Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors Part 29

If it be asked what the Scriptures teach concerning immortality, it must be admitted that they have not much to say. They speak of life and of eternal life; but this, as we shall discover, is quite another thing from continued existence. It refers to the quality and quant.i.ty of being, and not merely to its duration.

-- 3. The Three Princ.i.p.al Views of Death-the Pagan, Jewish, and Christian.

There are three princ.i.p.al views of death-the Pagan view, the Jewish view, and the Christian view.

PAGANISM, in all its various forms, is chiefly distinguished by its transferring to the other life the tastes, feelings, habits of this life.

The other world is this one, shaded off and toned down. It is gray in its hue, wanting the color of this world; and is really inferior to it, and only its pale reflection. To the G.o.ds of Olympus the doings of men are matters of chief interest. Tartarus and the Elysian Fields are occupied by lymphatic ghosts, misty spectres, unsubstantial and unoccupied. When a living man enters, like Ulysses, aeneas, or Dante, they throng around him, delighted to have something in which they can take a real interest.

"Better be a plough-boy on earth than a king among the ghosts." This expresses the Pagan idea of the other world. This world is more _real_ than the other, to the Pagan.

JUDAISM, in its view of hereafter, is much more positive. It began with no idea of a hereafter. Nothing is taught concerning a future life by Moses, and little is to be found concerning it even in the prophets. The explanation is simple. Men hard at work in the present do not think much of the future; and the work of the Jews was to be servants of Jehovah and doers of his law here. However, all men must think a little of the region beyond death. When the Jews thought of it, they projected their LAW upon its blank s.p.a.ces. It was a place where Jehovah would vindicate his law-where the just should be happy, the unjust miserable. The perplexity which tormented Job, David, and Elijah-namely, that bad men should succeed in this world and good men fail-was to find its solution there. Judgment was the Jewish idea of hereafter-a judgment to come. "I have a hope toward G.o.d, as they themselves also allow," said Paul, speaking of the Pharisees, "that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, of the just, and also of the unjust."

The CHRISTIAN view of death is, that it is abolished-it has ceased to be anything. The New Testament distinctly says, "who has _abolished_ death, and brought life and immortality to light."(32) Death, to a Christian, is but a point on the line of advancing being; a door through which we pa.s.s; a momentary sleep between two days. In the same sense the Saviour says, "He that liveth and believeth on me shall never die."

So also he spoke of Lazarus as being only asleep, and said of the daughter of Jairus, "She is not dead, but sleepeth."

Certainly Jesus could not have spoken of death in this way if he regarded it as the awful and solemn thing which most believers consider it. If it is the moment that decides our eternal destiny, which shuts the gate of probation, which terminates for the sinner all opportunity of repentance and conversion, for the saint all danger of relapse and fall,-then death is surely something, and something of the most immense importance.

But Christ has really destroyed death both in the Pagan and in the Jewish feeling concerning it. He destroys the Pagan idea of death as a plunge downward from something into nothing, a descent into non-ent.i.ty or half-ent.i.ty, a diminution of our being, a pa.s.sage from the substantial to the shadowy and unreal.

For, according to Christianity, we do not descend in death; we ascend into more of reality, into higher life. Death is a pa.s.sage onward and upward.

The proof of this we find in the Christian doctrine of the RESURRECTION.

The meaning of the resurrection of Christ is not, as has been often supposed, that after death he came to life _again_, but that at death he rose; that his death was rising up, ascent. This we shall show in a future section of this chapter.

One power of Christ's resurrection was to abolish the _fear of death_. It brought life and immortality to _light_. It showed men their immortality.

The fear of death is natural to all men, but it is easily removed. The smallest and lowest power of the resurrection is shown in removing it.

The fear of death is natural. It consists in this-that we are, in a great part of our nature, immersed in the finite and perishing. "When we look at the things which are seen," which "are temporal," we have an inward feeling of instability-nothing substantial. Therefore it is said, "In Adam all die," for the Adam, the first man in all of us, is the animal soul.

