Kevin Clarke has an article on the America website titled "My children think tech will let them live forever. Our faith tells us why we shouldn’t try," where Katherine Nielsen and Stanley Kopacz have posted comments. Here is a fragment from the article (italics added) that caught my attention:
My church indeed helps with understanding and accepting the inevitable and not just because of the expectation of life everlasting it heralds, a belief I frankly struggle with all the time . . .
I once asked my older sister, the most steadfast and orthodox Catholic among me and my three siblings, if she has any sense (i.e., feeling, as opposed to belief) of the continued existence of our parents, who have both long since passed away. She said no. I don't either.
I certainly don't want technology to extend my life indefinitely, but I find Catholic teaching about "eternal life" utterly vague and rather frightening. Eternal suffering, which I can't bring myself to believe in, is nevertheless easier to imagine than eternal bliss.
I think everyone struggles, to a degree, with belief in life hereafter. I am fascinated with accounts of near- death experiences, but the bottom line is that they're subjective, one person's account of what they think it is like on the other side.
ReplyDeleteI find the thought of not existing frightening, which is illogical, because you're not going to know it if you cease to exist. But I would find it more frightening to have a kind of immortality which the article discusses. One's body parts wear out. It seems like the bionic people would have to endure constantly having something replaced or fixed. Or what would be even worse, if they were somehow able to transfer someone's consciousness into an electronic or robotic creation. I would find that a type of hell I read too much Isaac Asimov in my youth. Another thing is that this faux immortality would be something only rich people could do.
In the end I just have to trust that what Jesus promised is true.
"Eternal bliss" is an abstract concept that's hard to wrap one's mind around. Maybe it's easier just to think of heaven as a place where we live in God's peace, where we are in the company of loved ones, no more pain or strife. Mary and the saints presumably enjoy the Beatific Vision, but yet they are still able to pray on behalf of us earthlings, so I think a whole bunch of things can be true at the same time.
DeleteSome years ago (I am not sure when) I stumbled across a fascinating article by N. T. Wright in Christianity Today titled "Heaven Is Not Our Home." (I think it's behind a firewall.) It is from Wright's book titled Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, which I have but haven't yet finished. The first two paragraphs make his point quite clearly:
DeleteThere is no agreement in the church today about what happens to people when they die. Yet the New Testament is crystal clear on the matter: In a classic passage, Paul speaks of "the redemption of our bodies" (Rom. 8:23). There is no room for doubt as to what he means: God's people are promised a new type of bodily existence, the fulfillment and redemption of our present bodily life. The rest of the early Christian writings, where they address the subject, are completely in tune with this.
The traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage, postmortem journey represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope. Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story of God's ultimate purposes. If we squeeze it to the margins, as many have done by implication, or indeed, if we leave it out altogether, as some have done quite explicitly, we don't just lose an extra feature, like buying a car that happens not to have electrically operated mirrors. We lose the central engine, which drives it and gives every other component its reason for working.
N. T. Wright is Anglican, but as far as I can tell, this is consistent with Catholic teaching. I think all Christians believe in the general (or universal) resurrection, yet it us very unusual to think of anything further along than going to heaven (or hell).
The resurrection of the body is an article of the Creed, so yes, that is Catholic teaching. I think the reason we don't think too much about it is that we figure that if our souls get saved, our bodies are God's problem. For that matter so are our souls.
DeleteThere is a school of thought that in the life to come the physical creation will be perfected rather than done away with. I have some neighbors who are Jehovah's Witnesses, and from what little I know that seems to be their belief.
I keep up with my medical support. I am not interested in prolonging my life, only being functional and even useful for the duration. I trust that the universe we see is only a small part of a larger reality and that consciousness is more fundamental to existence than derivative.
ReplyDeleteAs for rich guys who are trying to obviate death, only an a-hole like Jeff Bezos would want to be an a-hole forever.
"only an a-hole like Jeff Bezos would want to be an a-hole forever." Thanks for the laugh, Stanley!
