No. 24 So, is there a time �in between� physical death and the general resurrection? >>PROFESSOR ROLAND ZIEGLER: Yeah, good question. And one that is not easy to answer. Because if you look at Holy Scripture, there is a curious disinterest in that question. Okay. There's a lot of talk about death and the meaning of death. And there is a strong emphasis on the resurrection. But there is not much information about what's in between. Is there an in between? What happens with the souls of the deceased? Now, traditionally the answer was: Well, the souls of the Christians are with Christ. And the souls of those who die in unbelief, they are also in some kind of a state of prehell you might say. But this traditional view that speaks of a separation of body and soul that happens at death has been under attack in the 20th Century. People like ***Austre Coleman and others accused traditional Christian theology of being infected by Greek philosophy. Any talk of the immortality of the soul was seen as a capitulation to a platonic mind set. Also, the traditional view of death and the intermediate state was attacked because it was seen as not taking death seriously. Well, if you tell me that: The soul survives death, what's the big deal then about death? I mean, death then is no longer really a judgement or anything that could be called a consequence of sin. You know, it's just a change of location or a change of your residence, so to speak. It has nothing to be afraid of. So to take seriously that death is death, you have to say that this is really the end of your existence. Period. That means that then you say: Well, after death, there is nothing. There is no soul that's somewhere and continues to live, to exist. But death is the extinction of a human being. For those who still wanted to retain it is something like the resurrection of the body, that meant that they say: Well, the continuity of the person is not in a soul. But rather it is in the fact that God remembers you. So God remembers you. And then in the last day, he will raise you as a body, soul, unit from the dead. Supported was all this rejection of the immortality of the soul by an environment that philosophically was more and more hostile to this duality or dualism of body and soul. And also the rise of materialism. Man was seen more and more as a psychophysical unity. And one of the materialists in the 19th century, a doctor, said the phrase: I dissected so many corpses. But I never found a soul. Which is about as intelligent as the statement by Gagarin saying: I was in space but I couldn't see God. Well, nobody said that God was simply out there like some kind of man in the moon. Nor did anybody ever say: If you just cut deep enough in the brain, then you will find the soul sitting there. But nevertheless, so in Protestant theology the traditional doctrine of the intermediate state was attacked. And you can still find people who say: No; no. Intermediate state. That's all bogus. Death is death and then there is the resurrection. Another version of a denial of the intermediate state is that you say there are two different timelines. There is really no time difference between dieing and the resurrection of the dead. You enter so to speak, a different dimension. And there physical death and the resurrection of the dead do coincide. So the moment of death is for you the moment of your resurrection. You so to speak, jump from our timeline and it seems to be a jump in time. Whereas because there's a different dimension, it is a continuity. That's an interesting philosophical speculation I would say. But it's questionable if that is the biblical view. So what can we say scripturally about the state of those who have died? As said, there is not that much in Scripture. And much of it is in passages that are parables. Or you have Revelation, which speaks also in metaphors. You have, for example, the passage in I Peter 3 which talks about Christ preaching to the spirits in prison which is a notoriously difficult passage. But assuming that it talks about Christ's dissent to hell, the spirits in prison would be the deceased unbelievers. So it would talk about a continual existence in a -- you could almost say parallel universe of the deceased. You have the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus. And again it's a parable. So it's not primarily told to inform us about the post mortal state. But you could make the point that Jesus assumes here at least that there is this state of the deceased which is conscious. And which in a way is on its own timeline. So there is an intermediate state. And you have the passages in Revelation where the souls of the martyrs are under the altar of God crying to God. And you have the 24 elders before the throne of God who are also the deceased. Celebrating the divine liturgy. But these are metaphorical texts of Holy Scripture. So it is at least difficult to draw direct conclusions out of these texts. Also the passage when Jesus says to the robber "Today you will be with me in paradise," was interpreted traditionally in a way that it means today you will be with -- as an immortal soul -- be in paradise. And when Paul says that he would rather die and be with Christ, this also strongly suggests a post mortal existence before the resurrection. So I do think that you can make a case that the traditional view that is the souls of the just are with Christ and in a conscious state and the souls of the unbelievers are in a prestate of hell has some scriptural basis for it. But it's not at the center of the hope of the Christian. And that's one thing that has to be remembered. Sometimes at funerals it seems all that is said is: Oh, now he is with Jesus. Or even worse: Now he is with his deceased wife. You know, yes, true. But the hope is not of an intermediate state. The hope is resurrection. We all tend to be Gnostics. We really believe that this body is just external to us. But it's not. So to be a disembodied spirit is not really a great thing to be. And that's one of the great distinctions between Christianity and Platonism. Plato really thought that this material body is a negative thing. That death is a joyful occasion because now your spirit is no longer encumbered by this material body. Christians value the body. We are always psychophysical beings. At least that's how we were intended by God and how we will be. And therefore, the separation is not the optimum. That's at least what we can say. It doesn't mean that the souls will suffer. But