Читать книгу Imago Dei: Man/Woman Created in the Image of God - George Hobson - Страница 9

(Talk at St. Michael’s Anglican Church, Paris)

I

Writing to the gentile Christians in Ephesus, Paul says: “. . . remember that formerly . . . you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:11a–12). Both believing Jews and gentiles consider that the covenants of the promise are fulfilled in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. Christ redeemed us, Paul wrote to the Galatians, “in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (Gal 3:14). Essentially, the covenanted promise is communion with God the Holy Trinity, Creator, and Redeemer. “My dwelling place will be with them,” says the Lord to his people through the prophet Ezekiel (37:27a). And near the end of the book of Revelation, as John sees in a vision the New Jerusalem—the renewed creation—coming down out of heaven from God (it is no man-made construction, no Babel) “as,” he writes, “a bride beautifully dressed for her husband”—at that very moment, writes John, “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev 21:23–24). And the prophet goes on: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev 21:4).

Life. This is what the covenantal promise is all about. God is life. God is life, and the form—the heart—of life is love. “I am come that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” says Jesus (John 10:10b). “For God so loved the world,” writes John, “that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). And to Martha, before raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus says: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me shall live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” he asks her (John 11:25–26). And yet another word from the Gospel of John: “I tell you the truth,” says Jesus, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:24–26).

“Do you believe this?” Jesus asks Martha. It’s the question we must ask ourselves. It’s the key question. Do we believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? In him—in himself, in his being—is life, and as we are in him by grace through faith, and as he is in us, we have life—true life, everlasting life. Herein lies our hope, the hope that the world lacks and cannot give. In him who was raised from the dead, we shall be raised from the dead. This will be the consummate expression of God’s love. “For if the dead are not raised,” writes Paul to some skeptics in Corinth, “then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins . . . If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men . . . If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (1 Cor 15:16–17, 19, 32b). But of course Paul, who had encountered the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, and who, later, in Christ, had been caught up to the third heaven (2 Cor 12:2), was utterly convinced that Christ had been raised, and hence that those who belonged to him would be raised too: “With that same spirit of faith,” he writes to the Corinthians, “we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence” (2 Cor 4:13–14).

II

Resurrection life is what characterizes the kingdom of God. Where Jesus reigns, there is the kingdom of God. This kingdom is both present and future, hidden now in the hearts of those who believe and in the Spirit-filled lives they seek to lead (see Matthew 4:17, 23, 13:24; Luke 12:31–32, 17:20–21), and to be manifested fully in the future, when Christ returns to raise and judge the dead and renew the creation (see Mark 9:1; Luke 13:29, 22:30; John 6:40, 44; 1 Cor 6:9–10, 15:50). Eternal life and the kingdom of God are the same reality, as Jesus makes plain in his exchange with the rich young man (Mark 10:17–31). To enter it, we must die to the autonomous self—the rebel self that lives apart from the true God, according to its own dictates—and we must follow Jesus. We must humble ourselves and repent. We must decide to put to death our own self-as-king and receive in exchange, by faith, Jesus as King. This involves identifying with Jesus on the cross. The old man, the self-focused ego, dies with Jesus, and the new man rises with him. Neither for Jesus nor for us is resurrection possible without death. “For you died,” writes Paul to the Colossian Christians, “and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” And he exhorts them: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above” (Col 3:1). Paul uses the present tense. Because, by faith, we are in Christ and are indwelt by the Spirit of God, we have new life—eternal life—even now.

The Son of God, who is life, has overcome death: first by becoming one of us, then by living a sinless life of obedience to the Father, and then, at terrible cost, by laying down his life for us. He has defeated the devil, who holds the power of death (Heb 2:14–15). The evidence of this victory is Christ’s resurrection and the establishment of his kingdom in the hearts of men and women down through the ages who, living in the shadow of death and conscious of the shadows in their own lives, have hungered for life and love and found hope and salvation in Jesus. The church is not the kingdom of God, but it is the vehicle for the kingdom to penetrate this fallen world. We who make up the church are sinners and have often failed to live the life Christ calls us to, but that does not alter the truth of the good news at the heart of the gospel we seek to proclaim. At his return, Christ the King will complete the victory won at Calvary by destroying Satan forever and renewing the creation (Rev 20:7–10).

