Modem Theology 1:1 1984 ISSN 0266-7177 $3.00
DO WE NEED IMMORTALITY? GRACE M. JANTZEN The doctrine of of life life after after death d eath is ofte often n taken to be an essential essenti al ingredient ingre dient in Christian theology. Baron Friedrich Von Hügel, when he said that 'Religion, in its fullest development, essentially requires, not only this our little span of earthly years, but a life beyond/ 1 was only echoing the words of St Paul: 'If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.' 2. And more recently, others, among them John Hick, have devoted much energy to a consideration of life after death. Hick writes that 'Any religiou religiouss understa under standin nding g of human hum an existe existence nce — not merely one's own existence but the life of humanity as a whole — positively requires some kind of immortality belief and would be radically incoherent without it.' 3 In this article I propose to look behind the arguments for and against the possibility of life after death, to investigate the various motives for wanting it, ranging rangin g from from the t he frivolo frivolousl usly y irreligious to the profound. profou nd. I shall argue that tha t the belief belief in immortality immortali ty is not so central to Christian thought tho ught and practice practice as is often believed, and indeed that a rich Christian faith does not require a doctrine of life after death in order to be profound and meaningful.
7.
Self-Regarding Motives
To begin with the obvious, our desire for immortality is not a desire for just any sort of continued existence: the less musical among us might prefer extinction to an eternity of playing harps and singing hymns, and given a choice, we would all prefer extinction to hell. H. H. Price has offer offered ed a picture of a life life aft after er death d eath which is entirely the produc pr oductt of of our desires - but which might turn tur n out to be a highly undesirable state. state . In his his description, the th e post mortem world is a world in which our wishes wis hes would immediately fulfil themselves, a world whose laws 'would be more like the laws of Freudian psychology than the laws of physics' 4. As Price points out, this might be
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we include all those we have repressed, are not in mutual harmony. They incorporate, for instance, desires for punishment and suffering for the wrongs we have done. He offers the following grim comments: 'Each man's purgatory, would be just the automatic consequence of his own desires; if you like, he would punish himself by having just those images which his own good feelings demand. But, if there is any consolation in it, he would have those unpleasant experiences because he wanted to have them; exceedingly unpleasant as they might be, there would still be something in him which was satisfied by them' 5 . Price's point is that if all our repressed desires suddenly came true, this would be horrifying, and we would have to set about the difficult process of altering our characters so that when we get what we want, we want what we get. The popular desire for immortality is very little like this. Life after death is often pictu red , rather, as the fulfilment of longings for pleasur e: it will be a paradise where there will be no more suffering and pain, where we will be happily reunited with those we love in perpetual feasting and gladness. It must be admitted that some religious pictures of heaven reinforce this frankly hedonistic conception. In the Koran we find that heaven is a beautiful garden filled with fruits and flowers. 'There the Muslims drink the wine they have been d enie d on ear th, wine that ha s no after-effects. It is brought to them by handsome youths, and dark-eyed houris wait on their every pleasure'6 . Similar descriptions of a hedonistic paradise of feasting and delight can be found in Christian writings, except that the dark-eyed houris are conspicuously absent, probably because of Christianity's long standing suspicion of the sorts of delights the presence of these creatures would signal. One of the appeals of such a description of paradise is that in this eternal delight there is no more separation from those we love; we are all eternally reunited. This, however, might prove a mixed blessing. Apart from the fact that with some of those we love, the relationship improves if there are periods of space between our togetherness, there is also the consideration that heaven would not be a private party — everyone is invited. Now, what might it be like to find oneself at the heavenly feast seated next to a Neanderthal man? Surely conversation would lag, and it is doubtful whether the silences could be filled by enjoyment of the same food. Christianity has sometimes avoided this social embarrassment by consign ing the vast majority of mankind to hell, but that is not a possibility with which many of us could acquiese and still enjoy the feast. The point behind these frivolous comments is that it is not quite so easy to give a picture of unending delight as might be thought; it is against