"The first man is of the earth, earthy." The law of our life is, that it comes from our love. When we love the finite, our life is finite. But besides the finite element in man, the animal soul, or Adam, is the spiritual element, or Christ, the life flowing from things unseen, but eternal.

Christ has abolished death. There is now to the Christian no such thing as death, in the common sense of the term. The only death is the sense of death, the fear of death, which insnares and enslaves. Jesus delivers us from this by inspiring us with faith. We rise with him when we look with him at the things unseen. Faith in eternal things brings into the soul a sense of eternity. Death is only a sleep: outward death is the sleep of the bodily life; inward death is the sleep of the higher life. We awake and rise from the dead when Christ gives us life; and when he, who is our life, shall appear, we shall also appear with him.

The philosopher Lessing says, "Thus was Christ the first _practical_ teacher of the immortality of the soul. For it is one thing to conjecture, to wish, to hope for, to believe in immortality as a philosophical speculation-another thing to arrange all our plans and purposes, all our inward and our outward life, in accordance to it."

Jesus also destroys the Jewish idea of death, as a pa.s.sage from a world where the good suffer and the bad triumph, to a world where this state of things is reversed. The kingdom of heaven, with him, begins here, in this world. Judgment is here as well as hereafter. The Jew lived, and all Judaizing Christians live, under a fearful looking for of judgment after death. The Christian sees that judgment is always taking place; that Christ is always judging the world; that G.o.d's moral laws and their retributions are not kept in a state of suspense till we die-that they operate now daily. The Christian knows that heaven and h.e.l.l are both here, and he expects to find them hereafter, because he finds them here. He believes in law, but not in law only. He believes in something higher than law, namely, love-the love of a present, helpful Father, of a friend near at hand, of an inspiration from on high, of a G.o.d who forgives all sins when they are repented of, and saves all who trust in him. He is not under law, but under grace.

When he looks forward to the other world, it is not as to a place where he goes to be sentenced by a stern and absolute judge, but where judgment and mercy go hand in hand, where law remains, but is fulfilled by love.

This is what Paul means when he says, "The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to G.o.d, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

The only real death is the fear of death-the Pagan fear of death, which is a dread of loss, change, degradation of being, to follow the dissolution of the body; and the Jewish fear of death, which is a fearful looking for of judgment, and the sting of which is sin. Christ abolishes both of these fears in every believing heart. He abolishes them in two ways-by the life and the resurrection. He is both resurrection and life: by inspiring us with spiritual or eternal life, he abolishes all fear of dissolution; and by showing us that he has ascended into a higher state by his resurrection, he gives us the belief that death is not going down, but going up. For, though "it doth not yet appear what we shall be, yet we know this, that when _he_ shall appear, we shall be like him."

But, unfortunately, Christians are still subject to the fear of death.

This fear has been aggravated by the current teaching in pulpits professedly Christian. The fear of that "something after death" has been made use of to palsy the will; and conscience, as instructed by Christian teachers, has made cowards of us all; so that few persons can really say, "Thanks be to G.o.d, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

It is very certain that the Pagan view of death and the Jewish view of death still linger in the Church, and are encouraged by Christian teachers. Death is made terrible by false doctrine and false teaching in the Church. Christ has _not_ abolished death to the majority of Christians. Christians are almost as much afraid of death as the heathen-sometimes more so.

Actual Christianity is a very different thing from ideal Christianity.