DeleteMy pleasure, Katherine.
DeleteI think that the after- life will be must different than it has been conceived.
ReplyDeleteFor example, although I think it is unlikely that God will “torture” people in purgatory, it seems likely that many, perhaps even most will experience some painful adjustments over a period of time as we give up our limited visions.
I don’t think that it will be a horde of people adoring a vision of God.
Rather we experience God here on earth mostly in the form of creation and especially in the love of others. What I have noticed is that our ability to see the divine in life and others is not something objective and under our control but very much a part of our relationship with God and others.
God can allow us to see the transcendent in some people and not others, and can allow some people and not others to see the transcendent in us. I think heaven will be more of that but on a gradual basis. That we will discover that earth has been a novitiate for a much longer (eternal?) period of growth and development.
The research in the book Friends suggests that we can relate to only a certain number of people at a time, about 150 composed of five close people, another ten who know and support us well than about another thirty whom we see for less than an hour each quarter, and the rest whom we know very slightly.
What might God do to allow us to process more people. Maybe this is something we can do only serially, so that say every ten years we will get another fitty people to process. I think we encounter God by getting to know people deeply.
Is heaven a social place? I can't think of a reason that we should have bodies after the Second Coming if not to interact with other persons as well as with God. The parable of the Wedding Feast suggests that life with God is not a solitary experience. But on the other hand, God tells us that resurrected people neither marry nor are given in marriage, so apparently are bodies aren't for *that* anymore.
ReplyDeleteWell the only thing we know about resurrected bodies is what Jesus' body was like post-resurrection. He occupied space and had substance. People could touch him. He could eat. But he could go through walls and be anywhere he wanted to be.
ReplyDeleteOn thing which always intrigued me were the transfiguration accounts. Moses and Elijah appeared in a glorified state. Did they have corporeal bodies? It doesn't say. To me they were proof that everyone didn't just hang out in Limbo in kind of a ghostly state until after the resurrection.
I guess I don’t take the scriptures as literally as some. I tend to look at a lot of scripture stories as metaphorical, not as historical accounts.
ReplyDeleteI view some scriptural stories as .metaphor and not as historical accounts. For instance a whole bunch of Old Testament stories, such as the Genesis creation accounts. Or the books of Job and Jonah which are more in the category of literature rather than history. But when something like the transfiguration accounts appear in the three synoptic gospels because three people said they witnessed it, I tend to believe they saw what they said they saw.
ReplyDeleteExcept that the people who wrote the gospels were not eyewitnesses to Jesus’s life. They didn’t personally witness whatever happened that became the story of transfigured. They wrote decades later, based on stories that had circulated during those decades. I am not much on biblical history, but weren’t all three synoptic gospels based on the same source? One which has never been found?
ReplyDeleteI am not much on biblical history, but weren’t all three synoptic gospels based on the same source? One which has never been found?
ReplyDeleteThe most widely held theory (although a minority of scholars disagree) is that Mark's gospel was written first, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the synoptic gospels because they are so similar and may be placed side by side. A source of sayings (usually designated Q) is thought to have been used by both Matthew and Luke, although no copy of this hypothetical document has survived. It is reconstructed from Matthew and Luke.
The scholarly consensus (again, not universally held) is that none of the four evangelists were eyewitnesses. (Probably the most frequently cited work by a dissenter is Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham.)
So there is only one account (not by an eyewitness) of the transfiguration (Mark's), which is repeated pretty much verbatim by Matthew and Luke.
This is not in the least controversial, and it is basically the view found in the notes and introductions to the New American Bible (Rev2e) found on the USCCB website. (Very conservative Catholics are highly critical of the NAB, some going so far as to call it heretical.)
