Eternal Perspectives

Spurred by the ongoing tragedy that presently wears the face of Terri Schiavo, several theologgers have reflected upon and discussed the nature of human existence following death. Four in particular have examined the biblical presentation of what constitutes the soul and what transpires after death:

All these posts are well-written and reflect serious, theological considerations of a few of the issues undergirding the discussion about Terri’s situation. Hers is a situation that cannot be handled with a knee-jerk, one-size-fits-all approach to the ethical difficulties posed in such dilemmas, although sadly it frequently is. The church in general and every Christian in particular needs to think through such complicated and emotionally-charged matters.

What follows is my attempt to do just that. I do this because my own mother has been neurologically hijacked for the past few years and a stranger now seems to inhabit her body. As her best friend of 60-plus years said after leaving her hospital room,

“That’s not your mother in there.”

The issues that I will address in this two-part post are (1) the relationship of our immaterial and material being, and (2) the implications of such a relationship upon the biblical teaching regarding death.

Spiritual Experience

Sensing argues, correctly, that Western theology has been significantly and (at times) unfortunately influenced by Greek thought. The Protestant theologians have relied heavily upon Augustine, who was influenced by the teachings of Plato; Catholic theologians have drawn from Aquinas, who was impacted by Aristotle. “In Christian theology,” Sensing says, “the Greek world view supplanted the Hebrew-Jewish world view and has remained dominant to our day.”

Whether following Plato or Aristotle, however, one outgrowth of the influence is the conceptualization of human nature as dualistic: it consists of body (physical, material) and soul (spiritual, immaterial). For the Greeks, Sensing says, this led to the belief that at death the soul was released or freed from the body and thus able to exist independently in the presence of God.

Sensing holds to a monistic or unified view of human nature and concludes that, at death, the soul does not go into the presence of God but awaits a future resurrection. He writes,

“To die is to cease to exist . . . In the Bible, death is the destruction of the entire person . . . Yet for the Jews and Jesus and the apostles, the fact of death was not the major issue, bad as they recognized death to be. The issue was not death, but extinction.” (emphasis his)

Leaning upon the authority of Luther, he advocates that at death humans enter into “soul sleep:” when a person dies, they enter a state not unlike sleep. Although a considerable amount of time may pass, there is no awareness of time and the experience is one of immediately being in the presence of God, even though millennia may have passed. Thus, Paul is to be understood as describing our subjective rather than our actual experience.

Bipartite Anthropology

Wayne respectfully takes issue with Sensing, noting that it can be perilous to develop doctrine or a position based on the definition or etymology of a Greek or Hebrew word. He maintains that the New Testament does, indeed, teach such a division of the person and that it also teaches the objective transportation of the soul to the presence of God.

Based on his understanding of 2 Cor 5.1-10, Wayne believes that

“Paul speaks of three states of being for the Christian – our time in our earthly tent, and a time when we are clothed with our heavenly dwelling. The third is a time when we are “unclothed” or “naked.” The time of our earthly tent would be now, while we live in the flesh here on earth and the time when we are clothed with our heavenly dwelling would be in the new heavens and new earth, after the return of Christ and the general resurrection. It is possible to interpret verses 6 and 8 to say that to be away from the body (i.e. away from the earthly tent) is to be in the eternal, resurrected state. But it’s that whole idea of being “naked” or “unclothed” that lends credence to the idea that there is an intermediate state where the soul is present with the Lord while the body is not. This is a state of disembodied, yet conscious, existence.”

Wayne concludes by noting that

“. . . a disembodied state, though a blessed state, is not a perfect state. In fact, it is not the most desirable state as can be seen in Paul’s words where he says that he does not wish to be unclothed. The souls of believers in heaven are blessed and happy to be there, but they are eagerly longing for the eternal state where Christ will bring justice and where they will be reunited with their bodies.”

Baptist Conditionality

In a comment on Wayne’s post, Opderbeck focuses on the question of dualism for its own sake. His position, which he describes as being essentially that of Baptist theologian Millard Erickson, is:

“. . . the monistic view of personhood (we are essentially body) is not Biblical; the dualist (we are two separate parts: body + soul) and trilateralist (we are three separate parts: body + mind + soul) views of personhood likewise are not Biblical; the Biblical view is a ‘conditional unity,’ which affirms the unity of the person but acknowledges unique physical and spiritual aspects to personhood. The physical and spiritual aspects of personhood are separated at death pending reintegration at the Resurrection; our physical bodies die, but we continue to exist consciously in a spiritual state pending the eschaton.”

Benedict declares that “too many Christians today have an heretical understanding of what it means to be a person, according to the Gospel.” This, he maintains, is the

“damnably pagan Platonic notion that our souls (or spirits) are the ‘real’ us, our bodies just the shell housing us. Under this rubric then, Terri is ‘no longer there,’ since she does not manifest any evidence of the sort of consciousness that souls housed in bodies manifest . . . But according to the rubric of the Incarnation, Terri is still manifestly a person, and not ‘merely’ a living, breathing human being . . . She is a person, because she is made in the image of God, and not because she is conscious like us.”

My own understanding of human nature and experience shares some commonality with all the positions but agrees with none completely.

I believe the teaching of the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, presents an anthropology that reflects experiential division but ontological unity. Additionally, I believe Scripture teaches that at death the believer immediately – both subjectively and objectively – goes into the presence of God without any interruption of fellowship.

My own positions will be subject of my next post.