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by choosing interesting conversational partners, and making the dinner occasions not merely for food and drink but also for stimulating discussion and for giving and receiving friendship the value of which extends beyond the termination of the dinner. But if the feasting literally never came to an end, if there were no progress possible from the sensuous enjoyment of paradise to anything more meaningful, then we might well wish, like Elina Macropolis, to terminate the whole business and destroy the elixer of youth. It is important to notice, however, that on this view survival is tedious simply because there is no progress, no point to the continued existence except the satisfaction of hedonistic desires. But this picture is much too simple-minded. Christians (and Muslims too, of course) have long recognized this, and have taken the hedonistic descriptions of the Scriptures as symbolic of something more meaningful than eternal selfindulgence, as we shall see. Death is sometimes seen as evil because it means the curtailment of projects; immortality would be required to give significance to life because it would allow those projects to be meaningfully continued. Of course, most of our projects would not require all eternity to complete. But even in this life, one enterprise leads to another, and provided endless progress were possible, we might pursue an endless series of challenging and absorbing tasks, each one developing into another, without any risk of boredom. This might also give more point to some of our earthly projects: the painstaking acquisition of languages and techniques would be worthwhile beyond the few years we have to employ them here. This way of thinking about survival is probab ly more attractive to an intellectual whos e curr ent projects could easily be extended into the future, than, say, to a labourer who considers the prospect of endless projects as enough to make him feel tired already. Still, given the opportunity, perhaps he too would develop interests which he would genuinely like to pursue. The notion that life after death would provide an opportunity for the fulfilment of projects is not, of course, pre sen ted as an arg ume nt for th e likelihood of survival but as an argument for its desirability. But does it succeed? There is considerabl e pull to ward saying tha t it doe s, especially for those who have far more interests than they can possibly develop even assuming an average life-span. An after-life in which we could all pursue what we are really interested in without worrying about earning daily bread or having the notion that the project itself is fulfilling — so that a fulfilled person is one who comple tes fulfilling projects - but then we have go ne round in a circle. Personal fulfilment involves something like actualizing our potential, completing projects which 'do ourselves justice.' But this
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in some forms) it is possible to give an alternative account of fulfilment which does not require survival. If death is seen as the limit of life, then 'death gains what significance it has, not by serving as a state characterizing thi ngs , bu t as a function whi ch ord ers memb er s of the limited series'8 . Thus if we take seriously the fact that our existence will terminate, this will affect our choice about life: if we will not live forever, then we must do while we can those th ings which are really imp ort ant to do . On this view, a fulfilled person would be a person who picked such projects for his life that were genuinely worthwhile and suitable for his abilities and aptitudes, and was able to bring them to completion: Einstein, who lived to an old age and had accomplished significant projects would be described as fulfilled, but a person who never had any projects at all, and lived in continuous aimless frustration, 'In the evening saying "Would it were morning" and in the morning saying "Would it were evening" ' would not be so describable. Neither would be the person who had projects but died before he could accomplish them. We do distinguish fulfilled and unfulfilled people in these ways, without reference to immortality. This does not of course mean that immortality is not desirable, especially for those who through no fault of their own are not able to complete their projects in their life-times. But it does mean that we do not have to postulate an after-life to make sense of the very concept of fulfilled and meaningful human life. Also, if death is a limit, this gives a significance and urgency to our choices which they would not otherwise have. If we could go on pursuing an endless series of projects, it might not matter very much which ones we chose first: we could always do others later. Nor would it matter how vigourously we pu rs ue d them - for there wou ld always be more time nor how challenging they were or how well they developed us and brought out the best in us — for there would always be other opportunities. But if fulfilment is something which must be reached in this life if it is to be reached at all, we will be far less cavalier about the choices we make affecting our own fulfilment, an d also, very import antl y, in our relation ships with others for whose fulfilment we are partly responsible. A great many of our projects, and arguably the most significant of them, have to do not merely with ourselves but with others: our fulfilment is not simply a matter of, say, satisfying our individual intellectual curiosities, but is bound up with the fulfilment of family, friends, students. If we really have only this life, then enjoyment and fulfilment cannot be postponed to another, either for ourselves or for those we care about.
