Module 6_Lecture_LIFE AND DEATH IN CHRISTIANITY
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LIFE AND DEATH IN CHRISTIANITY
In the first century CE, Jesus, a charismatic figure emerged in Palestine. He attracted a loyal following who saw him as the promised Messiah. This man was titled rabbi, prophet, and Son of
God. In the Greek-speaking world he came to known as Christos, meaning the ‘anointed one,” which is a translation of the Hebrew “Messiah.”
Jesus Christ was born a Jew. His early followers were Jews.
Christians accepted the Tanakh of the Jews as scripture. They called it Old Testament, and they added the New Testament. All together the Holy Bible of Christianity records a history of the Jewish people, their patriarchs, and the life of Christ and his disciples. The Gospels provide the most detailed information about Jesus. Jews relied on their teachers (Pharisees or Sadducees) to interpret the Tanakh. Jesus preached from a personal understanding of the word of God. In some cases, his interpretations agreed with the rabbis, in others it differed.
1.
Resurrection in the Christian Bible
It was Jesus’s death and his resurrection that proved, for Christians, Jesus’s divine status.
Romans nailed Jesus to a cross for political sedition. His death and later his resurrection are central to the understanding of Christianity.
The Gospels refer to an afterlife much more often than the Hebrew Bible had. It assumes an understanding of the Jewish concepts of resurrection and judgment. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus makes explicit mention of the fires of hell that wait the unworthy.
The idea of a division of the world to come between the heavenly Kingdom of God and the torturous underworld of hell stems directly from the period within which Jesus was born. At that time the traditional Jewish view of a shadowy Sheol was giving way to varied state of torment or reward depending upon how one led one’s individual life.
Jesus preached a philosophy of compassion for the less fortunate, encouraging those who can afford it to give to the poor. He also assured the sufferers that they will be taken care of in the next life.
In one passage, Jesus makes a clear statement about the afterlife. The Sadducees, conservative
Jews who opposed the notion of resurrection, proposed the hypothetical question of a woman who was obliged by tradition to marry her husband’s brother after his death. The husband had 7 brothers, each of whom died one after the other, while the wife married each in his turn. The
question was after the resurrection, which brother would the woman be married to? In his answer, Jesus supported the notion of resurrection. There would be no marriage in heaven. In other words, the state of humankind after resurrection was different from that 1
before death. Men and women, according to Jesus, would be “as angels in heaven,” which meant that heavenly conditions would differ from earthly conditions.
All 4 Gospels mention Jesus’s death and resurrection. They tell a story of the bodily resurrection
of Christ, not a spiritual one. In John, the resurrected Jesus invites Thomas, the sole doubter among the apostles, to touch his wounds.
In other passages, though, Jesus seems to appear out of thin air. In Luke, the resurrected Jesus is described to two of the disciples in “another form.” He travels with the unknowing apostles for a short time in the form of a person they do not recognize after which time he vanishes before their eyes. It is in Paul’s epistles that we find the clearest statements about life after death. For Paul, the post-resurrection man is fundamentally changed from his present state. The corruptible, physical body is dead and gone and in its place is a fresh, incorruptible spiritual body. Paul believed that through his conversion he had been transformed into a higher state of being that would only be fully realized upon his death. All believers in Jesus would share the same fate on the Last Day. In short, in Christianity, when human bodies are resurrected, they will be identical to our earthly bodies, yet transformed.
2.
Christian Eschatology: The Kingdom of God
Eschatology deals with the study of the last things (eschaton in Greek).
The eschaton is the Kingdom of God.
Christians believe that the Kingdom of God has already been initiated by Jesus’s salvific ministry, death, and resurrection, and that it is continually infused by the accompaniment of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Kingdom of God is already here and now because of Jesus’s sacrifice, but the Kingdom of God will finally be realized at the end of time when Jesus returns.
Broadly speaking, Christianity teaches that human death is a consequence of sin. Because Christ conquered death, to live in Christ is to transcend death. Sin and original sin are central categories of Christian understandings of salvation and the afterlife. Because all humans are born in a status of sin, they all require salvation through Jesus Christ. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus saves humankind from the original sin that entered this world at the beginning of times.
The original sin is symbolically depicted in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when they disobeyed God’s command not to eat from the tree of knowledge. In simpler terms, the original sin means that it is easier for humans to sin than to do good.
For Irenaeus, born in the 2
nd
century and one of the earliest Christian theologians, Christ’s incarnation was necessary to restore humanity in the image and likeness of God. Jesus’s 2
obedience replaced and atoned for Adam’s disobedience. Similarly, Mary’s obedience when she
accepted her role as the mother of Jesus undid the damage inflicted by Eve’s disobedience. In short, humans’ salvation was the recovery through Christ of what was lost in Adam, namely the image and likeness of God. 3.