Ideal Christianity is Christianity as seen and lived by Jesus; the gospel which he saw and spoke; the word of G.o.d made flesh in him. But actual Christianity is an amalgam; a portion of real Christianity mixed with a portion of the belief and habits of feeling existing in men's minds before they became Christians. The Jews took a large quant.i.ty of Judaism into Christianity; the Pagans a large quant.i.ty of Paganism. The Christian Church from the very beginning Judaized and Paganized. Paul contended against its Judaism on the one hand and its Paganism on the other. But Judaism and Paganism have always stuck to the Christian Church. She has never risen above them wholly to this day. They mingle with all her doctrines, ceremonies, and habits of life. The Romish Church has more of the Pagan element, the Protestant more of the Jewish. The mediatorial system of Rome is essentially Pagan. Its ascending series of deacons, sub-deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, cardinals, and pope in the Church below; and beatified and sanctified spirits, angels, and archangels in the Church above; its processions, pilgrimages, dresses, its monastic inst.i.tutions, its rosaries, relics, daily sacrifice, votive offerings-everything peculiar to the Roman Church, existed before, somewhere, in Paganism. So Protestantism has taken from the Jews its Sabbath, its idea of G.o.d as King and Judge, its exclusion from G.o.d's favor of all but the elect, its view of the divine sovereignty, its doctrine of predestination, day of judgment, resurrection of the body, material heaven and material h.e.l.l.

I do not mean to say that there is no truth in these things. There is, because there is some truth in Paganism and in Judaism. We are all Pagans and Jews before we become Christians. The Jewish and Pagan element is in every human soul, and in all _constants_ in man there is truth. But the Pagan and Jewish truths are but stepping-stones to the higher Christian truth. The law and Paganism are school-masters to bring us to Christ. The evil is, that Christianity has not been kept supreme; it has often been sunk and lost in the earlier elements. As the foolish Galatians were bewitched, and relapsed from the gospel to the law,-turning again to weak and beggarly elements, desiring to be in bondage to them again, going back to their minority under tutors and governors,-so the Church has been relapsing, going back to weak and beggarly elements, not keeping Christianity supreme in thought, heart, and life, but letting Paganism or Judaism get the upper hand.

So it has been in regard to this subject. We Paganize and Judaize in our view of death. We reestablish again what Christ has abolished. We make death something where Christ made it nothing. It is made the great duty of life to "prepare for death." No such duty is pointed out in the New Testament. Our duty is to prepare every day _to live_; then, when we die, we shall be taken care of by G.o.d. We can safely leave the other world and its interests to Him who has shown himself so capable of taking care of us here.

The gloom of death has been heightened by artificial means. Mourning dresses, solemn faces, funeral addresses, the grave,-all have had an unnatural depth of awe added to the natural sense of bereavement. The Orthodox Church has deliberately and systematically Paganized and Judaized in what it has said and done about death. Its object has been always to make use of the great lever of fear of a hereafter in order to enforce Christian belief and action. Hence Death has been made the king of terrors, the close of probation, the beginning of judgment, the awful entrance to the final decision of an endless doom. All this is wholly unchristian, unknown to apostolic times, a relapse towards Paganism. It is utterly opposed to the great declaration that "CHRIST HAS ABOLISHED DEATH, AND BROUGHT LIFE AND IMMORTALITY TO LIGHT THROUGH THE GOSPEL."

What is called faith in immortality, therefore, is of two kinds: it is an instinct, and it is a belief. In the New Testament these are plainly distinguished. In the pa.s.sage just quoted, it is said that Jesus "brought life AND immortality to light." Jesus himself says, "I am the resurrection AND the life." "He that believeth in me hath eternal life abiding in him, AND I will raise him up at the last day."

Life is a matter of consciousness. It is a present possession, something abiding in us now.

Immortality, or the resurrection, is an object of intellectual belief. It is something future. We _feel_ life; we believe in the resurrection.

We will pa.s.s on, in the next sections, to consider each of these.

-- 4. Eternal Life, as taught in the New Testament, not endless Future Existence, but present Spiritual Life.

It is only necessary carefully to examine the pa.s.sages in the New Testament where the phrase "eternal life" (??? a??????) occurs, to see that it does not refer to the duration, but to the quality, of existence.

