40: Death and Immortality

Death is a universal experience, yet men will not think about it until compelled to. They plead that death is incomprehensible, that there is no evidence of survival after death. They are offended by the thought of hell and embarrassed by the thought of heaven. The triumphs of modern science and the secular and atheistic philosophies of life and of the state have produced this reaction. The weakening of man’s personal dignity, wholesale extermination by means of the atom bomb, slave labor camps, the secularization of human life, have blurred the concept of eternal life. Many, including religious people, are not interested in, attracted by, or concerned about, a future life. Belief in immortality may not have been extinguished but it has been eclipsed.

Meantime, death remains an ineffaceably solemn fact. Why? Because of the relation between death and sin. Men die because of sin. Man’s creation in the imago Dei probably implies a relation between God and man in which death had no part. Man was not originally immortal; death is not now inescapable, but it was probably inoperative in man’s original perfection. But with sin came death. Death is inevitable not because man is a creature of nature but because he is a sinner. Sin makes death a “bondage of corruption” and gives it its painful power and penal character. Death being separation from God (Ps. 88:3–5; Isa. 38:9–20) is both a physical and a spiritual event. Christ triumphed over sin by triumphing over death. Sin’s curse “compelled” Christ to die a death that destroyed death and him who had power over death. Death’s solemnity stems from its connection with sin.

This solemnity arises from man’s ineradicable conviction that he survives death. In spite of death’s inevitability and seeming finality, man knows he is deathless. In their best moments even agnostics and rationalists find their certainty of extinction after death fading. Belief in survival after death is not only universal but very ancient. The Egyptians held it; in Greece it was adopted by the Orphics, from whom Plato received it; the Hebrews accepted it; Jews in Christ’s day held it; Christianity has always believed it; and for primitive man, too, immortality was a certainty, not a conjecture. Survival after death was how man interpreted the ineradicable intuition rooted in the imperishable core of his being.

Yet there is no scientific “proof” or material knowledge of immortality. The belief cannot be based upon scientific discovery or philosophical conclusions. Life after death belongs to a realm of experience of which science knows nothing. Even the psychical researches of the spiritists have produced little of real value. Their claim to have proved the soul’s survival after death is not made out. Certainty of identification of any disembodied spirit is rarely claimed.

Is there, then, no certainty of hope of immortality? There are three considerations. (1) Man’s personality. Doubt that there exists as the core of the personality a persistent entity called the soul or the self is a rejection which goes back to David Hume. For Bertrand Russell “the most essential thing in the continuity of a person is memory.” If then memory does not survive death the hope of immortality is groundless. Personal identity and continuity in life after death imply memory since, if a person’s memories of life on earth are eliminated at death, he would not be the person identical with the earthly counterpart. But since memory is closely connected with the brain memory should disappear when the brain disintegrates, hence belief in immortality has no scientific basis. But this ancient objection assumes that the brain is causally related to the mind; in fact science does not know how they are related. At best scientific evidence against immortality is negative in that the evidence against it is not forthcoming.

(2) Man’s rationality. Mind and body are interdependent but does a physiological change in the brain produce thought? If so, how do physical changes produce psychical phenomena? Materialists answer that man’s mental life springs from entirely physical changes but that this causality does not work in reverse. Some psychologists reply that mental and physical events are not interdependent; at best there is a correspondence between them. Others suppose an interaction between the physical and psychical. That is, the first view denies life after death; the other two, especially the third, support such a hope by implying that mind is a higher mode of existence than body and is not necessarily dependent on the physical organism for existence.

(3) Man’s morality. Since the source and satisfaction of moral principles transcend this time-space world they commit men to living as if they were immortal. Morality means that if man is not immortal then he ought to be. Morality is a guarantee that life is worth living. But this also means that religious faith is an indispensable factor in the hope of immortality. Faith in God commits one to the belief that the universe is rational and moral, that it is on the side of justice and truth, and that in a life beyond death evil and good shall receive their just reward. Faith finds in the revelation of God to the Hebrews and through Christ God’s pledge and promise that life survives death. Several things call for attention here.

Scripture. (1) Immortality in the Old Testament. There death as well as life involves men in relations with God. At death the body remained on earth, the nephesh passed into Sheol (Isa. 38:17; Pss. 16:10; 86:13), but the breath, spirit or ruach, returned to God (Eccl. 12:7) not Sheol. But in Sheol, a place of darkness, silence and forgetfulness, life was foreboding and shadowy. In spite of consciousness, activity and memory the “dead” subsisted rather than existed (Job 10:21 f; Pss. 39:12 f.; 115:17 f., Isa. 14:9–12). Death was a passing beyond Jehovah’s hand (Isa. 38:10 f., 18) for ever (Job 7:9), hence the despair in Psalm 88:10–12, and the not very bright hope in Job 7:9. Sheol had little religious significance. The prophets are all but silent on the subject although when the hope of individual immortality clarified, the prophetic insistence on the value of the individual contributed to the hope. But through the dark despair attaching to life in Sheol gleams of hope appear (Pss. 16:8–11; 73:23 f.). God’s presence, providence and guidance throughout life guarantees that death is not extinction. “Afterward thou wilt receive me into glory.” Belief in immortality springs from faith in God, from the nature and fidelity of the God with whom one fellowships daily.

(2) In the apocryphal (cf. 2 Esdras 7:43; Wisdom 9:17) and apocalyptic literature the hope of immortality is clarified still further. When the resurrection was more clearly formulated the question of the dead sharing Messiah’s Kingdom was raised. Would the body be raised along with the soul and spirit, and would it be identical with the earthly? The answer was that the resurrected would have angelic bodies (Enoch 51:4; 62:15 f.). Here also the fusing of Jewish national and individual hopes of immortality was effected.

