From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Thu Nov 28 2002 - 13:07:02 GMT
Hi Platt,
I've been thinking about your comment a few weeks ago that "The fundamental
appeal of most religions is precisely the promise of life after death. Just
as the first living cell was motivated to free life from obliteration, so
each person desperately wants to escape the finality of his own death. "Do
as I say and you will have life everlasting" promises the preacher. No
wonder his influence on mankind has been and continues to so much more
profound than that of the philosopher. I've always felt that a metaphysics
that doesn't conclude with (or even hint at) a similar promise will never
capture the imagination of the world."
I've been dwelling on it simply because, for me, I don't think that the
promise of 'life after death' has much weight in my understanding of the
world. I don't deny it, it just doesn't mean much to me.
Let me explain a little further. A classic distinction is between 'eternal
life' and 'everlasting life'. In the first eternity is outside of time, in
the second, time is ongoing and never ending. So in the first, there is no
awareness of time, in the second, there is. So for an individual person
contemplating 'life after death', the first would represent something like
the 'beatific vision' where you are taken outside of time and brought into
the presence of the divine (this is neo-Platonic); the second is something
more like the 'vision of paradise', ie where you carry on existing and
inter-relating (with other heavenly beings) in something like the way that
we do now.
Now, traditional Christian language of the resurrection of the body clearly
implies something of the second type, ie that we are reconstituted after the
last judgement as bodily beings - and that means within some framework of
'time'.
The thing is, I don't think that this was the most important thing for
Jesus. When he talks about the fate of the soul, his understanding is much
more the first sort, ie 'eternal life'. Even when he talks about 'separating
the sheep from the goats', the language of 'hell' that he uses is 'Gehenna',
which was apparently the rubbish tip outside of Jerusalem: you are 'cast
out', not cast into everlasting torment (although there are places where he
uses that language, eg Dives and Lazarus). There is the question of how far
to take his language as literal and how far as metaphorical. Most
importantly, though, as I read him, eternal life is something that we have
access to now - I think it is what lies behind his language of being 'born
again', and also what lies behind all the traditional language of 'sonship'
or, to use the Orthodox term, 'theosis', ie becoming like God. Eternity is
something that is found in the present moment or not at all.
If our hopes are placed in some element outside of what we have here and
now, then to that same degree, the importance of the here and now is
diminished. We can see this in extreme form with some of the
self-justifications of the 9/11 terrorists: the prospect of virgins in
paradise is seen as more important than ongoing life here and now. But it is
something which is inherent, I think, in any notion of 'life after death'.
A comment of Wittgenstein's that I am fond of is: "The fear of death is the
best sign of a bad (ie false) life." What I take him to mean is that if you
are afraid of death you haven't actually achieved any integrity in your
life. We will all die; that is unavoidable. But death is not something that
we can experience - it's a boundary. Obviously we can experience dying, but
not death itself. Either it is a transition or it is a terminus; either way,
it's not a source of concern. I think Wittgenstein is trying to point out
that it depends upon a mistaken valuation of our own ego.
So if I were asked whether I believed in 'life after death' (of either sort)
the short answer is: I don't know, and it's not a 'weight bearing' part of
my faith. That is, I don't think and feel and act the way that I do because
I have a hope of a reward after death. I am the way that I am because it is
'the
way the truth and the life' - in this life. It makes sense to me, it feels
right, it seems to hold more truth and meaning than anything else I've come
across. Anything else (after this life) is a bonus. I don't disagree with
the idea of life after death, it just doesn't mean very much to me - quite
literally, I can't make much sense of it. The beatific vision seems much too
Platonic, everlasting life doesn't make philosophical sense.
In terms of my hopes for the future, and what most stimulates them, I'd
rather watch Star Trek than ponder the Apocalypse :o)
Sam
www.elizaphanian.v-2-1.net/home.html
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