If you really want to know what a religious person actually believes look at the hymns and songs they sing. We learn more from our hymn books and prayer books than we do from sermons or theological books. Few Christians read theological books or listen critically and thoughtfully to sermons, but nearly all sing in church. And the words of those hymns and songs both shape and reflect their faith. And if you want to know what the wider church believes, the denominational bodies to which many churches belong, then look at the prayer books and liturgies those bodies authorise. As our theological understanding of God, humanity and creation develop (as they must) those developments make their way into the wording of our prayers of praise and supplication. Recently, traditionalists were shocked by the suggestion that the Church of England baptismal liturgy should no longer asked parents to renounce "the devil and all his works", no doubt because the idea of a real, actual devil is no longer theologically fashionable. ' Similarly our understanding of the afterlife is reflected in our funeral liturgies and prayers and I have known for some time that within the Christian tradition the biblical emphasis on resurrection and new creation has been downplayed in more recent funeral liturgies where an emphasis on personal immortality has become more important. But I until I read Jon Levenson's wonderful book Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel I had no idea that the same tendency was evident in Judaism too. Levenson argues powerfully and persuasively that the way the Gevurot Prayer, which proclaims a faith in the "God who raises the dead", has been treated in various revisions of the prayer books of the Reform tradition in Judaism reflects a growing embarassment in Judaism with the idea of bodily Resurection. That simple affirmation of faith in the power of God to overcome even death itself has been replaced by affirmations of the value and power of the human person and the hope of 'immortality' within the hearts and minds of those who love us. This, Levenson argues, is a denial of the original biblical faith of Rabbinic Judaism. Instead of the belief in the God "who keeps faith with those who sleep in the dust" worshippers using the Reformed prayer book Gates of Prayer say the following words "We pray . . . for love through which we may all blossom into persons who have gained power over our own lives." Belief in personal autonomy and human flourishing have replaced faith in the power of God to defeat death. In this post I outline the various changes in the wording of the Gevurot prayer and discuss, with the help of Jon Levenson, the reasons why this has happened. The answers hold great importance for the way we, as Christians, respond to our historic faith in The Resurrection. "Given the solid biblical precedent for seeing the individual as altogether and properly mortal, why have liturgical innovations in modern Judaism so emphasized the immortality of the soul? Why have they not followed those streams in biblical literature that see the self as unitary and unable to survive its physical demise (that is, without supernatural intervention)? One answer surely lies in the vastly greater concern with the individual in modern thought. The notion, self-evident in much biblical literature, that God’s promise to a person can be fully realized in his descendants after his own death rubs against the grain of this characteristically but not uniquely modern attitude. That God’s promise to me may not be fulfilled in my own lifetime but only in that of my descendants or other kinfolk (including my nation) seems unjust today in ways that, for the most part, it did not in biblical times. However much it may offend the materialist orientation of much modern thought, the doctrine of personal immortality at least allows for the relative detachment of the individual from the group in ways with which many moderns feel more comfortable—and more comforted." Jon Levenson Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 14 I have been aware for some time that in our modern liturgies in the Christian church the belief in the bodily resurrection of the dead has been to a large extent replaced by a less biblical and theologically less meaningful affirmation of personal immortality i.e. being held safe in the love of God, going to heaven or leaving behind good thoughts and memories in those left behind (forthcoming post). What I hadn't realised until I read Jon Levenson's book Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel is that Judaism has been subject to the same changes. Just as resurrection has become less central to Christian faith so in some forms of Judaism the original, foundational hope in the resurrection of the dead and belief in a God who can reverse the power and effects of death has been replaced by a more person-centered affirmation of individual immortality. Levenson begins his book by pointing out that although a number of prominent Jewish theologians and philosophers have indeed rejected or tried to play down the idea of resurrection, the hope of resurrection lies at the heart of the ancient Jewish theology as shown by its importance in the Jewish liturgy. In the prayer known as the Eighteen Benedictions (or the 'Amidah' or the 'Tefilah') the second of the benedictions reads as follows You are mighty forever, my Lord. This prayer, the second of the eighteen benedictions, is called the Gevurot or 'the Power'. It calls on God to sustain, protect and revive the faithful. The benediction sees in God’s revival of the dead the outstanding and incomparable instance of his insuperable might. The other affirmations of his assistance to those in need—his support of the falling, his healing of the sick, and his release of prisoners—are enclosed within an envelope-like structure that begins and ends with an address to the God of Israel as the one who resurrects. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 3 And this is not some unusual or peripheral part of the Jewish liturgy. This is a prayer that devout Jews say at least three times every day, four times on Sabbaths, New Moons and Festivals and five times on the Day of Atonement. For the devout Jew then, as Levenson points out There is never a day—never a morning, never an afternoon, never an evening—without it. The prayer is thus as authoritative an epitome of rabbinic theology as one can find, and its second benediction endorses the idea of resurrection repeatedly and emphatically: ‘‘revives the dead’’ (four times), ‘‘keeps faith with those who sleep in the dust,’’ ‘‘brings about death and restores life.’’ Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 3 Levenson's comments on the place of resurrection belief in the prayer are worth quoting in full: In sum, Gevurot, the second benediction of the Amidah, affirms simultaneously the cold, hard, unavoidable reality of death and the unshakable trust that God will revive the dead in the eschatological future. It thus stands among the multitude of texts in the Hebrew Bible (whose language it continually adopts) that maintain that although bad things do indeed happen to good people, they are not the last word. The last word, rather, is a good thing, in this case God’s miraculous intervention into history to grant the dead of all generations new life as he finally secures his triumph over evil and suffering and establishes on earth the kingdom over which he already reigns in the higher realm. In Levenson's view, belief in resurrection emphasises the power of God. The God who raises the dead if the creator God, the redeemer God, the God who is faithful, powerful and unwilling to let death have the last word. As the very term Gevurot (‘‘power’’) implies, the resurrection of the dead in this benediction serves as a definitive manifestation of God’s might. By reviving those who have gone the way of all flesh, God shows his power to be greater even than the power of nature (itself his own creation). Like creation, resurrection is a preeminently supernatural act, a miraculous reversal of the course of nature. Through it, God thus transforms death, nature’s last word, into a prelude to his own new act of creation, the re-creation of human beings in a form that is bodily yet immune to the vulnerabilities and ravages of biological life. So conceived, resurrection thus recapitulates but also transcends the creation of humanity. The miracle of the end-time restores the miracle of the beginning. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 3 Playing down resurrection in Reform JudaismHowever, just as in some Christian traditions, in parts of Judaism the hope of resurrection has increasingly given way to an emphasis on the immortality of the soul. This can be seen in the different ways in which the Gevurot prayer has been translated into English (or/and the Hebrew text itself modified) for the use of worshipping Jewish congregations. One of the founding fathers of modern Reform Judaism, Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) argued that it was no longer possible to believe in literal resurrection. He suggested that the concepts of afterlife appropriate to modern Jews ‘‘should not be expressed in terms which suggest a future revival, a resurrection of the body; rather they must stress the immortality of the human soul’’. Geiger’s own German translation of the close of Gevurot rendered it as ‘‘der Leben spendet hier und dort,’’ literally, ‘‘who bestows life here and there" So God was no longer to be the God who raised to life those who have returned to the dust, but rather the God who gives life "here and there". Further inspiration in the liturgical playing down of resurrection came from David Einhorn (1809-79), another leading light of the Reform movement both in Germany and in the U.S.A. He advocated the replacement of the doctrine of resurrection with the idea of a purely spiritual immortality. In his edition of the prayer he replaced the closing phrase "you who revive the dead" with a phrase usually said in connection with being called to the Torah "(God) who has implanted immortal life within us". God no longer revived the dead. Rather humanity had become blessed with immortal life. They (we) sort of do it (survive beyond death) by ourselves. God is relegated to history. He once (upon a time) gave us the immortal life that now sustains us through and beyond death! This both removes the scandal of resurrection and transfers the focus of immortality from Torah to something ostensibly more universal, creation itself. This upholds God’s miraculous power—for what could be more miraculous than ‘‘immortal life’’?--but it relegates the miracle safely to the primordial past and removes any expectation that something analogous to it will occur in the eschatological future. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 9 Einhorn had a huge influence on the best-known and longest-lasting Reform prayer book, The Union Prayerbook (1895), which according to Levenson, used "several strategies to affirm the continued existence of the dead while sidestepping the rabbinic expectation that they will be miraculously revived". The Union Prayerbook also changed the Hebrew text. "You revive the dead" is changed to "You preservest all". Levenson comments . . . the substitution of ‘‘preserve’’ for ‘‘revive, give life to’’ makes it difficult to conceive the afterlife in question as an instance of God’s supernatural intervention to reverse death and establish his longed-for justice. The image, rather, is one of a smooth and uneventful continuation of the this-worldly scenario in which God ‘‘sustains the living.’’ Death really does not make much difference. Things continue almost as if it had not happened. In fact, the two movements evident in this text from the Union Prayerbook are implications of each other. Since death is no great source of grief—divine sustenance continues whether it happens or not—its reversal in the joy of resurrection or immortality can be safely minimized as well. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 8 Death becomes 'nothing at all'.The sentences "Death really does not make much difference. Things continue almost as if it had not happened" interest me. During many years of conducting funerals in the UK I found that the most requested prayer/reading at funerals was the extract from Henry Scott Holland's prayer which begins "Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped away into the next room". The same emphasis is found there (an extract not representative of the whole sermon from which it was taken) as in the Union Prayer Book. People want to minimise the impact of death, to 'pretend' that life continues. Those words from his sermon help to give that impression. Death is nothing. Life goes on as ever. There is merely separation until final reunion. Death is not defeated - it is ignored, minimised and wished away. One of the prayers from the Union prayer book to be used at funerals reads ‘‘Only the body has died and has been laid in the dust . . . The spirit lives in the shelter of God’s love and mercy.’’ Here immortality of the soul is affirmed along with the implication that the body will stay in the dust. According to the prayer ‘‘Our loved ones continue in the remembrance of those to whom they were precious. Their deeds of loving-kindness, the true and beautiful words they spoke are treasured up as incentives to conduct by which the living honor the dead." Again Levenson helpfully and clearly identifies the problem with this watering down of the classical doctrine of resurrection The affirmation that takes the place of these two traditional doctrines is, however, markedly less optimistic than they are, since it implies that the dead cease to exist when they are forgotten (as nearly all are two or three generations later) or if their deeds and words were other than loving, kind, true, and beautiful. It also excludes a crucial element in the classical vision of God’s postmortem involvement with human beings—the element of reward and punishment, which secures in the future life the justice of God so often and so mysteriously absent in this one. In sum, this formulation not only excludes the element of re-creation; it also excludes the exercise of divine mercy and judgment upon the dead. All of these points had been central to the classical rabbinic expectation. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 8 Gates of PrayerThe successor to the Union Prayer book was the Gates of Prayer. In this book the avoidance of resurrection terminology is very marked. At the beginning, instead of the traditional "God, who revives the dead" the Gevurot prayer now begins "We pray . . . for love through which we may all blossom into persons who have gained power over our own lives." Levenson comments This wording subordinates the traditional affirmation of resurrection at the beginning of Gevurot to the affirmation immediately preceding it that God ‘‘sustains the living with kindness.’’ The objectionable Hebrew phrase, though retained, is now reinterpreted to refer to God’s role in aiding human self empowerment. The dead have disappeared altogether, and resurrection has been redefined as ‘‘power over [one’s] own life.’’ The inversion is striking: an ancient acclamation of divine power in the face of ultimate and unavoidable human defeat has been transformed into a thoroughly modern prayer for enhanced personal autonomy. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 9 Further, the prayer at the end is also the object of a quite remarkable transformation. Instead of And who can compare to You, O King who brings about death and restores life and makes salvation sprout? Faithful You are to revive the dead. Blessed are You, O Lord, who revive the dead Gates of Prayer offers this: Praised be the God whose gift is life, whose cleansing rains let parched men and women flower toward the sun. Levenson comments This metaphor views the dead as vegetation in need of watering, resurrection as rainfall, and the new life that follows as a flowering in the presence not of God but of the sun. Whatever poetic resonance this English prayer possesses or lacks, it continues the old Reform strategy of evading the affirmation of the resurrection of the dead . . . In this case, however, the English does not seem to substitute immortality, as earlier Reform translations did, but defines God’s action in strictly this-worldly terms—as directed toward human self-empowerment and refreshment, metaphorically conveyed by reference to the revival of plants that are not really dead at all. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 9 A safe faith for a complicated ageSo why have some parts of Judaism moved in the direction of denying resurrection? Levenson suggests that there are two main reasons. The first is that it has enabled Jewish thinkers to distance Judaism from Christianity. The Resurrection of Jesus is so central to the Christian message that Jewish theologians could readily assert the unique identity of Judaism by rejecting the idea of resurrection, per se. By revising the Jewish tradition . . . . one can claim to be a good Jew while at the same time adhering to a modern materialist sense of human existence and destiny of the sort that dismisses resurrection as an embarrassing relic of the childhood of humanity, a groundless fantasy. Christianity, by way of contrast, founded on the proclamation of Jesus’ Resurrection, thus appears not only as incompatible with modern thought but as a deviation from the teaching of the Scriptures that Jews and Christians hold in common to boot. The true, mature, and genuinely biblical religion had no such idea. In the context of Jewish-Christian disputation, the denial of resurrection can therefore be a potent weapon in the armamentarium Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 11 The second reason is that resurrection seems to fly in the face of modern critical and scientific thinking, something modern Jewish theologians especially, have wanted to avoid doing. They have tried to portray Judaism as a modern, thinking faith whose ideas are wholly compatible with modern science and philosophy. For both these reasons a belief that human bodies are literally raised from the dust of the earth and re-formed has come to be seen as primitive and unfitting for a great and intellectually robust tradition such as Judaism. By showing that Judaism (unlike Christianity) has moved beyond or outgrown ideas such as resurrection, Jewish thinkers have been able to claim an intellectual superiority over Christianity
