[This is
an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5 volume series, Christian
Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely read and bridges the gap
between the academic and devotional world. It is therefore worthy to be carefully
analyzed so that all readers can understand his key points while at the same
time gaining a critical eye to some of his rather bold claims. This series of
posts are concerning volume 3 – The
Resurrection of the Son of God.]
N.T. Weight’s emphasis in this chapter is laudable. He is
primarily interested in how the message of the resurrection would have been
heard to a Gentile audience (he will discuss how this same message would have
sounded to a Jewish audience in the following two chapters). Wright focuses on
the worldview of most members of Greco-Roman society. He does a good job
presenting the worldview, but less of a good job showing the possibilities
within the world by focusing so exclusively on the concept of resurrection and
by not discussing minority religion such as Greek magic or the mystery cults.
First, Wright emphasizes that on the level of the worldview,
most people could not have imagined a conversation about any type of
“resurrection” in any way that would have made sense to them:
This basic tenet of human existence
and experience is accepted as axiomatic throughout the ancient world; once
people have gone by the road of death, they do not return. When the ancient
classical world spoke of (and denied) resurrection, there should be no
controversy about what the word and its cognates referred to: it was a coming
back again into something like the same sort of life that humans presently
experience.[1]
He argues that any idea of “resurrection” would not be
expected because such an idea would be a reanimation of one’s bodies – a view
held by very few. While Wright is correct that the focus of Greek and Roman
religion is on the present world – and frankly very little speculation about
any type of “life after death” – his focus being so narrowly on resurrection
causes problems.
First, it is necessary to show where it is that Wright
succeeded. He correctly points out that the worldview generally had little
interest in life after death. He argues any idea of life after dearth would be
something that was not particularly hoped for:
We can, then, answer the worldview
questions in relation to the dead. Who were the dead thought to be, in the
ancient pagan world? They were beings that had once been the embodied human
beings, but were now souls, shades or eidola.
Where were they? Most likely in Hades; possibly in the Isles of the Blessed, or
Tartarus; just conceivably, reincarnated into a different body altogether. They
might occasionally appear to living mortals; they might still be located
somewhere in the vicinity of their tombs; but they were basically in a
different world. What was wrong? Nothing, for a good Platonist, or a Stoic like
Epictetus; the soul was well rid of its body – a sentiment echoed by many
non-philosophers in a world without modern medicine, and often without much
justice. Almost everything, for most people: some kind of life might continue
after death, but it was unlikely to be as rich and satisfying as the present
could be, at least in theory.[2]
This is certainly accurate. Most people did not focus on the
coming life after death, rather, they focused upon life right now. Roman
religion had almost no interest in any kind of future life, instead religious
devotion was centered upon a do ut des relationship
that addressed current needs (as well as having nearly no interest in ethics).
He illustrates this by showing that life after death in
Homer is something that is not what a Western reader would expect. Any type of
future existence is not “bodily” in the sense that Christians would later make
so popular. Instead, the type of existence was shadowy and elusive:
Who then are the dead, for Homer
and the subsequent centuries that read him devoutly? They are shades (skiai), ghosts (psychai), phantoms (eidola).
They are in no way full human beings, though they may look like them; the
appearance is deceptive, since one cannot grasp them physically. The Latin word
Manes conjures up the same sort of
world, with similar variations. Where are they? They are in Hades, under the
eponymous rule of the underworld’s god and his dread wife. What’s wrong? They
are sorry both to be where they are and at much that happened in their previous
human existence. They are sad at their present subhuman state. In some cases
they are tormented, as punishment for particularly heinous crimes (though we
are not told, interesting, the crimes of Tantalus and Sisyphus). There may be
some who have a shadowy alter ego in a better place; we shall come to Hercules
presently. But for most of them, including those who have been great and goo
din their former life, Hades holds no comforts, no prospects, but only a
profound sense of loss.[3]
Here Wright is correct – at the level of Homer, there really
is very little as far as a Christian life after death. There certainly were not
otherworldly expectations of wages of life based upon any kind of merit.
Wright then explains that in philosophy, there was a
development of a kind of future life that would be valued. Here, he argues that
Plato broke new ground by dividing the soul and the body and having the soul
exist in the world of the forms as a kind of happy future:
How will we ever get people to be
good citizens, he asks, to serve in the army, to do their duty to their
friends, if their view of the future life is conditioned by epic pictures of
gibbering ghosts in a gloomy underworld? Instead, the young must be taught the
true philosophical view: death is not something to regret, but something to be
welcomed. It is the moment when, and means by which, the immortal soul is set
free from the prison-house of the physical body…Here is the central difference
between Plato and Homer. Instead of the “self” being the physical body, lying
dead on the ground, while the “soul” flies away to what is at best a half-life,
now the “self,” the true person, is precisely the soul, while it is the corpse
that is the ghost.[4]
Wright argues that Plato found a way for some type of
afterlife to be of value. In fact, it was of utmost value in the world of the
forms when a human could finally stand at rest rather than being tossed to and
fro in the vicissitudes of the present world rife with changes.