Christ’s return is a certainty of which Jesus himself and the apostles have a great deal to say. In no way should this biblical truth be considered myth, any more than our Lord’s resurrection. Not only did Jesus promise it categorically (e.g., Mark 13:26–35; Matt 24:30–51; Luke 17:19–27; John 14:3–4; and see Acts 1:11; Phil 3:20–21; 1 Thess 4:13–18), his return in glory is, when you think logically about it, absolutely necessary to complete the work of salvation and new creation. The church knows that the divine invasion of earth has taken place and that Satan and death have been defeated by Christ at the cross (Luke 10:17–20, John 12:31, Col 2:15, Heb 2:14–16), but it is clear, as St. John puts it in his First Epistle, that the world still lies in the lap of the evil one (1 John 5:19). If Christ does not return to complete his victory at the cross, that victory would be stillborn. It would not be generally and conclusively effectual. Evil would still be effectively on the throne, and Satan triumphant. There would be no final judgment, justice would not prevail. God would not be God—he would not be the righteous and all-powerful Creator and Re-Creator.

The establishment of the kingdom of God within history happens in stages. There is first the period of Israel, when the true God reveals himself and calls out a people to make known his Name; this leads to the coming of the Jewish Messiah, the Son of God, who, by his incarnation and passion, accomplishes the work of salvation, making communion with the true God available not only to the people of Israel but to gentiles (pagans) as well; then there is the period of mission, when the good news of the kingdom is proclaimed far and wide by the church, so that those of the human race who desire truth may be able to turn to God and receive eternal life; and finally there is the time of fulfillment, when Christ the King will return in manifest power to complete his work of redemption, take back his creation, and definitively destroy the devil, the rebellious angelic forces, and death. Then God will be all in all, and his kingdom will be established forever (1 Cor 15:20–28).

The early church longed for the Lord’s return, and so must we. And we must earnestly look out for the signs that point to his return (e.g., Matt 24; Luke 21; 1 Thess 5). In our day, they are everywhere, and it may well be the case that Christ’s return is imminent. The modern spirit, with its materialism, its suspicion of transcendence, and its rejection of any objective divine reality beyond and behind the cosmos, has infected much of the Western church with skepticism as far as the Lord’s return is concerned. The myth of progress has absorbed and virtually replaced the biblical understanding of the kingdom of God. In the last 100 years, this myth of progress has been basically shattered by world events, but it still hangs on, both in the popular mind and among elites, and is finding, to some extent, new strength in the prodigious advances of technology. But the hope and sense of purpose and direction that accompanied this myth in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—these are hardly to be found any more. Messianic political ideologies have been discredited. A sense of pointlessness, even despair, is now common currency, and corruption, fear, and violence of all kinds are overtaking every part of the world. Even the reigning god of technology and the economic structure of capitalism that expands technology’s reach and power—and which is itself an expression of technology—is no longer looked upon, at least by reasonable people, as the source of salvation and the provider of ultimate meaning to human life.

And yet for all that, materialism and consumerism, sustained by technology, maintain their ideological grip on human society, even where nationalist or religious identity retains or asserts, often violently, a supposedly countervailing influence. While this state of affairs puts tremendous pressure on Christians who, along with Jews, are being scapegoated and attacked wherever they find themselves because, in principle, they follow a different—transcendent—star, it also provides a tremendous opportunity for the church to proclaim with boldness the good news of hope and eternal life in Jesus Christ. There is desperation and a great hunger for truth out there, underneath the apparent indifference to transcendent reality, and we Christians alone have truly good news to proclaim. The message of the return of the Messiah to set things right, of the final judgment of evil and the establishment of justice, and of the renewal of creation, even as we see the original creation being desecrated—this message, while it certainly stretches the mind and imagination and is in fact, for our finite minds, quite unimaginable in its realization (as were the incarnation and the resurrection before they actually happened in history), is an absolutely essential part of the good news we are called to proclaim, and it should be consciously at the heart of our personal and liturgical prayers, as it was in the early church.