_Temporal life_ is that life of the soul which through the body is subject to the vicissitudes of time. _Eternal_ (or everlasting) _life_ is that life of the spirit which is independent of change, and is apart from duration. G.o.d's being was regarded by the Semitic races as outside of time and s.p.a.ce, as a perpetual Now, without before or after. ("I am the _I Am_." Exod. 3:14.) Man, made in the image of G.o.d, becomes a "partaker of the divine nature" (2 Peter 2:4) by the gift of eternal life.

That "eternal life" is not an endless temporal existence appears,-

(_a._) From the pa.s.sages in which it is spoken of as something to be obtained by one's own efforts, as (Matt. 19:16) when the young man asks of Jesus what good thing he shall do that he may have eternal life, and Jesus replies that he must keep the commandments, give his possessions to the poor, and come and follow him. Certainly that was not the method to obtain an endless existence, but it was the true preparation for receiving spiritual good. So Jesus tells Peter (Mark 10:30) that those who make sacrifices for the sake of truth shall receive temporal rewards "in this time;" and "in the coming age eternal life" ("?? t? a???? t? ??????? ????

a??????"). The coming age is the age of the Messiah, when the gift of the Holy Ghost should be bestowed.

(_b._) Pa.s.sages in which eternal life is spoken of as a present possession, not a future expectation. (John 3:36.) "He that believeth on the Son _hath_ (??e?) eternal life." So John 6:47, 54, &c.

(_c._) Pa.s.sages in which eternal life is defined expressly as a state of the soul. (John 17:3.) "This is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true G.o.d, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent," &c.

So (Gal. 6:8) it is represented as the natural result of "sowing to the Spirit;" (Rom. 2:7) of "patient continuance in well-doing;" as "the gift of G.o.d" (Rom. 6:23); as something which we "lay hold of" (1 Tim. 6:12, 19).

This view of "eternal life" is taken by all the best critics. Professor Hovey thus sums up their testimony:-(33)

"On a certain occasion, Christ p.r.o.nounced it necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up, 'that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but _have eternal life_' (John 3:15)-??? ???? a??????.

???? a??????, says Meyer, who is, perhaps, the best commentator on the New Testament, of modern times, 'signifies the eternal Messianic life, which, however, the believer already possesses-???-in this a???, that is, in the temporal development of that moral and blessed life which is independent of death, and which will culminate in perfection and glory at the coming of Christ.' And Lucke, whose commentary on the Gospel of John is one of the most thorough and attractive in the German language, says that the ??? a??????, which is the exact opposite of ?p??e?a (destruction), or ???at?? (death), is the sum of Messianic blessedness. It is plain, we think, that the life here spoken of as the present possession of every believer in Christ is more than endless existence; it is life in the fullest and highest sense of the word, the free, holy, and blessed action of the whole man, that is to say, the proper, normal living of a rational and moral being. The germ, the principle of this life, exists in the heart of every believer; it is a present possession. 'Whosoever,' says Christ, 'drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a fountain-p???-of water, springing up into everlasting life.' (John 4:14.) In another place our Saviour utters these words: 'He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, _hath eternal life_, and shall not come into condemnation, _but has pa.s.sed from death into life_' (John 5:24)-eta???e? ?? t?? ?a??t?? e?? t??

????. Here, again, the believer is said to _have_ eternal life, even now; for he has pa.s.sed from death into life. _Ingens saltus_, remarks Bengel, with his customary brevity and graphic power. We translate a part of Lucke's ample and instructive note on this important verse.

" 'The words, "Has pa.s.sed from death into life" determine that ??e? (_hath_) must be taken as a strict present. For the verb eta???e? (_has pa.s.sed_) affirms that the transition from death into life took place with the hearing and believing. Only if an impossible thought were thus expressed, could we consent, as in a case of extreme necessity, to understand the present ??e? and the present perfect eta???e? as futures. And then we should be compelled to say that John had expressed himself very strangely.