift of the Eucharist is the ultimate gift, for to believe in it as Jesus asked us to is the final cap in our understanding that death truly was defeated (thousands ran from this revelation when he announced it, and his apostles stayed not because they could accept it/believe it, but because they had "nowhere else to go").

Catholics also believe in the communion of saints, which, if true, means that those persons declared saints have a consciousness that is NOT, in my view, separate from their flesh, and we can petition them to pray for us. Mary, of course, did not go through the process of what is apparently a separation of flesh from spirit, but what of the saints who did? Does the Church lie in saying they, beginning with Stephen, have life right now in heaven?

Because we are an incarnational religion, this must, in my view, mean there is no separation of body and spirit, that its obvious separation in death is more apparent than real. But how can this be so? It is certainly a mystery, but for me there has been much speculation throughout the years (I have been contemplating death for 45 years, since in 1968 I was faced with the death penalty, of which there was no apparent way out during the process).

The Church teaches that Mary can hear all our prayers, and so can the other saints. Mary appears in different physical forms throughout history, but it is her body, the one she was assumed into heaven with (implying endless mysteries in transfiguration). I am a member of the body of Christ, and so my body (flesh and spirit) is already immortal (flesh and spirit), for my flesh exists in Christ's flesh, made clear Eucharistically. Death has truly been conquered in this revealed fact alone.

But I speculate further: I am convinced that, as science teaches us, energy and matter cannot be destroyed, only transformed. A question: the energy that leaves the body upon death and the energy that remains in the body in its decomposition faze, along with the material aspects of the body involved in the decomposition process, is it possible that there is a mysterious and radical interconnectedness of this matter and energy with the soul, that in fact it is NOT separate from the soul at all? And that this energy and matter is sustained in its interconnecting integrity in Christ, in Christ's body until the end of time when a reconstitution (if you will, a word that subtracts from the mystery and could easily mislead) will miraculously take place?

In other words, it is no coincidence that the phrase "illusion of separateness" is common to most religious traditions East and West, inside and outside Christianity and Judaism.


About a week after my mother died I had an elaborate conversation with her, with HER, and it went on all night until sun break. And that conversation delivered me past the many torments I watched my sisters and brother go through many years.

In a small Russian village there is a religious group that, during the funeral process after a loved one dies, marches through the streets with the casket for three days and chant one thing over and over: "Eternal Memory, Eternal Memory, Eternal Memory". In other words, God knew us in eternity even before we were conceived in our mother's womb. He knows us in eternity. This is why, for example, if a baby is aborted, it is an illusion that the baby died, for death has been radically defeated in the revelation that is Christ. And that child's life in its entirety exists in God's eternal memory, from before its birth and beyond the point where that person utters its affirmative and eternal yes to Christ, in his/her entirety. If a person exists in God’s eternal memory, how could that person not be in any way in eternity?

Nothing can kill us. Not even a hair on our head can be destroyed. That's the revelation. We live eternally in Christ. The illusion of separateness has been conquered.

Sorry to hear about your father.

Another image that Paul (and others) use is that we are sleeping until Christ returns. It seems to me that while we are asleep we have no idea of time. We are raised up -- whether that is instantaneously at the moment of death or thousands of years in the future -- we won't know. It's only when I look at a clock do I know how long I've been asleep. Thus, the "when" of the resurrection of our bodies doesn't concern me much. At funerals I preach the certainty of our resurrection and living forever with Christ.

In the Gospel according to St. Luke, Jesus says to the good thief: "Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise." He didn't say "...at the end of time," or "...at my second coming."

Paul knew imperfectly at the time he wrote ("Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." (1 Cor. 13:12)). Jesus, by contrast, knew of what He spoke when he told us of Lazarus's consciousness in death (Luke 16:19-31).

I don't know exactly how life after death will be; nor do I know how time after death fits with time on Earth, but I trust in Jesus's words.

"Thus after death the soul goes to its bedchamber and to its peace, and while it is sleeping it does not realize its sleep, and God preserves indeed the awakening soul. God is able to awake Elijah, Moses, and others, and so control them, so that they will live. But how can that be? That we do not know; we satisfy ourselves with the example of bodily sleep, and with what God says: it is a sleep, a rest, and a peace. He who sleeps naturally knows nothing of that which happens in his neighbor's house; and nevertheless, he still is living, even though, contrary to the nature of life, he is unconscious in his sleep. Exactly the same will happen also in that life, but in another and a better way." -- Martin Luther

Among other persons, such as my brother Russ, I have ongoing struggle with time and death. We are called even now as the baptized to walk faithfully in the now and not yet. As the thief on the cross who heard that "Today you will be with me in Paradise." was already there... alongside God, I wonder about whether we instantly upon baptism are then, and for all time, become part of the new creation. I believe that even as we struggle mentally with time and death, it may be that we receive a new body upon our demise... and it cannot be destroyed. Thus it is we struggle... seeing these things dimly; whereas, God, the eternal One, does not.

