Hope is a wonderful thing. It sustains us through disaster, grief and disappointment. It inspires change and enables faith to survive through the most appalling circumstances. The three greatest virtues says the apostle Paul are faith, hope and love. And his hope was very firmly based on the resurrection of Jesus. Paul was confident that because his life was inextricably interconnected with Christ's he too would share in a resurrection like Christ's. But that hope was not new to Paul (or Jesus). It was grounded in the ancient Hebrew bible, in passages in Daniel, Ezekiel and Isaiah, where the prophets offered hope to an exiled and oppressed people familiar with death and destruction, that God would, in the end, conquer death and lead them and all the righteous who had died to new life. God came to be seen not only as the God who blessed the righteous in the present, in this life, but as the God who could (and would) revive even the dead, saving bodies as well as minds and hearts and communities. In this post I examine the hope expressed in the remarkable passage sometimes referred to as the Little Apocalypse of Isaiah, where the prophet offers a profound understanding of God's victory over death and where we read one of the most powerful affirmations of resurrection hope in the bible. The reason a belief in resurrection is so important (as distinct from a belief in the immortality of the soul) is that without it, death remains the powerful constant of human life. To emphasise our escape from our bodies into a disembodied state of bliss "in heaven" is to say that death has the final word on bodily life. We have escaped, but we haven't triumphed over death. Death finally got to us - it stopped our lungs from taking in air, our hearts beating and our brains functioning and our eyes seeing etc etc. But we somehow "got away" in some reduced form, to a place where none of those things (hearts, lungs, brains, eyes) matter anymore. If we believe, as Plato did, that the body is a source of trouble and pain, then we might well feel content that death takes away embodied life, as long as it leaves us with our "souls". But if, as the people who put together the Hebrew bible believed (who had no notion of a 'soul'), without the body there is no meaningful human life, then death's continuing power over human bodily existence very much matters. For them, for God to fulfill his great promise to give "life" to his people, meant that at some point, God would have to destroy death itself.
I have previously suggested that, overall, the Hebrew bible pictures the state of the individual after death in a very bleak light, as an existence in Sheol, the land of the dead, which is an existence of emptiness and forgetfulness. It is not "hell" and it doesn't (in the Hebrew bible at least) involve punishment or retribution, but it is not life, and life mattered to the Hebrews. So, the hope of the Hebrews was for a good, long and fulfilled life, followed by a "good death" i.e. peaceful and surrounded by family (and followed by a proper burial which represented a connection to the 'ancestors'). This hope for a good death was represented by the story of the death and burial of Jacob (Genesis 47.27-31) A new hopeBut that isn't the whole story. There are a number of passages which do speak of some kind of meaningful life beyond death. This hope seems to have developed along with the growth of what scholars have called an 'apocalyptic' theology i.e the belief that the future hope for the creation would have to involve a once-and-for-all, radical re-ordering of everything by God, involving God's dramatic intervention in human history to restore everything to its intended norm. Particularly with the experience of exile in Babylon, many Hebrews struggled with the traditional idea that a long and full life could be enjoyed simply by following the principles laid down in the Torah, God's Law. For these writers and thinkers there was simply too much injustice, too much immorality and infidelity to God, even within Israel, for the 'normal' pattern to apply any more. They could no longer accept that following the Law would automatically lead to a 'good' life in this broken, unjust world. Somehow, they believed, the creation was in the grip, under the influence, of powers that disrupted the original God-given pattern. The national failure of exile was evidence of that. Now only God's direct intervention could re-establish the goodness of life and of the world. In many passages in the Hebrew bible, especially in the prophets, this hope for God's dramatic intervention is expressed in terms of a coming 'Day of the Lord' in which God would restore the creation to its intended goodness and purpose. With a radical and dramatic intervention in history God would decisively 'put things right'. In the Hebrew Bible this hope is expressed most clearly and beautifully (I think) in these words from the end of the book of Isaiah For I am about to create new heavens This powerful, beautiful vision of a new world without hunger, oppression or violence is familiar to many readers of the bible, and stands as the backdrop to the famous passage in Revelation where the seer, John, sees a vision of the coming kingdom of God in which there will be 'no more tears' Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
No more DeathBut underlying both passages, is the expectation that in this new creation there will be no more Death. I have used a capital for Death because for both Isaiah and John, Death is not just a state, a condition, of non-living, a medical description of what happens to a human body when the heart and brain stop working, but an actual thing, a force, an entity opposed to God's purposes. John's statement is the clearest. 'Death will be no more'. The fundamental problem mankind faces is that terrible negation of life that we call Death. God will do away with Death altogether. In the previous chapter in his apocalyptic vision, John had spoken of the destruction of Death in God's great incinerator, Gehenna (Revelation 20.13-15). Death and the land of the dead (Hades) are throw into the great lake of fire to be burt up and destroyed.