Once again, it is Christ’s resurrection that is the core of this proclamation. This, as I’ve been saying and as we know, is true dogmatically, with respect to sin, death, and salvation. But it is also true philosophically, in the following sense—and I think this is an important point. Christ’s resurrection is the great reality within history that is manifestly supernatural (his incarnation was likewise supernatural, of course, but not manifestly so, not publicly—only to Mary and Joseph). His miracles are supernatural too, of course, and point to the reality of who he is, but they don’t have the utter and absolute strangeness as has his own resurrection from the dead. His resurrection does not arise in any way from within historical conditions as such, or from natural law or causality. It is absolutely sui generis, a demonstration of power that is not human and so can only be divine. Those who deny it or who call it a myth cannot contest this, they can only claim—with no historical evidence whatsoever to support their claim—that it did not happen.

Here is not the place to develop this point, but it should be for believers a source of tremendous reassurance and hope: in Christ, God has manifestly penetrated our human sphere and has acted as nowhere else in the course of history, and the nature of that action being what it was, we have every reason to believe that what those who experienced it declared to be its significance—that is, redemption and the offer of eternal life to those who hunger for it—was and is true. Similarly, if such supernatural power has turned nature inside out once, we have every reason to believe—even if we cannot imagine how he will do it—that the Lord, at his return, will have the power to upturn and renew his entire fallen creation. Heaven will be joined to earth—to this earth, our earth. “And I saw,” writes John on the isle of Patmos, “the holy city, 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, ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying anymore, for the former things have passed away’” (Rev 21:2–4).

III

Let me now bring to your attention some of the peculiarities of what the Bible does tell us about life after death. The subject is vast, so I can only touch on a few points. When a believer dies, he/she goes to be with the Lord. Paul longed for this. “Now we know,” he writes to the Corinthians, “that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling . . . so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life . . . We live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor 5:1–2, 4b, 7–8). And to the Philippians he writes: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain . . . I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body” (Phil 1:21, 23b–24). The state referred to here—the state of “being with Christ”—appears not to be that of resurrection. The general resurrection will happen at the Lord’s return, not before. It would seem that the state being referred to here—and the place being referred to—is what is called elsewhere “paradise,” or the “third heaven,” where Paul at one point was transported in the Spirit (2 Cor 12:2–4). The word has the connotation of a garden, a place of bliss and rest in God’s presence, as in the words of the risen Lord to the church in Ephesus reported in the book of Revelation: “To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is the paradise of God” (Rev 2:7b). It is presumably the paradise where Jesus went immediately upon his death, and where the believing thief on the cross would go to join him (Luke 23:43).

In this state, the mortal body has been left behind, the incorruptible body has yet to be given. The human spirit, inbreathed by God, is the soul—the form, if you will—of the body, its vital structure and animating principle. At death it has been separated from the body, which has now become a cadaver—“I” am gone from what was my body, that decaying flesh is no longer “me.” This bodiless state of the human person is impossible for us to imagine, yet Scripture does seem to reveal that it is a stage between our physical death and our ultimate state, our resurrection, when we will be clothed with a spiritual body. Personal identity is retained and recognizable, and communion in love—with the Lord and with those who are his—characterizes this new form of reality; but the plenitude of redemption, the fullness of our hope, when, as Paul writes to the Romans, “the creation itself will be liberated from the bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21)—this plenitude is not yet present. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” Paul declares to the Christians in Philippi. “Already—even now,” he might have added, and surely after our death, when the soul is released from our earthly body. But the plenitude is still to come. “And,” he writes, “we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil 3:20–21).

