What can we believe today about the Life Death and Hope?
A talk given in the education room by the Dean of Wells on Sunday March 30th 2014
Human Beings and Great Apes
I have been reading recently a book by the American evolutionary psychologist Michael
Tomasello. Tomasello is the co-director of the Max Planck Institute for evolutionary
anthropology in Leipzig. His specialism is the distinction between humans and animals, and
particularly the distinction between humans and our nearest ancestors, great apes.
Tomasello’s hypothesis about the difference between apes and humans is focussed around
what he calls shared intentionality. He writes, ‘The shared intentionality hypothesis is that what
created this unique type of (human) thinking … were adaptations for dealings with problems
of social coordination, specifically, problems presented by individuals’ attempts to
collaborate and communicate with others (to co-operate with others). Although humans’
great ape ancestors were social beings, they lived mostly individualistic and competitive lives,
and so their thinking was geared towards achieving individual goals. But early humans were
at some point forced by ecological circumstances into more co-operative lifeways, and so
their thinking became more directed toward figuring out ways to coordinate with others to
achieve joint goals or even collective group goals. And this changed everything.’
Tomasello traces a journey from what he calls individual intentionality, to joint intentionality,
to collective intentionality; a journey that has occurred over the last 6 million years of
evolution. Individual intentionality, which he ascribes to the great apes, is all about strategies
for hunting. Temporary partnerships may form and social interaction happen between great
apes – he carefully documents the range of this interaction from a series of studies of
primate behaviour. But it remains the case that ‘Individual intentionality is what is needed
for creatures whose social interactions are mostly competitive, that is, creatures that act on
their own or, at most, join in with others to choose sides when there is a good fight going
on.’ On the other hand he says ‘Human beings, in contrast are all about (or mostly about)
cooperation.’ Collective intentionality results in the human capacity for language, culture,
and agreed objectivity.
Now, I have no way to judge accurately Tomasello’s scientific credentials but they sound
fairly impressive to me, and his argument appears to make sense. If the distinctive mark of
human beings is about the ability to collaborate, and to think collaboratively, it puts a new
slant on the traditions we have inherited from Aristotle, who describes human beings as
‘rational animals’ or from Descartes with his famous aphorism ‘I think therefore I am’.
Tomasello, it should be noted, is not arguing that human beings are irrational, or that
rationality is unimportant, he is saying that rationality as we know it, the objective rationality
of an individual thinking subject, is dependent on deeper structures of the human need and
desire to collaborate.
This emphasis on collaboration should not come as too much of a surprise to those of
religious faith, and especially to those formed in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. After all the
two creation stories at the beginning of the book Genesis both emphasize that creation is,
from the beginning, about men and women together. The priestly account says ‘So God
created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he
created them’. (Genesis 1 v 27) This is echoed by the earlier pictorial writing of the Yahwist:
‘Then the Lord God said, “it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a
helper as his partner”….So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he
slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the
Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Then the man said “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be
called Woman, for out of man this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and
his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were
both naked and not ashamed.’ (Gen 2 v 18ff). The religious insight of these mythological
stories suggest that the world is not self-standing but is created by God, and that human
beings are called to partnership with one another as part of the good purpose of God. It
seems that this collaborative vision of human origin and human destiny may, to some extent,
be echoed by contemporary research in evolutionary anthropology, though, in the light of
contemporary debates about same-sex marriage, we should consider carefully how far
collaboration needs to be linked to gender difference, as it is in the Genesis stories.
A view of creation
A contemporary philosopher who has helped me think about how human beings are created
for collaboration is Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas, who lived his adult life in France, was rooted
in the Jewish tradition and his work helps to explicate what it means to be a created person.
Levinas focusses on the face of the other person as the site where God speaks to us. God
approaches through the vulnerability of the other person, through their defencelessness that
calls out for our generosity and service. The face commands us, not by force, as a power
within the world, but by an invitation to collaborate. The face expresses; language is a
communication of trust that is more than the content of what is communicated. We can
respond to the other person, come to understand their needs, disagree with them. We are
in relationship with them.
