What did Christ save us from? Discarnate unconsciousness (Hell = Sheol/ Hades + Insight)

Jesus Christ is known to have saved us - but what from?

From what the Ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament called Sheol (which is much the same a what the Ancient Greeks called Hades). And the descriptions of Sheol/ Hades are of a state of discarnate un-consciousness.

So - before Christ, when mortal Men died, they lost their bodies and their 'wits' - they become 'demented', lost self-awareness, lost the meaning and purpose of existence, lost all relationships with other Men and with God.

And this is what Christ saved us from - because after Christ Men are resurrected - that is they have restored and perfected bodies, and become again capable (indeed in an enhanced way) of consciousness: they have real relationships, their lives are self-aware with meaning and purpose.

Sheol/ Hades is the consequence of the death of an incarnate mortal. Yet (Mormons believe, and so do I) that before mortality we had a spiritual existence in which we were conscious souls, had relationships, meaning and purpose.

From this I infer that our incarnation as mortal Men was not merely our souls being given a body - but that the soul and body become one, interpenetrated - such that when the body dies, our souls are left incomplete - as described for Sheol/ Hades.

It was always a part of the plan that Jesus Christ would remedy this state (only the fully-divine Christ being incarnated, dying and Himself being resurrected could accomplish this) - and that Jesus would by his mystical work enable resurrection, and thereby restoration of our wholeness.

Why then did the advent of Christ also bring Hell - a place of tormented rather than 'demented' souls as in Sheol/ Hades?

Because Christ brought post-mortal awareness - we must choose to accept Christ's gift of resurrection and a post-mortal eternal life as Sons and Daughters of God, siblings of Christ - of working towards higher levels of our divinization. And to chose this entails to remain aware in the post-mortal state.

Therefore, Hell is Sheol/ Hades PLUS post-mortal awareness: Hell is Hades but ALSO to know Hades - to know that we chose Hades above Heaven and to experience meaninglessness, purposelessness and existential alone-ness.

(Approximately) Hell = Hades + Insight   

Reincarnation BC - Resurrection AD? - some speculations

Although most Christian apparently don't have this attitude; I find personally it hard to reject-outright the idea of reincarnation.

This mainly because (it seems) that most people, through most of human history, have believed in the reality of one or another form of reincarnation - plus several of the more modern thinkers whom I most respect believe in reincarnation, apparently from directly intuited personal experience.

However, I find that the Gospels tell us that Jesus taught all Men are resurrected after death - not reincarnated - and make their choice of Heaven or Hell. On the other hand, the Gospel discussions of whether or not John the Baptist was some kind of reincarnation of a prophet seem to confirm that, at least until the advent of Jesus's ministry, reincarnation was regarded as possible - if not universal. 

One way I make sense of this is that I think modern religions tend to fall into one of only two categories - either they believe in some version of reincarnation with spirits returning to inhabit a series of bodies; or else that each human spirit is formed at a time related to incarnation. But these two are not the only possibilities.

A further alternative is seldom known or considered - that an eternal pre-mortal human spirit was alive before incarnation, death and resurrection; in other words that the full potential span of human life falls into three stages: pre-mortal spirit, mortal incarnate, and resurrected incarnate.

(However, given the role for agency and choice, presumably it is possible to choose not to be incarnated, and to remain as a pre-mortal spirit. This would presumably be the situation of some angels - who are either awaiting incarnation, or else have - at least currently - declined the offer of incarnation. And it would be the situation of demons - who reject incarnation along with rejecting God's plan for creation and the Love necessary to its accomplishment.)

This three stage understanding of human life (which is the Mormon view) is the one I regard as true - and my interpretation of those modern people who believe in the reality of reincarnation is that they have not sufficiently seriously considered this alternative. That, for example, they have misinterpreted their intuited memories of pre-mortal spirit life (which may include historical actions in this world, and with people in the past) as being incarnated life. In other words, they remember previous spirit lives, but simply assume that these must necessarily have been incarnated lives.

On the other hand, since reincarnation was apparently a possibility for John the Baptist, it is also possible that some modern people happen also to be reincarnates who, like John the Baptist, are spirits that have returned to fulfil some particular function, do a particular job... So when such people seem to recall a previous incarnate life or lives, maybe they are correct.

I find it striking that so far as I know, all simple, tribal, hunter-gatherer type societies believe in reincarnation - in the form of a 'recycling' of spirits within the tribe over time. The concept is apparently that there are implicitly a fixed number of spirits (or souls) who are reborn some time after death - so that the same set of personalities recur across the generations. My presumption is that such societies self-understanding will have been broadly correct - so this would imply that there used-to-be a, probably universal, system of reincarnation.

Most sedentary (i.e. settled, non-nomadic) totemic and pagan societies apparently either believe in some version of reincarnation, or else they regard life after biological death as being something like Hades or Sheol; that is continued existence of the spirit or soul in a ghostly, demented half-life of present-awareness without agency. Again, I would tend to accept that these people correctly understood their situation - at least in essentials. So, it is possible that this 'underworld' represented the time in-between reincarnations; or that some people/s (e.g. the Ancient Hebrews or Greeks) chose Not to reincarnate - but remained in Sheol/ Hades... implicitly awaiting the Messiah/ Saviour.  

If we accept that the situation up to the time of Jesus's incarnation (i.e. approximately the years BC) was as above - that biological death was followed either by a a kind of suspended animation like Sheol, or else a reincarnation from such a state. Then the further possibility is that this situation was changed by the work of Jesus; and from some point AD onwards - probably the time of Jesus's own resurrection - spirits were resurrected instead of being reborn.

This also applied to the spirits at that point in Sheol/ Hades - some of whom were resurrected at the same time as Jesus. But - given the importance of free choice - it may be that resurrection could be refused, and that some of these may have a job still to do as reincarnates.

If so, modern people who believe they recall earlier incarnations may either be recalling their pre-mortal spirit lives; or they may be people who recall an incarnation (or more than one) before Christ's work in making resurrection, and who have returned to incarnation for some particular purpose.

What survives death? An intuitive account

What of us survives death? The same 'self' that survives through all the transformations of our mortal life; and that same self which came originally from before that embodied life when we were first formed on earth. 

As I look back on my life the memory seems like a dreamy vision which was inhabited by the same self. In my earliest childhood memories, through the development of growing -up and adolescence, and the now-strange events of my early adult life... Everything seems fuzzy, indistinct, dreamy (maybe nightmarish) - but the self continues. 

I can imagine my-self as a four year old, as nine, as thirteen, when I was twenty-one and so on - it is the same self but the situations are as different as can be, and mostly have the quality of a day-dream: fluid, imprecise, fuzzy... 

Was that really me in those situations, in those behaviours? Yet the self that observes these strange occurrences was the same. 

That inner self seem independent of the body - that body which changed so much. Independent of circumstance - which changed so much. 

I think "Was that really me?" about what I did, where I went - but I do not think that about the self that remembers. That was really me. 

It is that self, which was maintained through so many 'bodies' and situation which will be maintained through the transformation of biological death - and will remain.

But what then? What happens to the self when the body has not just changed, but died? It continues in some way, but how?

The tendency is for the self to lose its consecutiveness; its memory and its continuity; to break up into mere awareness of the moment. We have an inkling of this from some dreams, from recollection of descending into delirium... of losing grip on the situation, or our sense-of-being falling-apart; that perplexity, slippery-confusion-angst as we cannot recall how things became as they are, or what we are supposed to do. 

(We may see exactly this in demented people - as reality, purpose, their situation is always slipping away from them.)

This situation seems to be the 'natural', spontaneous fate of the self - called by the ancients names including Sheol and Hades. The self survives biological death to become a witless, demented ghost who does not remember who he is; merely reactive; incapable of purpose and choice. 

(The process of dying is the dwindling of the self towards this state.) 

Death is the state of mere-being, without memory, aware only of the instant now.

This state of Sheol/ Hades is what Jesus called death; it is what he came to save-us-from. Jesus is our saviour from the death that is mere-being of the self. 

We are saved from death by following Jesus. How can this 'following' be imagined? 

All will encounter Jesus after death, and before the dissolution of the self into a witless ghost. 

What is preventing immediate dissolution of the self? God does that  - God the creator - by divine creative power. If we love God; then we allow God to stop the dwindling to nothing, allow God to sustain our-self in a state in which we retain our memory, purpose etc. 

So we remain able to choose. 

