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. The Testament of Abraham is the story of how the great patriarch and ancestor of the Jewish people, Abraham, tries to evade the reality of his death. He is 'God's friend' and so God wants to make Abraham's death as easy and trouble-free for him as possible. He sends his chief angel, the Commander-in-chief of his armies, Michael, to prepare Abraham, so that Abraham will have time come to terms with the idea of death, say his goodbyes and put his affairs in order. But Abraham doesn't want to die. Despite (or maybe because of) being nearly a thousand years old he wants to cling on to life and refuses to 'go quietly'. He plays for time, asking God for permission to take a tour of the creation, to see all of God's wonderful works! During the tour he sees people acting in wicked ways and the righteous 'friend of God' calls down God's punishment (i.e. death) on these 'sinners. Eventually God calls off the tour. If Abraham carries on like this there will no-one left alive!. Instead, Michael takes Abraham to the gate to heaven at the East of the world, where the souls of the dead pass through from this life into the next. On the other side of the gate there is a tribunal, a court, where each soul is judged, where their good and bad deeds are compared. Those with more good deeds than bad are lifted to paradise while those whose wicked deeds outweigh the good are sent to a place of punishment and torment. But what happens if there is no clear-cut decision, if the balance of good and wicked deeds is equal? What if a life is finely balanced between deserving of eternal torment and eternal salvation: What happens then? To discover the answer to that question we have to step back for moment, to a point just before Abraham and Michael passed into heaven through the broad gate. We are told that Abraham and Michael witness a myriad of souls being whipped through the gate into heaven by a 'pitiless' fiery angel. But amidst the vast hordes they see one soul being singled out Right at the start of the vision of the two gates and the tribunal, before they pass through the gate, Abraham and Michael watch a 'pitiless' fiery angel driving thousands of souls through the broad gate with a fiery whip. He sees one soul being singled out And the angel seized one soul. And they drove all the souls into the broad gate toward destruction. A few lines later they see this soul again and understand why it has been singled out. He or she presents a special problem for Abel the judge. According to the great book which records all human deeds this soul's good and bad deed balance one another. It is impossible to consign him or her either to paradise or to the place of torment. Like most of us, this soul's life has been a mixture of both the good and the bad, and somehow they manage to cancel each other out. The soul remains literally and metaphorically 'in the middle'. And behold, the angel who held the soul in his hand brought it before the judge. And the judge told one of the angels who served him, "Open for me this book and find for me the sins is of this soul." And when he opened the book he found its sins and righteous deeds to be equally balanced, and he neither turned it over to the torturers nor (placed it among) those who were being saved, but he set it in the middle.' [Testament of Abraham 12 .16-18] Now, in chapter 14, having had the roles of the 'weighing-angel' Dokiel and the 'fire-angel' Puriel explained to him Abraham remembers the poor soul standing 'in the middle', and wonders about it's fate. What will happen to this soul? Will it remain in the middle forever? Is there no way of allowing it to pass on to its proper destination? Abraham said to the Commander-in-chief, "My lord Commander-in-chief, how was the soul which the angel held in his hand adjudged to the middle?'' the Commander-in-chief said, "Hear, righteous Abraham: Since the judge found its sins and its righteous deeds to be equal, then he handed it over neither to judgment nor to be saved, until the judge of all should come." [Testament of Abraham 14.1-3] So this soul must wait until the coming of God at the Arrival, the time when God will bring an end to history and re create the cosmos. Until then it remains stuck at the gate. But Abraham, who is now suitably appalled at the rigour of the workings of the heavenly justice system, seizes his opportunity. He wants to know if something can be done to allow this soul to progress beyond the gate, on into paradise. Abraham has developed compassion for sinners, for those who are not as righteous as he is. He wonders what can be done and is told that only one more good deed is needed to send the soul on to paradise. 'Abraham said to the Commander-in-chief, "And what is still lacking to that soul in order for it to be saved?'' And the Commander-in-chief said,' If it could acquire one righteous deed more than its sins, it would enter in to be saved. [Testament of Abraham 14.3-4] Unfortunately there are no more righteous deeds. The system is infallible nothing has been forgotten; there are no lost pages of the great book waiting to be discovered behind a filing cabinet! But Abraham has an idea. If they both (the righteous friend of God and the Commander-in-chief of the Lord's armies) pray for the soul, surely God will listen to their prayers and decide in positive way for the soul here and now. And Michael agrees. Abraham said to the Commander-in-chief, "Come, Commander-in-chief Michael, let us offer a prayer on behalf of this soul and see if God will heed us. "And the Commander-in-chief said, "Amen, let it be so." And they offered