Levinas writes of the infinity of the face: ‘This infinity, stronger than murder, already resists
us in his face, is his face, is the primordial expression, is the first word: “you shall not commit
murder.” The infinite paralyses power by its infinite resistance to murder…. There is here a
relation not with a very great resistance, but with something absolutely other; the resistance
of what has no resistance – the ethical resistance.’ The face refers us beyond this world.
Although the face can be described in terms of shape and colour and hair and eyes, what
commands us in the face comes from beyond. It is a reminder that beyond all description in
terms of the visible world, we are created, and so called to respond to God through the
other person.
This is a language about God that exceeds the metaphor of height. It brings together the
two great commandments of Jesus given in the gospels. ‘The first is, “Hear O Israel; the
Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength”. The second is this, you
shall love your neighbour as yourself”.’ (Mark 12 v 28f) These commandments become no
longer sequential but two aspects of the same action as God is found through and beyond
the love of neighbour. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer ‘your will be done on earth as in
heaven’ it is not that God is in a space above us in heaven issuing commands for us to fulfil
on earth. Instead, in performing the action of service to our neighbour the infinite God is
made present on earth.
When we speak of God as transcendent in this philosophy we are speaking of him as
absolutely other, beyond the claims of understanding but open to us through holy action,
embodied giving to the other. Levinas quotes Rabbi Yochanan, “to leave men without food
is a fault that no circumstance attenuates; the distinction between the voluntary and the
involuntary does not apply here.’ Spatial metaphors of height only make sense for Levinas, as
he seeks to articulate Jewish faith, if they emphasize the absoluteness of the obligation to
engage with the other person.
For Levinas, this order of creation is prior to our understanding of the world through
science or art or history. The freedom of the individual thinking subject that has been prized
by post-enlightenment thought, finds itself already committed, already bound to the other
person and so to God. Measuring, comparing, ensuring justice between competing interests
is a further stage of political life, life in society that remains dependent on this prevenient
structure of generosity that is the identity of a human being created in the image of God.
Whether human beings recognise this createdness is a matter of choice, each person is free
to refuse, to go their own way, to live for themselves, to ignore this destiny that they have
been given before the day of their birth. Levinas sums up the status of the creature as
follows: ‘But the idea of creation ex nihilo expresses a multiplicity (of persons) not united
into a totality; the creature is an existence which indeed does depend on an other, but not
as a part that is separated from it….’ Men and women always retain the freedom to refuse
God, to refuse the other person, to refuse to be defined and contained by any category.
This personal freedom, when used in the service of the otherness of the other, means that
human beings also have the capacity to resemble God, to fulfil the purpose of collaboration
for which they have been made.
Religious faith springs from this createdness, from the sense that the world is a gift of God
and that we are called to serve him and to serve our fellow creatures both human and nonhuman. For the religious believer in the Judaeo- Christian tradition the world as we see it is
incomplete, still awaiting the fulfilment of God’s justice and peace. This fulfilment requires
human cooperation to be realised. In reaching out in love to the other person, in attending
to the needs of another person, especially of the widow, the orphan and the stranger,
human beings encounter the transcendent.
A first form of this transcendence is met through the family, in which our life comes from
another person and in which, as a baby, we depend upon an other. In adulthood we learn to
live for other people, for our partner, for our children. We discover an otherness that takes
precedence over self-regard. Desire is purified as we learn to live beyond biological and
emotional attachment and find that each other person has a claim upon us even before we
have accepted it or even recognised it. Michael Morgan, a commentator on Levinas makes
the point ‘We always already have been responsible…’ We are responsible for the other
person and we are responsible both to God and for God.