We could imagine this choosing as meeting Jesus in a dream; and, as in a dream, we will know that it is Jesus. We realise that Jesus is present with us. And then we decide. 

So, instead of dwindling to mere-being; we will recognise Jesus, and will remember and know what he is offering us: resurrected life eternal in Heaven. And we decide whether to follow him to this everlasting life; or not. 

If we choose to follow Jesus - what then? It is the continual presence of Jesus that will guide us through the transformation of resurrection. It is the continual presence of Jesus that enables resurrection - and for this to happen we must actively wish for this transformation - which transformation is permanent and entails rebuilding from the remnant self wholly in the basis of love. 

If we cannot love, if we reject love, or if we want something else - then we will choose Not to follow Jesus. Indeed we cannot follow Jesus unless we are prepared to make a permanent and irreversible commitment to live only by love; to become forever incapable of not loving. 

As I implied earlier; if someone loves God, but does not want to follow Jesus (e.g. perhaps a theist but not a Christian) - he will Not be transformed. Instead he will remain in the state of consecutiveness of consciousness; being maintained thus by ongoing divine creation. He will be sustained in awareness wholly by God - thus aware only of himself and of God. 

This is the state sometimes called Nirvana; a blissful state of current awareness of God's love and of being in the state of loving God - an eternal now; without memory and without purpose. A passive state. 

Not mere being; but a state of being 'in' love. 

What of Hell? The demons themselves do not die, since they are never incarnated spirits. But what of the ex-Men in Hell: those selves who were once Men but have been through biological death?  

I suppose Hell to be the choice to prevent the dissolution of the self by continual infusion of life energy. So, instead of becoming a witless, demented ghost in the state of Sheol/ Hades; the self is maintained in this world, 'animated', energized by demonic actions. 

Divine creation is primary - it is (as we see it) something from nothing. It is originative and primary - adds to reality. Creation is the opposite of entropy. But creation entails love (in a crude sense, creation requires love). 

So, those who cannot love, or reject love, cannot creation.  

Since demons cannot create, they are bound by entropy. 

That life-energy that sustains continuity, memory and purpose is continually being used-up, needs continual replacement - like fuel in a car. 

Replacement life-energy to sustain a dead-self functionally-above the level of Sheol must therefore be taken from living beings, for example from living Men. 

The process is not creative but parasitic, vampiric. The sustaining life-energy is extracted from one being and redirected into another; just as we consume the energy of coal to warm ourselves when otherwise we would freeze. 

Crudely, one lives because another dies; one dies that another may live - but (because of entropy) only temporarily. 

The Hellish economy is therefore based upon destruction of energy. While Heaven grows as love grows; Hell is always shrinking. 

Hell's intent is to retain functional life without love of God. Hell maintains control of its denizens by the threat of death - if life-energy is not infused (by demonic action), the damned soul will to revert to the insensibility of Sheol. 

Thus the economy of Hell is one of mutual exploitation, of 'dog-eat-dog' - one ex-Man survives only at the price of another Man being consumed (either consumed partially, or - eventually - consumed wholly). 

...Until only one remains - and he will then inevitably die. 

In the end, all will die; so life in Hell is a deferral of ultimate death - the ever more frantic desire to live a little longer, to be the last to die.

In conclusion. When we die biologically, our self will survive; but the state of that self is a matter of choice. And the choices seem to be fourfold: Heaven eternally, Nirvana, Hell - en route to Sheol, or Sheol and the extinction of self awareness. 

In a deep sense, after death we get what we want. And what is that?  

From what most people are saying nowadays, it seems that Heaven is currently the least popular of these destinations - Sheol-direct (i.e. perceived death, annihilation, cessation of all awareness of the self) perhaps the most sought-after. 

And the other two possibilities of Nirvana and Hell, maybe ranking somewhere in between?  

Just a guess... 

Nirvana is Sheol

This suddenly struck me yesterday, when I was considering that time is intrinsic, and creation is therefore irreversible.

We began as eternal spirits; but when we became incarnated (on earth, as mortal Men) this decision meant that we could never return to that pre-mortal state.

What happens 'naturally' (I mean in the absence of following Jesus Christ to resurrection) is that the body dies and the disembodied soul continues in a kind of life that was called Sheol by the Ancient Jews, and Hades by the Ancient Greeks.

Existence continued, but 'the self' was lost; the spirits remained alive, but lost self-consciousness - and therefore the free agency that comes from consciousness. This was seen in qualitative terms of existing as witless, demented ghosts - who were aware on a moment-by-moment basis; but had no memory, no anticipation of future, no sense of eternity.


This is indeed probably what the reality of Nirvana actually is. Since the consequences of incarnation are irreversible; the return to original unconscious passive spiritual life can only be simulated, sibjectively.

I mean, post mortal souls can subjectively experience Nirvana (blissful re-absorption into the abstract divine), they can believe (on a moment by moment basis) that they have re-absorbed into the divine - but the reality will be Sheol.


The experience of Nirvana is that the division between self- and the whole is lost; the individual merges-with, melts-into the divine - where the divine is seen as the totality of everything.

This may be understood to be a state of bliss; and for some people I expect it is - since some people are tormented by their separation from reality, are tormented by consciousness and want it to end.

Whether this unresurrected after-life is regarded as Sheol or Nirvana may depend on the way that the divine is understood: either as an impersonal abstraction (Deism; as with Hinduism and Buddhism) or as a personal God (Theism) - and if personal, further what the nature of the personal God is understood to be.

If the personal God is understood to be a loving Father, and we his children; then the state of souls in Sheol would presumably be pleasant - on a moment-by-moment basis: maybe even blissful. But if God is understood to be otherwise motivated (vengeful, tyrannical etc), then Sheol would be understood as more-or-less miserable.


As for Hell - it is different from Sheol, although Hell is also inhabited by spirits.

My best guess is that Hell is chosen by those souls who wish to retain self-awareness but to work against God's creation. The hellishness of Hell is that of a child of God and a product of creation, eternally in rebellion against these facts.

A parable of Hell (and how it is chosen) is a teenager who hates their loving family; and flees them, and cuts-off all familial relations; in order to live in the worst part of the city as a thief, prostitute, drug addict - and who exploits and is-exploited-by, torments and is-tormented-by, the other denizens.

Such people exist, such things happen; and therefore (by analogy) presumably some have chosen, and will continue to choose, Hell rather than Heaven or Sheol/ Nirvana.


Note added: As is probably obvious - the above is an explanation from my particular Christian perspective. I would not expect those with a different understanding of reality to agree with it!

Death as dreaming sleep (and the coming of Hell)

What is it like to be dead?

Modern materialist Man seems to have decided that to be dead is like being permanently in deep sleep, unaware of the self, unaware of anything.

The ancient world also seems to have regarded death as like being asleep; but like dreaming sleep. The Hades of the Greeks and Sheol of the Jews were states of being much like the world of dreams - the self was feeble, agency was feeble, the individual had little control and was merely swept-along by events.

In the ancient underworlds, as in dreams; memories slipped away almost as soon as formed, motivations likewise; understanding likewise. To be dead was thus to be delirious, or demented - to become a ghost - living in a perpetual present mostly dominated (like dreams) by perplexed incomprehension, confusion, angst - but presumably with interludes of pleasure and satisfaction. 

We should note, therefore, that the ancient understanding of death as underworld, Hades, Sheol was Not that all men 'went to Hell'. The state of dead souls was one to be dreaded, as a modern Man would dread delirium or dementia - but it was Not a state of perpetual misery or torment.

*

Among Rudolf Steiner's ideas is that our self is spiritual and not located, and our body is like a mirror for the external self; the self sees-itself in the body. A similar idea from Rupert Sheldrake is that memory is like an electromagnetic field - a radio signal - and the brain is like a receiver - a radio - which intercepts this field, interprets and broadcasts it.

Common to such ideas is the notion that the human brain, the body, are not the origin of our-selves; but these solid things are necessary for our immaterial/ extensive selves to become centred, focused, autonomous, agent...

Back to Steiner... he suggested that during sleep the consciousness and the self left-behind the living body - so deep sleep without dreams is our experience of merely being alive in the body, rather like a plant; whereas dreaming sleep was when we became 'located' with the consciousness outside the body, in the spirit.

By such an account, sleep is closely analogous to death; because with death the physical body dies - but not human consciousness. The body dies, but the soul continues. If our awareness becomes cut-off from our bodies; we might expect that the remaining consciousness would be incomplete, and we would experience its life much as does the dreamer.

