Argument 5: The traditional view of “Where Are the Dead” is Flawed
About 100 years ago, someone published a tract called “Where Are the Dead?” Several denominations were so impressed that they adopted its arguments as their standard position, and many republished the tract. Indeed, it’s standard fare in Church of Christ preacher schools even today.
The gist of the tract’s conclusions is that the dead pass into Hades where they go either to Paradise or Tartarus, pending Judgment, following which the Tartarus residents go to hell and the Paradise residents go to heaven. It’s been said so many times that most people never question the truth of the claims.
Now, there are obviously some problems with this theory –
* Why wait on Judgment if the souls are already sorted between lost and saved? No one is going to be surprised! And Matthew 25 predicts surprise. I mean, if you die and find yourself in Tartarus next to Stalin and Hitler, you pretty much already know how it’s going to end.
* This theory is astonishingly similar to Greek mythology, which seems just too weird.
* Where’s the new heaven and new earth?
* Why judge those already judged? How is that “judgment”?
* Where is the resurrection in all this?
* The Bible doesn’t actually describe Tartarus and Paradise as a holding tanks for human souls pre-judged but not officially judged.
Tartarus makes but one appearance in the scriptures –
(2 Pet 2:4 NIV) For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell [Tartarus], putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;
Nothing says that lost human souls wind up in Tartarus pending Judgment Day. This one passage speaks only of rebellious angels. Not a single verse says a lost human will spend time in a place called Tartarus. And both the NIV and ESV translate Tartarus as hell, because it’s the Greek word for hell — the place where the damned are tortured forever. And the Bible does indeed teach that Satan and his demons will suffer forever — but they are immortal beings.
I’ll spare you the details, but the scriptures use Hades to refer to the place where the dead are, not a holding tank. It was uniformly used to translate the Hebrew word Sheol into Greek in the Septuagint. “Hades” just means the place where the dead are.
What about “Paradise”? Well, it’s used three times —
(Luk 23:43 ESV) And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
(2Co 12:3-4 ESV) 3 And I know that this man was caught up into paradise–whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows– 4 and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.
(Rev 2:7 ESV) 7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’
None of these passages describe Paradise as a holding tank, but they do describe it as presently in existence, which would seem to contradict the idea of the earth being transformed into a new heavens and new earth at the end of time. But Revelation gives the answer (which is suggested many other places, such as in the “New Jerusalem” passages, but this series is already way too long).
As we’ve seen, Rev. 2:7 says the “tree of life” taken from the Garden of Eden exists in Paradise. The root of “Paradise” is the word for garden! Paradise is the new Eden!
(Rev 22:1-2 ESV) Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
The tree of life is in heaven — and in Rev 21, heaven comes down to earth and God joins heaven to earth to form the new heavens and new earth. God dwells with his people, and the tree of life (in Paradise!) sits astride the river of the water of life.
Paradise is presently in heaven, where God dwells, but Paradise — the Garden — will be restored to earth when Jesus returns. We are going back to Eden to walk with God in the cool of the morning.
(Isa 51:1-8 ESV) “Listen to me, you who seek the LORD: look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. 2 Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him. 3 For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.
4 “Give attention to me, my people, and give ear to me, my nation; for a law will go out from me, and I will set my justice for a light to the peoples. 5 My righteousness draws near, my salvation has gone out, and my arms will judge the peoples; the coastlands hope for me, and for my arm they wait. 6 Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell in it will die in like manner; but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will never be dismayed.
7 “Listen to me, you who know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my law; fear not the reproach of man, nor be dismayed at their revilings. 8 For the moth will eat them up like a garment, and the worm will eat them like wool; but my righteousness will be forever, and my salvation to all generations.”
Isaiah explains that God will return his people to Eden, those who reproach and revile will be eaten as a moth eats a garment and as a worm eats wool, but God’s children will last forever.
Rev 22:1-2 borrows its image from —
(Eze 47:1-6 ESV) Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. 2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side. 3 Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. 4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. 5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. 6 And he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he led me back to the bank of the river.
(Eze 47:12 ESV) 12 And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing.”
(Eze 47:21-23 ESV) 21 “So you shall divide this land among you according to the tribes of Israel. 22 You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. 23 In whatever tribe the sojourner resides, there you shall assign him his inheritance, declares the Lord GOD.
Paradise is Eden is Jerusalem remade by God as a blessing to all nations, in which all nations are given an inheritance and healed. Paradise is now in heaven, but will ultimately be joined to earth.
And so, it’s a mistake to call Paradise a holding place for souls awaiting Judgment. Paradise is for those souls already judged and found righteous. Paradise is the very presence of God, and Paradise will be the new heavens and new earth, renewed by God to be a new Eden.
Argument 6:There is no need for a holding tank
In the geography of heaven and hell I find in scripture, there is no need for a temporary place to store souls pending Judgment. They simply appear asleep to us and, to God, pass straight to Judgment, where all will meet their Maker at once.