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as well as virtue, and since in this life we often find a disparity between the two, it is necessary to postulate a life after death where the imbalance will be redressed. Otherwise the universe is ultimately unjust, out of joint. I do not wish to linger long over this, but simply make three points, none of them original. First, maybe we should just admit that the universe is out of joint; it hardly seems obvious, even (or especially) from the point of view of Christian theology, that it is not. Second, even if it is, that does not rob morality - eve n on a Kant ian syst em - of its point. An act of intrinsic worth is still worthwhile even if it will never receive any happiness in reward; furthermore, morality retains its meaning even if we are all going to perish. (It is not pointless for the dying to show kindness to one another.) Those wh o say that if the re is no life after dea th the n noth ing - incl uding morality — in this life is meaningful, are implicitly admitting that there is nothing in this life which is worthwhile for its own sake, independent of eternal consequenc es; that every thing , even love, is only a mea ns to an en d, and an end which this life cannot give. Kant himself could not have accepted such a view. Third, the Kantian view of reward has a peculiarity. What sort of happiness is it which is to be the reward of virtue? Suppose we think of it as some variant of the hedonistic paradise described earlier: then for reasons already given, the more moral one was — the more one valued that which was intrinsically good — the less happiness one would find in such ultimately pointless eternal self-indulgence. On the other hand, if Kant was speaking of the satisfactions of fulfilment rather than of a hedonistic utopia, then for the one who truly pursues virtue, becoming virtuous will itself be the fulfilment; virtue will be its own reward. A more interesting argument for the requirement of immortality arises, not from the idea that virtue needs to be rewarded, but from the fact that none of us is sufficiently virtuous. If part of the point of life is moral development, and none of us develops fully in this life, would it not be desirable for this process to continue beyond the grave? There is considerable connection between this argument and the previous ones; except that here there is no request for happiness as a compensation for virtue, but rather for fulfilment of the very virt ue that one ha s soug ht, albeit with only moderate success. There are at least two aspects of this, which I shall consider separately. The first is encapsulated by Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. 'Surely I have n't suffered simply tha t I, my crimes an d my sufferings, may manure the soil of the future harmony for somebody else. I want to see with my own eyes the hind lie down with the lion and the victim rise up and embrace his murderer. I want to be there when everyone suddenly
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point, whether we are 'there' to understand it in the end or not. Even if we are not present at the final denoument, this does not make working toward it less worthwhile, for once again, the value of doing that cannot depend on what we individually get out of it. Although Dostoyevsky here touches, as he so often does, a very deep nerve of desire, he surely cannot be interpreted to mean that if that desire remains forever unfulfilled, there was no meaning to the suffering in the first place. The second aspect of the longing for immortality is the longing for perfection in virtue. This is part of what prompted the more positive conceptions of purgatory, where that was seen not as a place of retributive punishment until one had suffered proportionately to the sins one had committed on earth, but rather as a place of moral purification and advance,
Where human spirits purge themselves, and train 10 To leap up into joy celestial . This, clearly, is not an unworthy motive for desiring life after death (though in more cynical moments one might wonder how universally it is shared — how many people desire immortality because they truly want to become better.) Yet it too has some problems. In the first place, it is not obvious that simple extension of life would result in moral improvement: more time can be opportunity for deterioration as well as for advance; the person who says, Ί would be better, if only I had a little longer' is justifiably suspect. Still, although time does not automatically produce growth, it may be true that it is necessary for growth. But once again it is worth thinking about the concept of death as a limit. If immortality is denied, and if moral growth is valued, there is an urgency to moral improvement, both for oneself and for others, which might easily be ignored if it were thought that there was endless time available. And as we have already seen, it will not do to say that such moral improvement, with its struggle and frequent failure, would be worthless if all ends at death, for this would hold true only if moral improvement were a means to an end, rather than intrinsically valuable.
HI.