I read recently that the American Psychiatric Association is prepared to define grief longer than two weeks as an illness (http://our-cancer.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/2012/02/21/is-grief-an-illness/ is one example).

Such denial of death is, ironically, the direct result of embracing the both culture of death and the idolatry of youth. So do wicked, pagan men and women dismiss real disorders such as homosexuality and post-abortion syndrome, and invent others such as homophobia and the "illness of grief."

Mr. Saltzmann, may God strengthen you in this time of loss and grief, and may God's comfort surround you and lift you up. He will wipe away every tear someday, and will dismember death, our mortal enemy.

I spoke to soon about the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). It seems the culture of greed is competing with the culture of death to twist the truth in this pervasive source of information. Turns out that 57% of contributors have ties to the pharmaceutical industry, thus creating a conflict of interest contributing to a bias for quick medication of all kinds of natural and normal, if painful, conditions like "grief illness." See http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21580-many-authors-of-psychiatry-bible-have-industry-ties.html

I wonder what the DSM says about bearing false witness and covetousness?

I have often wrestled with the concept of the resurrection of the body. Gil, though, in his comment above, came very close to the idea I was trying to express in my first comment. If death has been truly conquered, than death itself may be relegated to the realm of illusion--the illusion of separateness. We already have eternal life, but need to move beyond the world of illusion to understand it. Now, I thoroughly expected to be pilloried as some type of gnostic for suggesting this, but I've been spared that so far.

If the body is to be resurrected at some future time, though, I cannot believe it will be this same biological entity I live in today, which has obviously been custom designed for life on planet Earth. Would I have the same crooked teeth, because when I was growing up parents of working class families didn't send their kids to orthodontists? Would I still have the arthritic problem I have in one foot because of a motorcycle accident in Africa? Would I have to worry about feeding the organism several times a day? This could fall well short of paradise!

Fortunately, Saint Paul has a radically different interpretation of the resurrection of the body. In First Corinthians, he says, "There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies....So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable....It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body....flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God..."

This is clear enough. This flawed, decaying biological organism is not what will be raised--at least not in its present form.

Apparently we prefer to mask death to comfort us rather than bluntly and boldly facing death's reality in Christ. So we don't go to funerals but celebrations of life. We surround the casket with the symbols of the person's interests in life as if they now life to pursue their hobbies and dreams unhindered by the burden of flesh. And we laugh at the stories we tell and we smile at the remembrance and go home and say to ourselves "it was a life well lived and a good time was had by all..." As long as we continue to minimize death, we will diminish the resurrection. I love the petition for funerals (from LBW and adapted in LSB) where we pray for the mourners who look forward to our own joyful resurrection with those whom we love who have departed in faith...

Pastor Larry A. Peters said:
...we smile at the remembrance and go home and say to ourselves "it was a life well lived and a good time was had by all..."

How many bereaved people have you been in contact with lately? The son of my wife's colleague at the university hurled himself to his death from a tall building last year, and my wife can still sometimes hear her sobbing in the office next to hers. The son of our good friends in Chicago was killed last summer when his car went out of control on the Interstate and hit an oncoming semi. We still have to call regularly to console and council them.

But, in any case, who are we to say how long, or in what manner, a person should grieve? Many years ago, my aunt in Oklahoma was shot in the back during a holdup at the gas station where she was clerking. (I mentioned that I come from a rather "redneck" working class family, didn't I?) I was profoundly grieved after the event and simply couldn't get over the horror of what had happened. However, I was sitting, rather morosely, one day a week or so later when an absolutely remarkable thing happened. I felt a prayer well up from my innermost depths. But it was a prayer powered by pure spiritual energy. I began talking to
God, asking that my aunt's soul be received by grace. I was not praying alone; the Spirit itself was praying through me! There was power and wonder and depth in this prayer that I had never felt before. This power, I later realized, was resurrection power. It lifted me above all the darkness, horror, loss, and evil of my aunt's murder. I came out of it knowing that my aunt HAD been received by God and was safe in His hands. Instead of grief, I actually felt joyful afterwards. What I've learned is that this resurrection power trumps all the lower forces of this mortal world. And we don't have to wait for some future time to experience it. It can be with us any time.