An immortal soul detached from its living body is in much the same situation as the dreaming consciousness. 

*

So - until the work of Jesus Christ - Man's death was universally like sleep, but like dreaming sleep; and this state seemed to be the permanent fate of the dead.

But since Jesus; the universal fate of Men has been resurrection; and resurrection reunites consciousness with the body; but with a permanent immortal body.

This suggests that resurrection would be analogous to awakening from dreaming sleep; and with a similar sense of renewed agency, freedom, self-awareness, control. The consciousness returns to its living body - but not to the mortal body left-behind a few hours ago; but instead to to a new living body, the resurrected eternal body.

The choice of Heaven of Hell is a choice of where this resurrected Man will dwell. Indeed, Hell was not possible until resurrection had been instituted.

In sum; BC there was universal Sheol but no Hell; after Christ Sheol was abolished, there was universal resurrection and the possibility of Heaven - but the coming of Christ was also the coming of Hell.

With Sheol there was no possibility of Men choosing Hell, because the dead lacked free will, so the dead could not choose. But Christ's gift of life everlasting brought the post-mortal capacity to choose - to choose evil, as well as to choose Good.

Moral inversion in secular modern society

The most striking aspect of modern secular society, which would have amazed and horrified our ancestors, is the moral inversion by which have redefined bad as good, sin as virtue.

This has happened as part of the modern rejection of Christianity, and as a solution to the fundamental paradox of the human condition – the conflict between spontaneous human desire and spontaneous human morality.

It is, at root, this moral inversion which is causing secular modern societies to commit suicide by a combination of denial of danger and by deliberate policy.

***

It seems that our literate ancestors (such as the ancient Jews) all spontaneously recognized that for a person to live according to their spontaneous desires - living primarily for seeking gratification and avoiding (or minimizing) suffering - was morally wrong.

This was so obvious that it needed (and indeed needs) no argument - it is the natural moral law for humans that a life aiming at selfish hedonism is intrinsically wicked: that is wicked as a basic stance, not merely in terms of its consequences (which vary according to specific circumstances).

Yet it was also recognized that at some level, for humans as they are now, it is also natural and spontaneous to be selfish and hedonic.

So there was a conflict between the way that humans were 'set-up' to be self-gratifying and the moral sense by which we knew that this way wrong.

***

This was the basic situation, the human condition, as perceived by pretty much all humans throughout history - that of conflict.

And therefore the situation was bleak in the extreme, since there seemed to be no solution.

Of course, all humans also believed (in some sense) in the soul, and its potential persistence after death (in some form, perhaps as a ghost, perhaps in Hades - not the same as hell, perhaps returning to be recycled or reincarnated)

The ancient Jews attempted solution was The Law, which prescribed morality in terms (essentially) of behaviour. If a man could live according to the law, his life (in this world) would be good - although the end was the same for all - good and bad - the ghostly and depersonalized realms of Sheol/ Hades.

However, actually men could *not* live by the law. It was impossible, because of their nature. They could never achieve that to which they aspired. The human condition was tragic.

***

This was the basic human situation, about which humans could do nothing, and from which humanity needed to be rescued.

The Christian solution, the Good News, was that God's Grace had provided a solution, since the incarnation meant that God had taken-up humanity; and if a person proclaimed in their heart Jesus as Lord, and repented of his (inevitable) sinly nature, then there would be forgiveness and the soul would (instead of losing humanity in Hades) be granted eternal life with God.

Man's soul after death would become God-like instead of a gibbering, depersonalized ghostly form of persistence.

So, the Christian message is that belief and repentance in this life can lead to a solution of the fundamental paradox, but only in the next world, after death (however this life is temporary, while life after death is eternal).

***

For whatever reason, the Western elite ruling class became increasingly atheist from the advent of modernity (?c 1700). Since the elite ruling class disbelieved in the soul, they were this-worldly; and since they were this-worldly they wanted as much satisfaction from life as possible (there being nothing else).

But spontaneous natural morality gets in the way of worldly self-gratification – so spontaneous natural morality must (somehow or another) be rejected.

Yet since morality really is spontaneous, it cannot be rejected.

***

So emerged moral inversion: the morality that (contrary to the instinct of spontaneous morality) this-worldly self-gratification is the proper primary aim in life.

From this derives the many specific new ‘Laws’ of modernity; which state that what we used to think was necessary is actually un-necessary, that what we thought was bad was actually good, and what we used to think was good was actually bad.

For secular moderns the only *real* sin is to believe in the reality of sin.

***

This is the current situation, this the secular modern ‘solution’ to the fundamental paradox of the human condition – that life in this-world can be, should be, harmonious - *if only* we recognize that our spontaneous self-gratification is actually morally necessary and should be the primary explicit goal of human endeavor.

And because this solution actually solves nothing, and is merely a statement, a wish-that-this-was-so; it has necessarily been embodied in the *coercive* beliefs, practices and laws of atheist totalitarian states (notably the USSR, National Socialism and Communist China) and this process is now advanced in all Western societies (by enforcement of what is termed ‘Political Correctness’).

So the citizens in modern secular societies are not merely *encouraged* to flout the natural morality which they cannot help but feel, they are increasingly *forced* to flout natural morality. They are compelled to live (and to think and to believe) as if hedonic gratification was the primary value in a life which ends with death and extinction.

And there is no hope of resolution in this world, nor the next world (the existence of which is denied).

***

Since there is no hope of resolution, the only alternative is distraction – to lose oneself in hedonic gratification: such that intense, continuous self-gratification *obliterates* our awareness of the fundamental paradox.

Despair, distraction, denial, self-indulgence… and if these do not work, then some kind of suicide of awareness.

By this analysis, the Decline of the West is a willed societal suicide driven by the mass psychological consequences of top-down, enforced moral inversion.

Explaining the 'mechanism' of salvation and the necessity of Jesus (from the Fourth Gospel)

The beginning of the Fourth Gospel tells us that it was Jesus, The Word, who made this world; and it is this work of creation which enabled Jesus (and only Jesus) to be our saviour.

*

Having made this world; Jesus was then incarnated-into the world he had created; that is, he was incarnated from his creation, using the stuff of his own creation. This world has that primal and fundamental unity - of being created by Jesus - everything is inter-related and mutually-affecting, by kinship of shared origin.

So we too are all incarnated from this world, from the creation of Jesus. 

When Jesus died and was resurrected; this was the death and resurrection of the creator of this world, Jesus's mortal body and his resurrected body were both of this world (which Jesus himself had made).

We are incarnate from this world, Jesus became incarnate from this world (which he had made); we and Jesus are both Men; and therefore Jesus's death and resurrection had universal significance for Men. 

This it was, that made it possible for other Men to follow Jesus into resurrected life everlasting; and why only Jesus is our saviour.

*

Why then do we need to have faith in Jesus? Why doesn't salvation just-happen?

Because there are two things Jesus gave us; the first is 'physical' resurrection to eternal life, the second is 'dwelling' in Heaven (life 'everlasting', and life qualitatively greater - not merely unending existence...).

Resurrection just-happens, and it happens to all men. Instead of remaining as a severed soul - as was the case for all Men before Jesus; since the resurrection of Jesus, all Men (including those from before the time of Jesus) are resurrected.

Resurrection is not a choice - it 'just happens' - it is something like a change in physical reality; a change in what happens to the soul after death.

*

But Heaven is a choice, a decision, an act, an opt-in - and salvation therefore happens only through faith - that is love, trust of Jesus.

To understand this requires recalling the fate of the soul after the death of the body, and before the resurrection of Jesus - the soul was a witless, demented thing of little intelligence, little memory, little judgement, no free will... incapable of helping itself...

(This, at least, is how both the ancient Hebrews (with Sheol) and ancient Greeks (with Hades) regarded life after death - and other variants may be understood similarly. The soul after death was a damaged, incomplete, incapable thing - eternal life was merely eternal existence.)

I regard the Good Shepherd parable as providing the key to understanding salvation - which is that while the soul is always resurrected, resurrected Man cannot find his own way to Heaven.

The resurrected soul must be led to Heaven; that is, Man must choose to follow the guidance of the Good Shepherd. This following is not imposed, it is chosen.  

This was made newly possible by Jesus because the resurrected soul has greater capability than the discarnate souls destined for Sheol/ Hades; the resurrected soul has sufficient capability to recognise Jesus, to know him; it has the capacity and necessity to choose whether to follow the Good Shepherd, or not.