Religious Motives
Those who say that immortality will be the scene of moral progress do not, of course, usually have in mind nothing but temporal extension to bring this about: as Fichte once said, 'By the mere getting oneself buried, one
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sometimes in Clockwork Orange fashion — of our innate sinfulness. The most interesting theory of inducement to moral perfection, and one that forms a bridge to specifically religious arguments for the need for immortality, is the idea that the lure of divine love, more obvious in the next life than in this one, will progressivley wean us from our self-centeredness and purify us so that at last our response will be perfect love reciprocated. John Hick, in his discussion of universal salvation, argues that given the assumption that man has been created by God and is 'basically oriented towards him, there is no final opposition between God's saving will aid our human nature acting in freedom' 12. Thus God, extending his love ever again towards us, will not take 'no' for an answer but will ultimately woo successfully, not by overriding our freedom, but by winning us over so that eventually we freely choose him and his perfection. Hick says, 'if there is continued life after death, and if God is ceaselessly at work for the salvation of his children, it follows that he will continue to be at work until the work is done; and I have been arguing that it is logically possible for him eventually to fulfil his saving purpose without at any point overriding our human freedom' 13. But even granting Hick's basic assumptions of humanity's created bias toward God, God in loving pursuit of men and women, and endless time for 'the unhurried chase', there are still problems with his conclusion. It is not clear that genuine freedom could be preserved while still guaranteeing the ultimate result: surely if there is freedom there is always the possibility of refusal. Hick's response, presumably, would be to agree that refusal is possible but that, given his assumptions, it becomes less and less likely as time goes on. Yet significantly to the extent that theists, Hick among them, wish to use the fact of human freedom as a (partial) resolution of the problem of evil, one aspect of their defence is that, though persons were created with a bias toward God, their freedom made it possible for them to choose rebellion, thus bringing moral evil in its train: evil is the price of freedom gone wrong. I do not see how one can have it both ways: if evil choices were made in the past even when there seemed no particular reason for them, how can Hick be confident that they will not be repeated endlessly in the future, especially since in the latter case they are made by characters already considerably warped by previous evil choices? The only way that I can see out of this for Hick is by increasing the emphasis on the divine pressure, but that runs the risk of undermining the very freedom which must here be preserved. It is important to see the implications of human freedom for a Christian doctrine of redemption. One aspect of choice not sufficiently considered is
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it makes no difference what our inter mediate choices are becaus e ultimately we will all (freely) be brought to the same goal. If it is true that whether I choose ρ or not�p, in the end I will get p, the idea of choice has been robbed of all significance — and that is so even if I can be persuaded that in the end it will really be ρ that I do want. So if I perpet uall y choose selfishness and distrust and dishonesty, and my character is formed by these choices, it seems perverse to say that eventually these choices will be reversed and I will attain the same moral perfection as I would have if I had all along chosen integrity and compassion. Part of what it means to be free is that our choices have consequences; it is playing much too lightly with the responsibility of freedom to suggest that these consequences, at least in their effects up on ourselves, are always reversible, even if only in the endless life to come. For that matter, if everyone is perfected, then even the consequences of our choices upon others will finally be overridden: all, in the end, will be as though no one had ever chosen evil at all. Morally revolting as is the thought of God committing people to eternal flames, one of the reasons wh y traditi onal theology has so long retained a doctrine of hell is surely to guard this aspect of freedom: there is no such thing as automatic salvation. In spite of the strong reinforcement which the belief in immortality receives from Scripture and Christian tradition, a surprising amount can also be found which calls into question the idea that immortality is a religious requirement. In the first place, it is sometimes held that, of all the evils and sufferings in this world, deat h is the worst . On a traditional theistic view, evil mus t eventually be overcome, and all the wrongs mad e good; and this requires that death, 'the last enemy', may not be proud. Death, too, shall die, when all who have ever lived will live again. This assumes, of course, that death is an evil; and if what I have said about death as a limit is correct, then that cannot be retained wit hout some qualifications. Still, although death is not the worst evil, and not an unqualified evil, this does not amount to saying that it is not an evil at all; consequently in a wor ld where evil was eradicated, death, too, would have no place.