supplication and prayer on behalf of the soul, and God heeded them, and when they arose from prayer they did not see the soul standing there. [Testament of Abraham 14.5-6] So they pray and after a time God heard the prayers of these two worthy creatures and the soul disappears from view. He or she is no longer 'stuck in the middle'. Abraham wonders where the soul has gone and Michael explains 'And Abraham said to the angel, "Where is the soul which you were holding in the middle?" ' And the angel said, "It was saved through your righteous prayer, and behold a light-bearing angel took it and carried it up to Paradise." Abraham said, "I glorify the name of the Most High God and his boundless mercy." [Testament of Abraham 14.7-8] So, the prayers were answered, and a third angel the 'light-bearing angel' has come and taken this soul away to paradise. The prayers of the righteous man and the glorious archangel have had an effect on the outcome of the judgement. No longer did the decision depend merely on the list of good and bad deeds. Now a new factor, the gracious intervention of God, had been called into play and it had influenced the outcome. Moved by the prayers of the righteous, the divine grace has ensured that this soul is now in paradise. Further on and Deeper inOf course this immediately raises a problem. If the amazingly rigorous system of heavenly justice can so easily be circumvented why does the structure still exist? If God can intervene in this way for one soul why not for others? What about souls with one more wicked deed than righteous? Must they necessarily go to the place of torment? Could God not intervene for them too, after all if they could only find one more good deed then they too would be finely balanced requiring (according to the precedent we have just witnessed) the intervention of God to expedite them through the system to paradise. The decision to make an exception for one soul immediately calls into question the whole edifice of heavenly post-mortem judgement. It no longer seems perfect or just. And that of course is the point. This whole edifice is flimsy; it does not stand close scrutiny. This is judgement of the dead as Abraham would want it to be. What he is shown here is a reflection of himself and his own exacting outlook on life. This is the afterworld judgement of the Abraham who called down immediate destruction on everyone he saw doing unrighteous acts during his tour of the world. And by seeing the stark reality of judgment portrayed as it really is, Abraham is shocked into a change of mind, into a realisation that perfect justice cannot be the last word on human life - it would simply lead to too much appalling suffering. And so, when he sees the positive effect that his prayers have had on one soul Abraham becomes 'mercy unleashed'! Now he wants all of those whom he condemned during his 'world-tour' to be given a second chance and he calls out to God on behalf of all of them. Abraham said to the Commander-in-chief, "I beg you, archangel, heed my plea; and let us beseech the Lord yet (again) and let us prostrate ourselves for his compassion 'and beg his mercy on behalf of the souls of the sinners whom I previously, being evil-minded, cursed and destroyed, whom the earth swallowed up and whom the wild beasts rent asunder and whom the fire consumed because of my words. ' Now I have come to know that I sinned before the Lord our God. Come, Michael, Commander-in-chief of the powers above, come, let us beseech God with tears that he may forgive me (my) sinful act and grant them to me." 'And the Commander-in-chief heeded him and they offered supplication before God. [Testament of Abraham 14.10-13] So Abraham has seen the error of ways and he makes the prayer for all those on whom he called down God's judgement. They pray together a long time (hours? days?) and then the answer comes. When they had besought him for a long time, a voice came out of heaven, saying, "Abraham, Abraham, I have heeded your voice and your supplication and I forgive you your sin; and those whom you think that I destroyed, I have called back, and I have led them into life by my great goodness. 'For I did punish them in judgment for a time. But those whom I destroy while they are living on the earth, I do not requite in death." [Testament of Abraham 14.14-15] So, God has called them back to life. They have been given back their lives to live them again. Nothing is said about what the effect of this short 'intermission' has had on them. The focus here is on Abraham and the change in his outlook. Now, like God, he sees human beings from the perspective of divine mercy and compassion. He will no longer judge people by the strict standard of righteousness. Like God, he now views humanity with the eyes of love. A very Jewish storyThe Testament of Abraham was cherished by Christian communities, no doubt because they saw here signs of the grace and mercy of the God they viewed through the lens of Jesus Christ. It was the value set upon it by Christians which led to its preservation and transmission. But this was a story originally written by a Jewish author, very probably working in Alexandria in Egypt where there was, until the great Jewish revolt of 115-117 A.D., a large and thriving Jewish diaspora community. And the ideas of grace and mercy in this story are very Jewish ideas indeed. The essential elements in the story, including the mercy of God, resonate with other streams of Jewish tradition and reflection on the Abraham narrative in the Hebrew Bible. Not least, this is a very familiar Abraham, the Abraham who was famous for his willingess to intercede for others. No