This week, we open up a topic that has a few parts to it. What exactly is the Christian teaching of life after death?
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody. This is Jamie Dew.
Joe Fontenot: And I'm Joe Fontenot.
Jamie Dew: And welcome back to our podcast, The Talent Base and glad to have you.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah, really glad to have you. So in our last episode, we talked about this concept of NDEs, near death experiences, which is very fascinating. So if you haven't listened to it, go back and listen to that. But that opens up this whole other life after death concept and question the whole whatever. And so I feel like this is probably going to be several episodes here, but I just want to start with a general, where are we? A lot of us have an idea about this, but just for the record and all this kind of stuff, what is the general teaching of the church on life after death?
Jamie Dew: Yeah. All right. So yeah, it's not unlike necessarily other world religions who have some kind of story about what happens after death. There are lots of variations about that, but Christianity does have a very unique thing that it says about what happens to us when we die. And in short, what Christianity tells us is that death is not the end, that there's more to our life and to our existence after we take our last breath on this earth, that we will live again in the kingdom of God to come, and we will live forever with Christ. And of course there's all sorts of beautiful things entailed within that.
The ability to see loved ones again and to reconnect and to relive with them again. The ability to be cleansed of our sins and our wrongful longings and the ability for our bodies to be healed. And then most importantly, that what theologians throughout the ages have referred to as the beatific vision, to be able to behold our God and to seek Christ and to hear him and to worship at his feet forever and ever and ever. It's to live as we were originally designed and created to live. And this is the hope of the Christian story.
There are other belief systems that say different kinds of things. Islam has some things it has to say. Interestingly, Judaism really debated whether or not there was any life after death up to about the time of Christ. And then you have the Eastern religions, which essentially have a life after death, but all moving towards some kind of cessation of existence. And the goal in those religions is going to be for you to actually stop existing because it's a miserable cycle. But Christianity is distinct in its concept of a recreated world and a resurrection of the dead and life eternal in Christ, living as we were designed to live, stripped of our sins, made pure and whole, healed of all ailments and basking in the presence of Christ. So in short, this is the hope of Christianity and the hope of all who trust in Christ.
Joe Fontenot: So I feel like that's a helpful answer. I feel also like that's an answer that probably a lot of conservative Christian and by conservative, I mean theologically conservative, not politically necessarily, but conservative Christian people would hold to. I mean, that's pretty standard, right? So what I think might be less standard or at least less agreed on is what form does that take? What picture should I have in my mind when I think about these things?
Jamie Dew: Yeah, like how does it progress and how does it come to be?
Joe Fontenot: Yeah.
Jamie Dew: Interestingly, I think you're right. I do think that there's probably a wide variety of ideas that individual believers have, but I don't think that there's particularly much debate within the larger branches of Christianity through history. I mean, roughly speaking seems to me that the major branches of Christianity, Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox perspectives have all roughly with the exception of Catholicism and purgatory. Okay. So Catholics have this thing called purgatory that, no we don't think that way at all. And I mean them don't disrespect, but no, we don't think that that's what the Bible teaches at all. But other than that, I think that generally speaking, we've all affirmed the same core set of ideas about life after death. Purgatory, notwithstanding. And that is that there's a really two different phases to what happens next.
And one, we would refer to as what we call the intermediate state and the other one we would refer to as the resurrection of the dead and the resurrection of the dead, really both of these, but specifically the resurrection of the dead is probably if there is a research topic that I have given myself to more than anything else in my entire career, it's this question right here in my writing, in my thinking. Nothing published yet, but several things in the works on this, but the resurrection of the dead is the thing that Christianity is pointing to. So now, while the branches of Christianity have roughly all affirmed these things and I'll unpack these essentially, they're not well taught in any of those branches, such that throughout the culture at large, what you're going to get is a lot of conflation of these two.
So for example, when someone dies and we go to their funerals, we tend to reference that person as fully and completely in heaven. And let me be clear, that's all going to happen if they were a believer in Christ, but there's still a bit of a phasing and a process in here that Christianity does affirm. And that is that essentially these two next phases, the intermediate state and the resurrection. So the intermediate state, here's what this is.
The intermediate state is what happens to the soul of the person. Again, in the last podcast, we talked about NDEs and we talked about whether or not souls exist. And I argued there that if those are happening, then this would support it. There are other reasons I think that we have souls. And I can talk about that maybe if we, as you mentioned, we do another podcast on some of this. But essentially what the intermediate state is referencing is what happens to the soul when death occurs prior to the resurrection of the dead.
And essentially what Christianity says is, in Genesis chapter two, it says that God took the dust to the ground and he breathed into his nostrils. He shaked it and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And then in Ecclesiastes, 12, six and seven, it talks about how at death and references back to this Genesis two passage. At death, the body and soul separate. The body, which is referred to there's the dust goes back to the ground where it came from, and the spirit goes back to God where it came from. And then we get these pictures, Paul and Philippians one talking about wanting to go be disembodied in the presence of Christ. Paul again in second Corinthians five verse number seven and eight to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord Jesus on the cross of the thief saying, remember me, when you come into your kingdom and you have Jesus saying today, you'll be with me in paradise.