Wright though, narrowly focusing, argues that Christianity
was fundamentally different because this idea of a soul was not “bodily” in the
same sense Christians would expect and therefore was not analogous to
“resurrection.” He argues that this goal of life is fundamentally different in
that it is not bodily in the sense that Christians would expect. However, this
is too narrow. There certainly is an expectation of a life after death – just
because they did not focus on the issue of resurrection does not make this so
foreign that it cannot be fathomed. What seems to be at issue is the nature of
the human after death. Rather than being souls (which, in themselves were not
acorporeal in the way that Wright seems to imply), they would be truly somatic
(bodily). However, that is far less of a change than he wishes it were.
The important emphasis is that a future life that had
something to do with a change in philosophy was generally valued. The point,
though, is that the worldviews he expresses does not find it important. Take, for example, what he says about Seneca and
the general apathy toward future life everlasting:
For Seneca, the immortal human soul
has come from beyond this world – from among the stars, in fact – and will make
its way back there. Though one might hold that it simply disappeared, it is more
likely that it will go to be with the gods. Death is either the end of
everything, in which case there is nothing to be alarmed about, or it is a
process of change, in which case, since the change is bound to be for the
better, one should be glad.[5]
Seneca – like many stoics – was simply indifferent to the
issue of death. There might well be something in the future, there might well
not; however, that was not the goal of human life.
The worldview of Greco-Roman society was far less one of
disdain toward any discussion of resurrection; rather, it was general indifference.
The vast majority of people would not have heard the message of a physical
resurrection as troubling because they felt any future life should not be
physical – they would have been indifferent to the calling of the question in
the first place. This is the emphasis that would have been more rich for Wright
to explore.
There were minorities, however, who did think of life after death as something to be taken very
seriously. These are most easily found in the mystery cults and in Greek magic.
These groups did very much focus upon a future life in which ethics often
determined one’s future (the latter being more true of mystery cults than
magic). Wright does briefly bring up mystery cults arguing that they held the
same goal as Platonists with less work:
Already in Socrates’ time the
mystery religions had begun to flourish, offering (so it seemed) a comparable
benefit to philosophical wisdom but without the hard intellectual work.
Beginning with the Orphic cult, but fanning out much more widely, these
religions (if that is indeed the right term for them) offered the initiate
access to a world of private spiritual experience in the present time which would
continue into the world beyond death.[6]
He argues that the eventual goal of the mystery cults was
not a bodily resurrection and
therefore can simply be folded inside Platonism. The problem, though, is the
issue of indifference cited above. Many
Platonists would be generally indifferent about a future life – they expected
it, but it was not their main concern. By contrast, a reasonable argument can
be made that the mystery cults were very
much interested in an afterlife and it was their main concern. Therefore,
real question arises as to why Wright does not discuss this issue further. He
does bring up mystery cults one more time, but the conversation is so clipped that
it is hard to follow:
These multifarious and
sophisticated cults enacted the god’s death and resurrection as a metaphor, whose concrete referent was
the cycle of seed-time and harvest, of human reproduction and fertility. Sometimes
as in Egypt, these myths and rituals include funerary practices: the aspiration
of the dead was to become united with Osiris. But the new life they might thereby
experience was not a return to the life of the present world. Nobody actually
expected the mummies to get up, walk about and resume normal living; nobody in
that world would have wanted such a thing, either. That which Homer and others meant
by resurrection was not affirmed by the devotees of Osiris or their cousins
elsewhere.[7]
Why would this be different? Why is this not an important
element to delve into very deeply? Wright does not clearly explain.
This omission is further exacerbated for Wright’s eventual goal
– to see how the message of Jesus and his resurrection would have sounded to a
gentile audience. The one thing Christianity might have sounded like would be a mystery cult. Therefore, to
simply ignore major elements of them and instead to focus on Homer does not
make a tremendous amount of sense – except in the most vague terms as a general
“worldview” – magic and mystery cults were minority religions – but they did exist. It seems that his
narrow discussion of resurrection from the dead has eliminated conversation
that well should have occurred.
In all, his conversation of the general worldview is strong;
however, his details could have been far more carefully managed to create a
more robust picture.
No comments:
Post a Comment