Wednesday, February 18, 2004
As we prepare to meet this weekend and continue our discussion, it might be helpful to begin to think about how our understanding of the afterlife compares to the Biblical data. As a followup to our video last week, I would like to suggest that the resurrection, not heaven, is the critical hingepin for thinking about the afterlife. Here is Wright again:
"'Resurrection', with the various words that were used for it and the various stories that were told about it, was never simply a way of speaking about 'life after death'. It was one particular story that was told about the dead: a story in which the present state of those who had died would be replaced by a future state in which they would be alive once more. "...resurrection was a life after 'life after death', the second of two stages in the post-mortem programme. Resurrection was, more specifically, not the redefinition or redescription of death, a way of giving a positive interpretation to the fact that the breath and blood of a human body had ceased to function, leading quickly to corruption and decay, but the reversal or undoing or defeat of death, restoring to some kind of bodily life those who had already passed through that first stage. It belonged with a strong doctrine of Israel's god as the good creator of the physical world. It was the affirmation of that which the pagan world denied." (The Resurrection of the Son of God, p.201)."
Note especially the comment about the resurrection belonging with the doctrine of God as the good creator of the physical world. If we continue to buy into the dualism (that is a holdover from the Enlightenment) that separates the world into spiritual (good) and physical (bad), then we will tend to see the afterlife as a non-bodily existence in a non-material world (the Evangelical idea of heaven?). But if creation is good because it was made by a good Creator, then we can see why there is a bodily resurrection. God affirms his creation in the resurrection.
"'Resurrection', with the various words that were used for it and the various stories that were told about it, was never simply a way of speaking about 'life after death'. It was one particular story that was told about the dead: a story in which the present state of those who had died would be replaced by a future state in which they would be alive once more. "...resurrection was a life after 'life after death', the second of two stages in the post-mortem programme. Resurrection was, more specifically, not the redefinition or redescription of death, a way of giving a positive interpretation to the fact that the breath and blood of a human body had ceased to function, leading quickly to corruption and decay, but the reversal or undoing or defeat of death, restoring to some kind of bodily life those who had already passed through that first stage. It belonged with a strong doctrine of Israel's god as the good creator of the physical world. It was the affirmation of that which the pagan world denied." (The Resurrection of the Son of God, p.201)."
Note especially the comment about the resurrection belonging with the doctrine of God as the good creator of the physical world. If we continue to buy into the dualism (that is a holdover from the Enlightenment) that separates the world into spiritual (good) and physical (bad), then we will tend to see the afterlife as a non-bodily existence in a non-material world (the Evangelical idea of heaven?). But if creation is good because it was made by a good Creator, then we can see why there is a bodily resurrection. God affirms his creation in the resurrection.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
This is an excerpt from Wright's new book on the resurrection. It attempts to show how this theme is so vital to living and to the body of Christ, including our little (but growing!) community called The Gathering. This particular piece concerns the great love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13.
Lou
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In between the long and involved chapters [1 Corinthians] 12 and 14, like the slow movement in a concerto, stands the short and deeply poetic chapter 13. So often read at weddings, it has not often been heard as what it is, namely, a poem about the now/not-yet tension of Christian living, and the way in which love, agape, is not so much a virtue to be worked at, though it is surely that as well, as the ultimate bridge, in terms of human character, from present Christian living into the future kingdom. Many things do not last; love does:
Love never fails; but if there are prophecies, they will be abolished;
if there are tongues, they will fall silent; if there is knowledge,
it will be abolished. "For we know only partially, and we prophesy
only partially; '"but when the complete has arrived, the partial
will be abolished.
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child; but when I grew up, I did away with childish
things. For in the present time we are looking at puzzling reflections
in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face; in the present time
I know partially, but then I shall know in the same way that I am also
known. So now these three things last: faith, hope and love; but the
greatest of these is love.
Love is what will hold the church together when various pressures threaten to pull the Messiah's body apart - when those with different gifts, or enthusiasm for a particular teacher, or a sense of their own rights and a disregard for other people's conscience, or a failure to recognize those of different social standing as equal at the lord's table, seem to want to go their own way. This chapter has a claim, alongside chapter 15, to be considered the real heart of the letter. If the church can only grasp this, it will solve at least half the problems Paul has been grappling with. And yet even this exquisite chapter looks forward, particularly in the section just quoted, to the final discussion, which will concern the resurrection, the new world that God will make, and the continuity between the resurrection life and life here and now. The point of 13.8-13 is that the church must be working in the present on the things that will last into God's future. Faith, hope and love will do this; prophecy, tongues and knowledge, so highly prized in Corinth, will not. They are merely signposts to the future; when you arrive, you no longer need signposts. Love, however, is not just a signpost. It is a foretaste of the ultimate reality. Love is not merely the Christian duty; it is the Christian destiny. To hold the Corinthian church together, Paul needs to teach them love; but to teach them love he needs to teach them eschatology.26 All the lines of the letter, therefore, are now pointing towards chapter 15.
_______________________
26 cf. O'Donovan 1986, ch. 12; e.g. 246: 'love, the form of the moral life, is grouped, not with spiritual gifts, which have their own intelligibility, but with faith and hope which depend for intelligibility upon the end of history.'
--
--From The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N.T. Wright
Lou
----------------------------------------
In between the long and involved chapters [1 Corinthians] 12 and 14, like the slow movement in a concerto, stands the short and deeply poetic chapter 13. So often read at weddings, it has not often been heard as what it is, namely, a poem about the now/not-yet tension of Christian living, and the way in which love, agape, is not so much a virtue to be worked at, though it is surely that as well, as the ultimate bridge, in terms of human character, from present Christian living into the future kingdom. Many things do not last; love does:
Love never fails; but if there are prophecies, they will be abolished;
if there are tongues, they will fall silent; if there is knowledge,
it will be abolished. "For we know only partially, and we prophesy
only partially; '"but when the complete has arrived, the partial
will be abolished.
"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child,
I reasoned like a child; but when I grew up, I did away with childish
things. For in the present time we are looking at puzzling reflections
in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face; in the present time
I know partially, but then I shall know in the same way that I am also
known. So now these three things last: faith, hope and love; but the
greatest of these is love.
Love is what will hold the church together when various pressures threaten to pull the Messiah's body apart - when those with different gifts, or enthusiasm for a particular teacher, or a sense of their own rights and a disregard for other people's conscience, or a failure to recognize those of different social standing as equal at the lord's table, seem to want to go their own way. This chapter has a claim, alongside chapter 15, to be considered the real heart of the letter. If the church can only grasp this, it will solve at least half the problems Paul has been grappling with. And yet even this exquisite chapter looks forward, particularly in the section just quoted, to the final discussion, which will concern the resurrection, the new world that God will make, and the continuity between the resurrection life and life here and now. The point of 13.8-13 is that the church must be working in the present on the things that will last into God's future. Faith, hope and love will do this; prophecy, tongues and knowledge, so highly prized in Corinth, will not. They are merely signposts to the future; when you arrive, you no longer need signposts. Love, however, is not just a signpost. It is a foretaste of the ultimate reality. Love is not merely the Christian duty; it is the Christian destiny. To hold the Corinthian church together, Paul needs to teach them love; but to teach them love he needs to teach them eschatology.26 All the lines of the letter, therefore, are now pointing towards chapter 15.
_______________________
26 cf. O'Donovan 1986, ch. 12; e.g. 246: 'love, the form of the moral life, is grouped, not with spiritual gifts, which have their own intelligibility, but with faith and hope which depend for intelligibility upon the end of history.'
--
--From The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N.T. Wright