Why would the resurrected soul follow the Good Shepherd to Heaven, except that the soul loved and trusted the Good Shepherd?

That is the need for faith.

*

Thus Jesus was necessary to our salvation, only Jesus could give us salvation, only faith in Jesus can lead us to salvation.

 

Death as annihilation, and other desired post-mortal destinations

We are eternal Beings, and at some level we know this. Therefore, the eternal future is a subject of compelling concern - albeit that concern may well be expressed by an absolute refusal to think or speak about it. 

I am suspicious of the common modern 'belief in' (which I interpret as desire-for) death as annihilation. I mean, the standard mainstream belief that biological death of the body also entails a complete destruction of every-thing about that person... There is no 'soul' or 'spirit' separable from the body... Dead means dead and gone.  

As I mentioned, I interpret this belief as a desire; and my understanding of this desire is that it often arises in those who will not repent (perhaps they will not acknowledge the reality of sin?)... People who are deeply and ineradicably ashamed - and who want (more than anything) for their shame to end. 

In sum: those who desire annihilation want permanent annihilation of their own self as a final solution to unendurable existence in a reality with No Hope.  

'Death as annihilation' is a manifestation of existential despair. 

 

In the ancient past - at least among both the Hebrews (Sheol) and the Classical Greeks (Hades) - there was a belief in "death" as becoming witless, demented ghosts; spirits with no memory of life and who had lost self-identity. 

This was not a torment, nor a pleasant state; rather it was neutral - and implicitly a situation of waiting. The fate of the dead soul was undecided, and there was a possibility of being-rescued. 

And this, indeed, happened; since Jesus rescued as many of these souls as wanted to Follow Him.

 

The anticipation of Sheol/ Hades was therefore for a state after death with hope of escape. But it seems a distinctively modern thing to desire death to be irrevocable; death to be a permanent and complete annihilation.

The modern idea of death is the desire to make an eternal commitment of negation. And, once thus conceptualised, I think that modern death can be seen as a mirror of Christian hope for Heaven. 

The Christian believes that he can make an eternal commitment in favour of God; and can thereby join-with God (and others who have made this positive commitment) in the continuing work of loving creation. 

In contrast; the mainstream, modern idea of death as annihilation is the opposite desire; the wish to make an eternal commitment to reject God, love and creation.

...And is, thereby, a decision to join-with the side of Satan and the powers of darkness; working against God. 

 

In sum, the normal, mainstream, modern desire for death as annihilation is evil: it is a manifestation of the unrepented sin of despair: it expresses an active rejection of God, love and God's creation. 

 

Note: A somewhat less 'final' version of the death-as-annihilation desire is the wish for death as a state of 'sleep', 'rest', 'peace' and so on - which seems to have become popular in England in the 19th century; and is still expressed in the unthinking repetition of 'RIP'. 

This seems to express a desire for death-as-annihilation; but of a potentially revocable type; allowing at least the possibility of awakening after a period of sufficient rest/ sleep/ peace.  

Further note: I have not discussed the matter of reincarnation, in its many and contrasting forms; nor what desires they reflect - because I am not yet clear on that matter.

How does salvation-damnation work? A choice of The Moment - described by CS Lewis

From Surprised by Joy The Moment with a choice of salvation: 

The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words and (I think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armour, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armour or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corslet meant the incalculable. The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open, to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, "I chose," yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand, I was aware of no motives. You could argue that I was not a free agent, but I am more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most that I have ever done. Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when, instead of producing motives, he could only say, "I am what I do."

From That Hideous Strength - The Moment with a choice of damnation:

Still not asking what he would do, or why, Frost went to the garage. The whole place was silent and empty; the snow was thick on the ground by this. He came up with as many petrol tins as he could carry. He piled all the inflammables he could think of together in the Objective Room. Then he locked himself in by locking the outer door of the ante-room. Whatever it was that dictated his actions then compelled him to push the key into the speaking-tube which communicated with the passage. When he had pushed it as far in as his fingers could reach, he took a pencil from his pocket and pushed with that. Presently he heard the clink of the key falling on the passage floor outside. That tiresome illusion, his consciousness, was screaming in protest: his body, even had he wished, had no power to attend to those screams. Like the clockwork figure he had chosen to be, his stiff body, now terribly cold, walked back into the Objective Room, poured out the petrol and threw a lighted match into the pile. Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul--nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was hardly fiercer than his hatred of that. With one supreme effort he flung himself back into his illusion. In that attitude eternity overtook him as sunrise in old tales overtakes trolls and turns them into unchangeable stone.

From this blog - The Moment occuring after biological death:

Heaven is a choice, a decision, an act, an opt-in - and salvation therefore happens only through faith - that is love, trust of Jesus. To understand this requires recalling the fate of the soul after the death of the body, and before the resurrection of Jesus - the soul was a witless, demented thing of little intelligence, little memory, little judgement, no free will... incapable of helping itself... (This, at least, is how both the ancient Hebrews (with Sheol) and ancient Greeks (with Hades) regarded life after death - and other variants may be understood similarly. The soul after death was a damaged, incomplete, incapable thing - eternal life was merely eternal existence.) I regard the Good Shepherd parable as providing the key to understanding salvation - which is that while the soul is always resurrected, resurrected Man cannot find his own way to Heaven. The resurrected soul must be led to Heaven; that is, Man must choose to follow the guidance of the Good Shepherd. This following is not imposed, it is chosen. This was made newly possible by Jesus because the resurrected soul has greater capability than the discarnate souls destined for Sheol/ Hades; the resurrected soul has sufficient capability to recognise Jesus, to know him; it has the capacity and necessity to choose whether to follow the Good Shepherd, or not. Why would the resurrected soul follow the Good Shepherd to Heaven, except that the soul loved and trusted the Good Shepherd? That is the need for faith.


Note:  It might be asked why there needs to be a permanent and irreversible decision on salvation versus damnation. Why can't people change their minds?

There are a couple of aspects to this. First is that all decisions are irreversible - in the sense that they have permanent consequences. This is because Time is real, sequential, and linear. Every decision changes the sequence, changes the future; and Time cannot be rewound - because that is its nature. We know this; albeit are inclined to wish it away and that we might undo our mistakes of the past.

Second is that Heaven would not be possible unless Men were able to make a permanent positive commitment to it; a permanent commitment to Love, God, The Good and God's work of Creation. Therefore, salvation must, at some point before we go to Heaven, be irreversible.

The same need not logically apply to damnation - which is (broadly considered) the negative decision to reject Heaven; because in principle that decision might be reversed.

But in practice - as we know from the experiences of our mortal life - there is a strong tendency for choices in favour of evil to lead to further corruption, to further evil choices... and the tendency is for a choice for Good to become harder and harder, less and less likely.

This is a matter of 'psychology' rather than logic; but I think we can see from the example of Frost in That Hideous Strength how unlikely it would be that someone who has seen reality and then chosen damnation, would later reverse that decision.
     

Why did 'Hell' replace 'Sheol' in the New Testament - as a possible situation of the spirit after death of the body?

It was several years ago that commenter WmJas pointed-out that the Old Testament underworld after death - Sheol (much the same in its characteristics as the Hades of Greek religion) which was the destination for all spirits/ souls after death (the good as well as the bad) - was replaced in the New Testament with a much more polarized distinction of Heaven or Hell: Heaven being vastly better than Sheol, but Hell depicted as vastly worse.

Sheol is apparently a shadowy world inhabited be witless, demented spirits/ souls who have forgotten (or cannot hold onto their own identity (presumably, spirits maimed by having been torn apart from their bodies); whereas Hell is some kind of a place of torment.

This - on the face of it - is a rather ambiguous benefit for Jesus to have brought; and seems initially hard to square with the way that a loving father would organize things for his beloved children.

But this interpretation is, I believe, a consequence of our stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Men have agency, or 'free will', and God either will not or (I would say) cannot compel any Man to choose his ultimate destiny.

My understanding is that Sheol was merely a temporary holding-place awaiting the advent of Christ (and not experienced as having any duration by the souls who dwelt there); and we can interpret the Atonement of Jesus Christ as having led to a situation where all souls were brought out of Sheol and each Man was able to choose his own destiny.

*

To understand Christianity (or indeed anything) in this mortal life, we need to know what it is for; and my assumption is that the whole of creation was made by God (in a nutshell) so that some Men (as many as possible) could advance to deity and join The Father and The Son (and Heavenly Mother) in a loving society.