Jewish reader of the story would have been surprised to learn that Abraham is moved to pray for the 'stuck-in-the middle' soul. Abraham, because of his great righteousness and his foundational role in God's great plan for the world, is often pictured in Jewish literature as the one whose intercessions for others could have a powerfully positive effect. The biblical source for this image of Abraham is of course the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Having been told by the three 'men' that Sodom and Gomorrah are to be destroyed because of their wickedness, Abraham prays on their behalf, asking that, for the sake of any righteous men or women who live there, God might avery the judgement on the others. (Genesis 18:22-33). So, in Rabbinic literature Abraham is represented as having wonderful powers through his continuing intercession for those alive on the earth. In the Jewish commentary on the book of Genesis known as Genesis Rabbah we read this: Thus did Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai say: 'If Abraham is willing he can effectively intercede for all generations from his day until mine' [Rab Gen 35.2] And in a later reference we learn that the prayers of Abraham were effective for the sick and for barren women. Rabbi Levi says 'No man ever priced a cow belonging to Abraham (in order to buy it) without becoming blessed nor did a man ever price a cow (in order to sell to him) without becoming blessed. Abraham used to pray for barren women and they conceived and on behalf of the sick and they were healed. That text goes on to say that Abraham's prayer could even guarantee the safety of ships at sea! But it's not just a familiar Abraham we find here. The whole question of those 'stuck in the middle', the 'in-betweeners', is a familiar problem in Judaism, and in the Rabbinic writings there are several references to the state of affairs when someone's good and bad deeds balance each other at the judgement. In one of the commentaries on the Targum, the Pesikta Derab Kahana, we read this account of this problem and how God fixes it! When both pans of the scales of justice balance exactly, a person's iniquitous deeds on one side and his good on the other, the Holy One lifts out from the pan of iniquities one of the writs attesting the man's guilt so that the good deeds tip the balance. [Pesikta Derab Kahana 25.2] The same procedure seems to be imagined in the Talmudic tractate Quiddushin, (1.10) which states that when good and deeds are equal, God removes one of the wicked deeds from the pan on the balance so that the weight of the good deeds becomes greater than the wicked deeds, and the soul is saved. In another tracate from the Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah, the rabbis discuss the difference in opinion between the followers Rabbi Shammai and those of Rabbi Hillel over the fate of the 'in-betweeners'. According to the 'house of Shammai', the 'in-betweeners' will go to Gehenna for a time to be purified before being granted access to paradise. Beth Shammai say, There will be three groups at the Day of Judgment — one of thoroughly righteous, one of thoroughly wicked, and one of intermediate. The thoroughly righteous will forthwith be inscribed definitively as entitled to everlasting life; the thoroughly wicked will forthwith be inscribed definitively as doomed to Gehinnom, as it says. 'And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence.' The Hillelites, on the other hand, claimed that when the good and wicked deeds are finely balanced "God's grace inclines towards grace" in other words that they are, as above, 'rounded up', i.e. given the benefit of the doubt. ‘Beth Hillel says, He that abounds in grace inclines the scales towards grace’. In the Egyptian underworldSo the Testament of Abraham is an essentially Jewish book looking at problems that confronted many other Jews (and sometime coming to similar answers). But it was also, I think, deeply influenced by where it was written. I have suggested before that the Testament of Abraham was a product of the Jewish diaspora, in particular, Alexandria, in Egypt. Interestingly, there is a famous Egyptian folk tale about judgement in the afterlife which may have influenced the writer. In this story the Egyptian prince Setne is taken to the underworld where he witnesses what occurs in the seven halls of the netherworld. In the seventh hall he sees the judgement of the dead by the god of the underworld Osiris. There are are (as you might expect by now) three outcomes of the weighing process in which good and bad deeds are compared. Those whose bad deeds prove heavier are led away to punishment and those whose good deeds outweigh the bad are led off to their blessed destination. But there is a third group, those whose good and bad deeds weigh the same. Egypt had its 'in-betweeners' too! They entered the seventh hall and Setne saw the mysterious form of Osiris the great god seated on his throne of fine gold crowned with the atef-crown. Anubis the great god was on his left. the great god Thoth was on his right and the gods of the tribunal of the inhabitants of the netherworld stood on his left and on his right. The balance stood in the centre before them, and they weighed the good deeds against the misdeeds, Thoth, the great god writing, while Anubis gave the information to his colleague. So, the Egyptian 'in-betweenies' are 'saved'. They join the spirits of those who serve the underworld deity Sokar-Osiris. So the idea of the souls whose good and bad deeds perfectly balance each other was not new. It was certainly in currency in the Egyptian legends about the