But to expect God to transform atoms is to put something on the line, to open ourselves to face the possibility that God does not actually exist, because everything the enlightenment has taught us speaks against such a possibility. We "know", because of science and philosophy that once people die their bodies decay back into their basic constituent parts. We "know" that those parts no longer bear the identity of the original body; we "know" that putting those atoms back together again (or creating new atoms just like them) and combining them again in such a way that the original person is reconstituted is impossible, and we "know" that nowhere in nature does anything resembling "resurrection" in this sense actually happen. So to believe that God will do such a thing (and in the Christian case, that God has actually once, done such a thing) is to open ourselves to the possibility of being proved wrong, not just about resurrection, but about God. It is really a form of the God-of-the-gaps argument. It's all about me!But I think there is another reason. We live in a "me, now" age. This is an age in which my future, my destiny, my salvation are the priorities, The greater destiny of the cosmos is reduced to a supporting role in the story of my salvation. What we want to know is where we are going when we die, not what will happen to the world, the universe, that God created which has sustained us through life and which will be central to the future of the billions who will go on living in it. So, basically, it's about the narrower, more individual perspective we share with the modern developed world. My salvation, my autonomy, my self empowerment are the central focus and the bigger questions of God's eternal purpose and the future of creation (and our connection with the wider community!) slip into the background. During a recent conversation on the subject of this blog with a lovely, older, Pentecostal friend he asked me at one point "why do you want to take away my hope?" "My hope" and the biblical purpose of God for the creation had, in his mind at least, become detached. How did this happen? How did we let ourselves get so self obsessed? That's a huge subject and not something I feel competent to answer, but I do believe (as I think does Jon Levenson) that both Judaism and Christianity have been profoundly impoverished by an attitude which asks God to serve our needs and our hope rather than gladly and joyously seeing our lives enhanced and enriched through participation in the eternal and glorious purposes of God. Given the solid biblical precedent for seeing the individual as altogether and properly mortal, why have liturgical innovations in modern Judaism so emphasized the immortality of the soul? Why have they not followed those streams in biblical literature that see the self as unitary and unable to survive its physical demise (that is, without supernatural intervention)? One answer surely lies in the vastly greater concern with the individual in modern thought. The notion, self-evident in much biblical literature, that God’s promise to a person can be fully realized in his descendants after his own death rubs against the grain of this characteristically but not uniquely modern attitude. That God’s promise to me may not be fulfilled in my own lifetime but only in that of my descendants or other kinfolk (including my nation) seems unjust today in ways that, for the most part, it did not in biblical times. However much it may offend the materialist orientation of much modern thought, the doctrine of personal immortality at least allows for the relative detachment of the individual from the group in ways with which many moderns feel more comfortable—and more comforted. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 14 Levenson points out that the modern emphasis on personal immortality and the immediate promise of eternal life compared to the original biblical hope is reflected in the contrast between the two great ancient flood heroes Noah and Utnapishtim (in the Gilgamesh Epic). Whereas Utnapishtim's reward for his service is release from death and immortality, Noah, in the biblical account, finds a different kind of immortality, one in which (strangely to our modern way of thinking) he doesn't personally figure at all. He is promised an eternal life through his descendants i.e. all of us! Thus, whereas Utnapishtim, the ‘‘Babylonian Noah’’ of the Epic of Gilgamesh, is granted immortality after he survives the great flood, the Israelite Noah receives a covenant that ‘‘never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth’’ (Gen 9:11). The permanent continuation of the human race (that is, the descendants of Noah) plays in Genesis the role that Utnapishtim’s personal immortality plays in Gilgamesh, and the individual’s own death—the issue that drives the narrative of Gilgamesh—is no issue whatsoever in the biblical flood story. Indeed, there is no hint in Genesis that Noah’s own death poses any theological problem whatsoever. His offspring, explicitly included in the covenantal grant (v 9), shall continue forever. With that, God acquits himself of his promise to Noah and demonstrates beyond cavil the full measure of his good will to humanity. In this theology, death is neither a scandal, the inevitable source of a crisis of meaning, nor in any way a necessary impediment to the communion of the faithful with God Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel p 14 That I think is a brilliant insight. The degree to which we truly believe in God is surely related to the degree to which we find our fulfillment and happiness in our willingness to participate in God's saving, redeeming activity even if that activity seems to have another focus than ourselves. Surely the only kind of worship worth speaking of is the worship in God for God's own sake, not because of what God may or my not do for us. And surely (writing now from a Christian perspective) the only kind of faithful living that is of any use at all is the living that engages with this torn and battered world of atoms, knowing and trusting that at one point in history, indeed the foundational point of history, God reassembled the atoms of a dead man so that his entire being, including his personal identity, was restored in such a way that he now stands as the promise and hope for every part of this creation. You might also be interested in . . .
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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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