What happens just after death? Is There a Purgatory or Not?
The Parousia or Jesus’s second coming is a future event that concludes history. It is believed that with the second coming of Christ, the dead will be resurrected as the body reunites with the soul. A final judgment would then occur. One important question remained: what happens just after death? Is there an intermediate state of death between individual death and the Parousia?
a.
The Notion of Purgatory and its Development before the sixteenth century (i. e. before the Reformation):
In the fourth century, St Augustine of Hippo, an important church father, addressed the growing concern of the time regarding the true fate of humans between death and resurrection. He proclaimed that at death the soul left the body for an intermediary state where it awaited the coming resurrection. The body itself was no longer important as it was the soul that increasingly held meaning. Only the purest such as Elijah in the Old Testament went straight to Heaven, the others went to a transitional state. Here are the first inklings of what was to become known as purgatory in the Catholic church. Purgatory comes from the Latin verb
, purgare
, which means to purge. Saint Augustine distinguished between the purgatorial fire that burned off stains and the everlasting fire that consumed those who died unrepentant. Still the question of salvation or damnation was settled at the moment of death. Only those destined for salvation passed through purgatory.
During the twelfth century, purgatory became a formalized belief within the Roman Catholic church. The purgatory was reserved for those who died in God’s grace but had not put everything in their lives in order. Contained within the doctrine of purgatory were the value of prayers for the dead and the efficacy of indulgences. Indulgences are releases from specified amounts of time in purgatory.
At the start of the Crusades, popes began to offer indulgences for services or sacrifices made by
the living for the dead. Christians believed that indulgences could reduce the temporal punishment of the dead in purgatory, speeding their entrance in paradise. Purgatory thus became a profitable venture for the medieval church. Indulgences took the form of gifts of money or goods to monasteries. 3
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The abuse of indulgences was one of the many signs of corruption within the church against which Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant reformation, railed.
b.
Time of the Reformation (16
th
century) and the Catholic Church’s Response to Protestantism As mentioned above, the one who challenged the concept of church authority and purgatory was Martin Luther, a former monk. According to him, anyone could pick up a Bible and read the Word of God for themselves. There was no need for intermediaries (pope or saints). Luther felt that the church had abused its authority, and that the church wrongly profited from the sale of indulgences. Instead, he readopted the Judaic concept of “sleeping” dead. The dead were peacefully “asleep,” awaiting the second coming of Christ and Judgment Day. For Luther, salvation could not be bought through indulgences. Salvation was simply a free gift from
God. Luther’s instructions for funerals reflected these new beliefs: no more vigils, masses for the dead, or processions. Churches were no longer places of wailing and mourning. The proper way to conduct funerals was praise and celebration of the resurrection of the dead, thereby showing Christian disdain for and defiance of death.
Another important Protestant reformer was John Calvin. Calvin went further than Luther. He argued against Martin Luther’s conception of “sleeping dead.” For him, the souls of the dead were transported directly to either Hell or Paradise. The reunion of the soul and body at the resurrection would simply serve to intensify the joys or pains of the afterlife.
While Luther did not reject entirely the possibility that the dead could be aided by the prayers of the living, Calvin forbade the practice as idolatrous and futile.
As Calvin’s teachings took hold among Protestants, contact between the living and the dead ceased. Puritans, the first settlers in North America, whose approach to death was greatly influenced by
Calvin, held that the living could do nothing to aid the dead. For this reason, they had very simple burials. The body was washed, wrapped in a plain white cloth, and placed in a simple wooden coffin. A eulogy (a speech or piece of writing that praises someone or something highly, typically someone who has just died) would be said, but puritans did not express grief, which was thought incompatible with certainty in the resurrection.
c.
Today’s Catholic Position Regarding Purgatory
As a response to Luther’s criticisms, the Catholic church condemned the sale of indulgences at the Council of Trent in 1563, but the practice of indulgences was still maintained. 4
The Catholic church has never claimed it could exercise authority over purgatory, the realm of God, to reduce punishment, but unscrupulous priests claimed indulgences could help the dead.
Purgatory is still a belief held by Roman Catholics. However, the Catholic church has moved away from the medieval infernal imagery and softened the punitive aspect, stressing that souls in purgatory, assured of salvation, willingly undergo this process of purification. Catholics pray for the dead in order to support the purification of souls. Only souls that are purified will enjoy the beatific vision of God (that is the full vision of God granted to the saved in heaven). Catholics may seek indulgences for dead relatives in the same way they seek indulgences for themselves. But they are now limited to praying that Christ or the saints intervene on behalf of their loved ones so that these indulgences may count toward reduced time in the purgatory.