But can this be used as a argument for a religious requirement of life after death? I am not sure that it can. If the perfect world dawns, death will perhaps not be found in it; but does this mean that death in this very imperfect world is followed by immorality? On e might argue that only if it is, is God just: the sufferings of this present world can only be justified by the compens ation of eternal life. But this , in the first place, is shocking theodicy: it is like saying that I may beat my dog at will provided that I later give him a dish of his favourite liver chowder. What ha ppen s after de ath —
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would not contain; why should we expect to escape this one? A Christian surely must recognize that there are many aspects of the problem of evil which he cannot explain; maybe he should just accept that death is another one. But would not death make the problem of evil not just more myster ious t ha n it already is, but actually in principle unsolvable? Wou ldn 't we have to conclude that God is unjust? I don't know. If we can retain a belief in divine justice amid p re se nt evil an d suffering, horrific as it is, I am not sure that relinquishing the prospect of life after death would necessarily alter the case. Of course it might tip the balance psychologically, making us 'of all men, most miserable,' but that is another matter. If the present evils can be relegated to the mysterious purposes of God, it seems presumptuous to assume that these purposes could not include our extinction. A very persuasive argument for the requirement for immortality for Christian theology gathers up strands from several of these lines of thought, but places special emphasis on the personal love of God. If, as Christians maintain, God loves and values each of us individually, then we can trust him not to allow us to perish forever. We are worth more to him than that. Thus Helen Oppenheimer, in her discussion of problems of life after death, recognizes the great philosophical complexities regarding personal identity, resurrection, and the rest, but finally says that if we believe in God at all, we must also believe that if we keep on looking we will find the solution to these problems, because it is as unthinkable that a loving God would permit a relationship with one he loves to be severed by extinction of that loved one as it is to think that we would willingly allow our dearest friends to perish if it were in our power to provide them with a full and rich life15. This approach has the merit, first of not pretending that the puzzles of identity and/or resurrection are easily solvable, second, of treating death seriously, and third, of placing the doctrine of irrìmortality within the context of a doctrine of personal relationship with God. Death is not seen as a mild nuisance which can be quickly left behind never to be repeated; immortality is not automatic, and could not be expected at all were it not for the intervention of an omnipotent God. It is only because Christianity stakes itself on the unfailing love of God, following the man who dared to call God 'Father' rather than 'Judge', that life after death can even be considered. But even though this seems to me a sounder starting place, given basic assumptions of Chritian theology, than the belief that human beings are endowed with naturally immortal souls, I still have problems with it. It is comforting to be told th at th e love of God will not allow the ter mination of a
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Christian theologians increasingly recognize that it is not the case that the whole earth, every primrose, every songbird, all the galaxies of all the heavens, exist for the benefit of humanity alone. Yet if it is true that God brought about the existence of all these things and takes delight in them; then it is also true that some of the things he delights in perish forever: a popular book of natural history estimates that 99 per cent of all species of animals which have lived on earth are now extinct16 . We cannot have it both ways. 'Are not three sparrows sold for a farthing?' Jesus asked. 'Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your heavenly Father's knowledge' 17 . These words of Jesus have often (and rightly) been taken as his teaching of the tender concern of the Father for all his creatures; what has not been noticed so often is that Jesus never denies that sparrows do fall. If the analogy which Jesus is drawing to God's care for persons (who, he says, 'are of more value than many sparrows') is taken to its logical conclusion, the implication, surely, is not that we will not die but that our death will not go unnoticed. If a Christian admits that God allows some things which he values to perish, it will need further argument to show why this should not also be true of human beings: the primroses, presumably, are not loved less simply because they are temporary. But perhaps they are temporary because they are loved less? Because they are not of such enduring worth