What Happens After Death?

This weekend, as noted earlier, I am in Waco, Texas giving a lecture as part of the Wilken Colloquium named in honor of Robert Louis Wilken. The theme this year is eschatology. I am giving a lecture alongside Brian Daley, some of whose earlier works I noted here. He and I, I gather, are the Catholic representatives while our evangelical colloquists (the Colloquium being run under the auspices of the Paradosis Centre for evangelical-Catholic dialogue) include Todd Billings and Jerry Walls.

Walls, whose earlier collection on eschatology was noted here, has a book published just this month: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory: Rethinking the Things That Matter Most (Brazos, 2015), 240pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Will heaven be boring? How can a good and loving God send people to hell? Is there such a place as purgatory? If so, why is it necessary, if we're saved by grace?

Questions about the afterlife abound. Given what is at stake, they are the most important questions we will ever consider. Recent years have seen a surge of Christian books written by people claiming to have received a glimpse of the afterlife, and numerous books, films, and TV shows have apocalyptic or postapocalyptic themes. Jerry Walls, a dynamic writer and expert on the afterlife, distills his academic writing on heaven, hell, and purgatory to offer clear biblical, theological, and philosophical grounding for thinking about these issues. He provides an ecumenical account of purgatory that is compatible with Protestant theology and defends the doctrine of eternal hell. Walls shows that the Christian vision of the afterlife illumines the deepest and most important issues of our lives, changing the way we think about happiness, personal identity, morality, and the very meaning of life.

My own lecture, for those who are interested, is entitled "Eschatology and Funerary Practices Today: Byzance après Byzance?" It surveys a good deal of recent Western scholarship critical of reformed funeral rites in the West today as being, inter alia, inadequate expressions of orthodox eschatology and often tools of very shoddy pastoral psychology also. I then critically review the Byzantine funeral rites to see how they fare before making some practical suggestions at the end.

Wanted: Christian Burial Societies

Ask the average person (sadder still: the average Catholic) to name one of the corporal works of mercy, and you'll very likely get a blank stare. Ask him what the pope said recently about the reproductive habits of rabbits and Catholics, and you'll get some fulsome burbling about how Francis is just the coolest pope ever.

But burying the dead is one of those practices of charity and mercy enjoined upon all Christians. And burial practices today, as I recently noted, are very much in a state of flux and change. This creates problems for Christians insofar as many of these new practices (and a goodly number of the older ones also) subtly, and sometimes overtly, undermine the Church's faith in the resurrection in particular and her teaching on eschatology more generally.

Such, at any rate, is my thesis for a lecture I am giving next month at Baylor University's Wilken Colloquium (part of the Paradosis Centre). The colloquium is named after the historian and patrologist Robert Louis Wilken, author of numerous important works, including The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God, John Chrysostom and the Jews : Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century, and The Christian Roots of Religious Freedom; and translator of others, including Maximus the Confessor, On The Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ.

As I am thinking about this problem, and how to bolster a proper eschatology, my mind returns to two books previously discussed on here: Juliet du Boulay, Cosmos, Life, and Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village; and then Mark and Elizabeth Barna, A Christian Ending. I interviewed the Barnas here.

Du Boulay's book, which I discussed briefly here, has made me realize that restoring Christian funerary practices in a robust and undiluted way will not come about merely by getting the liturgy correct--much as I love the Byzantine liturgical tradition and think it alone today has some of the crucial elements in her funeral rites missing in Western traditions. Absent an entire local community (such as the villages in the Greek islands du Boulay surveyed), it will not be possible to pull off what I am proposing. Too many recent commentators (e.g., Thomas Rausch) have noted that you can have wonderful liturgy with all the correct theology and yet get nowhere with preaching the resurrection of the flesh to people surrounded by contrary cultural customs and beliefs. Liturgy, thus, is a necessary but not sufficient condition to recovering healthy Christian practices and a solid eschatology.

What is further needed, I am coming to see, is the establishment of something with an old history: Christian burial societies to handle the work--washing and dressing the body, building coffins, digging graves, planning funerals and memorials and meals. These societies existed at one point in England, and still exist in Jewish form in Israel and elsewhere today. But for all intents and purposes Christians today in the West have handed over their dead to funeral "professionals." I'm not denying that many such professionals do a fine job with the best of intentions (though there are, of course, shady operators).