So don't judge the grieving process of others, or their seeming lack of it, because it doesn't suit your theological proclivities. You may have no idea what is going on within them.

Rick,

I agree with what you write, and you are as far removed from Gnosticism as you can get, for you are rejecting the mind/body/soul split required first and foremost in Gnosticism.

Christianity for many centuries has been under the spell of Platonism and other abstract intellectual systems, but, ironically, in being open to Platonism and all other worldly systems of discerning the human predicament, Christianity has benefitted much, for God is immanent, and we should be open to receive God in all that we see, hear, feel and discern. It has its dangers, of course, but when committed to living in Christ through faith, one need not fear at all. Instead, we witness the marvels of God's providential way in his desire that all be saved. In other words, no one anywhere is left alone in any worldly system—mysticism is inherent in all worldly systems, including atheism (look at the work of Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni and a host of other atheist artists), and why persons from every system can find their way to Christ who in grace (offered by the Holy Spirit when he chooses) opens and expands their visions beyond words and images into absolute Love. In whatever system one finds oneself imprisoned, God will provide a means to exit those prisons and move deeply into his life, and the life of Christ is as deep as one can go, and where one can indeed live in eternity here on earth in God's Eternal Now (what we call a saintly life), where one can have confidence in the arrival of the Beatific Vision that awaits us in that final arrival, the parousia at the end of time, but never losing sight of the theological fact that Jesus is our parousia in this Eternal now.

Of course, we have not reached the end of time yet, where the entire universe will be transfigured, which is tantamount in our limited knowing as the world passing away. In fact, in faith we should be dying daily to this world (passing away), for the Kingdom is here in Christ. The more we let go and allow ourselves to be members of the body of Christ (and why I experience Eucharist as the greatest gift), the more we exist in God's Eternal Now with a confidence in the final transfiguration of the universe, where we will have new bodies indeed, but, as I speculated earlier, mysteriously they will not be disconnected/separate from the bodies we now exist in. That cannot be explained in the logic we are limited to, but the mere fact that Jesus could not at times be recognized in his transfigured body, we, too, cannot imagine what our transfigured bodies will look like, except to know that they will be absolutely beautiful, not marred by sin in any way. But we do have some clues that speak to that transfiguration; for example, Mary appearing to persons physically in the cultures they reside in, whether it be Incan, Japanese, Western or Eastern European or whatever. We thus know that the transfigured physical appearance tells us very little, or next to nothing, about the transfigured physicality of our everlasting physical form, but we can rightly speculate that that physical form is not separate from the physicality of our existence now, for Mary was assumed totally into heaven, having not lost anything of her earthly physicality. This, no doubt, is a great mystery, but it is what makes me suspect that even our decomposing bodies or burned bodies are not separated from our souls in heaven or hell, that Christ's body (which totally completes ours, which we are physically/spiritually united with), somehow contains everything that we are creatively constituted with, mind/body/soul, for God pronounced that it (Creation) is good, and he would not destroy what is good. Degeneration and death was a curse that fell upon man when he rebelled against God, but that curse has been undone in Christ. We are no longer subjected to degeneration and death in Christ: that’s the great revelation of Christ’s resurrection: degeneration and death have truly been defeated.

The reason I am with Duns Scotus in believing the Incarnation was from all eternity decided by God is because in believing this we see clearly, as Paul saw, that the Fall was a happy fault, that we are taken much higher than where we were in the Garden. We have moved into, in this Eternal Now, the 8th Day of Creation, one of Christ’s important titles. In other words, before the Incarnation no one was able to move to the highest ground; in some fashion there just wasn’t any way to transcend the Law’s judgment. Christ truly is the completion of Creation and the fulfillment of the Law, where God is enfleshed in Creation, and if Jesus’ body was not destroyed, then neither can ours be destroyed, only transfigured, and the decomposition of our flesh can be a stage in that transfiguration (forced as we are to imagine inside time, which has also been transcended in Christ’s body), but is already complete in Christ, for we are his body!

Death truly has been defeated, not partially, but absolutely defeated! Somehow Stephen knew this beyond human knowing when he was being stoned to death, and why he could do nothing but smile. And why Aquinas on his deathbed when he glimpsed it would say, “My Summa is all straw.”

Gil:

I appreciate your long, thoughtful comment above. I read it slowly, it being rife with such provocative ideas. I was particularly impressed with your concept of God's grace finding ways to bring people to Christ from "any worldly system," even atheism, and the subsequent mystical journey beyond all concepts, words, and images to Absolute Love. The driving force for people trapped in worldly systems is, of course, the realization that they need to escape. "There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief," as Bob Dylan wrote. And it was later that he found Jesus.