Transcendence and death
A second form of transcendence is seen in our works, in what we achieve in life through the
artefacts we make, through the historical legacy we leave, or even through the beauty and
productivity of our garden. In the case of works of art these take on a more lasting
transcendence – we are still in some way endebted to Fra Angelico for his paintings, to
Shakespeare for his words, to Mozart for his music. There is a sense in art that something is
being bequeathed to posterity. But even art, like our garden, like the cathedral, and like all
living things, including human beings, is subject to decay and in the end to death.
The objectivity of our thinking is another promise of transcendence. Science, in all its forms,
promises trans-generational certainty about the constituents of the world. We rely on facts
that are objectively proven, beyond subjective opinion. Tomasello suggests that objectivity
rests on the human cultural need and desire for collaboration shown through ritual and
language. Knowledge, however, does not provide a final answer to the drive of human
beings to be, to live and to thwart death.
Humans, as Levinas suggested, have the capacity to hasten death by premeditated action,
through murder and through war. Humans also are able to postpone death, but not finally
to thwart death even if they work in collaboration with others. The doctor and the nurse
are signs of the desire of human beings for the prolongation of life. However we also hasten
death in less obvious ways by concentrating on our individual selves. We forget the fragility
of others especially those who live at a distance from us, say those who are caught up in
war in South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo. We, the rich, hoard resources of
money and food, healthcare and weapons. The reality is that the forces of death and life are
so interwoven in this world that it is sometimes difficult to know how to choose life.
Nevertheless that is what we are called to do if we are not to be tricked by evil into
believing that the ‘I’ is immortal, that if I look after myself all will be well. Lent is perhaps the
time when we let a little more of the world’s pain and injustice impinge upon us.
But, in the end everything in this world has to face death. There is no part of us, Christianity
teaches, that can evade it. There is not even an immortal soul, detached from our body, that
can escape death. In fact we have been dying since the day we were born, even before we
are born as the process of conception already involves the death of cells. Whilst death
exists the transcendence that human beings can experience will remain partial.
It is on the subject of death that Christianity seems to be at its most outrageous. Judaism
calls all to holiness, to the fulfilment of the law, to living for the generations to come, whilst
awaiting the messianic transformation of the world. Islam speaks of paradise, of another
world, as a reward for those who obey God. Buddhism and Hinduism whilst they call men
and women to dispossession and to the dissolution of the ego, unlike Christianity, they do
not seem to speak of the destruction of death, or to promise a purified personal life; a life
made just, that goes beyond death, and that is already glimpsed within this world.
Christian logic and death
Christianity, by contrast, speaks of the coming of God to dwell on earth and the passage of
Jesus through death into a life transformed. Furthermore, it suggests that those who trust in
him enter into a new form of life that is no longer bound by death, and that this life is the
end to which every person is called – in the words of St Maximus the Confessor: ‘... the one
(person) who has been initiated into the ineffable power of the resurrection knows the
purpose for which God originally made all things’.
How can we begin to understand the logic of this claim whilst recognising that it remains a
proposition of faith; that is, it remains a statement of the hope that Christians find that God
has given to them?
The first thing to say is that the logic depends upon a belief in the providence of God. It
believes that the God who has given this structure of createdness that I have outlined
earlier continues to care for his creation and seeks a way in which the power of death over
human life – the inability of human beings to achieve permanent transcendence - can be
overcome. There is a divine purpose, even a desire of love, at work within human history
that calls it to transcendence.
The second consequence of this logic of faith is that the overcoming of death will not take
place in a different way from the intimations of transcendence that we have already seen in
creation. The defeat of death is inseparable from God’s justice and God’s call to men and
women to live for the other, the other person and for God who is the ultimate other.
Human beings cannot achieve this transcendence by themselves because they are enmeshed
in death from the moment of conception. Only God is free from the mortality that
enmeshes the world, and so a new action of God is needed, an action that is consonant with
his intention of love already shown in creation, and it is an action that, as in creation, will
always be respectful of human freedom. This is the incarnation of God within the world and
the acceptance of death in order to show that, as the Song of Solomon says, there is a love
strong as death.
