Today in my Sunday school class (discussing John 11), I went off on a tangent to explain the background of Jewish and early Christian thinking about the resurrection. I always consider this important, since for most contemporary Christians, the afterlife is about ‘going to heaven when I die’ and not ‘rising again on the last day’.
On the one hand, I think that it is important to be aware of (if not necessarily reassert in the same terms) the early Christian affirmation of resurrection, since it marked an important rejection of the negative view of bodily existence typical of many systems of Greek thought. On the other hand, there does seem to be at least one writing in the New Testament that thinks in terms of the soul’s immortality rather than bodily resurrection. In the letter to the Hebrews, there is no obvious way to fit bodily resurrection into its system of thought. Jesus dies and enters the heavenly tabernacle, presents his sacrifice there, and sits down at the right hand of God. There is no room left, at least not in any obvious way, for Jesus to ‘pick up his body’ and ‘take it along’ at some point in the process.
Could there be Christianity without an afterlife at all? The only writing in the New Testament that, at the very least, gives it no explicit attention is the letter of James. There are certainly references to judgment, but there are such references in the book of Amos too, and yet in the latter they are very obviously judgments within history rather than in an afterlife. Could the letter of James be read in the same way? If so, this would provide explicit room within the range of acceptable diversity affirmed by the canon, for those who at least eschew focusing on the afterlife, if not necessarily rejecting the possibility outright.
The afterlife was of course a very late addition to Israel’s thought, appearing in the Jewish Scriptures only in Daniel and perhaps a few other very late passages. Ecclesiastes 9:5 affirms the more usual view, although more explicitly than anywhere else. Affirmation of the afterlife (and more specifically resurrection) was a response to the problem of God’s justice if those martyred from obeying him were never rewarded. For those trying to accept the challenge of the book of Job, and do what is right without seeking reward, questions of the afterlife are best set aside as at best irrelevant. The right thing is worth doing even if no one notices, even if no one ever gives us credit or praise. If God or people reward us in this life or another, it should be a pleasant surprise, and not something that is actively sought.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In