[Excerpt from the NAB introduction to Luke]
ReplyDeleteAmong the likely sources for the composition of this gospel (Lk 1:3) were the Gospel of Mark, a written collection of sayings of Jesus known also to the author of the Gospel of Matthew (Q; see Introduction to Matthew), and other special traditions that were used by Luke alone among the gospel writers. Some hold that Luke used Mark only as a complementary source for rounding out the material he took from other traditions. Because of its dependence on the Gospel of Mark and because details in Luke’s Gospel (Lk 13:35a; 19:43–44; 21:20; 23:28–31) imply that the author was acquainted with the destruction of the city of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70, the Gospel of Luke is dated by most scholars after that date; many propose A.D. 80–90 as the time of composition.
[Excerpt from the NAB introduction to Matthew]
ReplyDeleteThe position of the Gospel according to Matthew as the first of the four gospels in the New Testament reflects both the view that it was the first to be written, a view that goes back to the late second century A.D., and the esteem in which it was held by the church; no other was so frequently quoted in the noncanonical literature of earliest Christianity. Although the majority of scholars now reject the opinion about the time of its composition, the high estimation of this work remains. . . .
The questions of authorship, sources, and the time of composition of this gospel have received many answers, none of which can claim more than a greater or lesser degree of probability. The one now favored by the majority of scholars is the following.
The ancient tradition that the author was the disciple and apostle of Jesus named Matthew (see Mt 10:3) is untenable because the gospel is based, in large part, on the Gospel according to Mark (almost all the verses of that gospel have been utilized in this), and it is hardly likely that a companion of Jesus would have followed so extensively an account that came from one who admittedly never had such an association rather than rely on his own memories. The attribution of the gospel to the disciple Matthew may have been due to his having been responsible for some of the traditions found in it, but that is far from certain.
The unknown author, whom we shall continue to call Matthew for the sake of convenience, drew not only upon the Gospel according to Mark but upon a large body of material (principally, sayings of Jesus) not found in Mark that corresponds, sometimes exactly, to material found also in the Gospel according to Luke. This material, called “Q” (probably from the first letter of the German word Quelle, meaning “source”), represents traditions, written and oral, used by both Matthew and Luke. Mark and Q are sources common to the two other synoptic gospels; hence the name the “Two-Source Theory” given to this explanation of the relation among the synoptics.
In addition to what Matthew drew from Mark and Q, his gospel contains material that is found only there. This is often designated “M,” written or oral tradition that was available to the author. Since Mark was written shortly before or shortly after A.D. 70 (see Introduction to Mark), Matthew was composed certainly after that date, which marks the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans at the time of the First Jewish Revolt (A.D. 66–70), and probably at least a decade later since Matthew’s use of Mark presupposes a wide diffusion of that gospel. The post-A.D. 70 date is confirmed within the text by Mt 22:7, which refers to the destruction of Jerusalem.
Don’t forget John.
ReplyDeleteIt has material which is very similar to the synoptic Gospels as well as material which is very different from the synoptic Gospels. While the majority of scholars think it is much later than the synoptic Gospels, a minority of scholars think it might have been the earliest Gospel, but not one that received wide circulation as did Mark and Q.
One of the reasons for thinking John might be early is that much of historical details are more plausible. In John Jesus goes back and forth to Jerusalem with a ministry that stretches over at least three years. This is in sharp contrast with the Synoptic Gospels where Jesus ministry takes place mostly in Galilee with a final journey to Jerusalem and could have taken place within one year.
As a social scientist the most plausible explanation is that Jesus spent most of his time within the safety of his native Galilee while going up to Jerusalem on all the major feasts where he could work the crowds both on the journey up and the return as well as the pilgrims from around the world that came to Jerusalem for the major feasts.
Thanks David and Jack for the refresher course. I did remember that the never-found source is called Q. Anyway, the reality is that the three accounts of the transfiguration are not by three separate eyewitnesses, but by three writers who basically used the same source, which may or may not have been written by an eyewitness. Or may have been written by a proponent of the Jesus movement who was hoping to persuade more Jews to join the movement by using Moses and Elijah. It is not a very solid reason, for me anyway, to believe that our souls will be rejoined with our bodies. It also doesn’t answer any of my questions about this hoped for ( by some) reunion of our bodies with our souls in some undefinable place called heaven. I tend to trust the message - the teachings - attributed to Jesus, far more than accepting the settings, miracles etc that surround the gospels in a literal way.