But as Thomas G. Long's recent and excellent book, Accompany Them with Singing--The Christian Funeral notes, the professionalization of funerals has also resulted, however inadvertently, in their paganization also in significant ways. If Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection (as St. Paul put it), then this is not something we can afford to get wrong, or to hand over to others who do not share the same fundamental theology. Hence I should be delighted to see the work the Barnas are doing, training volunteers in how to handle death, spread very widely until it becomes the norm, at least for Christians. This would be a good in itself, but it would also be a tool of evangelical outreach to a world one can characterize as increasingly rébarbatif.

East-West History and Relations

Robert Taft recently gave an interview about Orthodox-Catholic relations, especially in the new papacy of his fellow Jesuit. You can read that here. Attentive readers will note that much of what is said here has been said elsewhere by him, but it bears repeating.

Taft also mentions a new book by another important historian, Robert Louis Wilken, whose earlier book, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Yale UP, 2005) I used in a course several years ago.

Wilken has written numerous books and done important historical work on pivotal figures and crucial issues such as John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (U Cal Press, 1983).

Wilken's latest book, which Taft praises, is The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity (Yale UP, 2012), 416pp.

About this book we are told:

How did a community that was largely invisible in the first two centuries of its existence go on to remake the civilizations it inhabited, culturally, politically, and intellectually? Beginning with the life of Jesus, Robert Louis Wilken narrates the dramatic spread and development of Christianity over the first thousand years of its history. Moving through the formation of early institutions, practices, and beliefs to the transformations of the Roman world after the conversion of Constantine, he sheds new light on the subsequent stories of Christianity in the Latin West, the Byzantine and Slavic East, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
Through a selected narration of particularly noteworthy persons and events, Wilken demonstrates how the coming of Christianity set in motion one of the most profound revolutions the world has known. This is not a story limited to the West; rather, Christian communities in Ethiopia, Nubia, Armenia, Georgia, Persia, Central Asia, India, and China shaped the course of Christian history. The rise and spread of Islam had a lasting impact on the future of Christianity, and several chapters are devoted to the early experiences of Christians under Muslim rule. Wilken reminds us that the career of Christianity is characterized by decline and attrition as well as by growth and expansion. 

Ten years in the making and the result of a lifetime of study, this is Robert Louis Wilken’s summa, a moving, reflective, and commanding account from a scholar at the height of his powers.

Commentary on Romans

Eerdmans continues to publish their series "The Church's Bible" under the general editorship of the well-known historian and patrologist Robert Louis Wilken. The most recent volume is edited and translated by J. Patout Burns: Romans: Interpreted by Early Christian Commentators (Eerdmans, 2012), 456pp. About this book the publisher tells us:

The Church's Bible series serves to bring the rich classical tradition of biblical interpretation to life. Compiled, translated, and edited by leading scholars, these volumes draw extensively from early and medieval commentators, illuminating Holy Scripture as it was understood during the first millennium of Christian history. Designed for clergy, Bible teachers, men and women in religious communities, and all serious students of Scripture, The Church's Bible will lead contemporary readers into the inexhaustible spiritual and theological world of the early church and hence of the Bible itself.

This Church's Bible volume brings together select lengthy excerpts from early Christian writings on Romans, Paul's most comprehensive statement of Christian teaching. J. Patout Burns Jr. has judiciously chosen extended passages from such church fathers as Origen, Rufinus, Pelagius, Chrysostom, Ambrosiaster, Augustine, and Theodoret, enabling readers today to benefit from the church's rich treasure trove of commentary on Paul's Letter to the Romans. Covering the first five hundred years of Christian history, this volume incorporates new translations made from the best texts currently available.

Both Burns's pastoral sensitivity and his extensive study of patristics shine through his selection of ancient passages, which run the full gamut of perspectives on Romans. Each passage is relevant and applicable to our current understanding and living of the Christian life, not just historically valuable. This volume -- and the entire Church's Bible series -- will be welcomed by preachers, teachers, students, and general readers alike.