In other words, by painting an exaggerated picture of life expectancy in that new age, Isaiah inspires an expectation that life in that new creation will have no limits, either of depth or length. The essential pre-requisite for such a promise is the removal of death itself. The death of DeathIsaiah may not have spoken explicitly about the ending of death in chapter 65 but there is a powerful statement of hope for destruction/ending of death found much earlier in his book in chapter 25. There, were find this remarkable passage On this mountain, The links to Revelation are obvious. As in John's vision of the New Jerusalem, here, the swallowing of Death means that God now wipes away every tear from the faces of his faithful ones, i.e. there is no more pain, suffering or mourning. Death has been done away with. Isaiah's ApocalypseThese verses which speak about the swallowing up of Death comes in a remarkable section of the book of Isaiah in which the prophet speaks about the future of the whole world (not just Israel) at what seems to be the end of time (not just in the immediate future). Some people have called this Isaiah's "Apocalypse", in other words he seems to writing in a way that reflects passages such as Daniel 7-12 and also non-biblical writings such as the book(s) of Enoch, which scholars think were written by Jewish writers sometime in the centuries before the birth of Christ. In these works, rich, striking and often scary symbols and images (eg beasts and monsters, changes to the physical cosmos like the sun darkening) are used to talk about the struggle between good and evil and the way that, at the end, the world will be transformed by God's grace and power. In apocalyptic writings the writers employ imagery of cosmic scope to emphasise the thorough, decisive nature of God's intervention to save the creation. The focus is no longer simply on Israel and its future but on the re-ordering of the whole creation by God. In some ways then, to talk about this section of Isaiah as an Apocalypse is appropriate. Towards the beginning of this section the prophet speaks about God twisting the world (24.1) so that everything is upset and disoriented. The world cannot be the shape it once was. And later he writes Heaven’s windows will open, and the earth’s foundations will quake.
Therefore, a curse devours the earth; its inhabitants suffer for their guilt. This radical, violent re-ordering of the earth will mean that 'the town is in chaos broken', that 'ruin remains in the city' and that the 'gate is battered to wreckage'. Everything will come 'out in the open', everything that was once thought secure and fixed will be unhinged and unsettled, and things will be "sorted out" in a way that will leave many in misery and terror. The shaken earth will mean that the cries for wine will receive no answer. There will be no more dancing or partying now. Those who enjoyed the richness and fullness of life while God's people suffered will find that there is no more blessing for them. In the beautiful and terrible images of Isaiah, they will find that 'all joy has reached its dusk ' and that 'happiness is exiled from the earth'. But if this violent, apocalyptic re-orientation of everything means judgement and terror for the secure and privileged, for the powerful oppressors who wreak violence and havoc on God's people, for the faithful, for the poor and oppressed, God's chosen ones, the judgement means something quite different. It means fullness, peace and restoration. On this mountain, This after all is who God is and what God does. God reverses the fortunes of humanity, so that the rich and powerful are brought down and the poor raised up. The well fed and watered will starve, the hungry will be fed with 'a rich feast and a feast of choice wines'. Judging the "powers and principalities"God will protect and shelter the victims of the evil and wicked "powers and principalities": God has always acted on behalf of those tyrranised by forces beyond their control, human and otherwise, and he will do so again. Where 'angelic' forces and human tyrants try to oppress and exploit the weak and powerless, God intervenes on behalf of the victims You have been a refuge for the poor, What this means is that God will judge all those responsible for the harm that has been done to the earth and for the pollution under which it suffers. On that day, the Lord will punish the forces of heaven in heaven, and the kings of the earth on earth. They will be gathered together like prisoners in a pit, shut into a prison, and punished after many days. Those responsible for the disaster are the "powers and principalities" in heaven and the kings and rulers on the earth. These will be gathered together, locked away and then punished.