So from passages of scripture like that, what the Christian tradition has affirmed is that when we die our bodies and souls rip apart, and that's a tremendous upheaval of God's creation and his creation order there. This is the sting of death right here. The bodies fell separate from each other. The body goes back into the ground where it came from and the spirit goes to be in the presence of God. And it waits there in the presence of God for the resurrection of the dead.
Now, what's it doing? By most accounts what we seem to be taking from the scriptures is it that that soul is the very thing in you now and in me now, that is conscious, that has experiences, that loves, that thinks, that reflects, that remembers. That's the thing in us doing that right now. And so it's that thing, the soul, which does all those things, which goes to be in the presence of Christ and by most accounts in Christian tradition, that soul continues to do those very same things, to think, to feel, to love, to perceive and to do all those things specifically does that of Christ perceive him and love him, but it waits now for the next phase. And that is where we get to first Corinthians chapter 15 and first Thessalonians chapter four, where we're promised and in John chapter 11 in these passages where we're promised the resurrection of the dead.
I would say while the New Testament and even the Old Testament certainly does give us enough information to say, we have to affirm something like the intermediate state. There are some materialists today, Christian materialist that want to deny that. I think they're just dead wrong, with all due respect. But while there's enough in the scriptures to affirm the intermediate state, I think that I would admit that far and away, the emphasis in the New Testament is on bodily resurrection. The hope that's put before us is the resurrection of the dead. And that is the hope that when Christ returns, the dead in Christ shall rise up. And that means, and this is the part that most people don't think about. I think while Christianity broadly has affirmed this very clearly, most people when I do their funerals and their families are sitting there looking at me, and I start talking about the resurrection of the dead, they look at me like a cow staring at a new gate. Like they've never heard of this. They have no idea [inaudible 00:10:04].
And I go, "Y'all this is what the hope is. This dead body, this very same body that lays in death now shall rise up again and walk and be healed and shall be reunited with a soul and will be in the presence of Christ." That's what we're promised. I think, far and away, the emphasis in the New Testament is on the resurrection of the dead. And so in short, this is how I think it happens.
So when technically speaking, someone dies, maybe granny's passed. If granny was a believer, here's what we would say. Granny's soul is in the presence of Christ and how glorious and wonderful that will be to see him and behold him and to be with him. But at the same time, waiting on him to finish his work and to come again and raise our bodies and reunite our body and soul and allow us to live again in the way that we were designed to live the whole time. That is what Christianity I think is teaching to us.
Joe Fontenot: So when Jesus talks about Abraham's bosom, is he referencing this intermediate state before the resurrection?
Jamie Dew: Yeah. The story, yeah.
Joe Fontenot: Yeah.
Jamie Dew: Well, I do think so. I caution my students on that particular passage of scripture. Be careful not to build too much on this point out of that passage, simply because it seems to me the point of that passage that Jesus is actually driving to isn't to make a statement. Jesus doesn't seem to be intending there. The point of that passage is not to say the guys here's how heaven works. And here's how the intermediate state works. Rather, his point is to make a really strong commentary on our relationship to money.
He's cautioning us not to be greedy and treat money as an idol and love our money, right? So it's really actually an instruction about money and a warning about money. Now, he employs this possibility of a disembodied existence in heaven as a way of making that point, which I would say to that, well, therefore you can't take that. You have to take that seriously. You can't dismiss that. So is there something there in that passage that informs us here? Yeah, maybe, probably, but I wouldn't make too much out of that specific passage for that reason.
Joe Fontenot: Okay. Okay. So let me see if I can say this back to you to see if I'm tracking with you. Christian doctrine, with the exception of purgatory, the majority of the church has essentially agreed on two things. That we have this intermediate state, which is where the body and the soul essentially separate for a time. And then we have this bodily resurrection, which is the New Testament spends a lot of time on that part, not so much the middle part.
Jamie Dew: That's right.
Joe Fontenot: And that's where we get to the quote heaven that we're often thinking about. Is that an accurate restatement?
Jamie Dew: That is an accurate restatement. Absolutely. I think you heard me right on that. What we referenced the place where St. Granny's soul is in that moment, I don't have any problem, please don't hear me say, we need to go around correcting people when they say granny is in heaven right now. No, no, no, that is not helpful. That is just not helpful. I have no problem with people referring to that place that granny soul is that way, because frankly, our soul is in the presence of Christ. How glorious. I mean, I think it's going to get even better still for granny after this, but granny's in a preferable place to where I am right now. I'll say that.
And so I don't have a problem with referring to that place as heaven, but technically speaking, it's not yet fully been realized. There's still more to come. It gets better still. And that is, we are waiting with great anticipation and this is all throughout the New Testament, even the book of Romans, Romans chapter eight talks about this. We are waiting with great anticipation for the finished work of Christ to come. And hence why the book of Revelation teaches us to pray. Lord Jesus come, because that's our hope.
Joe Fontenot: Well, this is a very fascinating topic. I have a lot more questions. Maybe [inaudible 00:14:33] right. Maybe so that people aren't just like whipped around constantly, we'll cut it here. We'll come back together and do a part two.
Jamie Dew: Okay. Sounds great.
Joe Fontenot: All right. Thanks Jamie.
Jamie Dew: Hey everybody. This is Jamie and Joe again. If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps other people find it. And if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way. And we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.