Indulgences are associated with what is called good works. Catholics can receive indulgences by
reciting a set of approved prayers, making charitable contributions, and/or going on pilgrimages. These are good works.
In Protestantism, there is no purgatory. There are no indulgences. Salvation cannot be earned through good works. The emphasis is on Salvation by faith alone.
4.
Christian Gnostics on the Margins
The development of Christian doctrine in the first five centuries responded to the challenge of Gnostic teachings. Gnostic comes from a Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge.
Gnosticism was an ancient movement that believed the material world to be the result of a fall from pure spiritual existence. Christian Gnostics viewed Jesus as the bearer of a secret saving knowledge enabling the faithful to be redeemed from the material realm.
In their view, the spirit is in a cosmic struggle with matter. At the beginning, the material world was created through the fall and fragmentation of spirit into matter. The spirit was the victim of temptation. There will be battles before the cosmos is redeemed and the spirit is restored to
its proper place.
The Christian Gnostics viewed Jesus as an emissary of the spirit. According to many Gnostics, Jesus appeared on earth as an apparition in human form (a kind of ghost), but he did not take on material existence. Instead, he brings to humans the saving sacred knowledge of how to rise above this life to the realm of spirit.
If matter is evil, then physical comfort and procreation are to be avoided. Asceticism and abstinence from sex follow.
5
Gnostics denied any physical resurrection, even that of Christ himself. This is one reason why the Gospel of Thomas was not included into the Christian Bible.
The Gospel of Thomas was a gnostic gospel. This gospel presented Jesus’s sayings as if he were still alive, and it did not describe his death. Gnostics introduced the notion of reincarnation into the fringes of Christianity. Their model of successive lives resembles the one described in Plato’s philosophy. Individuals choose their successive lives based upon the purity they have attained, leading to an eventual union with God. Those who did not have the will or desire to be pure would be damned.
Only two things that Gnosticism supported found their place in some forms of Christianity: the reality of the devil as an antagonist to God, and the desirability of ascetical practices (such as monasticism and priestly celibacy). 5.
Today’s Perception of Heaven and Hell
The general tendency is to view the punishment for sin or hell as isolation from the grace of God.
Pope John Paul II described heaven, hell, and purgatory as being more states than actual places.
Heaven, hell, and purgatory are the states of being near or away from God.
Within Protestantism, the understanding of heaven varies. The seventeenth-century Puritan theologian, Richard Baxter, emphasized the spiritual heaven. Others emphasized the material dimension of heavenly life on the new earth that would come. During the nineteenth-century Romantic period in the arts, greater sensuality between men and women in heaven gained credence for some. Not all Protestants, however, accepted the idea of celestial sex in the glorified state. Many came to believe in a heaven that included work, responsibility, and, most of all, reunion with friends and relatives. In general, the early Protestant idea of heaven as an unending celebration of God in worship receded over the centuries as a more human-centered conception of the afterlife took hold: friends and relatives would come together.
6.
Christian funeral and burial in the Contemporary world
In America, despite the initial strong influence of its Puritan founders, the practice of embalming, viewing and burying the dead became the norm by the beginning of the twentieth century. The ascetic practices of Calvin and his Puritan heirs have given way to more expressive, personalized, decorative funerals. Flowers and white vestments are more common in keeping with the theme of resurrection and Eastertide. Throughout the twentieth century, the social forces of bureaucratization and medicalization continued to undermine the role of the church community and the clergy in caring for the dead.
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Dying and care of the dead became the purview of medical and funeral experts, and the religious response was limited to the funeral service itself and bereavement support. Christian funeral services take place a few days after the death in the church, offering friends and family a chance to mourn and pray for their loved one. Death and mourning in Christianity focus on the afterlife and heaven, meaning the funeral service is an important time to reflect on
faith and mortality. Several branches of Christianity hold a wake after someone passes away. This takes place before the funeral and can be held at the church, the funeral home, or the family’s home. Food is often served. There are prayers, readings, and eulogies as well.
The body of the person who has passed away is present at the ceremony, in a casket, brought to the church.
Throughout the ceremony, a range of prayers, hymns, and sermons is led by the pastor or the priest. The congregation is often encouraged to sing hymns. A burial ceremony follows the funeral service, often on the same day. The pastor or the priest says a few words at the burial site as people gather to watch the casket being lowered into the ground or sent for cremation.
In general, the Protestant funeral has evolved from a very melancholy occasion, characterized by black vestments and somber music, to a service focusing on an Easter-like celebration of the resurrection. Cremation for Catholics has been permitted since 1963, but the official preference is still for burial. Permission for cremation is granted unless it is evident that cremation was chosen for anti-Christian motives.
Since 1989, Catholic funerals include blessings for unbaptized children and prayers for the dead who died at their own hand and those who mourn suicide victims. 7