Friday, July 12, 2013

I believe in everlasting life.

"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church (catholic in the Latin), the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting."
The Apostles' Creed, Book of Concord

"I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.  Amen."
The Nicene Creed, Book of Concord

As I mentioned in my last post setting the stage for this post, the Gospel Lessons of Jesus raising the dead to life, and my re-reading of Ursula LeGuin's "Wizard of Earthsea" series (5 books) got me thinking about everlasting life.  I am grateful to my colleague, Rev. Dr. Clint Schnekloth, who is a voracious reader, for suggesting the book, "Immortality" by Stephen Cave.  I want to confess up front that I focused in reading the book on the opening, the closing, and the discussion of Christianity and The Resurrection to eternal life.

In the third book of Ursula LeGuin's series, the hero, the mage and later archmage, Sparrowhawk, descends to "the place of the dead" where he finds the "people" to be ghostlike, and without recognition or memory of their lives.  In book 5, a young magician and Sparrowhawk's adopted daughter "set the dead free" from this non-life by opening the gate to oblivion, through which the dead gladly go to escape the hell of eternal non-life.  But Sparrowhawk's adopted daughter is both human and dragon.  And dragons have a much different destiny.  Dragons have the possibility to fly beyond this world, and fly on "the other wind."  I pondered this quite a bit.  I came to a realization that as a self-proclaimed atheist, oblivion was the best that Ursula LeGuin could offer.  And oblivion was / is far better than an eternal existence as non-life.

In his book, "Immortality", author Stephen Cave arrives at a similar place.  He sets forth four immortality narratives, and then sets out to demonstrate that none of them is credible.  I only read his discussion of resurrection.  It was clear in the reading that Cave came from the perspective of atheistic evolution.  From that perspective, that starting place, it is of course quite true that resurrection is irrational.  But we come from a very different starting place.  We come from The Resurrection Event, the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Not surprisingly, he does not deal with any of the voluminous evidence of the actual, historical, resurrection of Jesus.  [I do not list it all here.  My DVD (or manuscript) of my closing argument in the role of attorney laying out the substantial evidence for the resurrection is available upon request.]  For a God who created and can create ex nihilo (out of nothing) this is not incredible at all.  In his conclusion, Cave tries to create a narrative of hope and meaning from a system without eternal life - and ending in oblivion.  (He uses a Wisdom Narrative, taken partly from Ecclesiastes, while conveniently leaving out, "Vanity, vanity; all is vanity.")  I submit that his conclusions are as much imaginary wishful thinking as the narratives he attacks.  (This has been aptly demonstrated by philosophers for many, many years.) 

And this relates back to the conclusion of LeGuin's series.  Of course oblivion is far superior to a half-life, a non-life, of eternal existence without meaningful experience.  But, of course, these are not the only options presented to us.  In the Gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, evidenced by His resurrection, attested by God the Holy Spirit, eternal life is offered to us to receive by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work.  We are offered the promise of going beyond this present world as we not know it and flying "on the other wind."

I believe in the resurrection to eternal life.