Men are made a spirit children, and incarnated as mortal children - but the point is that we are immature, extremely immature - but our destiny (if we choose it) is to mature towards greater and greater divinity.

Mortal life is designed so that 1. Men can be incarnated and have a body. And 2. Men can have experiences, make choices - including errors, and being to mature such as to make spiritual progress.

So, Jesus Christ made it such that the discarnate spirits from Sheol, and every other Man from then onwards, would be resurrected; and then, by his 'taking away the sins of the world', made it possible for Men to choose their eternal destination.

In sum, I am saying that since Christ (but not before then) Men have been able to choose Hell.

Now, it seems strange that anybody would choose Hell; and most Christians through history have regarded Hell as either the default (from which some, maybe only a few, are rescued by Christ) - but this equates Hell with Sheol which seems false.

Or, they have regarded Hell as a punishment place where those Men are sent who are wicked - whether they like it or not - and are tormented forever. Or at least for those Men who fail to keep to acceptable behaviour. But this set-up seems impossible for a loving God - no loving parent would want this for his children; and when God is envisaged this way He seems worse than some Men.

My assumption, therefore, is that Men get what they really want - and therefore Hell should be regarded as one of the things that Men want and choose for themselves - among various other imaginable alternatives, which are often seen as eternal destinations in other world religions.

*

Hell is to do with Sin - therefore we need to consider how can Sin be conceptualized?

One way is to consider Sin is that all Men are at least somewhat (and some men are very) prone to choose and do what is short-term, pleasurable, pain-avoiding and in a word expedient - rather than what leads to joyousness in an eternal time-frame. This applies to choices during mortal life, and it would presumably also apply to choices concerning destination after death in those who have followed a life of accumulating sin.

The point is that short-term expedient sin sabotages what is best for long-term joyous spiritual progression.

Well, part of the work of Christ was to expunge this accumulation of sin, and allow a fresh choice of destination.

(I will leave aside whether this choice of destination is permanent - but I cannot see why permanence would be enforced: I think the tendency to permanence in long-term destination is due to the self-reinforcing nature of choices, rather than being due to God preventing any resurrected soul from changing his mind.)

From what we know of men and women in the world today, we can see that not everybody want to dwell in Heaven. And, by and large, people will be given what they want - and those who don't want Heaven but instead want something else will have it.

Heaven (a variety of Heavens, in fact) is the destination of choice for those who want to live in loving relationships with their (perhaps several, overlapping) families and loved ones. The highest heaven is for those who wish to become mature, deified 'adults'  - and dwell in contact with deity; and lower heavens for those who want to stay as children, or do not want to grow-up towards divinity - or, at least, not yet.

*

For example, some people do not want to grow-up - but prefer to remain as (immature) children of God. They are allowed to remain as children (maybe they can change their minds again later?).

If you want to lose consciousness, to lose the sense of self, to cease to be aware - to be-absorbed back into divinity, living in a perpetual present of bliss (i.e. the state of Nirvana) then that is allowed.

Perhaps the commonest desire (or belief) among modern Western people is that when they die they will be utterly unconscious - not in Nirvana but simply the extinction of all awareness, as if deeply anaesthetized. If they really want this, that is what they will get.

(Although maybe a merciful God will awaken then form time to time, to see if they want to change their minds? But if they have been utterly unconscious, it is hard to imagine what could happen to make them change their minds...)

Many modern people seem to dislike their birth families, and do not wish to have their own families; they seem not to want to live in a web of loving and responsible relationships - well such people would not want to live in Heaven. What such people seem to want is some kind of shallow, serial, mutually-exploitative (or 'reciprocal') relationships based upon immediate pleasure. I can imagine an after-death world where such people might be allowed to live this kind of life.

This would correspond to the Paradise which is the aimed-at state for some religions; in which the after-life is envisaged as a perfected form of sensuous (indeed sensual) earthly life - a life of pleasure rather than joy; a human-level life, minus the physical suffering. Life as a cycle, without progression, each day much like the one before - pleasant, but going-nowhere.  

The problem is that exploitation is seldom equal - one gets more than the other, some people tend to give more than they get - would they be happy with this in the long-run? Is such a system sustainable? This contrasts with love, which enhances both parties; and is sustainable for that reason. But there are some social circles on earth - for example among hyper-promiscuous people - which seem to be based on mutual exploitation, novelty and rotation of personnel. If that is what people want - presumably some provision is made for them.

The problem is those who want to impose their will upon others, to exploit them unilaterally and selfishly - habitual murderers, rapists, torturers, con-men, gold-diggers, psychopaths and the like. Now, clearly such people cannot be supplied with the unwilling victims that they crave - however, they utterly reject loving and responsible relationships of any kind. The question is whether such individuals are prepared to acknowledge their objective wrongness, and repent their wicked desire to exploit and impose?

If such individuals will give-up all claim to have what has been their primary desire through life; then they will not go to Hell because Christ has made repentance wholly effectual; but if they will not give-up their core sin, then they will prefer solitude and the torment of perpetual frustration to being cleansed of that sin.

And if that scenario of chosen Hell seems implausible to you - it does not seem implausible to me; since I have seen individuals in an analogous situation in human life - living utterly miserable lives due to their choices, yet refusing always to repent these choices and repelling all chances at loving society; indeed loathing and despising and wanting to make-suffer those who live in loving society.

*

In sum, all after-death states including Hell can be seen as a loving Father giving his children what they want - so long as this does not infringe the consent of his other children. And this explains why Christ brought Hell, as well as Heaven.

The character of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel

The author of the Fourth Gospel (who I believe to be the risen Lazarus) is the only person in the Bible who claims to be a witness of the last three years of Jesus's life and teachings, and a disciple. 

He is the only one who knew Jesus personally, loved and was loved-by him; and so is (presumably) the single person in the best position to provide a true account of Jesus's character during the period of his ministry, death and resurrection. 

In the first Chapters of the Fourth Gospel, there is initially more about John (the Baptist) than Jesus, and more of his words. 

Jesus only gradually gets-into the narrative from a few phrases of reported conversation with the disciples and his mother, and the account of the 'scourging' of the Temple; until the interaction with Nicodemus. 

Even from these snatches of conversation, it seems that Jesus is enigmatic, even mercurial. He does not answer direct questions; but instead responds with a further question, or a 'riddle' or a 'story'. 

This, together with the violent actions at the temple, depict Jesus as a confrontational personality: very much "in your face", regardless of whoever he is currently interacting with.  

But there is another side: Jesus as Prophet. These prophetic utterances are often prefaced with "Verily, Verily, I say unto you..."

The first is during the meeting with Nathaniel in Chapter One: Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. 

Jesus here introduces the term "Son of man" for himself*. Again we can see that - even when teaching directly - by modern standards Jesus's speech is what we moderns might term poetic or symbolic (i.e. it means more than it says, and means several things at once). 

The truth of such prophetic statements is occult: i.e. hidden, non-obvious to mundane understanding. Thus; when teaching spiritually, Jesus employs a spiritual - unworldly, unpractical - form of language.   

Then, in Chapter 3, when when Jesus meets Nicodemus, we get a great outpouring of such vatic teachings. 

We get, indeed, the essence of Jesus's work and message distilled in its entirety. 

And different versions of this core-teaching recur several times throughout this Gospel - sometimes encapsulating in a verse or two; sometimes in an extended parable-teaching, such as "the feeding of the five thousand" or The Good Shepherd. 

The impression of Jesus as a character in the Fourth Gospel is very striking indeed! 

He is volatile, unpredictable, moody; fearless, elusive, direct, kind, harsh, empathic, highly intellectual, simple like a child - each as he discerns that the occasion demands. 

(A word for this personality type in the classical-medieval astrological system is "Mercurial" : as described by CS Lewis in The Discarded Image, and explicated by Michael Ward in The Narnia Code.)

And then Jesus may suddenly - as it were - stand tall and speak from the great prophetic heights of one who is the 'only begotten Son of God".

...Which I take to mean the first and only among all of God's children who fully understands, and is in full accord-with The Creator's divine purposes and will. 

The One who is uniquely capable of offering a path to all men, all those who are (unlike himself) 'sinners - out-of-accord with God and desirers of death... 