afterlife. And it certainly seems to have become part of Jewish tradition and lasted through antiquity. In short, many people found it easy to believe that post-mortem judgement depended on the comparison of good and bad deeds and in that case the logical possibility always exists that there will be some people whose righteous and wicked deeds are perfectly balanced. In all these examples it seems, the person stuck in the middle gets 'rounded up', as we do with numbers when they become problematically fractional. In other words they make it to a better life somewhere! Iranian InspirationsApart from the obvious connections between the Testament of Abraham and Jewish and Egyptian ideas and imagery there may also have been an influence on the shaping of these such ideas (not necessarily on the book directly) from other sources. During the time of their exile in Babylon the Jews came into contact with Iranian religious beliefs. We often speak about the 'return' of the Jewish people to Israel/Palestine from the accession of Cyrus in 539 B.C. onwards, but of course many Jews stayed in Babylon and there was, for a long time, a large and thriving Jewish community there which produced the Babylonian Talmud, the great repository of comment and reflection on the Hebrew Bible. There must have been an awareness of Iranian religious ideas and myths amongst the Jews. It's hard to know when, historically, any any of the beliefs within Iranian religion became widely accepted (there is very little documentary evidence from the period of the Jewish exile) so it is difficult to attribute any influence of these beliefs on the religion of the Israelites. But it is interesting that some Zoroastrian texts (Zoroastrianism was a strong influence within Iranian religion) speak of a place between the heavenly paradise (above) and hell (below), called the hamēstagān where those souls whose works are finely balanced between good and bad are sent. According to the Encyclopedia Iranica there is no suffering in the hamēstagān but that souls there are subjected to the cold and heat of atmospheric movements. Another text indicates that there are three paradises and that the hamēstagān exists between the earth and the sphere of the stars (the location of the first paradise). It also refers to the fact that the souls who go there feel cold and heat. Another text suggests that if they 'improve', souls can migrate from hell to the hamēstagān and then on to paradise. Whatever the influence on Hebrew religion of these ideas, it is fascinating to see that how widespread was the problem of 'the in-betweeners', i.e. the people who were neither really bad nor really good. Anyone for Plato?Of course, as I noted in the last post, the predominant intellectual influence in the time when the Testament was written (1st century A.D.?) was Hellenism, the collection of philosophical and cultural ideas which had originated in Greece and which was spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean world by Alexander the Great and his successors. Chief among the Greek thinkers whose ideas became widespread was the philosopher Plato. Towards the end of Plato's dialogue, Phaedo, Socrates describes the nature of the afterworld and the judgement of the dead. He suggests that humanity can be divided into three groups. Those who have lived their lives well and piously, those who have lived wicked lives, and a third group whose lives have been neither pious nor wicked - those who are 'in-between'. He describes their fate as follows “Such is the nature of these things. Now when the dead have come to the place where each is led by his genius, first they are judged and sentenced, as they have lived well and piously, or not. And those who are found to have lived neither well nor ill, go to the Acheron and, embarking upon vessels provided for them, arrive in them at the lake; there they dwell and are purified, and if they have done any wrong they are absolved by paying the penalty for their wrong-doings, and for their good deeds they receive rewards, each according to his merits. [Plato Phaedo ] So the 'in-betweenies' are sent to the Acherusian lake, which, we are told , is the destination of most of those who die (because most of us are neither very good or very bad). There they are 'purified' and either receive reward for the good they have done or pay the penalty for the bad they have done But Plato makes a distinction between the 'in-betweeners' who show some hope of change i.e. who might become better given another chance, and those who are not likely to. The latter, the 'incurables', are sent to Tartarus, the terrible fiery lake at the centre of the earth But those who appear to be incurable, on account of the greatness of their wrongdoings, because they have committed many great deeds of sacrilege, or wicked and abominable murders, or any other such crimes, are cast by their fitting destiny into Tartarus, whence they never emerge. [Plato Phaedo 113d-114d. Translation at the Perseus Project ] But the curables, the ones who, for example, committed some terrible act in the heat of passion and who have regretted it ever since, are sent to Tartarus for a year, after which they return to the lake, where they beseech their victims to forgive them. If their victims do not forgive them they go back to Tartarus for another spell in the hot lava before returning the lake and trying again. This goes on until their victims relent. Those, however, who are curable, but are found to have committed great sins—who have, for example, in a moment of passion done some act of violence against father or mother and have lived in repentance the rest