Today we are encouraged to have a more positive view of death than our forefathers often did. People talk about the appropriateness of death, emphasising that it part of the natural cycle and doctors and therapists dealing with people at the end of life seek to help the dying find what they call a 'good death'. All of this is true and very healthy and where we are able to think in this way and have the resources to plan and arrange our dying it may well help face what is nevertheless a terrifying reality. But it is also true that for millions in our world still death comes as a negation of life, often coming in brutal, painful and úntimely ways. However much we try to accommodate death within our modern culture we are still aware that death represents the antithesis of life, that in death possibilities, ambitions plans and relationships come to an end. In the Hebrew bible there is a similar tension. For some, the 'good death' came at the end of a long and fulfilled life, surrounded by family, followed by burial in the ancestral home. But other traditions, recognising the violence and injustice prevalent within Israelite national life, speak of death as the enemy of life, indeed as God's enemy. Death is pictured as a prison with gates, as a monster with a voracious appetite and terrifying jaws, and as a subterranean menace pulling the unwitting down into its belly with cords and chains. The promise of God's victory over death through the resurrection of the dead therefore depends on God's victory over death. In this post I examine this imagery of death as a life-denying power and reflect on the importance of this imagery for the New Testament understanding of Death as a power opposed to God. "So, when when we read in Isaiah, 'And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death for ever' we realise that Isaiah is playing with the concept of death as the monster with the voracious appetite. On that great Day, when everything is "shaken up" and where everything is twisted out of shape so that nothing is as it was, the tables are turned even on death itself. Instead of it swallowing us, God will do the swallowing, eating up devouring the monster which has bought such distress and misery on the earth. And so with the monster of death/Sheol swallowed up, those trapped in the cords and snares of death, those imprisoned by its gates, can walk free, no longer entangled, no longer held in death's vice-like grip. Now, with the defeat of death, resurrection, i.e. whole, complete restoration of embodied life in all its fullness becomes a possibility, in fact it becomes the hope of the people of God."
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In Matthew 16.18 Jesus tells Peter that "the gates of hell will not prevail" against the rock that is the church. Many of us imagine that what Jesus meant was that the forces of hell (i.e. the devil and his demonic hordes) will never be able to overcome the church. The devil and his demons will try but the rock-like church will withstand their onslaught. The problem with this interpretation is that the word translated as 'hell' in the King James Version is the greek word Hades, which meant simply the land of the dead. In this light his statement seems rather odd. Is Jesus saying that the dead will not be able to destroy the church? The statement makes more sense when we realise that usually gates don't move. They are normally to be found in a fixed spot keeping people out, or in. So, Jesus is saying that the gates of death's kingdom will not be able to withstand the onslaught of the church! Jesus is not painting a picture of his church under siege, but rather of the church triumphant, breaking down the doors of death and proclaiming the hope of resurrection to those within. However much the church might enjoy living under a siege mentality, the reality is that the church is invested with great power, the power of the gospel to utterly transform the landscape of human existence. If we can rid ourselves of the unbiblical and medieval notions of 'hell' and understand what Jesus really meant the church might reclaim it's confidence in the power of Christ's resurrection to overthrow the reign of death with all its terror, despair and hopelessness. "So, when people read or heard Jesus telling Peter that to him and the church has been given dominion over the gates of Hades, they would have had a clear understanding of what Jesus meant. Now, the eschatological fulfillment had arrived. These were the last days, the days of the defeat of death, the end of the darkness which had become the paramount enemy of God and of his purpose of life. It is not a text about Satan, the powers of evil or "spiritual conflict". It is not a text about a place called hell. It is a text about resurrection, triumph and the gates of death/Hades being burst open. It is a text about the hope for a world in which there is no more mourning and no more tears." |
Archives
April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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