Offering all such men a path to everlasting life on the far side of death when they are Born Again; all this by the simple act of 'believing on' Him! That is (approximately) knowing who He is, and following him to Heaven - but after death, by being 'born-again' or resurrected:

[16] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. [17] For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. [18] He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

The "already" of to be "condemned already", means that this is not a threat of punishment - but a rescue from the otherwise inevitable fate of men before the time of Jesus: which was to die and descend, as discarnate "ghosts", to witless and depersonalized mere-existence in Sheol/ Hades/ the underworld. 

(There to await the coming of Jesus, and the coming of choice.)

Hell only emerged after Jesus, because Hell is the choice of those who know, but reject and oppose Jesus's offer and gift of resurrected eternal Heavenly life - which is a very different matter from passively having-imposed the default state of Sheol. 

* Chapter 3: [12] If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? [13] And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. [14] And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: [15] That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 

Jesus is here saying, in vatic-poetic mode - that he himself is the Son of man who 'ascended up to Heaven' - when baptized by John and becoming fully-divine albeit mortal; having come 'down from heaven' as a man in perfect accord with God the Father; and therefore 'which is in heaven' even as he speaks with Nicodemus (heaven being a place or state of those Beings whose natures are in full and eternal harmony with God's creative will).  

Note added: It is often said that Jesus wants us to become more like him. The implication is that we ought to behave more like Jesus; model our behaviour on that of Jesus. I don't see it, it would anyway be impossible; and I do not believe it is true. Jesus wants us to believe-on and to follow him - but surely not to behave like him, nor have characters like his character. The essence of Christianity is resurrection, which is a wholly-good and eternal restoration of our-self! Heaven is full of unique characters, each contributing something unique hence vital: not populated by Jesus-copies! (Which would, if true, be redundant and render eternal life futile.)  

Dreaming Sleep and Death/ Hades/ Sheol

It strikes me that dreaming sleep (of the usual, broadly nightmarish or bewildering kind) is often like the 'underworld' death as envisaged by the Ancient Greeks (Hades) and Ancient Hebrews (Sheol) - that is a 'demented', passive state of very partial awareness - with perplexity as the dominant emotion.

In sleep; life happens-to-us and we strive, and fail, to make sense of it, and to cope with it. Our minds are porous and connected with the dream environment - we are like the 'gibbering ghosts' of the underworld.

In dreams the environment affects our mind - and our mind affects the environment in a reciprocal causality. We are acted-upon rather than acting: there is no freedom in a dream...

The gift of Jesus is to be born-again, to waken from this unending nightmare - awaken to resurrected eternal life - that is by incarnation to be separate from the environment and act to act in free agency from it; to be alert and conscious and creative in relation to the environment rather than swept-along passively, uncomprehendingly, in perpetual bewilderment.

Dreaming sleep is a temporary death - although modern Man assumes that death is a non-being much like deep sleep: unconsciousness and oblivion, rather than the underworld, nightmare state of dreaming sleep. But by dreaming sleep, of the nightmarish/ bizarre/ confusing/ helpless kind... we can know what it is we are being rescued-from.

Jesus came to rescue Man from the inevitability of the underworld nightmare of death - by resurrection; and with the offer of a gift of life eternal, which is a creative state of divine being.

(But death is necessary: to be reborn we must die; and death is bitter vinegar, as well as purifying hyssop.)
 

Death before and after Jesus (and the possibility of resurrection)

The coming of Jesus Christ changed the nature of death.

More exactly, I believe that this happened at the point of his baptism by John; the time when Jesus became divine; when the divine spirit rested upon him and stayed with him.

From then; those who loved, trusted, had-faith-in, 'followed' Jesus (those who wanted to be resurrected and dwell in Heaven for eternity) would be resurrected.

So time is real, history is real; the nature of death is divided into before and after that moment. That moment introduced the new possibility after biological death; which was resurrection to eternal life.


Before Jesus, there was no resurrection. When Men died, the spirit was separated from the body. What then?

My understanding is that the body is what enables greater agency, greater freedom; our capacity to be an actor rather than acted-upon. A spirit without a body has a much lesser degree of agency; so when the body dies there is a loss of The Self.

We experience an analogous situation each time we sleep. Sleep itself represents two of the possibilities after death - when we live in the spirit.


Deep sleep is the loss of consciousness. We are alive but don't know it (or barely so); alive but unaware of anything. This is the nearest reality to the subjective perception of death as annihilation.

Genuine annihilation of an individual spirit is impossible since our primordial spirit had no beginning, is eternal, has no end - but self-awareness can be annihilated (which represents a return to our primordial state, before we became Children of God) - alive but unaware.

When this state of alive-but-unaware is pleasurable, blissful - then it is Nirvana; the state of being sought by Hindus and Buddhists. So I am suggesting that deep sleep is a temporary Nirvana.


Dreaming sleep is equivalent to Hades or Sheol; which are seen as conditions of 'delirious', or demented half-being; when men become witless ghosts or similar.

This is seen in the state of dreaming sleep insofar as we are in a passive state of being. Memory constantly slips away, our capacity for agency is feeble so that we 'go along with' whatever is happening.

Dreaming sleep is an experience of passivity, loss of reason and purpose. It is a vision of spirit life without incarnation.


I suggest that these states - Nirvana and Hades, corresponding to deep and dreaming sleep - were the possibilities of spirit life before Jesus.

A further possibility was reincarnation. The spirit could be re-housed in a new body.

Since the body, and its specific nature, affects the spirit - this meant the reincarnated spirit, reborn and leading another life, was 'a different person' - not the same person repeated.

An analogy would be a relative who shares a certain fundamental similarity, the same flavour, deep character - "He's Just Like his uncle John...".


After Jesus a further possibility was introduced, in addition to 'Christian resurrection' - and this was Paradise.

Paradise takes various forms - Valhalla, or the Muslim Paradise. Implicitly, Paradise is a state in which our-selves are retained and our agency; so paradise is a kind of resurrection.

But Paradise is not a resurrection to the presence of God and the participation in the work of creation that is Heaven. It is a place where one's favourite activities become possible, in principle eternally (and subject to the limits of that aspiration, and the constraints of mutual existence).

Paradise (in its variants) is, indeed, pretty much the lower or 'Telestial' Heaven as described in Mormon theology. It is pleasurable and enjoyable, but in Paradise men are not qualitatively different from how they are in this mortal life - there is no ascent to a higher, more conscious and creative and loving, form of life.

In sum; Paradise is essentially uncreative, passive ('contemplative', appreciating, consuming) a reversion to childhood or adolescence; to Original Participation. And I believe it is possible that some people in Heaven are actually experiencing Paradise - e.g. those who are resurrected as (in their essence) children, but who live (as children) with their families who include those who are participating with God in the work of creation.  


What about Hell? Well some will choose that, on the basis of how they choose in mortal life - maybe even a large majority of people in the modern West.

These are self-excluded from heaven, and self-excluded from resurrection; Hell is the exclusion of Love.

Such remain spirits in the condition of Sheol, but isolated by the perspective and priorities of those who choose Hell.

Their state seems terrible to me; and is based upon a primary (pride-full) dishonesty of denying that they are God's children living in God's creation... but Hell is what they get, having rejected all the above.

So, Jesus brought Hell, as well as resurrection in Heaven - because it is deliberate, conscious rejection of the world of God, Good, Creation and Love that makes Hell hellish.

Note added: Resurrection is the single most astonishing, incredible, mysterious thing about Christianity. That is my point. What that means is that resurrection is Not something that can be 'explained' in common-sensical, ordinary, easily intelligible, procedural terms as if it was a chemical manufacturing process. It is incredible. I am not At All surprised if people don't believe it. Nonetheless, resurrection is something near the core of what Jesus taught (and did). I think resurrection is probably a much more important fact of Christianity than commonly regarded. We should work from that, rather than try to make the incredibility go away.
 

The significance of Good Friday

For me, the significance of Good Friday is that this was when Jesus died; which he needed to do in order to fulfil, to complete, his core mission. 

He did not need to die in the way he did, because any mode of death would suffice; and death was inevitable one way or another, sooner or later, for Jesus as for all mortal Men...

But Jesus did need to die; in order to resurrect, and ascend to Heaven. 

I believe that Heaven as a state-of-being already existed before Jesus died, and that Lazarus was probably its first inhabitant - albeit Lazarus returned to dwell on earth, for a while. 

But in order for "everybody" who thenceforth desired resurrection and eternal life to be able to achieve these; Jesus himself needed to die, be resurrected, ascend. 