of their lives, or who have slain some other person under similar conditions—these must needs be thrown into Tartarus, and when they have been there a year the wave casts them out, the homicides by way of Cocytus, those who have outraged their parents by way of Pyriphlegethon. And when they have been brought by the current to the Acherusian lake, they shout and cry out, calling to those whom they have slain or outraged, begging and beseeching them to be gracious and to let them come out into the lake; and if they prevail they come out and cease from their ills, but if not, they are borne away again to Tartarus and thence back into the rivers, and this goes on until they prevail upon those whom they have wronged; for this is the penalty imposed upon them by the judges. The pious, and especially , escape these trials and tortures of course, and ascend to their 'pure abode'. Those who have purified themselves through philosophy escape bodily life altogether and pass on to 'still more beautiful abodes which it is not easy to describe'. But those who are found to have excelled in holy living are freed from these regions within the earth and are released as from prisons; they mount upward into their pure abode and dwell upon the earth. And of these, all who have duly purified themselves by philosophy live henceforth altogether without bodies, and pass to still more beautiful abodes which it is not easy to describe, nor have we now time enough. [Plato Phaedo 113d-114d. Translation at the Perseus Project ] So, in many different ways, from various religious and philosophical standpoints people have worried about the eternal fate of the people who have been neither very bad nor very good, those who clearly do not deserve to suffer in torment for eternity nor to be rewarded in paradise. We all know people like this . . . . because in all probability we are people like this. This isn't just n historical philosophical problem, this is our problem. We, (forgive me if you are a saint dear reader!) nearly all fit into that problematic category of those who are neither righteous nor wicked, the average mixture of 'the good, the bad and the ugly'. 'Say a little prayer for me'In the last post I suggested that the idea of trial by fire was part of the complex of beliefs and ideas that eventually led to the concept of purgatorial suffering, i.e. that God's fire could distinguish between the bad and the good, destroying the one and leaving the other intact. In the same kind of way I am sure that the idea that the prayers of the living could influence the fate of the dead, which we see dramatically at work here in the Testament of Abraham, became the basis for the tradition within Christianity of praying for the dead. In antiquity and in the medieval era most people believed that they would end up in purgatory after death. Paradise (or heaven) was a place for the perfect and hell a place for the wicked or for godless pagans. Most people then, as now, thought of themselves as 'in-betweeners', neither perfect nor wicked and in need after death of some purification before they were ready for heaven. It made perfect sense then to think of the living playing their part in that process of purification through their prayers. There are numerous references to prayers for the dead in early Christian tradition and by the time the normative Apostolic Constitutions were complied in the 4th century A.D. it seems to have become widely accepted, as this comment in the Constitutions reveals Let us pray for our brethren that are at rest in Christ, that God, the lover of mankind, who has received his soul, may forgive him every sin, voluntary and involuntary, and may be merciful and gracious to him, and give him his lot in the land of the pious that are sent into the bosom of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, with all those that have pleased Him and done His will from the beginning of the world, whence all sorrow, grief, and lamentation are banished. Let us arise, let us dedicate ourselves and one another to the eternal God, through that Word which was in the beginning. And let the bishop say: O Thou who art by nature immortal, and hast no end of Thy being, from whom every creature, whether immortal or mortal, is derived; who didst make man a rational creature, the citizen of this world, in his constitution mortal, and didst add the promise of a resurrection; who didst not suffer Enoch and Elijah to taste of death: “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, who art the God of them, not as of dead, but as of living persons: for the souls of all men live with Thee, and the spirits of the righteous are in Thy hand, which no torment can touch;” for they are all sanctified under Thy hand: do Thou now also look upon this Thy servant, whom Thou hast selected and received into another state, and forgive him if voluntarily or involuntarily he has sinned, and afford him merciful angels, and place him in the bosom of the patriarchs, and prophets, and apostles, and of all those that have pleased Thee from the beginning of the world, where there is no grief, sorrow, nor lamentation; but the peaceable region of the godly, and the undisturbed land of the upright, and of those that therein see, the glory of Thy Christ; by whom glory, honour, and worship, thanksgiving, and adoration be to Thee, in the Holy Spirit, for ever. Amen. The [Apostolic Constitutions 8.41-48] The most influential theologian in the western christian tradition was Augustine of Hippo. In one of his later works the Enchiridion, a book designed to present the doctrine of the church in an accessible form for deacons and