For the Christian, eternal life cannot properly be conceived without a body, for the body is an essential part of God’s good creation, the means by which the soul—the body’s inner life—expresses itself. Material and spiritual reality are not to be disconnected in a Cartesian manner and set in opposition, as the modernist mindset insists on doing. They are interlocked as a single reality. God, who is Spirit, has created and sustains a material cosmos, and he is immanent within every particle of it, even while being absolutely transcendent to it. Spirit animates materiality and, from a Christian point of view, materiality cannot be properly conceived apart from Spirit. The plenitude of created human being cannot be imagined apart from corporeality, but it must be a corporeality that is incorruptible, not subject to decay, animated entirely by the life-giving Spirit that is God. In a word, the ultimate perfection—the complete realization—of a human person is not an immaterial immortal soul but a spiritual body, as Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 15.

This transformation will be wrought by the power of God at the moment of Christ’s return. Paul longs for this, it is the source of his hope, that for which he “presses on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:14). “We ourselves,” he writes elsewhere, “who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (Rom 8:23–24a). And finally, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul’s extended treatise on the resurrection, he declares: “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:42–44). The perishable, he insists, cannot inherit the kingdom of God: “For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality . . . then the saying that is written will come true (here he quotes from Hosea 13:14): ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’” (1 Cor 15:52a, 53, 54b).

IV

To conclude, a brief word on the final judgment. “A time is coming,” says Jesus in John’s Gospel, “when all who are in their graves will hear his—the Son of Man’s—voice and come forth, those who have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5:28b–29). Jesus, echoing a text in Daniel 12:1–3, is presenting himself here as the eschatological Judge entrusted by the Father with the authority to exercise judgment at the time of the end, that is, when he returns in glory. All human beings will be raised up and judged according to what they have done. Christians—let us say all those who have believed in Christ or whose hearts will have been disposed to believe in him—are not under condemnation, because they have received Christ and the benefits of his atoning work on the cross (Rom 8:1). Jesus took our judgment upon himself, in our place. But our works will be judged. The apostle Paul writes: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due to him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Cor 5:10). “You, then,” he scolds the Romans, “why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we all will stand before God’s judgment seat . . . So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God” (Rom 14:10, 12). And similarly, to the Christians in Corinth:

But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. (1 Cor 3:10b–15)

John takes up the same theme in the Book of Revelation, in his vision of the final judgment:

Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. . . . And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books . . . Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev 20:11a, 12, 13b, 14–15)

We are not saved by our works—we are justified entirely by grace through faith, in accordance with God’s mercy in Christ; but our works on this earth have great importance, for we will be judged and rewarded according to them. What was godly in them will be retained, what was not will be burnt up. Our daily choices and actions have eternal significance. This a sobering thought. Not just our faith in Christ, but the way we live out that faith in historical time, from day to day, with the moral freedom God has given us, will impact the shape of our lives in eternity (Jas 2:14–17). We are making a sketch now, in this earthly life, of the full portrait we will someday be.

V

Let me finish by asking: What does one’s soul, resting in heaven after death, separated temporarily from the old body (“temporarily” is an inapt word, since the nature of time in this state is unclear to us), actually do during this period of waiting? Reflection on that will have to await another occasion, but let me drop this thought in your minds: Might this be a sanctifying time, not for sin to be punished—Christians are fully justified in this life by grace through faith in Jesus, so there is no punishment for them to undergo after death—but rather for our lives to be considered and examined, including the sin—but examined as from outside those lives, with a detachment impossible on this earth, to achieve a kind of rereading of our lives and so a really full understanding of ourselves, both the good and the bad, bringing a kind of completion and, with it, a kind of in-depth washing of our minds and an even greater appreciation of Christ’s redemptive work? The notion of purgatory, rightly conceived, might correspond to something like this. Perhaps this sanctifying work, involving the assessment and judgment of our acts and the final burning up of all that was sinful, is accomplished altogether at the final judgment, as Paul suggests in the texts I’ve quoted. But perhaps some kind of sanctifying and edifying work is accomplished by the Spirit in the soul as it waits restfully in paradise for the Lord Jesus Christ to return to earth triumphantly, when he will resurrect and judge the living and the dead and transfigure believers into the fullness of his image. On this point, it seems, the Bible gives us no conclusive illumination.