However, the new life given through love for the other does not come to earth without a
struggle. The story of Jesus is the story of a battle of life and death, the battle of one who
trusts in God the Father against the forces of disintegration that seek to make him break
that trust. It is the story of love reaching out to the forgotten, and into the dark places
where evil and destruction hide in the ordinary assumptions of life. Jesus really dies and it is
only by another action, demonstrative of the continued love of God the Father for him, that
he is raised from the dead. His risen life is not the same as life in this world, because it is
freed from death, and purged and transformed by love.
Finally, as Jesus has passed though death so we too have to face death. This dying and rising
is symbolised in baptism when we affirm that we are willing to die to self and live to Christ;
yet we still have to pass through the second death, the point at which our final breath in this
life is drawn. In Christ we are offered a new relationship with one whose love in God is not
broken by death. We are called to be born afresh, and we have to learn to respond to that
invitation day by day, year by year, so as to enter into this life that is no longer beholden to
sin and death.
By putting the Christian logic of faith in this way I have perhaps given the impression that I
have the self-emptying (kenosis) of God, the unlikely coming of God into a particular human
life, sorted out and know exactly how the parts of the whole fit together. So I want to insist
again that this, as are all my talks, is a personal exploration of the mystery of resurrection
faith as I have known it in the life of the church and as I try to articulate it in the light of my
experience of this pluriform world. I expect that as I travel on, some parts of what I have
said in these talks will become clearer to me, whereas about other matters I will face new
questions that will continue to make me ponder afresh.
The resurrection stories
I now turn to the resurrection stories that stand at the core of Christian hope.
The resurrection stories in the gospels are short and quite diverse. Whilst there is common
ground in the stories of Jesus’ passion and death, there is much greater variety in the
accounts of the resurrection. The stories are both allusive and elusive, and each can be
thought about from many different angles. Whilst they may relate to an historical event or
events they are not trying to tell an inner worldly historical narrative. They are written to
encourage the faith of the first Christians, faith that the death of Jesus did not mean the
defeat of all that he had stood for, and that the power of Jesus’ life, his presence, was still
active amongst them especially as they assembled for worship.
The gospel writers were grappling with the unknown. They wanted to talk of something that
didn’t fit their previous frameworks of experience. The risen Jesus was more than a physical
body that had been brought back to life but which would then die again like the body of
Lazarus. It was the dawning of a new age, what Paul calls a new creation. To begin to
understand them we have to leave the literal and yet pay attention to the details of the
individual narratives. We have to let them play in our experience of God today.
In each of the gospels we have an account of the discovery of the empty tomb and the
consternation that this caused. The empty tomb can perhaps be seen as signalling that death
and the whole process of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus is not to have the final word. But
the appearances vary. In Matthew the angel appears to the women, and then as they leave
the tomb Jesus is in their path. The guards are bribed to say that the body is stolen and the
disciples are commissioned to make disciples of all nations. Jesus will be with them to the
end of the age. In Luke, two men in dazzling clothes suddenly appear to the women saying,
he is not here, he has risen, and they go to tell the eleven. In Luke we have the
extraordinary and powerful story of the appearance of the stranger on the road to Emmaus,
and the meal afterwards, and then a final blessing that we have come to think of as the
ascension. The original version of Mark that finishes at Chapter 16 verse 8 ends with the
women fleeing in fear after having met a young man in a white robe who says to them to tell
the disciples that Jesus has gone ahead of them to Galilee. John follows the empty tomb with
the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdelene; the appearance in the locked house on the first
day of the week; the subsequent appearance to Thomas; the scene by the lakeside in
Galilee; and the testing and commissioning of Simon Peter.