ReplyDeleteI don't have a problem with the material cited by David and Anne, or the fact that the gospels were set in writing after the lifetime of the actual apostles. But..I do know something about oral traditions, since my mother was a writer whose specialty was putting together a coherent account of local history from oral accounts which had been passed down with very sketchy written record about events that happened over a century ago. Sometimes the accounts would vary, based on who was telling them. But the historian's task is to suss out the truth as much as possible. The truth matters, and it's in there somewhere. Its not like anyone had security footage, and the accounts have been filtered through people's memories. But that doesn't mean that what they remember didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteAbout the transfiguration, I realize that the accounts weren't set in writing by three different witnesses, that the source was likely the same for the three synoptic gospels. My point was that there were three eye witnesses, Peter, James, and John. And they were the sources for the source. I assume a level of seriousness of the people who were trying to get the story right.
ReplyDeleteWell, that’s the difference between you and me - you take it all on faith and I do not. I suspect that a lot of stuff was added and subtracted from the various accounts of scripture during the decades following Jesus’s death. His followers were proselytizing, after all, trying to convert people to their own beliefs. So the stories were likely enhanced.
ReplyDeleteI well remember playing “telephone” as a kid at parties. I’m quite sure that you probably played it too. The first person would whisper something to the person next to them, who would whisper to the next person etc. The last in line would then say what he or she heard. Generally it was so different from the original comment that it caused great hilarity. I look at the messages, Jesus’s teachings, outside of the miracles etc.The miracle stories have a point, valuable messages, but don’t need to be understood literally in order to grasp the fundamental message. All people want to live forever. Since the human body eventually dies, it is a normal human response to NOT believe that our souls don’t continue to exist in some way, that our essential selves, our essences, are annihilated. I want to believe this too. But I don’t need to believe in the resurrection of the body to be comforted by a belief - a hope, really - that somehow the WHO of who I am will not be totally snuffed out. But for me it is more hope than belief. While my body is alive, though, I try to heed the wisdom and truth of what Jesus taught about how we should live. What comes after? I truly don’t know.
For what it's worth, there's also parallel channels. An old way to improve the signal to noise ratio from a detector was to feed the electrical signal into three amplifiers instead of one and then the outputs combined.. The signal is increased by a factor of three. The random noise by the square root of three, or approximately 1.7. The signal to noise ratio of one channel is increased by 1.7. Of course, the telephone game is played by very restrictive rules. It would be interesting to see how it would work if three people each whispered to the next three and so forth. This would be more like how things actually work.
ReplyDeleteI might add that, according to all the police procedural son who v and in novels, eyewitness accounts are considered to be highly unreliable. Three eyewitnesses can produce wildly varying accounts.
ReplyDeleteProcedurals on tv ….
ReplyDeleteI am a big fan of Joan Chittister, OSB. I have many of her books, which are among those I re-read. This poem was in today’s email message from Joan Chittister. I subscribe to it. It’s free. ;)
ReplyDeleteLife After Death
These things I know:
How the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
So that in a forest
even a dead tree casts a shadow
and the leaves fall one by one
and the branches break in the wind
and the bark peels off slowly
and the trunk cracks
and the rain seeps in through the cracks
and the trunk falls to the ground
and the moss covers it
and in the spring the rabbits find it
and build their nest
inside the dead tree
so that nothing is wasted in nature
or in love.
—Laura Gilpin
I still maintain that the truth matters, and it's in there somewhere.
ReplyDeleteEyewitnesses to crimes aren't really relevant. A crime happens quickly, there's an element of surprise, the perpetrators and victims are strangers to the witnesses. I never witnessed a crime. I have witnessed weddings and I remember who got married to whom.
ReplyDeleteI was called in as a witness to a very serious traffic accident. A friend of mine witnessed the same accident. We were kept apart until after both of us had testified. There was a good reason for that.
