Autor: Ormerod, Neil

Buch: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Titel: Creation, Grace, and Redemption

Stichwort: Leben nach dem Tod: Neues, Altes Testament (Torah, Sadduzäer, Sheol, Makkabäer)

Kurzinhalt: Some would say that the Old Testament, or at least the Torah, has no conception of life after death. The conservative Jews of Jesus'time, the Sadducees, who followed the Torah strictly, did not believe in resurrection ...

Textausschnitt: LIFE AFTER DEATH

174b When we consider portrayals of life after death in film (for example, Ghost, or the final scenes of Titanic, or even Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey), one might wonder what all the fuss is about. Life seems to go on much as usual, except for the fact that the dead are no longer visible to the living. They continue to see, hear, and feel, though for some reason they are not able to touch the living or be heard or seen by them. They even take on the shape they had in life. Death appears as a simple transition from one state to the next, which, although it may be painful beforehand, leaves the departed "soul" in a fairly robust state. The underlying assumption of such portrayals seems to be a form of dualistic anthropology, in which the soul is a separate substance from the body, death separates the soul from the body in an almost physical sense, and the soul itself is conceived as a form of refined matter, much as the Stoic philosophers did. (Fs)

175a This conception is so common that many might be surprised how far it is from the biblical conception of life after death and from Catholic thought on these issues. Let us begin with the Old Testament, move on to the New Testament, and then consider the question from a more philosophical perspective. (Fs)

175b Some would say that the Old Testament, or at least the Torah, has no conception of life after death. The conservative Jews of Jesus'time, the Sadducees, who followed the Torah strictly, did not believe in resurrection and hence had no clear concept of life after death. When you die, that is it. From this perspective, the best one can hope for is a long life and a good family to carry on one's name and tradition. Beyond the Torah-for example, in the Psalms-we do find references to Sheol or the Pit, the place of the dead. Here the dead endure a shadowy existence, cut off from the living and from God (Ps 6:5). There are no punishments, rewards, or fellowship with others. The rich and the poor, the good and the bad all meet the same fate. It is not as if the biblical authors did not believe in rewards and punishments, but they were to be found in this life, not the next.1 (Fs)

As we have already indicated, this approach started to fall apart during the Maccabean Revolt. For the first time in their history the Jews were suffering, not because of their lack of fidelity to the Law but precisely because of their fidelity. How could God allow such suffering to his faithful elect? The "solution" that emerged was belief in life after death, through which rewards to God's faithful could be imparted-at this stage the writers did not conceive of a resurrection for the wicked (2 Mace 7:14). It is the form of life after death, however, that should capture our attention. The Jewish authors did not think of death as the release of the soul from the body, which would free it from the limitations of physical existence. Such a dualistic conception was far from their understanding of human existence. Rather, life after death could only mean bodily life, a life where "body and soul" are formed into a single living human being. For this stage of Jewish belief, a "disembodied soul" was not a human existence, more a half life, like that of the shades in Sheol. Real postmortem life, human life, must be embodied life, what N. T. Wright refers to as "life after life after death.'"2 We are not angels, and even in death a life without a body is hardly worthy of the name. (Fs)

175c This is the horizon that was operative at the time of the New Testament. While some Jews (the conservative Sadducees) did not believe in a resurrection (Matt 22:23), and hence did not believe in any form of life after death, the Pharisees did believe in the resurrection of the body (Acts 23:6), as emerged during the Maccabean period. In his debate with the Sadducees, Jesus affirms the reality of resurrection (Matt 22:23-33), and for Christians Jesus' own resurrection from the dead settles the matter in the affirmative. Nonetheless, any reading of the New Testament resurrection narratives, or of Paul's account of bodily resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, should be enough to remind us that we are dealing with mystery. These are not accounts of a resuscitated corpse, but of encounters with the risen Lord of history, whose bodiliness can no longer be tied down in easily quantifiable terms. For example, Karl Rahner speaks of the relationship of the soul to the material order as pan-cosmic, while Wright prefers to speak of the resurrected body as transphysical.3 It would be easy, perhaps too easy, to read these New Testament texts like some modern movie script of ghostly appearances, disappearances, and interactions with the living. Rather, they speak of Jesus as fully alive, in a new and mysterious relationship with the material world, but one in which he is able to express his presence in tangible and active forms. Jesus continues as an active agent in human history, through his body which is the church, through his body which is the eucharist, and in ways that are simply beyond our comprehension. (Fs) (notabene)

176a We shall now turn our attention to some of the philosophical concerns underlying this problem. As we shall see they closely parallel the discussion above. (Fs)