In all of this we are closer to poetry than to scientific fact. The accounts are probably
shaped both by memory and oral tradition, and by the experience of the early church
believing that the power of Jesus was still there and leading them onward. Each story
deserves careful attention and thought, an entering into it rather than trying to judge it by
external criteria of truth and falsehood. Some of the themes that are explored in the stories
are the nature of encounter with God and the recognition of God’s presence; the
transcendence of normal physical limits, that is the freedom of God who is not confined by
time or space; the place and nature of doubt and faith; the significance of forgiveness as a
preparation for mission; the communal life of the disciples and the commission to go out
beyond family and race trusting in the power of God.
Whilst the liturgical year of the church concentrates the experiences into 40 days after
Easter before the feast of the Ascension, the distinction between ‘special’ resurrection
appearances and the experience of God in the life of the church is probably less clear. Some
of the resurrection stories are clearly shaped by the eucharistic experience of the church
and in turn the stories themselves shape how the church came to understand the presence
of God as they sahred bread and wine. And then there is the record of Paul who tells of the
appearance of Christ to 500 hundred brothers and sisters at one time, then James and all
the apostles, and last of all to him as ‘one untimely born’. (1 Cor 15 v 6f). Paul appears to
speak of a tradition not recorded in the gospels.
The messianic hope in the New Testament
The New Testament is written within the framework of the Jewish hope of a messianic age
when injustices would be righted and God’s peace would reign over all the earth, a peace
amongst humans and animals that was proclaimed by Isaiah who wrote these words
associated for Christians with Advent and Christmas:
‘The wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and
the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them… they will not hurt or
destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as
the waters cover the sea.’(Isaiah 11 v 6 ff)
In the recognition of Jesus as the messiah the hope was that this new age had dawned and
Christians came to think that it had been inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus from the
dead. By the cross and resurrection God had shown his judgement upon injustice and the
false judgements of human rulers. Jesus, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, is the first fruits of
those who have died. He is the first fruits of a much greater harvest still to come when this
messianic age will be seen in all its fullness. The early church expected this completion of
God’s creation to come soon. So, in the meantime, the church lived in expectation that this
world would be changed, that the hardships and persecutions they suffered now were trials
on the way to a kingdom that had already dawned and would soon spread over all the earth.
They expressed this hope in a variety of ways. Like the resurrection stories it was a hope
difficult to define. Nevertheless it was a hope they felt compelled to try to express,
sometimes in ways that cannot easily be made into a coherent whole. I want to look briefly
at three places where this hope is voiced.
The first is in 1 Corinthians 15. Here Paul speaks of a progression. Christ is the first fruits of
the overcoming of death and then come those who belong to Christ, and then there is an
end when Christ hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every
ruler and every authority and power. This is the description of a victory, the defeat of evil
and of the last enemy death. Paul bases his thinking on a typology. Adam is the first man
born in a physical body and subject to death. Christ is the second Adam born in a physical
body but raised a spiritual body. Whilst the flesh (a wider concept than the physical for Paul)
brings death, the spirit will bring life. He develops this further; Adam is the man of dust,
Christ is the man of heaven. Paul goes on to offer a second image. ‘We shall not die but we
shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet.’ Paul says
that on that day we will be raised imperishable, for this mortal body will put on immortality.
Paul is grappling with the sense that the new life given by God in Christ is the promise for
all, but that this new life is not an extension of this unjust world, but a world in which even
the last enemy death is defeated. It is a world in which we are given new clothing for our
body, clothing of the spirit, (also described in 2 Corinthians 5), clothing that comes from
God and not from this world.
A second and shorter image is found in 1 Thessalonians 5. Here Paul gives a slightly different
sequence of events. The Lord will come again, but there are some who have already died
before his coming. Those who are alive will not precede those who have died at the coming
of the Lord, at the last trumpet, when the dead in Christ will rise first. Then those who are
left will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and will be with the Lord forever. Paul
goes on to exhort the church to be watchful, for the day of the Lord will come like a thief in
the night. The language of watchfulness resembles the apocalyptic chapter from Mark’s
gospel, Mark 13 – both are used liturgically in the season of Advent.