there is a certain privation here. When we talk about the immortality of the soul, this also has a different connotation than the platonic concept. Plato believed in an immortality that also included the pre-existence of the soul. Whereas -- except for origin, no Christian theologian ever had this kind of concept of immortality. Rather, man was created as a being that should live forever. And part of that was that his or her soul is immortal. That is that it is indestructible. It is indestructible because it was created that way. Not an inherent immortality. Of course only God is the one who is truly immortal. Because he is life himself. Man has a derived immortality. And that again is a difference to the platonic idea of immortality. In the Middle Ages you had rather fanciful geographies of the afterlife. And one example is Dante's "Divine Comedy" where he goes through hell to purgatory. Then to heaven. And you have all of these different circles of hell, heaven, purgatory. Again, biblical Christianity is much more hesitant. And it's certainly negative towards the idea of purgatory. Purgatory is a teaching that is particular to the Roman Catholic Church. The eastern Orthodox church doesn't have the concept of purgatory, even though they have the prayer for the dead. But they don't have the concept of purgatory. So just a few words about purgatory. You might have heard about purgatory in your Reformation history course. Because indulgences and purgatory belong together in the time of the Reformation. Purgatory is a place where the souls of the departed Christians are cleansed from the evil that is still adhering to them. And where they do penance for it, the punishment they have is not suffered on earth. Basics for the idea is that sin has two consequences: Guilt and punishment. Guilt is forgiven through absolution. But the punishment of sin has to be atoned for by the Christian. That's when a Catholic goes to confession or now the sacrament of reconciliation it doesn't end with the priest saying: Your sins are forgiven. But then he says: Well, pray a rosary. Say five hail Marys. Do an act of contrition. The priest is actually a judge commuting the sentence you normally would get for your sins into something lighter. It's like a judge who says: Okay. According to the books, you would get six months of jail. But I am commuting it into 200 hours of community work. And I can do that because I'm the judge. Now, nobody can remember all the sins he or she ever committed. So when you go to the confessional and you do not confess every and each sin you committed, they are still forgiven because absolution covers also the unconfessed sins, as long as they are convenable sins, not mortal sins. But you haven't paid your punishment. You haven't paid your fine. And in purgatory what happens is through the suffering, the poor souls pay their punishment. Now, this punishment can be taken over by somebody else. And that's the idea of indulgences. You can, so to speak, pay the fine for the poor souls by getting an indulgence for them. Or doing good works for them. And that's where all these masses for the dead, indulgence, good works and so forth come from. It seems to me that now in these present times, the concept of purgatory, even though it is still on the books and you still find it in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it's no longer looming that large in the consciousness of Roman Catholics than in ages past. It's still there, as mentioned. Masses are still offered for the dead. But probably you will see rarely little chapels like I saw in Germany where there's a picture of the poor souls burning in purgatory and an admonition pray for the poor souls in purgatory. I don't think you will find that maybe in a Hispanic areas which is traditionally Catholic. I don't know. But not in enlightened American Catholicism. Nevertheless, remember 2000, the jubilee year. The jubilee year in the Roman Catholic Church where this whole idea of indulgences for yourself and for the poor souls in purgatory was alive and well. And I thought it particularly ironic that when somebody asked: Well, but how does this jubilee indulgence go together with the joint declaration on the doctrine of justification? A Lutheran said, "Well, there's no problem." Well, it seems to me there is a problem. And it is a sign that really the agreement on the doctrine of justification, again, was like the agreement between the Lutherans and the Reformed and the Lord's Supper. An agreement in words but not really in the subject matter. So traditional Roman Catholicism has this topography of the afterlife. Purgatory, hell. In hell you have the ***limbus patrum and limbus ***infrontium. That is the place where the fathers of the Old Testament were -- which is now empty and where the unbaptized children come. And you wonder: My dear, how do they know all of that? Who was the map maker? And the answer is of course: People had visioned. And that's how these came. Or the deceased appeared and told them about these things. Here we again have to remember that when we talk about these things, we are not relying on visions and stories of apparitions of deceased people. But we rely on what revelation, that is the New Testament and especially the resurrection of Christ, tells us. So we have to be very, very careful. But we can say that the Communion of any Christian with Christ is not interrupted by death. But he is still part of the body of Christ in that certainly this relationship is mutual. So as Christians, we are with Christ. We are in this life or in the next life waiting for the resurrection are of the dead. And those who died without faith, well, we have to say there is no second chance in the afterlife. That's harsh. And of course you would like to have some kind of a second chance. But Scripture doesn't tell us anything about that. Hebrews says: It is ordered that man shall die once and then judgement. And not that man shall die once and then there's a second or third or a fourth chance. It's one of the reasons why we have to use the time we have wisely. Because what happens in this life counts for eternity. We shouldn't evangelize because we are driven by fear. We should evangelize because that's what Christians do. They want to share the good news. But we also realized that it is urgent that we preach the good news to everybody as long as they live here. What will come out of it, that is up to God. But it is our task to do that. Because this life does count.