priests, Augustine discusses the very same problem; the problem of those who are not wicked enough to go to hell and not perfect enough to go to heaven. He writes There is no denying that the souls of the dead are benefited by the piety of their living friends, when the sacrifice of the Mediator is offered for the dead, or alms are given in the church. But these means benefit only those who, when they were living, have merited that such services could be of help to them. For there is a mode of life that is neither so good as not to need such helps after death nor so bad as not to gain benefit from them after death. There is, however, a good mode of life that does not need such helps, and, again, one so thoroughly bad that, when such a man departs this life, such helps avail him nothing. [Enchiridion 29.110] It is here in this discussion that Augustine makes his famous distinction between the three categories of human lives; the very good, the 'not so very bad' and the very bad. Accordingly, when sacrifices, whether of the altar or of alms, are offered for the baptized dead, they are thank offerings for the very good, propitiations for the not-so-very-bad [non valde malis], and, as for the very bad—even if they are of no help to the dead—they are at least a sort of consolation to the living. Where they are of value, their benefit consists either in obtaining a full forgiveness or, at least, in making damnation more tolerable. [Enchiridion 29.110] So according to Augustine prayers, Masses and alms, all had the power to bring full forgiveness or if not, to ameliorate the suffering of those waiting to ascend to heaven. So, prayers, masses and alms could all contribute to the blessedness of those who who had left this life and were enduring the purgatorial fires. The category of the 'in-betweeners' had expanded from one poor soul plucked out of the masses heading to perdition in the Testament of Abraham, to the vast majority of those (baptised christians) who die, according to the theology of the early Christian church. In his book the Ransom of the Soul, Peter Brown argues that this it was this sense that the dead were 'in-between' heaven and earth, that gave rise to the deep sense of connectedness between the living and the dead. The dead (at least most of them) were not in heaven and so they needed the living just as the living needed the dead. One of the most remarkable aspects of this sense of mutual indebtedness was the belief that gifts given by the living could help to, as the title of the book puts it, ransom the souls 'lost' in-between heaven and earth. He writes By the beginning of the Middle Ages the anima - the soul - had come to be thought of as the lonely Christian soul which hung tremulously between heaven and hell in sore need of the comfort that only the gifts of the living could provide . . . there were links, vivid links, to be forged and maintained between the living and the dead. Those links enabled the living to intervene in some way or other, to touch the souls of the departed after death. Belief in the existence of such links enabled the rich to care for their dead with ever-more demonstrative splendour. The 'inbetweeners', the souls not yet ready for heaven, could find their passage through the afterworld(s) expedited by the gifts of the living. To a great extent this is what inspired such great generosity by the great and the rich throughout this period At times the deployment of wealth for the ransom of the poor led to stunning feats of generosity for the poor. It also led to spectacular achievements in art and architecture. One thinks of the great sarcophagi in milk-white marble that were gathered in or near so many early Christian shrines in an attempt to allow the dead to lie ever closer to the saints or of the shimmering gold mosaics the brilliant greens the blood-red poppies and the star-studded skies that brought a touch of paradise to the tombs of the great, in mausoleums and in funerary chapels. There would have been less beauty in the late antique world if there had been less concern for the link between this world and the next that was established at the grave. It was also this belief that the souls of the dead existed in the 'no-man's' land in-between eternal futures that provided the space and the necessity to imagine different kinds of existence in the afterlife: We should not underestimate the long term effects of these drawn out arguments. Without the twilight zones that hinted at the possibility at some role for the living in the life of souls beyond the grave and, one suspects, without the wealth that enabled the more fortunate among the living to render the frail bond between the living and the dead concrete, visible, and indeed at times, stunningly beautiful, there would have been less incentive for Latin Christians to envision, with such imaginative daring, entire worlds beyond the grave. So, the idea of the intermediary state, the place between heaven and the earth where once one poor soul was seemingly stuck until Abraham intervened, became the much vaster 'kind of place between heaven and earth' where tens of thousands of souls waited or their futures to be finally determined. In thinking about the development of beliefs about life beyond death, it is really important to realise that the Testament of Abraham gives us an insight into a question that became, for later Christianity at least, one of its defining problems and inspirations. You might also be interested in . . .
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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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