A third and different vision of the messianic end is given in the book of Revelation, a book
which speaks of the cosmic battle of good and evil and of the triumph of the lamb, the lamb
who is the figure of Jesus. At the end of the book death and Hades are destroyed and
thrown into the lake of fire, and we see a new heaven and a new earth, with the Holy City,
New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God and a loud voice that says from the
throne ‘see, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they
will be his peoples and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their
eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first
things have passed away.’ (Rev 21 v 3 ff)
All of these accounts place their hope in the triumph of God that has already been seen in
Jesus. All involve judgement, the overcoming of evil and death and the common life of God’s
people who are living in and for a world to come. All are couched in metaphorical language
because they are trying to express a hope that is still unseen, and yet a hope that through
faith here on earth has proved to be compelling, life-changing, for Jews and Christians and
even perhaps for Muslims who speak both of judgement and an afterlife in Paradise. What
distinguishes Jewish and Christin thought, ( I need to understand Muslim eschatology
better), from eastern religions may be to do with their emphasis on corporate and
interpersonal hope and upon the expectation of justice in a changed world.
Living the hope
However, in the present time even if we have seen the promised truth for which we were
created in Jesus, we have to wait for the time of fulfilment. In this waiting we join the Jewish
people who still wait for the coming of the Messiah and who proclaim the words ‘Next year
in Jerusalem’ at the end of every Passover Seder.
During the First World War Karl Barth wrote in his commentary on the Epistle to the
Romans that ‘… to wait is the most profound truth of our normal, everyday life and work,
quite apart from being Christians. Every agricultural labourer, every mother, every truly
active or truly suffering man or woman knows the necessity of waiting. And we - we must
wait, as though there were something lying beyond good and evil, joy and sorrow, life and
death; as though in happiness and disappointment, in growth and decay, in the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’
of our life in the world, we were expecting something. We must wait, as though there were
a God whom, in victory and in defeat, in life and in death, we must serve with love and
devotion. ‘As though?’ Yes, this is the strange element in the situation. In the journey
through time, we are still men who wait, as though we saw what we do not see, as though
we were gazing upon the unseen’.
We are to wait, as Romans 8 reminds us, with patience for the hope that we do not see.
But we are to wait in a way that shows our hope that the world will be transformed by
God. The key here is living with the recognition that the world before our eyes is
incomplete, not as God desires it to be, and that the peace and justice of God is not yet
fully present. We work for a changed world order in which the poor, the widow and the
orphan have an honoured place; we work to build a community where gifts and resources
are shared, both locally and between the rich and poor nations of the world. But even this
social improvement will not definitively bring about the messianic age. The hope of God
remains beyond our understanding.
So we have to wait, and to deepen out trust in God, and knowing that we depend upon him
for our life. We become spiritually part of the anawim, the poor of Yahweh who are
especially loved by him. Embracing this way means learning to be part of a gift economy in
which we give and receive from others, and depend on the other for our life. The monastic
writer Sandra Schneider reminds Christians that it is this gift economy that points to this
kingdom to come, because it has left behind the commodity economics of personal
acquisition that marks the economy of this world.
The first year of office of Pope Francis has offered a visible icon of this way for all the
churches. His humility and humanity has commended the Christian faith afresh to a sceptical
world in which economic and military power often seem to have the final word. So let me
finish this talk about hope with a quote from Pope Francis’ Lent message for 2014.
‘Christ’s poverty is the greatest treasure of all: Jesus wealth is that of his boundless
confidence in God the Father, his constant trust, his desire always and only to do the
Father’s will and give glory to him. Jesus is rich in the same way as a child who feels loved
and who loves its parents, without doubting their love and tenderness for an instant. Jesus’
wealth lies in his being the Son; his unique relationship with the Father is the sovereign
prerogative of this Messiah who is poor.’ (Pope Francis)
John Clarke