When they stand before their Creator, they will have no excuses and will remember their sins. Indeed, if God wishes, he can show them their past, because to God, it’s still present — at least until he remakes the universe.
Argument 7: The Rich Man and Lazarus must be understood for the kind of literature it is
Lenski writes in his commentary on Luke,
The question of the propinquity of the rich man and Abraham and of the great chasm that divided them is answered when we remember that our ideas of space do not apply to the other world, and that what applies there cannot be put into human language. … All arguments regarding the other world that are based on our ideas of physical space are inadequate, that world is spaceless as it is timeless. The real question is whether the blessed and the damned are able to see and to speak with each other as that is here represented. The answer is negative. The conversation that is put into this parable is placed there for its own sake — so Abraham, the father of believers … would answer every unbeliever in hell and justify God’s judgment on the blessed and on the damned. The very frankness of the parable ought to keep us from drawing false conclusions. …
The fact that the entire conversation is intended to teach an underlying thought to the hearers of the parable and is not a report of an actual conversation should need no proof. All mercy ended in hell. Even the least mercy as when a mere drop of water is asked for a tongue that is burned to a crisp … . This very request shows plainly that the conversation is only a vehicle for something that underlies it.
Norval Guldenhuys, in the New International Commentary on Luke, writes,
The Saviour related this parable not in order to satisfy our curiousity about life after death but to emphasize vividly the tremendous seriousness of life on this side of the grave — on the choice made here by us depends our eternal weal or woe.
He quotes Plummer as saying,
We must remember that we have here to do with a parable and not with a real occurrence and that “it is no purpose of the parable to give information about the unseen world. The general principle is maintained that bliss and misery after death was determined by conduct before death, but the details of the picture are taken from [uninspired] Jewish beliefs as to the condition of the souls in Sheol, and must not be understood as confirming those beliefs. …”
Guldenhuys provides very extensive footnotes to back up his conclusion.
There are, of course, commentators who disagree, but none of the commentaries that I own do. I must add the perspective of N. T. Wright, from his Jesus and the Victory of God:
The story carries clear echoes of well-known folk tales, to which Jesus is giving a fresh and startling twist. The emphasis falls at the same point that was made twice – i.e., with great stress – in the prodigal son: ‘resurrection’, i.e. ‘return from exile’, is happening all around, and the Pharisees cannot see it.
The parable is not, as often supposed, a description of the afterlife, warning people to be sure of their ultimate destination. If that were its point, it would not be a parable: a story about someone getting lost in London would not be a parable if addressed to people attempting to find their way through that city without a map. We have perhaps been misled, not for the first time, by the too-ready assumption, in the teeth of the evidence, that Jesus ‘must really’ have been primarily concerned to teach people ‘how to go to heaven after death’. The reality is uncomfortably different.
The welcome of Lazarus by Abraham evokes the welcome of the prodigal by the father, and with much the same point. The heavenly reality, in which the poor and outcast would be welcomed into Abraham’s bosom (as everyone would know from the folk-tale), was coming true in flesh and blood as Jesus welcomed the outcasts, just as the father’s welcome to the returning son was a story about what Jesus was actually doing then and there. The theme of ‘rich and poor’, not unimportant in Luke, is here thrown into stark prominence, as recent studies have stressed. But the point of this, when the story is seen as a traditional tale with a new ending, was not so much what would happen to both in the end, nor yet simply a statement on the abstract ‘ethical’ issue of wealth and poverty, but rather what was happening to both rich and poor in the present time. Jesus’ welcome of the poor and outcast was a sign that the real return from exile, the new age, the ‘resurrection’, was coming into being; and if the new age was dawning, those who wanted to belong to it would (as in Deuteronomy and Jeremiah) have to repent. The story points up the true significance of what Jesus was doing, and the urgent need of those who were at present grumbling to recognize this significance. The five brothers at home correspond quite closely to the older brother in the prodigal son. ‘Resurrection’ is happening, but they cannot see it. The story takes for granted that the poor and outcast were rightly being welcomed into the kingdom, and it turns the spotlight on to the rich, the Pharisees, the grumblers: they, too, now needed to repent if they were to inherit the new day that would shortly dawn. They were refused the extra revelation of someone ongoing to them from the dead; the message of repentance was clear enough in Moses and the prophets.
The parable is therefore further strong evidence that ‘repentance’, in the senses already discussed, formed a central element in Jesus’ proclamation. The basic story he was telling invited his hearers to see themselves as the true Israel, returning at last from exile, and turning back to their god as an essential part of the process.
(footnotes omitted)
In short, the best I can tell, the most scholarly commentators hold that the Rich Man and Lazarus is not intended as a roadmap to the afterlife. Indeed, the idea that Abraham — a human — might hear and speak to the damned in hell from up in heaven is a great way to illustrate a point, but what kind of heaven would it be if we were able to hear and talk to those in hell?