DeleteYes - but sometimes it’s pretty impossible to actually KNOW what the truth is - as opposed to what one BELIEVES that it is. My own (humble 😉) opinion is that no human being can truly KNOW what the truth is when it comes to religious beliefs, especially when it comes to an afterlife- or no afterlife. To heaven or hell. It shouldn’t matter though - the important thing is to try one’s best to follow Jesus’s ( and other wisdom teachers) teachings to love - for its own sake. Not just to be working for some eternal reward for good behavior. Not to being « good » simply out of fear of hell.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing a teenager hit by an automobile at high speed, stretched into an X by the centrifugal forces as he spun a hundred feet into the darkness. Happened fifty years ago but I can replay it anytime in my head. Didn't know the kid's name or that of the driver or the make of the car.
ReplyDeleteSomething like that you would never forget, even though you might want to.
DeleteWe tend to remember things that are associated with a particular day or occasion, like the tornado sirens that went off the night of my high school graduation.
The eternal part isn't about getting rewarded although that's how it's often sold. It's about what is good not being annihilated. Otherwise, what's the point.
ReplyDelete"The scholarly consensus (again, not universally held) is that none of the four evangelists were eyewitnesses. (Probably the most frequently cited work by a dissenter is Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham.)"
ReplyDeleteIf this topic of the role of eyewitness accounts is of interest, it's definitely worth reading. If nothing else, it's a useful corrective to what might be deemed some of the excesses of other ways of analyzing the biblical texts.
In my view, the heart of the book is a critique of form criticism, a mode of biblical interpretation which is quite popular among scholars and preachers. Some form critics have held, among other things, that there was sufficient historical distance between the actual words and deeds of Jesus, and the recorded texts, that we shouldn't assume anything in the texts is true as written; according to this view, the process of transmission, especially in oral tradition, is too unreliable. This belief in the unreliability of the earliest generations' transmission of the tradition has led to the so-called quest for the historical Jesus, in which scholars try to suss out which bits of the Gospels are his actual words, and which were garbled in transmission, or embellished (or even created out of whole cloth) by later tellers/writers/redactors/editors. Bauckham makes some pretty good arguments against that view.
Regarding the topic in the original post of "eternal bliss": I think we tend to draw too bright a line between heaven and earth. Some pretty wise people have noted that what Jesus preached was the in-breaking of the heavenly kingdom into our earthly society. The account of the baptism of Jesus, in which the heavens "opened", would seem to represent the breaking down of the barrier between where God dwells and where we dwell. This is, in fact, one way to think of the Incarnation.
ReplyDeleteI think understanding this "blurring of the line" between earthly life and heavenly life may be the key (or a key) to spiritual grace and wisdom. In seeking to unite ourselves to Jesus during our lives here on earth, we're preparing ourselves for the unity that is promised us beyond our lives.
Personally, I don't think we take the call to unity with Jesus nearly seriously enough. I think the early church understood it much better than we do now. Of course, we Catholics are strong on the Eucharist as a way to achieve sacramental unity with Jesus, and I am all for the Eucharist; but I would advise people to simply start with prayer.
I think this business of uniting ourselves with Jesus is precisely what those spiritual masters mean who advise us, when we pray, to talk less and listen more. I think the spiritual "listening" is meant largely in a metaphorical sense: I take the advice to be, to open ourselves - to be receptive - to God's presence. To join ourselves spiritually to God.
I think this is what St. Paul was getting at in a famous passage in Galatians, in which he wrote, "For through the law I died to the law, that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me." Paul had ceased to live for himself ("no longer I"); instead, his life had been transformed such that now he viewed himself, not as a vessel of himself, but as a vessel of Jesus. I think Paul was very close to life in heaven already.
"I think we tend to draw too bright a line between heaven and earth." Good point, Jim. Definitely food for thought.
DeleteThat's interesting, Jim. I will have to see if I can find Bauckam's book.
ReplyDelete