A Theology of Everything

Part 13, The Shadow of Non-Being is Overcome

This will be the last post in this series, finishing up with some more thoughts about eschatology, a theology of "last things."

As I mentioned in the very first post, this series can't be about "everything." This series was, rather, an attempt at some systematization, to pull different topics into a coherent, consistent whole. In that attempt, systematic theological reflection tries to create a holistic vision of "everything." 

This series tried to do a bit of that, from creation theology to theodicy to soteriology to eschatology. We've talked also about the Triune God, Father, Son and Spirit. We've dipped into theological anthropology and ecclesiology. 

Of course, much has been left out, critical questions remain and legitimate objections can be leveled. I'm continuing to ponder how the theology of creation I've sketched in this series might accord with an evolutionary account of human origins. Also, and relevant to today's post, I'm pondering how the "ontological drop" into contingency relates to our life after death. Today's post shares a speculative reflection about that topic. That is, the body succumbs to non-being at its death, but does non-being also shadow the soul after death? And if so, how to describe that? This post will attempt that description.

So, questions, puzzles, and issues remain, but I enjoyed over this series pulling together a lot of disparate thoughts into a "theology of everything."

While this post concerns the status of creatures after death, it's also an attempt to connect back to the beginning of this series to try to close some loops.

To recap: Creation is both ex nihilo and ex Deo. We come "from nothing" but also "from God." Created existence, to exist at all, has to be rooted in God. And yet, created existence, being from nothing, is shadowed by non-being should its connection with God become severed. Consequently, should we divorce ourselves from God we drop into contingency and begin a drift into non-being.  

Following Maximus the Confessor, at the instant of our creation humanity moved away from God and suffered the "ontological drop" into contingency. Death was introduced into created being, movement toward nothingness. As the volitional aspect of created being, the entire cosmos suffers this drop to experience the encroachment of non-being. Creation now awaits the human response to God.

From the foundation of the world God has made provision for the ontological drop. From eternity the Son was predestined to become Incarnate, joining in his person created being with Uncreated being. In his "yes" to the Father Christ reestablishes the ontological bridge between creation and God. Where Adam's "no" ushered death into created being Christ brings life:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned...But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many...If, because of the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5.12,15,17) 

The work of Christ in uniting created being to God is vindicated at his resurrection from the dead. Easter demonstrates that death has "no dominion" over Christ's created being. In Christ created being overcomes the "ontological drop" into contingency. Christ's resurrected body is the ontological hope of created being. Those who cross the ontological bridge that is Christ are filled with his Spirit and are thereby connected to the vivifying, resurrecting power of God. The indwelling of the Spirit is God's answer to our ontological drift into non-being.

For those indwelt by the Spirit, this life is no longer a drift into nothingness. Death becomes the birth pangs of new creation. Mortal being is exchanged for immortality, corruptible being for the incorruptible, fleshly being for the heavenly. The grain of mortal existence dies to give birth to the flower of spiritual existence:

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the physical and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. As one of dust, so are those who are of the dust, and as one of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven.

What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Look, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15.42-55)

Concerning the fate of those who die separated from God's Spirit, those who have yet to say "yes" to their own birth and creation, what follows is final bit of theological speculation. 

To start, there are puzzles regarding the logical and metaphysical consistency of some Christian conceptions regarding the following:

1. The separation of the soul from the body at death.

2. The persistence of the disembodied soul in an intermediate state between death and Final Judgment.

3. The belief in a bodily resurrection.

From a systematic theological perspective, there is a great deal of diversity, ambiguity, and controversy regarding how all these beliefs might cohesively hang together. For example, where do souls go after death to await future judgment and/or the general resurrection? Does this intermediate state reflect a "pre-judgment" status before a final judgment? (Think here of Jesus' Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.) Also, if the soul is separated from the body at death how are the souls of the dead reconnected to their mortal bodies at a future bodily resurrection?

Many Christians skirt or avoid these puzzles by dropping one of the three beliefs above. For example, you might drop the idea of an intermediate state and surmise that, upon our death, we immediately undergo judgment and find ourselves in either heaven or hell. Many Christians also assume a very Platonic view of the afterlife, dispensing with the notion of a future bodily resurrection. That is, upon death souls are separated from their bodies to await judgment in some intermediate and disembodied state to, eventually, go on to face a final judgment at some future date. There is no bodily resurrection in this view, just the soul going through various transitions: separation from the body, awaiting judgment, facing judgment. The trouble with this Platonic perspective is that it flies in the face of Paul's strong belief, cited above, that the resurrection is embodied.

In an attempt to address these puzzles, which seem to revolve around disembodied souls existing in an intermediate state, I have poked around looking for some answers to these questions. In what follows I'm going to borrow from and elaborate upon a piece of Paul Giffiths' argument in Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures. Let's end this series with some final speculations.  

Here's the basic idea: The soul is always embodied. Even after death. There is no such thing as a disembodied soul. Borrowing from the Hebrew idea of Sheol, the soul is not disembodied but is, rather, "shaded" by death. The indeterminate state between death and resurrection is inhabited by shades rather than disembodied souls. 