That of course raises the question of where they will go, but Isaiah is not willing to answer that question for us! He simply says that kings and angelic powers will be gathered together while they wait for their eventual fate. Sleepers awake!So, with the cosmos twisted out of all recognisable shape and the earth shaken, with the wicked wealthy humbled and judged, with the forces and powers that have terrorised the earth held in custody and with death itself abolished (swallowed up) it is now possible to imagine something else even more wonderful and remarkable - the resurrection of the dead! So we read Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise.
The images of life and growth here are powerful. The earth (where the dead are buried) will give birth to those long dead. Those who have died are like seeds ready to be watered so that their lives can grow again. Resurrection, not immortalityIt is really important to grasp that this hope was/is a hope for resurrection, not just disembodied existence after death. Why is this important? What is the difference? The reason a belief in resurrection is so important (as distinct from a belief in the immortality of the soul) is that without it, death remains the powerful constant of human life. To emphasise our escape from our bodies into a disembodied state of bliss "in heaven" is to say that death has the final word on bodily life. We have escaped, but we haven't triumphed over death. Death finally got to us - it stopped our lungs from taking in air, our hearts beating and our brains functioning and our eyes seeing etc etc. But we somehow "got away" in some reduced form, to a place where none of those things (hearts, lungs, brains, eyes) matter anymore. If we believe, as Plato did, that the body is a source of trouble and pain, then we might well feel content that death takes away embodied life, as long as it leaves us with our "souls". But if, as the people who put together the Hebrew bible believed (who had no notion of a 'soul'), without the body there is no meaningful human life, then death's continuing power over human bodily existence very much matters. For them, for God to fulfill his great promise to give "life" to his people, meant that at some point, God would have to destroy death itself. That's why here in Isaiah as in John (and the rest of the New Testament) the focus is on the defeat of death and the bodily resurrection of the faithful. If there is no resurrection there is no hope. And the hope depends on the defeat of death. The reason for that is that God's intention or his creatures (all of them) is Life. Life without limitIt is really important to grasp that this hope of life beyond death was not that people would go to be with God when they died, that their immortal souls would be received "in heaven", but that God would ultimately destroy death so that human life could be lived on the earth in full. Isaiah is not speaking about an escape from worldly, earthly existence but about the radical transformation of human existence so that it results in joy and abundance for everyone. The emphasis always remains on the creation and what God will do to make things right, rather than on the individual fate of any person. What God will do is not 'save' individuals but save the creation so that individuals can really, fully enjoy it. So, the party on the mountain, the swallowing up of death, the judgement of 'the powers' and the hope of resurrection are all bound up together in one beautiful, wonderful package of promise and hope. It is a hope that St John saw fulfilled through Jesus his Lord, who had risen from the dead and therefore could accomplish the divine purpose to overcome death and all its terrible consequences. It is only because John has encountered the one who was dead and is alive again (Revelation 1.17-18) that he can speak with confidence of a new creation, a heavenly city, where there are 'no more tears or mourning or pain'. Christ has defeated death, and now all can truly live in God's newly restored creation, without the terrible shadow of death. 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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