But back to the topic of the resurrection of the body. My mother was adamant that she did not want to be cremated after she died. No true Christian would allow such a thing, she insisted. Her reasoning was that if the body were totally destroyed, God would have nothing left to resurrect. Of course, when she died at the age of 94, I honored her wishes and she was buried in a cemetary in San Diego. But I sometimes used to argue with her about the anti-cremation idea. Did it follow that people who were incinerated in the nuclear fireball at Nagasaki had no hope of eternal life? (The bomb detonated more or less directly over Japan's largest Catholic community.) When they found the wreck of the Titanic, there was not even a trace of bones from the passengers who went down with her. What about them? If a person is cremated and the ashes scattered at sea, does it matter one whit for the resurrection? I certainly don't think so, but I'd be curious to know what you think about that.

Dear Pastor Russ,

You've shared your father's journey toward eternity over the past year. I simply sand with you and your family as you grieve the loss of your father, and celebrate his entry into the Eternal Presence, where there is no more tears or pain.

Despite all the theological talk, I think this comes down to simply, we are the children of Adam and Eve, expelled from the Garden of Eden until Christ returns in Glory. Thus, we suffer death, and in watching and losing our loved ones, simply, we suffer.

Prov 30 woman

Rick,

I will try to answer your question that ultimately cannot be answered for it is an abiding mystery, but the point of theological discussion is to help us get closer to a sense of what that mystery means, perhaps even understanding it better in some degree:

From our evolutionary history, especially at the stage where we began in microbial mats of coexisting bacteria and archaea, substances in the first stages of God's Creation of human life, it is evident that we humans not only miraculously evolved to a state incomprehensible to the mind, but that we were at some point mysteriously endowed via God's breath with a consciousness that could reflect on itself and see either an important aspect of God's image available to us in that self-reflection in our limited reasoning ability, or an image we could invent representing some aspect of self in our own image separate from God (all forms of idolatry from the beginning are rooted in self worship). Later in this evolutionary history Jesus arrives who is not only a person who is made in the image and likeness of God, but actually reveals who the Father is as far as we are capable of knowing him, and he also, it turns out, is actually the Son of God, i.e., God himself. His body, like ours, is the peak of creation, constituted by all the elemental processes involved in God creating us, and, as a human being, the peak of Creation, and, as God, in some definitive physical sense the last stage in the completion of Creation, the 8th day of Creation, and this why when Adam fell as the peak of an evolved Creation, all of Creation fell. And when Creation is not only restored in Christ, the new Adam, but is transcended in transfiguration (presaged and even mysteriously present in Christ before his resurrection, as evidenced on Mount Tabor), this entering the 8th Day of Creation occurs in some fashion and some degree (although the mystery transcends measuring cups) throughout all of Creation in this restoration/transfiguration, including every element of our bodies.

How matter and energy transforms on earth can in no way interfere with us being in this 8th day of Creation, Christ’s body, the beginning (but including the completion) of the transfiguration of all matter and energy (Jesus’ miracles, as one example, especially when he raises persons from the dead, especially Lazarus who was in a high state of decay), something already complete in Christ, which means whether our flesh upon death is buried in a field or burned up in a crematorium, it is inescapably participating in Christ's transfigured flesh, for we ARE Christ's body.

This mystery cannot be explained, but I have certainty in faith that we are Christ’s body, and therefore we are complete in heaven, for how could we not be complete in Christ? The grand mystery, though, in trying to answer your question, is that, as I speculate, our bodies in the aftermath of death, whether apparently annihilated in flames, degeneration or any other form of destruction, in fact is not separate from the body of Christ, that he sustains every molecule of our existence, including every molecule of every hair on our heads, in his body. Therefore, what appears as annihilation of the body in any fashion, even dismembered bodies of babies in trashcans, is a looking on our “destroyed" flesh through a glass darkly.

Quote: How many bereaved people have you been in contact with lately?

Hundreds. What I was referencing was the neatly packaged way our cottage death industry of funeral homes and pop psychology attempts to mask the seriousness of death and the real pain of grief. Either you did not read what I wrote or you read it through another lens to make it sound like something completely different.

The debate is really heated up. But i agree, God knew us in eternity even before we were conceived in our mother's womb. He knows us in eternity. This is why, for example, if a baby is aborted, it is an illusion that the baby died, for death has been radically defeated in the revelation that is Christ.