That salvation for "everybody" includes those who had died before the time of Jesus - and who resided as spirits in Sheol/ Hades, or had reincarnated, or were ghosts, or even demons who were not fully corrupted...

Which is what "the harrowing of Hell" on Easter Saturday, represents in a symbolic but distorted fashion. 

¿Four possible outcomes after death?

*

On the basis that Christ's work did two things: enabled resurrection and atoned for our sins:

1. We accept both resurrection and the atonement: happy, conscious, embodied life - Heaven.

2. We accept the atonement but not resurrection: happy, spirit life; impersonally absorbed into harmony with the divine - Nirvana.

3. We accept resurrection but not atonement: unhappy, conscious, embodied life,  - Hell.

4. We reject both resurrection and the atonement: a spiritual, witless, demented half-life - Sheol/ Hades.

*

Note: In case it confuses people - I here adopted the (¡excellent!) Spanish practice of placing an inverted question mark at the start of a question, as a way of informing the reader that what is to follow will be a question. I did this is in order to emphasise the tentative and conjectural nature of this post - as something for the reader to consider, rather than my own considered belief.

Christ's work - a complex answer to several problems

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There are several (orthodox) Christian explanations of Christ's work including the atonement - and an explanation is not the doctrine, or belief - an explanation is not necessary.

Nonetheless, this is a problem which - it seems - won't leave me alone; not least because I find the standard formulations to be either meaningless or actively-misleading.

*

The difficulty is that Christ's incarnation, ministry, death, resurrection and Lordship is a very complicated and 'roundabout' and linear series of 'answers' - indicating that whatever the problem/s they solved were several-fold, and also that there was 'no other way' for them effectively and completely to be addressed.

So there is no short and simple explanation for what Christ did, but only an answer which includes - or at least assumes - multiple needs and constraints.

*

Christ got us everlasting life, so we would not die - which is necessary for life to be meaningful; but what is everlasting life contrasted with?

The context is one where souls (or spirits) are already (and necessarily) everlasting (and also, I believe, we had a pre-mortal spirit existence).

Thus, 'everlasting life' apparently means specifically an everlasting incarnated life - life with a soul in a body such as we have now.

*

But then the kind of everlasting life we get is one when we must first die in the sense that our body must die, and the soul will (for a while at least) be severed from the body; and it was obtained for us by Christ Himself dying.

If we were to die without Christ's work, we would have an eternity as a severed soul (this, I infer, is what is described as the demented, witless state of spirits in Sheol, Hades or the Northern pagan Hel); and this is not the same state as our pre-mortal spirit life (and not the same as the spirit life of a never-incarnated angel).

It seems that to have been incarnated and then to die means that the soul or spirit will be maimed/ incomplete eternally (whereas never to have been incarnated seems to be okay).

*

So incarnation - if it is to have any point to it - must be in one sense potentially better than to have a pre-mortal spirit life; yet the post-death spirit life is worse than the pre-mortal spirit life.

And also, it seems that eternal (endless) life without first dying is not a blessing - but that it is best we should first die.

What is needed is resurrection - but resurrection cannot simply be either not dying, nor can it be a coming back to life (like Lazarus). The reason is that we are so very flawed, so very corrupted by sin that an eternity of living as we are now would be a torment.

*

So, to be fitted for resurrection into eternal life we must first be purified and perfected; this is the specific function of Christ's atonement.

By Christ's work of atonement we can be perfected and purified so as to be able to live forever with great happiness; but this requires that:

1. first we die and are resurrected, and

2. during this process, in-between death and resurrection, we are purified and perfected.

*

So, this clarifies, or narrows-down, what the atonement does and where it is located in terms of death and resurrection.

But how it is done remains obscure to us - as if we were very young children to whom an advanced scientific or technical process was being described - something like the functioning of a nuclear reactor, or fractional distillation.

*

Things happened as they must happen - the complex 'rigmarole' described in the Bible was the only way that the necessary could be achieved.

Time just is linear and sequential - therefore for Christ to enable us to die and be resurrected (apparently) required that Christ himself (Lord and maker of this earth) Himself become incarnated, died and was resurrected over Time and in human history.

And required also that Christ performed that act of atonement whereby He took upon Himself the sins and corruptions which we necessarily accumulate through mortal life with free agency and the reality of purposive evil.

*

And even this rather complicated answer to explain what Christ did remains seriously incomplete, because it leaves out Christ's teaching ministry, the role of the church, the role of scripture - and many other vital matters.

*

Fate after death

*

The Atonement of Christ perhaps led to at least four possible fates for eternal souls after death:

1. Heaven (of several kinds and degrees), where we retain our personhood but have been resurrected and enhanced towards god-status.

2. Bliss (as with some Eastern Religions) where we choose to lose personhood and our sense of 'self', and are absorbed into the impersonal spirit of God. I presume that these souls in some sense refuse resurrection.

3. Sheol/ Hades/ the pagan underworld, which is the default state - where our spirits severed from the body at death and thereby maimed, live in an eternal present, 'demented', without memory or sense of self. Many souls were rescued from this state by Christ's atonement - and it is seldom spoken of in later Christianity - but perhaps it continues...

4. Hell - where resurrected spirits have actively and knowingly rejected the salvation offered by Christ; but retain self-hood and memory and their earthly character - so live in the endless cumulative duration of eternity.

*

Where are 'other worlds' located? The 'mental block' of modern consciousness.

I've changed my mind on this topic several times, over the course of this blog. It is an important issue, and one where I think we probably need a coherent answer to avoid spirituality being sabotaged by corrosive doubt.  

The general question has many specific versions. One is to ask where exactly Heaven is located - especially considering that Christians believe in resurrection, so that the vagaries of spirits being everywhere (and nowhere) are denied us. 

Is Heaven (inhabited by the resurrected dead, walking-around...) up in the sky, outer space, a remote planet? All answers seem either evasive or absurd.

Another version is the Underworld (the Dwat), or the world after death (Sheol, Hades), the 'Inner World', the Collective Unconscious - or Collective Consciousness... people talk as if these are locations, or domains - but where? Why can't we detect them?

Then there is Faerie, Elfland - is that under a mound, in or through a forest, across the seas - or maybe on a different plane of existence through-which we must travel? 

It is easy to reduce answers to absurdity; in a modern world where we assume we have explored the whole planet, and that 'scientific instruments' allow us to detect anything that is real. 

I suggest here that, as so often when a question seem unanswerable - this is because we are asking the wrong question. We are assuming that The World is reality, and our knowing of that world is secondary (and optional) thing; an essentially passive matter of recognizing reality. 

In other words, we are assuming that our minds have no significant role in the existence of reality, except to fail to notice it or to distort it - we assume that real reality (Kant's das Ding an sich: the thing-in-itself) is out there and 'solidly real', even when unthought, unperceived, unknown. 

Yet this almost universal habit of thinking about reality is incoherent - therefore wrong (as demonstrated by, amongst others, Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfeld). Instead, a coherent understanding of reality must include the consciousness of the knower.

(Without the knowing-consciousness of a being, there is only meaningless disorder - literal primordial chaos.)

This is Not to say that consciousness simply makes-up any reality it wants, a reality without any reference to anything out-there, because there is nothing out-there (ie. philosophical 'idealism') - it is instead to say there is no knowing, no knowable, without consciousness; so that consciousness and reality cannot be separated.

We may notice that this question "where are other worlds?" was Not regarded as a problem in much of the past in human history. The answer seemed obvious, or else an answer was not requested or required.

And the question was not a problem because people knew other worlds, people once perceived these other worlds for themselves - either on an everyday basis, or (later) in special states of consciousness induced by religious ritual, dreams, trances - or whatever. 

That which is perceived is not regarded as unanswerable. 

Therefore I conclude that the question is a product of changes in human consciousness. 

We ask where other worlds are located because Modern Man no longer spontaneously perceives other-worlds, and has mostly lost the ability to perceive other-worlds. 

In other words; Modern man cannot know the location of 'other worlds' because he has developed a mental block. 

The other-worlds are still 'there', where they always were, but Modern Man is blocked from perceiving them by a change in his consciousness*. 

Indeed, the other-worlds can still be perceived, but only in altered states of consciousness that, to some extent, undo the recent changes of consciousness - and diminish our level of consciousness. 

Inner-worlds no longer impose on Men, that is why they are not perceived. To know inner-worlds for has become for Modern Men a matter of knowing, not perceiving. 