In his treatment of this, Paul Griffiths speaks of "discarnate animate bodies." Following the Hebrew imagination, I will speak of "shades." The basic idea is the same: while the dead are separated from their material flesh (they are "discarnate") they continue to posses a type of body. As Griffiths states, "the discarnate soul has a nonfleshly body of some kind, as do all creatures." (See sections 1, 18, and 22 of Decreation for Griffiths' treatment of "disincarnate bodies").

Though I am shifting away from the traditional word "soul" to speak of "shades" to name post-mortem human being, I would argue that we've always imagined, described, and depicted "souls" as "shades." Think of Jesus' Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. Think of Saul calling Samuel up from Sheol. Think of how the souls envisioned in Revelation are clothed in white robes. Think of how we "see" ghosts, the souls of the dead, as faded images of their former lives. Think of Dante's Divine Comedy where he encounters embodied shades in his travels. Think of C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. Think of the early Christian belief that Christ descends into hell to rescue the shades imprisoned in hades. Think of the embodiment of angels. In short, I would argue that the word "shade" has always better captured depictions of post-mortem existence than "soul" given how in every case we imagine embodiment, even if ghostly, spectral, spiritual or other-worldly embodiment. In fact, I would suggest that it is impossible to even imagine such a thing as a "disembodied soul." Any "soul" we'd imagine would have some connection to embodiment as a "shade" of a prior material existence.  (Griffiths uses the word "trace" to describe the connection between the shade and its prior fleshly existence.)

To offer a definition, "shaded" existence is existence where non-being has come to occlude the creature's material being. More simply, the material creature has died. In this sense, shaded existence is "immaterial" existence but not disembodied existence. 

Admittedly, all this is highly speculative, but I believe a contrast between shaded embodied existence versus disembodied souls solves, at least grammatically, some of the puzzles and inconsistencies described above. Specifically, shaded existence preserves embodiment from death through the intermediate state to resurrection and judgment. Shaded existence also avoids needing to describe how souls get separated from and reunited with bodies at death and at the resurrection. That is, shaded embodiment doesn't need, at the resurrection, to be reconnected to its former material constituents. Rather, shaded embodiment undergoes the change and transfiguration Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15. 

So, back to the question at hand: What happens to those who are disconnected from Christ when they die? 

When a creature separated from the Spirit dies its death is experienced as an ontological catastrophe, as an ontological loss. Rather than a birth, the experience is one of death. Non-being wins a victory over the material being of the creature who is thrown into ontological darkness. This darkness is also an apocalypse. In the darkness the creature faces its moral separation from God and its ontological precarity. This state is variously described as judgement, wrath, and hell. The creature suffers the shadow of non-being, exists as a "shade" of its former existence. Far from God and having suffered loss, the shades weep and gnash their teeth. They dwell in darkness. They are salted by fire.

The tradition differs as to the ultimate fate of the shades of hell. Some contend that God allows the shades to continue their drift into non-being. Separated from God, shaded existence eventually evaporates into nothingness. This view is described as mortalism, conditionalism or annihilationism. Rebellious creatures cease to exist. Refusing to exist in God, the creature becomes nothing. There is no other place to go. In Decreation, Griffiths argues for this position, that the shades can self-annihilate by choosing nothingness over God. This view is not my view, but if my view is incorrect this is the view I would fall back to.

Others contend that the shades of hell can and will remain in a state of intransigent rebellion for all of eternity. The shades cannot annihilate themselves and God refuses to allow them to drift into non-being. Consequently, the shades persist in the outer darkness for all eternity. This view is called self-exclusion or voluntarism. See C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. I find this view harder to believe in as I find it implausible that a stasis such as this, if solely due to the creature's volition, could persist for eternity. In a face-off between finitude versus infinity I'm betting on infinity. I find it more plausible that creatures complete their journey into either Being or non-being, that everyone, eventually, gets to where they are going, reaching either God or nothingness. That said, many feel constrained by their reading of Scripture that eternal self-exclusion, or something like it, is the proper view. The majority voice of the Christian tradition also supports them.

My view, however, as described in the last post, is apokatastasis, the ultimate and comprehensive restoration of created being.

According to apokatastasis, the shadow of non-being cast over created being will be fully overcome. Biblically, this is described as the final and ultimate defeat of death:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human, for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in its own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Cor. 15.20-28)

When death, the last enemy, is defeated God will be all in all. Ultimately, all of created being will say "yes" to God. Creation will consent to its birth. With this consent non-being is overcome. Undergoing the pedagogy of death, darkness, and hell, the shadow of shaded existence gives way to the Dawn. Creation crosses the ontological bridge. The birth-pangs of contingency are overcome in the birth of new creation. Created being is transfigured, divinized. In Christ, God became a human being so that human being, the whole of it, can become God. Theosis. Stated even more broadly, God became created being so that created being, the whole of it, can become God. Death, the last enemy of created being, is defeated. All die in Adam, but all will be made alive in Christ. Alpha and Omega. God will be all in all.