The Creed

It was the Methodist theologian Will Willimon who, about fifteen ago now in a short article in The Christian Century (if my memory serves) wrote of once taking a class at Yale in which a Greek Orthodox bishop was asked to address the students on the role of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. At one point, a young student stood up and asked "What do you do when you can't say the creed?" The bishop responded to the effect: "You just say it; eventually you'll learn it." The young student, frustrated, responded: "But what do you do when you don't really believe certain parts, like the Virgin birth?" The bishop again responded "Well, you just say them, especially the difficult parts. Eventually it will come to you." Now really exasperated, the student demanded: "How can I profess a creed I don't really believe in?" The Orthodox theologian then asks how old this man is, and he's something like 21, to which the bishop responds with the lovely rebuke to this man's self-importance and narcissism by saying that nobody knows or understands anything at 21 and to remember that "it's not your creed: it's our creed. Just keep saying it and eventually it will come to you."

The creed is indeed a part of our common patrimony as Christians--Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic. A new DVD has recently been released and, taking a break from our usual bibliographic focus around here, I thought I would offer a review of The Creed: What Christians Profess, and Why It Ought to Matter. Directed by Tim Kelleher, and produced under the aegis of the journal First Things, this is a smartly produced short film that marries commentary from leading Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox scholars and writers with lush imagery and beautiful music, much of it courtesy of St. Vladimir's Seminary Choir.

About this DVD, the producers tell us:

A Film by Tim Kelleher. From the back cover: The Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed, professed by billions of Christians throughout the world, makes radical claims about the nature of reality and the identity of Jesus Christ. What are those claims? Can they withstand contemporary scrutiny? Who should care? Andy, why? In this remarkably succinct consideration, the 12 basic articles that compose the Creed are examined historically, theologically, philosophically, linguistically, scientifically and culturally, in order to appreciate more fully this treasure that is so often "hidden in plain sight." You are invited to join this stirring conversation, featuring an eminent group of scholars and thinkers, whose insights are the fruit of life-long study, prayer and reflection. Whether you are a student or a teacher; one struggling with questions of faith or a believer, THE CREED: What Christians Profess, and Why It Ought to Matter, will be a challenging and rewarding experience.

I watched this film, which is only thirty minutes long, chiefly as a professor trying to see if it would be suitable and useful in my classes. I have over the years seen again and again the amazement, and often the bewilderment, in students when first confronted with the messy and often hotly debated nature of Christian dogmatic history in the era of the ecumenical councils. I have also frequently seen the glazed-over look of too many people who mindlessly accept modern prejudices in assuming that creedal, doctrinal, or dogmatic statements are ipso facto boring, abstract lists of things nobody cares about and that such lists do nothing except make Christianty seem "intolerant" and irrelevant in a twenty-first-century world of technology and terrorism. Creeds, according to this mindset--the product of feverish readings of Foucault and Nietzsche--are little more than the products of a will-to-power in which the so-called orthodox try to "discipline and punish" the so-called heterodox, these latter often being portrayed as brave but persecuted dissidents fighting, well, a proleptic version of the French or American revolutions against jack-booted bishops who have not yet encountered the Enlightenment.

The DVD offers a very vigorous defense of the importance and the centrality of the creed against its modern despisers. It is generously ecumenical in the best ways, lucidly drawing on such prominent Orthodox theologians as John Behr, Catholic historians such as Robert Louis Wilken, biblical scholars such as Luke Timothy Johnson (himself the author of a 2004 book entitled The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why it Matters), particle physicist Stephen Barr, and other writers such as Frederica Mathewes-Green. 

My only criticism of this otherwise very well done production is that it is unaccountably short. It is an appetizer when I was expecting an entrée. Indeed, it ends with one of the commentators expressing the hope that parishes and others will form groups to dive into the creed in depth. That was exactly what I was hoping this DVD would do: not just present an apologia for the existence and use of the creed, but a more systematic exposition of each clause. We get some exposition throughout, but not all articles are covered, and none with as much historical detail as I was expecting and thought necessary. Still, if this does nothing so much as provoke people to consider anew the basic tenets of Christianity, this will have done a great good. If it raises new questions for people, that is all to the good, and the producers and participants are to be commended for this compelling and elegantly executed presentation.