Seriously: what would it be like in heaven if we could hear the voices of those in hell begging for water — and we could answer?
PS — Bach’s Cantata 140 “Sleepers Awake” has multiple movements beyond the one we are familiar with and that the series of videos began with. I figured you could use some high class background music while reading about the afterlife.
Jay,
Just because Jesus didn't *intend* for the Rich Man/Lazarus speech to be about the afterlife doesn't imply that it must therefore be an inaccurate picture of the afterlife. He could've used a scene which did, in fact, accurately portray an afterlife, yet not have used it for that purpose. Those positions are not mutually exclusive.
And surely Lenski isn't claiming that because the Rich Man wanted mercy, the story thus cannot depict the afterlife accurately! Just because it is a fact that there is no mercy where the Rich Man was doesn't mean the Rich Man knew that. In fact, the Rich Man's request and the denial demonstrates that there is no mercy where he is.
Even if this is a mere parable which does not record actual other-dimension-ly events, it's nevertheless the case that Jesus didn't tell parables about yellow brick roads, oompa loompas, Narnia, or pots of gold at the end of rainbows. Jesus taught parables about tares and wheat, a sower spreading seed on soil, mustard seeds, a woman sweeping her house, vineyards, workers, land-owners, judges, kings, slaves, tax collectors, etc. etc. And, well, tax collectors actually exist in the real world. So do judges, kings, fields, seeds, sowers, vineyards, etc. Do we have any other case where a parable clearly contains elements that are utter fantasy?
–guy
Jay, did you ever read the Early Christian writings on this subject? I ask this, becaus eyou make seem this teaching quite "new" in your indroduction:
In fact, this is the earliest understanding of the afterlife outside the NT we have within the church of Christ. The earliest references are found in 1st Clement VI (around 96 AD):
and in chapter L:
Now, Clemet's goal was not to present a full explanation of the afterlife, but his scattered allusions to it, reveal the general conviction, which is also confirmed by later writers:
1) There is a time span between death and resurrection
2) Those who lived righteous lives in Faith to Christ enter "a holy place" among the Godly in "secret chambers" (distinct from their graves) – the now possess this place, but they shall be resurrected. This does not fit the idea of sleeping.
3) It is embedded is a premillenialist eschatology (the reveleation of Christ's Kingdom in the future)
Justin Martyr wrote in his Dialogue with Trypho V (ca. 160 AD):
You may note, that this is the common understanding among the church of Christ of the first centuries of this text in Luke 16. I take this just as an example. My Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs has over 50 quotes from the Ante-Nice Church on six pages in small print.
Also interesting is the following from Justin's Dialogue with Trypho LXXX:
This is BTW in the context of Justin's discourse on the millenium. But really interesting: The first ones who are called Christians and denied the bodily resurrection (and therefore the intermediate state) were the Gnostics.
But I am sure you have access to the literature of the first churches of Christ. So, when you say (or make it sound like) that a tract 100 years ago sheped the understanding of the afterlife in the churches of Christ, I'd say it restiored it – because this is historically the original understanding of the afterlife.
Argument 5: The traditional view of “Where Are the Dead” is Flawed
This is not an argument, but in itself a statement withot proof. You could have summed up, WHY it is flawd in the title, which would have made it easier to deal with this huge amount of information. I see how far I come:
Why not? This questions asks for understanding. If surprize should be the main aspect of the judgment, your obkection might make sense, but God does not want to surprize us in the first place – that's why He gave us an impression of this day in this passage in Matthew. There is – however a tension between Revelation and Matthew I am aware of.
The eschatological texts in the gospels are – in my opinion – very dense summaries, highlighting a few imprtant aspects. So I believe both resurrections are seen as one in the scene of Matthew. But there might be a different aspect:
Consider: Over whom will the church with Christ reign in the millenium? Over this earth with its inhabitants – all those who are alive at His coming before the millenium. After the millenium (which ends in sin again, after Satan was released) all nations will be gathered and judged according to their works. So this judgment defines who will be thrown into the lake of fire and who will inherit the Kingdom, the New Heavens and the New Earth.
But I would be a little reluctant to say which of these two ways of reading theis text is corerct, or if there is a third solution to solve this puzzle.
(To Tartarus a little later)
If you take the time to read Justin's Dialogue – he objects to Greek philosophy and points out the differences in great detail. If there are similarities, then because this is God's Word that is similar to what you see as similar to Greek thinking. And God's word is not weird. It may sound weird to us if we expect something else – but that's how it is with God's word in many other cases as well.
Why do both Revelation 22 and Ezekiel 47 speak of "the healing of nations" as if separate countries will still exist in the new heavens and new earth? I thought the entire earth would be just one dwelling place, Eden if you will, where all God's children will dwell in righteousness as one people with our Lord and God. Please explain how "nations" will continue to exist.