(3) Jesus’ argument against the Sadduces (Mark 12:18–27). It is really based on Psalm 73:23 f. The Sadducees rejected belief in immortality on the assumption that life after death would be merely continuous with the life in this world. In reply Christ says two significant things, (a) Life after death is different from life in this world. After death men will be “as the angels”; therefore marriage, for example, in the hereafter becomes unthinkable. To reject belief in this new mode of existence is “not to know the power of God.” (b) The Sadducean rejection also revealed ignorance of “the Scriptures.” The presuppositions from which belief in immortality springs have been present from the patriarchal period. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of the living, which includes the “dead” patriarchs. God called them into fellowship with himself; therefore they were dear to him, hence he could not possibly leave them in the dust. That is, Christ based belief in immortality upon God’s faithfulness, the only finally valid argument for life after death. The only alternative is to deny its premises.

(4) The Church argued from the same ground. Why was Christ’s resurrection the ground of the Christian’s resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20–22; 6:14; 2 Cor. 4:14; Rom. 8:11)? Because God loosed the bonds of death from Jesus since “it was not possible that he should be holden of it” (Acts 2:24). Otherwise God’s own nature, his sure mercies towards his own, the meaningfulness of the Incarnation, would have been denied. So Christ’s resurrection guarantees the Christian’s immortality since Christ pledged him a share in his risen life (John 14:1–3) and joined him to himself by unbreakable bonds (John 6:39, 40, 44, 54). That is, the Christian’s belief in immortality, Christ’s resurrection, and the Old Testament patriarchs’ hope, all stand on the same foundation.

(5) Natural immortality and eternal life are not synonymous. The first makes it possible to receive the latter, which is God’s gift. Eternal life is both infinity and a quality of life. It is life lived now but in a new dimension (Rom. 14:17; Col. 1:13; 2:12 f.; 3:1 f.). It consists in a knowledge of God (John 17:3; 5:24) which though imperfect is true. It is heart knowledge not head knowledge. In this world it issues in morality in that it issues in love (1 John 3:14); in the hereafter it will find an environment consistent with itself and will issue in absolute perfection.

(6) Judaism teaches that the dead are in Sheol awaiting resurrection, or are in an intermediate state of imperfect bliss, or are already in the kingdom though not till the Last Day do they attain to perfect bliss. Here again Judaism insists upon the immortality of the community and the individual; without the former the latter is imperfect. In orthodox Christianity the dead, redeemed and unredeemed, are in their final abode, and are disincarnate until the general resurrection when their mortal shall put on immortality. Both Jesus and the New Testament church treated the present condition of the dead with marked reserve. Although in heaven or hell (Luke 16:19 ff.) their fate is declared only at the judgment (Matt. 25:31 ff.). The Christian at death confidently resigns his spirit to the Father (Luke 23:46) and enters the blessedness of fellowship with him (Luke 23:42 f.; Phil. 1:23). Neither the Roman doctrine of purgatory nor intercession for the dead has any biblical foundation.

Resurrection. The resurrection impinges upon the subject of immortality. In the future state existence will not be patterned upon the Hebraic hope nor upon the Hellenic divorce between the spiritual and the physical. Continuity and identity, some form of physical likeness, an assurance of mutual recognition, are implied in the phrase “a spiritual body.” The continuity and identity may be in moral personality rather than in material particles, but a “bodily” form “as the angels” (Mark 12:25), infinity with loss of finitude, is assured. Scientific study and philosophical thought today support the credibility of this hope. No longer is personality divorced from the physical organism. Matter is energy organizing itself in particular patterns. The body is not identical with a particular collection of molecules. Through a seven years’ mutational period the body remains identically itself, not because material particles are immutable but because they are organized after the principle of the body’s self-identity. The body is essential to the self. Consciousness involves body as well as mind. The physical body’s identity and continuity with the spiritual body, and the transmutation that will be involved is “a mystery,” but a relation between the self here and the self there is certain. “The law of the spirit of life” is now operative in the body. “This mortal” is significant for the future “immortality.” It secures not only survival of the soul but the future life of the whole man, the restoration and recognizability of the total personality, clothed in “a spiritual body.”

Destiny. If, then, our continuity and identity between this life and the hereafter is primarily moral this world must be moral, and this life must be a period of probation. Moral choices between right and wrong determine character and eternal destiny. After death we shall be seen for what we are, and judged for what we have become as moral personalities. Christ taught the possibility of the loss of the soul in hell. All will not end well irrespective of choice and conduct. Hell is the sinful self existing in separation from God since man, being moral and spiritual, can find no satisfaction except in God. To reject the gift God desires to give—himself—is the fire that dieth not. But this is self-inflicted alienation. Darkness is given to those who prefer it. By contrast heaven is the beatific vision, ever deeper communion with God, the perfection of God’s image, the fulfillment of spiritual nature, the maturing of higher capacities, the perfection in holiness, “serving God day and night.” Death, then, is the most solemn crisis of the soul, the entrance to judgment, the step into eternity. If in this life only we have hope, death is terrible tragedy, unrelieved pessimism, the dark night of the soul. If Christ is our hope, death has already lost its dominion (Rom. 8:2), it is the threshold of life; death is “present with the Lord” and reunion with the blessed dead in communion with whom the beatific vision will be shared.

Bibliography: C. R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of the Hereafter; J. Baillie, And the Life Everlasting; W. A. Brown, The Christian Hope; C. Allington, The Life Everlasting; W. R. Matthews, The Hope of Immortality; W. Milligan, The Resurrection of our Lord; M. Ramsey, The Resurrection of Christ; J. Denney, Studies in Theology; H. V. Hodson, ed., The Great Mystery of the Hereafter.

Minister

St. David’s Church

Knightswood, Glasgow, Scotland

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