N.T. Wright's "Surprised by Hope": The Pirate Review, Day 9
Chapter 11
Purgatory, Paradise, Hell
Having completed his argument about the specific Christian hope of bodily resurection within the larger scope of the promise of new heavens and new earth, with the person of Jesus Christ at the center, and before turning to the relevance of that hope for the world today, Wright tackles the question of the intermediary state: "Where are the dead right now?"
Purgatory
Wright first discusses the concept of Purgatory, a Roman Catholic doctrine that emerged during the middle ages and which held that many souls that were not yet ready for heaven but also did not merit hell were in a state of further purification, to be helped along by prayer, mass, and (eventually) the purchase of indulgences, which was the primary catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. The official presentation of the doctrine today is a "quite a climbdown" from the traditional view as propounded by Aquinas and Dante, but the notion is still around in some forms and forums.
After reiterating that a disembodied heaven is not the ultimate Christian hope, but the first (and less important) step of a two-step process, and pointing out that nothing in the New Testament can be read to support the position that there are any category distinctions between those in heaven as they await the resurrection, Wright gives his take on why he feels the classic doctrine of purgatory became so popular:
"The myth of pergatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why pergatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story, here and now."
Paradise
Despite being sometimes described as "sleep," "it is a state in which the dead are held firmly within the conscious love of God and the conscious presence of Jesus Christ." Wright here points out that he sees no reason why, having done away with the notion of purgatory, we cannot still pray for the dead, inasmuch as those "in heaven" are still "in Christ," and are therefore still our brothers and sisters in Christ. "Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God?" But he also cautions that there is no indication in the NT that the dead in Christ can or do act as intermediaries for us, so that we might pray to them to intercede on our behalf. "The practice seems to me to call into question, and even to deny by implication, the immediacy of access to God through Jesus Christ and in the Spirit which is promised again and again in the NT." Wright sees this practice as a result of the world of late Roman antiquity finding it difficult to rid its collective imagination of the many-layered panoply of gods and lords, of demigods and heroes, that had been around for thousands of years.
Hell
Wright then turns to perhaps the most "sensitive" topic of the chapter, the Christian concept of "hell." Of course, the sensitivity is derived from medieval imagery more so that early Christian writing, the eternal torture chamber vision. When people decided to stop believing in that vision, they also chose to stop believing in hell.
But in the NT, the word translated as "hell" is Gehenna, which was a literal rubbish heap outside the south-west corner of the old city of Jerusalem. And that leads to Wright's main point:
"The point is that when Jesus was warning his hearers about Gehenna he was not, as a general rule, telling them that unless they repented in this life they would burn in the next one. As with God's kingdom, so with its opposite: it is on earth that things matter, not somewhere else. His message to his contemporaries was stark, and (we would say today) 'political.' Unless they turned back from their hopeless and rebellious dreams of establishing God's kingdom in their own terms...Rome would turn Jerusalem into a hideous, stinking extension of its own smouldering rubbish heap."
Wright points out that Jesus, even if he hinted about things in parables, never spoke explicitly about the post-mortem state. His agenda had to do with things here on earth. And neither did the rest of the NT writers, for whom hell/final judgment was not a major theme. All this silences those who are certain of hell, know what it is and know exactly who is going there, as well as the universalists who know that there is no such place, or if there is, it will at the last be empty.
But judgment, as Wright earlier defined that term, is necessary if we believe in a good, creator God who has promised to make His creation good, to fix it, to "put it to rights." Evil must be identified, named and dealt with before there can be reconcilliation (Wright here cites the amazing book by Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace).
And that "evil," at the personal level, has three characteristics that are repeatedly touched on in the NT. First, it stems from the primary error of worshiping that which is not God as if it were (idolatry); second, and derivitive of the first, is the subhuman behavior which fails to reflect the image of God, which is essentially why we have been created in the first place (sin); third, and derivitive of the first two, is the possibility that if this sub-human behavior continues long enough so as to become endemic in a person's (or group's) life, without a radical turning away from it, such person's connive with their own "dehumanization."
Wright here engages in one of the most important discussions in the book so far. Not important in its theological significance, but in presenting a new though faithful picture of "hell", based on the NT characteristics of personal evil discussed above. He is careful to tell us, as does Paul about marriage, that this is not an area that is theologically mapped out. It is mystery, and rightfully so. But look at the vision he presents and see if it not at once entirely consistent with the biblical vision, with the concepts of a good creation and a good creator, and with common sense.
After mapping the current spectrum of belief, with the "eternal torment" view on one hand, the universalists on the other, and "annihilationism" (the view that sinners simply cease to exist) in the middle, Wright offers this vision. I'm reproducing it in its entirety because I believe it is that important:
"When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance and worship to that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship; what's more, you reflect what you worship, not only back to the object itself but outwards to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it, and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners or customers rather than as human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories), and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sexual objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it, and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors or pawns. These and many other forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they touch. My suggestion is that it is possible for human beings to continue down this road, so to refuse all whisperings of good news, all glimmers of the true light, all promptings to turn and go the other way, all signposts to the love of God, that after death they become at last, by their own effective choice, beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all. With the death of that body in which they inhabited God's good world, in which the flickering flame of goodness had not been completely snuffed out, they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity. There is no concentration camp in the beautiful countryside, no torture chamber in the palace of delight. Those creatures that still exist in an ex-human state, no longer reflecting their maker in any meaningful sense, can no longer excite, in themselves or others, the natural sympathy some feel even for the hardened criminal."
The point of the entire discussion up this point (the last Chapter of Part II) is that heaven and hell are not the point, or at least not the main point. The point is whole renewed cosmos, new heaven and new earth, and how we may go about preapring ourselves and working in anticipation of that main point. Wright ends the Chapter (and the Section) by making an anology to the Israel of Jesus' day. Israel had made the mistake of thinking that the main question was how God is going to rescue Israel, when the entire OT bears witness to the promise that God was working to rescue the entire world through Israel. Today, many Christians are so concerned about how we will be "saved" that we have fallen into the same trap as did the Israel that Jesus addressed. The point now, the point always, is that God has promised to redeem the whole world through his created human beings, thereby rescuing those human beings in the process, but not as the point of it all.
Which leads us to the question of how do we go about living our lives in light of that perspective. In other words, what is the mission of the Church to look like in light of the proper Christian hope? That's the question Wright will tackle in the final section of the book.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Wright's last sentence "Those creatures that still exist in an ex-human state, no longer reflecting their maker in any meaningful sense, can no longer excite, in themselves or others, the natural sympathy some feel even for the hardened criminal" suggests to me that he may not be an annhilationist, since ex-humans "still exist." Moreover, while still in this world, all non-believing/non-Christian humans retain, however so small, a glimmer or shimmer of the imago Dei, as I understand Wright. And so, life after death and life after life after death for the unbeliever. Wright does seem to be ambivalent on how long this time is, however.