to God (as human beings are) they are allowed to perish? This still leaves me uneasy. It is one thing to believe that we are individually valued by God, and valued perhaps in a way that other things are not; it is quite another to say that this value must result in our immortality. How can we be so sure? The analogy with persons we love whom we would not willingly allow to perish assumes that our relationship with God is in this respect just like our relationship with them. But even if we accept this analogy as the best we have for our relationship with God, we must still admit that there must be considerable disanalogies as well: how do we know that the case of endless preservation is not one of them? We may believe that God looks upon us with love and compassion, but that does not seem to me to be any guarantee that he wills our everlasting existence — t hat is a further (very large) step. We are tau ght , to be sur e, that God wishes to bring us to eternal life; but it is a glaring confusion to equate eternal life with endless survival. As the notion of eternal life is used in the Johannine writings, for instance, it is spoken of as a present possession, a quality of life, not a limitless quantit y; nor is it someth ing tha t ha pp en s after death but in this present lifetime. Furthermore, if there were no life after death, this in itself would not mean that religion would be pointless. Just as that which is morally valuable is valuable for its own sake and not for the reward it can bring, so also trust
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point less if one day it too should en d? Shneu r Zalman, the Jewish foun der of the Chabad, once exclaimed, 'Master of the Universe! I desire neither Paradise nor Thy bliss in the world to come. I desire Thee and Thee 18 alone' . And the hymn of Fenelon has become the common property of Christendom: My God I love Thee: not because I hope for heaven thereby, Nor yet because who love Thee not are lost eternally . . . Not for the sake of winning heaven, nor of escaping hell; Not from the hope of gaining aught, not seeking a reward; But as thyself hast loved me, O ever loving Lord . . . 19 Solely because thou art my God and my most loving King . It is true, of course, that these words (and many more examples could be given) were written by men who did believe in immortality; the point, howev er, is that according to them, the value of the relationship with God, th e vision of God, cannot be measured by measuring its temporal duration. But perhaps it will still be objected that if God will one day allow me to peri sh, t his sho ws that all the teachin g abou t his love for me is a vast fraud — if he really loved me, he would preserve my life. I can only reply that for reas ons al ready given, this does not seem obvious to me. I cannot forget the primroses. They perish. Must we conclude that they are not precious to God? I am not arguing that there is no life beyond the grave or that it is irrational to hope for it or for Chri stians to commit their future to God in trust. But if what I have said is correct, then it would be presumptuous to be confident that life after deat h is a matter of course, guar ant eed, what eve r the problems, by the requirements of morality and religion. We should not neglect the significant change of verb in the Nicene Creed: from affirmations Ί believe in God,' Ί believe in Jesus Christ', an d so on, we come to the rather more tentative ' And I look for the resurrection of the dead and t he life of the world to come.' Christian faith and Christian commitment bases itself not first and foremost on a hope of survival of death, but on the intrinsic value of a relationship with God, wit hout any reservations about wh at the future holds — here or hereafter.
NOTES 1 2 3 4
Baron F. Von Hügel, Eternal Life, 2nd edition (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1913), p. 396. I Cor. 15:19. John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (Lon don: Fontana, 1976), p. 11. H. H. Price, 'Survival and the Idea of "Another World" ' in J. Donnelly (ed). Language, Metaphysics and Death (New York: Fordham University Press, 1978), p. 193.
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10 Dante, The Divine Comedy: Purgatory I. 5 & 6. 11 Fichte, Sämmtliche Werke Vol. 5 (1845-6) p. 403, Quoted in Von Hügel, p. 176.
12 Hick, p. 254. 13 Hick, p. 258. 'Salvation' as Hick uses the term involves moral perfection. 14 And of course it may pu t a different complexion o n thi ngs th at were perceived as evil in our imperfect state of knowledge, so that we see that it was a necessary condition for good; but that is not at issue here. 15 Helen Oppenheimer in a University Sermon preached in St Mary's, Oxford, in 1979. 16 Richard E. Leakey, The Making of Mankind (London: Book Club Associates, 1981) p. 20. 17 Matt. 10: 29. 18 Quoted in Isidore Epstein, Judaism (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1959) p. 279. 19 Quoted from Hymns Ancient and Modern 106.
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