The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'3/30/2016 The film Terminal, a film directed by Stephen Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, is about someone who, for political and bureaucratic reasons, becomes a resident of the airport terminal at J.F.K. airport in the U.S.A. The story is that Tom Hank's character, Victor Navorski, arrives in the US from an unnamed eastern European country to discover that the U.S. authorities don't recognise the government which has just taken power in his country and that consequently his papers have become invalid. Because the authorities at J.F.K. airport won't allow him into the US and he because he can't go back home he has to live in the International Lounge of the airport. There he makes friends, learns English and falls in love! It is fascinating idea, that someone can become legally stateless, able to live only in that legal 'no-man's land' between countries which is the airport terminal. The film mirrors the true story of Merhan Nasseri who lived in the airport terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport airport in Paris from 1988 until 2006 after his papers were stolen while travelling from Belgium to the United Kingdom. Charles de Gaulle spokesman Danielle Yzerman said of Nasseri's plight, "An airport is kind of a place between heaven and earth. He has found a home here." That description "a kind of place between heaven and earth" sums up exactly the situation of someone we read about in the ancient Jewish text, the Testament of Abraham. In this comic novel dating (probably) from some time in the late 1st century A.D., the great and righteous patriarch Abraham, the 'friend of God', visits the 'great assize' on the other side of the gate of heaven where the dead are judged. He is taken there by his angel-guide Michael, in order to grasp the cold, brutal severity of true justice. There Abraham sees the dead being judged in three ways; by means a great book which contains the infallible record of each person's life; by a balance, a set of scales held by an angel known as Dokiel, 'the angel of righteousness'; and by the testing fire held in the trumpet of the 'angel of fire', Puriel. In these three ways each soul is measured, weighed and tested and an unerring, precise measurement of their righteousness and wickedness is made. There is no room here for compassion, for mercy or for mitigation. One by one the souls are judged and taken either to paradise or to a place of torment and destruction. In this way Abraham is confronted with the consequences of his desire to call down the punishment of God upon the unrighteous people he has seen during his tour of the earth. But there is one individual for whom the system doesn't seem to work. In the case of one problematic soul no decision can be made. The lists of their good and bad 'works' are of the same length in the Great Book and their good and bad deeds are finely balanced in the scales. They don't fit - no decision can be made on them; they must wait until the coming of God at The Arrival, when the final infallible decision on all mankind will be made. Just like Viktor in Terminal this soul must remain at heaven's 'arrival lounge', unable to go further but equally (because she or he is dead) unable to return to the world to carry on with life. This unfortunate soul too is stateless, stuck 'in-between', inhabiting that 'no-souls land' between this life and the next. And so it would have remained had it not been for the intervention of Abraham. The plight of this one poor soul and the realisation that perhaps he could make a difference, inspires something new and wonderful in Abraham's heart. In this post I explain what that change was and what it meant for Abraham . . . . and for early Christianity.
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We are justifiably afraid of fire. Fire burns and when things burn they are damaged or destroyed. Fire has ravaged powerful cities such as ancient Rome and seventeenth century London. Wildfires have recently destroyed huge areas in drought-stricken parts of the world, bringing destruction, death and terror to the people who live there. Fire hurts and burns, leaving terrible scars and injuries. Fires destroy our homes and possessions. But the destructive power of fire is also something that can produce life. I was struck recently by the comments of a friend here in Sweden talking about the positive impact of a large forest fire which swept through the forests in the north of Sweden some years ago. It was horrendously destructive, destroying tens of thousands of trees and injuring and killing wildlife and people. And yet my friend, who at that time worked for the organisation that manages the forests, explained to me (an ignorant city dweller) that the forests depend on fires like these to grow and develop. Usually of course the fires are managed and kept within safe bounds and clearly this one wasn't! But the effect of such fires, controlled or not, is to is strip away the dead and old material in the forest, to allow new, young life to emerge. And the trees grow back, stronger and better and the wildlife returns and and forms a new ecology. And life goes on and flourishes better and stronger because of the fires. Something like this effect of fire, the rooting out and burning up of the old and tired, lies as the background for the trial scene in the Testament of Abraham, the ancient Jewish comic novel which describes the attempts of Abraham to escape the inevitability of death. Abraham's angel guide, Michael, shows Abraham what happens to souls after they die and Abraham passes through the gate of heaven at the East of the world, where he sees the souls of the dead being judged. He discovers that their eternal fate is decided partly on the basis of how the record of their lives responds to the divine fire blown from a trumpet held by Puriel, the 'angel of fire'. Their record of actions while alive, their 'works', are subjected to a 'trial by fire'. Good deeds survive the flames. They are clearly made of solid stuff, worthy and true, like a precious metal. Bad deeds are consumed by the flames, burnt up entirely, reduced to ashes. These are the deeds done in disregard for God's Law, the deeds born of selfish desire and Godless passions. So, as the dead and ancient material of the forest which inhibit the growth of the new are stripped away by the forest fires, here Puriel's fire consumes the dead and dying parts of individual human lives. The Testament of Abraham of course is not trying to say that the souls so-judged pass through to Paradise, better and wiser people; rather that those who see their life's work burn up pass directly to a place of horrendous torment and punishment (without passing go!). There is no sense here that these flames are intended to purify the souls who pass through them but, like the Sorting Hat in Harry Potter, they decide where the souls belong, in Paradise or in the 'other place'. But it was this very idea of flames that consume the dross, the old, the broken and the godless and leave the good and the new and the Godly unharmed that led some in the early church to imagine that what might happen after death is that souls would face the fire of judgement, not to destroy them but, like the beautiful forests of Sweden, to make them better. It was ideas like those we find in the Testament that led eventually to the birth of the idea of purgatory, to the idea of the flames that purify. In this post we come close to that place where such powerful ideas began to emerge. |
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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