Our culture goes two opposite directions on life after death. Both are a long way from Christian faith and hope.
On the one hand we have sentimental universalism. It can be the soft-focus flowers and clouds of greeting card theology, trying to comfort the grieving. It can be stories of near death experiences in the popular press.
The general impression is that we all roll smoothly into a happier life in heaven. Death is no problem. It is just a change of address. With the possible addition of angel wings.
On the other hand we have the current media darling of the zombie apocalypse. Somehow dead people come back to life here on earth and it is really, really scary.
This is a very different picture: the body is the same (well, maybe a little the worse for wear) but the familiar person who lived among us is absolutely gone.
Zombies aren’t alive. They are just “undead.”
Christian hope is completely different from both. The Apostles’ Creed calls our hope
“The resurrection of the body.”
Here’s how the Heidelberg Catechism (a classic Reformed teaching text celebrating its 450th anniversary this year) explains this line of the Creed:
57 Q. How does “the resurrection of the body” comfort you?
A. Not only will my soul
be taken immediately after this life
to Christ its head,
but also my very flesh will be
raised by the power of Christ,
reunited with my soul,
and made like Christ’s glorious body.
You can see our culture’s afterlife from here, but this is really a very different hope.
- There is the hope of our souls living on in heaven — but this is not just a vague better life without problems. The Christian heaven is about being with Jesus, being united personally to him as members of his “body” the Church.
- There is also the hope of our bodies living again — but this is nothing like fiction’s terrifying zombies. The Christian hope is of being real people again; real selves in real bodies.
Notice how this hope of resurrection is rooted in the biblical portrait of Jesus. We are raised by Christ’s power. We are taken to be with Christ. And, crucially, we are made like Christ, specifically in his resurrected state.
Christ is the one who rose from the grave on Easter morning. He’d been alive. He’d been really dead. And then, shockingly, he was alive again. It was frightening — people just don’t do that.
Then, in his resurrected state, he proved to be really himself — but not merely his old self. He was now beyond dying, whole and able to lead us to new life.
In this earthly life we are ever plagued by our brokenness and weakness, our sins and harmful habits, and all the consequences of the life we’ve lived.
Our hope in the resurrection is that we will be really ourselves, but no longer merely ourselves. Brokenness healed, true nature restored, able to live and love as we were first created to do. We will be like Jesus, the one who is truly human.
What comes to mind for you when you think about the promise of resurrection?
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This is the phrase in the Apostles’ Creed where I stumble. This helps.
You are welcome Lynn! Thanks for joining the conversation.
Even after umpteen years of Sunday school and several years in seminary, I find it very easy to talk in a confused way about eternal life and resurrection. I think I like N.T. Wright’s reference to the resurrection as life after life after death.
Personally, resurrection hope reminds me that the power of God’s love is such that it overcomes everything–even death. And if that is so, it can surely overcome my failures and shortcomings. Thank God!
Is it too far out to say that “Christ’s glorious body” is the same as the body of Christ? If that is so, then we are already there–as the Church. And we could spend a lot of bandwidth on just the subject of incarnational theology.
Thanks Brian.
I think the details are inherently mysterious — certainly far more so in Scripture than in the teachings of some parts of Christianity. So don’t be too hard on yourself for speaking confusingly about a mystery.
I don’t think that the Heidelberg Catechism is referring to the Church in the line about Christ’s glorious body. The reference is to Christ’s resurrected body and our resurrected body — restored, whole, and transformed.
This is a case where our committee’s efforts to restore the 1563 scriptural citations provides a lot of clarity. On that line the original citations were 1 Cor. 15:53-54, Job 19:25-26, 1 John 3:2, and Phil. 3:21. Check ’em out!
The western church has really dropped the ball on the topics of eternal life and the resurrection. I think it was a logical result of dismissing the concept of hell and moving towards universalism. When the church drops part of the Christian worldview because it is unpleasant or difficult, the rest of what we have to say is weakened and we are no longer giving satisfying answers to those searching. Our culture is obsessed with the afterlife; whether ghosts, angels, zombies, near-death experiences, or heaven. The answers the culture provides end up being more satisfying than the church’s. Book after book comes out about people who claim to die, go to heaven, and return to life. It should not be a surprise that we are all a little confused.
Even thought the details might be inherently mysterious, we do have solid answers to offer those seeking an understanding of what happens after death. Our hope is directly linked to the real, physical resurrection of Christ. I think reclaiming the resurrection and eternal life in our teaching and preaching will have a direct positive influence transforming congregations into the biblical Church, increasing our work in the community to serve all those on the margins of society and raising up disciples of Jesus Christ.
Maybe part of the problem modern Christians in America have with the concept of bodily resurrection is the inherently Western issue of self-loathing. I mean, who wants to spend eternity in the body we have now? We don’t even want to spend the next five years in it, otherwise the diet and health book market wouldn’t exist. Maybe we’d be alright with the resurrection of the body if we looked like that guy that plays Thor or some supermodel – but our bodies? I don’t think so. And the same goes for our personality. If we liked ourselves the way we are, why are there so many self-help books to change who we are? The idea of eternal life is only appealing and hopeful if we are fundamentally changed, which seems to be the Christian promise. I figure when I die and it’s me that got here, it must not be heaven. But to be made new in Christ (something that can begin now, in this life) would be heaven under any circumstances. I guess I just think our post-modern American culture probably has more influence on this subject than we may suspect – or maybe I just need a vacation from myself. I wish! 🙂
Resurrection to me offers hope. For if there is no resurrection then sadly I would have to think that this life is all there is, and well that truly would be sad.