Eschatology and the Soul

Eschatology and the Soul

• Early eschatological thinking often revolves around an immortal soul that persists beyond bodily demise
• This soul is believed to pre-exist the body, suggesting a spiritual existence prior to embodiment

Early Church Eschatology

• New Testament scholars find that the early church's eschatology differs significantly from popular modern beliefs
• Early Christian doctrine bears a resemblance to Gnosticism, which early Church Fathers combatted
• Early Christian eschatology originated from Jesus and his disciples' Jewish context
• Hebrew scriptures lack the concept of an indestructible soul that lives on after bodily decay
• The Hebrew word "nephesh" is sometimes translated as "soul"
• "Nephesh" does not have a meaning of an indestructible core
• The notion of an immortal soul is foreign to the Hebrew Bible

Resurrection in the Hebrew Bible

• There are very few texts in the Hebrew Bible that discuss new life beyond the grave
• Daniel 12:2 speaks of resurrection, where some will awaken to everlasting life or everlasting disgrace
• Resurrection is the return of the whole person, body and soul together, not just the "spiritual" dimension
• Bodily physicality is explicit in Jewish literature prior to Christianity
• 2 Maccabees recounts the story of seven brothers who affirm that God will return their bodies to them after execution

Jesus and Resurrection

• Jesus, a first-century Jew, affirmed belief in bodily resurrection
• Jesus supported his belief by referencing scripture commonly used in 1st century Jewish discourse

New Testament and Resurrection

• Resurrection is central to the New Testament
• Gospel accounts emphasize the bodily dimension of Jesus' resurrection
• In Luke's Gospel, Jesus appears to his disciples and invites them to touch him : Jesus makes it clear that he is not a ghost
• Paul states that Jesus' resurrection is the cause and model for the future resurrection of the dead

Jewish Eschatology

• Elements of Jewish eschatology were not marginal for early Christians
• Eschatological ideas are crucial to understanding early Christian texts
• Jesus repeatedly discusses the Kingdom of God in the Gospels
• Jesus' ministry focuses on the Kingdom's coming
• The coming Kingdom is explicitly an eschatological phenomenon

Kingdom of God

• Communal and social phenomenon
• Not the salvation of an isolated individual or a disembodied soul
• Throughout history people have spiritualized and individualized this message
• Christian theology transformed the Kingdom of God into a kingdom beyond mortal life
• Belief says the well-being of men became salvation of souls after death
• This contradicts the message of Jesus Christ
• The Lord was addressing the whole man, in his embodied form, with his involvement in history and society

The Lord's Prayer

• Jesus didn't teach a spiritualist vagueness
• He instructed them to pray for God's Kingdom to come

Paul's Epistles

• What he saw as end of time events has arrived
• A new creation has began
• Paul believed the scriptures were coming to fulfilment
• The present time had become the age of eschatological fulfillment

New Creation

• The new creation is about transformation
• The whole universe to be freed of mortality
• It’s about the transformation of the created order not escaping the material world
• The transformation the have already witnessed in Jesus

Revelation

• The final goal is a new heaven and a new earth
• God has his dwelling with mankind
• Not us leaving to be with God
• Its about God coming down to earth to be with people

Apocalyptic Theology

• Ernst Kasemann argues that apocalyptic theology is the mother of Christianity

Contrast

• Difference between bodily and earth centered eschatology and popular otherworldly eschatology
• Popular Christian belief in the modern period has tended to envisage the survival of the soul with little reference to the resurrection of the body or the new creation of the material world

Platonism

• Pagan philosophy has had too much of an influence on Christianity
• Original holistic expectations of eschatological salvation had become spiritualized
• In Platonism there is a division between a transient world and an unchanging world of ideal forms
• For Platonism, the mind or soul is the real person
• While the body is the encumbrance, so the Platonic hope was for the disembodied life of the mind
• Bodily resurrection went against it

Christian Hope

• Christian hope reflects the worldview of the Bible, is hope for the whole creative reality
• Does not divide creation into the immortal and the perishable
• Eschatology influenced by Platonic dualism promises eternal life only for the spirit, not the body

Christian History

• For the first few centuries, Christian theology resisted spiritualization of salvation
• The main challenge to this developing hope for bodily resurrection was a movement known as Gnosticism
• Gnostic theology generally shares the conviction that the present embodied condition of human consciousness is not the natural or ideal state, but is itself a sign of a fallen world
• Salvation in gnostic thought is the freedom that comes from accepting this account

Irenaeus of Lyon

• He defended belief in the bodily resurrection against Gnostic tendencies
• His theology essentially a plea for the religious relevance of the ordinary things, of the material world
• Of Israel's biblical narrative, interpreted and summed up in Christ
• Christ human body it’s the way he revealed in the world

Insistence

• Irenaeus insists that the fleshly body is important to the narrative
• Central to the salvation of the faithful, the resurrection of the flesh, is final plan

Emphasis

• Emphasis on the essential earthliness of humankind

Origen

• Scholars have suggested that is trying to marry Platonism with Christianity
• His theology can be seen as cyclical, he starts with the spiritual state of harmony Where rational souls are contemplating soul but souls fall from harmony

Redeem

• To redeem, they are given bodily existence which must leave to return to unity
• Accept Plato arguments on the immortality of the soul

Important Fact

• They immortal, the spiritual world of rational creatures, was God creator, creaton of the material world came later
• It’s their choice to cease contemplation So always possible to return again

Eschatological Hope

• Paul every knee shall bow

Conclusion

• Contradiction to church on Resurrection

Corinthians

• Raising spiritual body to what is worthy of God

Opposition

• Resurrecton escape to the new

Origens Belief

• Belief in the should seemed the bible true
• The church fathers they didn't know because of Plato on Jesus

Edwards Argument

• Based on description not play tonic
• Resurrection of dead what isn’t raised to be in corruption

The Spirit

• The adjective of the spirit is not what something is composed of
• But what is animated by
• The difference would be like a ghost versus not a soul.

Paul Said

• Flesh and blood cannot inherit kingdom
• Was assumed that could not be a physical But argued that the flesh referred to not the corpse but nature and sinfulness
• Paul declares truth doesn’t come through this though

Augustine

• Platonism and theology seems plausible
• Book of platonists was important to leave his other theology

Conclusion

• Platonists were right for subordinating the body, but wrong to Rid it
• Then it shows the way from how to understand is
• Follows for other theologist turning to others
• Platonic traditions

The Problem

• There no church to location location of god with self affirming divinity of divine

Augustine Says

• Souls should be distinct
• Middle level soul body

Approaching God

• Augustine isn’t leaving in traditon

Implication

• No sign, not a sacrament is a means if grace

Little Support

• Didn’t have scripture support to turn into soul and away

Influence

• Is the infuential of platonic traditions

Now

• Soul seems have speculatons

Not the end

• Intellects changing not the end of a chapter