A matter, that is, of direct-knowing.  

We should not strive to 'see through' the blocks, nor to dissolve them away - because they are there for good reasons; instead we can think over and around the blocks.

In other words: Final Participation.  

Then we will know where are other-worlds...

And the answer is: in this same world... 

Where they have always been. 

(*The reason for this change in consciousness is another matter, dealt with extensively elsewhere in this blog. In a nutshell, the mental block has the positive function of increasing freedom, agency; by removing us from the former state of automatic/ habitual, unavoidable and unconscious subjection to God's created reality. The mental block gives us the freedom positively to choose to align-ourselves with divine creation. In other words the block both imposes and gifts Modern Man's with personal responsibility for his spiritual affiliation.) 

Jesus Christ is our Saviour. But saviour from what?

*
Christians call Jesus Christ "our saviour", or simply The Saviour - but it is not clear to secular modern people what we mean by this; indeed, I believe that the meaning (or emphasis) has changed over the centuries, because Christ did not save us from just one bad fate; but from many, many bad things - and different people at different times feel themselves in need of different savings: so that what I understand Christ as saving-me-from may not be your understanding.

*

At the time of his ministry and for many centuries, Christ was understood as saving us from death; and by 'death' people meant that the soul would usually endure in a (literally) nightmarish underworld (Sheol, Hades etc) where we would persist forever as demented, gibbering, desolate ghosts.

In effect, death meant death of 'the self' - death of consciousness and the will - but not an end to existence.

*

Christ was also saving us from sin; and it seems clear that through most of history Men felt this to be necessary: felt that we absolutely needed to be saved from our sins; and that if we were not saved from our sins, then we would be tormented by them forever. 

*

But modern Western Man does not feel himself in need of saving from death - because he regards death as extinction and therefore the end of suffering (not death as the doorway to endless suffering, as in the past).

And modern Man does not feel he needs to be saved from sin, because he regards 'sin' as an arbitrary cultural category - and Modern Man has redefined many sins as virtues, virtues as sins.

So in effect, Modern Man 'saves himself' from sin by promoting, enforcing, and believing, legislation and propaganda to abolish any sin he cannot stop or does not wish to stop; and making new sins from whatever threatens the continuation of this process.

*

But Modern Man still needs to be saved - he needs to be saved from meaninglessness, purposelessness, existential isolation, alienation, and nihilism (the sense that all truth, beauty and virtue are 'relative'; that values are 'subjective', that nothing is really-real).

Modern Man needs to be saved from the retrospective pall cast by the meaning-destroying pseudo-reality of death-as-extinction; and the nothingness of a world where profundity is repeatedly dissolved and remade, and where Man is become a mere conduit for ever-changing psychological manipulations.

*

Another thing Man always has needed saving-from is suffering; the suffering of this world.

And Christ saves us from this suffering in two ways, at two levels. In the first place he offers a significant, albeit partial, alleviation of suffering in this world - mainly by putting suffering into a perspective of eternal hope.

An analogy would be the suffering of childbirth. Childbirth can be agony: in a purely physical sense childbirth may be as painful as torture - but the suffering is put in the perspective of a parent participating in the birth of a child and this makes a very big difference. Indeed, the perspective utterly transforms the meaning of pain, and drastically reduces the suffering.

And secondly, the long-term effect of suffering is likewise transformed by Christ - because there is the prospect of complete healing from all the ill effects of suffering at the resurrection.

So all earthly sufferings are re-framed by Christ as temporary.

*

Christ is still our Saviour, as before; but now Christ is perhaps primarily (upfront) most-often our saviour from the void.

Christ is now, mostly, our saviour from the denied but pervasive existential terror that nothing really matters.

*

With salvation it is not a matter of either/ or; but a matter of all-this-and-more.

Because death, sin, suffering and alienation are all facets of the same evil fate - therefore Christ is The Saviour.

However, maybe when we state this great truth to non-Christians, we need to consider what they personally most need saving-from.

*

Jesus as an addition to pre-existing religion - who then transforms what went before

It is interesting to try and understand the essence of 'Christianity' - the single main thing that Jesus did, if you like - and when you do, it seems that there are actually quite a wide range of answers. 

My own (Fourth Gospel derived) idea is that Jesus brought the new possibility of eternal resurrected life in Heaven to those who followed him. 

Others regard the coming of Christ in terms of setting up a new religion - and then participating in the prescribed activities of that religion. Or a changed relationship between Man and God. Or provision of a source of guidance for (this mortal) life. Others focus on a change in 'reality' in the totality of the universe - an 'evolutionary' view. Others take a morality-focused view; which see immorality/ 'sin' as The Problem, and Jesus offering a solution. There are also other ideas - a surprisingly large number!

But if my own understanding of Christianity as "following Jesus to Heaven" is accepted (as a thought experiment, if nothing more) then it is interesting to consider what happened during the years of Jesus's ministry when a Jew or a Roman Pagan decided to 'convert', to become a spiritual follower of Jesus - to consider what this meant in terms of their pre-existing religion. 

My understanding is that - initially - a belief in Jesus was understood in terms of an addition to what was already believed. The Jew added a belief in Jesus to his pre-existing religion, and the Roman likewise. 

In other words, the new thing about becoming a follower of Jesus was the expectation ('hope') of eternal resurrected life in Heaven - to come after this mortal life and after death; and that this resurrection was to be attained by following Jesus. 

'Following' involved having faith in Jesus (in his being the Son of God, thus divine - therefore able to do what he claimed) - and 'faith' meant something like loving and trusting him. 

I think this - specifically about the Jews - is what Jesus meant in those passages of the Gospels where he implied that no aspect of 'being a Jew' needed to be changed in order to become one of his followers. 

It also fits with the miracles of faith; where the miracle happens in someone who 'believes-on' Jesus - specifically, personally; without regard to the nature of his specific religious life - which might be Jewish, Samaritan, or any type of Pagan. 

This idea of 'Christianity' as pre-existing religion-plus, fits with the observation of people who seemed to be (to to believe themselves to be) Christians and Jews, or (presumably) Christians and Samaritans, or Christians and Roman or Greek Pagans. 

It happens because the original Christianity was actually composed of "pre-existing religion"... and then 'adding Jesus'. 

This idea of Jesus as 'an addition' to religion is quite different from - almost the opposite of - 'syncretic' ideas of a religion formed from combining aspects of "Christianity" (as it later became) and "some other religion". 

The idea is instead that Christianity has an essence - which is the following of Jesus to resurrection - and this essence can be added to almost any other "religion". 

But of course, adding Jesus does not leave the pre-existing religion untouched, unchanged! Far from it! In the first place, the Christian idea of death as followed by resurrection (for those who believe-on Jesus) must displace whatever description of death was given by the pre-existent religion. 

So the expectation of Heaven needs to replace Sheol, Hades, paradise, reincarnation, annihilation or whatever was previously expected. 

Furthermore, adding-Jesus inevitably works-back on the pre-existing religion. 

In other words, the expectation of immortal life in Heaven affects the understanding of mortal life on earth - affects it in innumerable ways. 

I suppose that this was the basis for the development of the various Christian churches - these are the various consequences of the expectation of Heaven, on Man's understanding of life on earth. 

And the churches vary because the order and priority of these changes strikes people differently. Since the changes in mortal life are secondary consequences of the primary reality of resurrection; there will often be disagreement as to which ought to come first, which ought to be most enforced. 

But our situation here-and-now, in 2022, is that of no pre-existing religion. "Following-Jesus" cannot easily or obviously be added to Zero - not in the way Jesus could be added to Judaism or Paganism. 

Atheism is the - increasingly mandatory - basis of all serious social life and discourse. Religion is everywhere subordinated to ideology - and that ideology is top-down, imposed, and evil. 

Our rituals and rules are secular (i.e. Satanic in nature and by intent) - not divinely-attributed. 

Jesus is not believed in his promises because he 'cannot be' divine, because 'the divine' is seen as untrue, mistaken, a lie - and indeed impossible. 

Resurrection and eternal life are seen as sheerly incoherent in a materialist world where spirit and the soul are seen as merely mythical, pathological or manipulative.  

 

Such is our situation. Men of 2000 years ago (and much more recently) were able to understand what Jesus meant easily and quickly. They could become 'Christians' (followers of Christ) almost instantaneously; simply by understanding that Jesus offered something more than their existing religion, and by experiencing the spiritual conviction (faith) that this offer of resurrection was real and possible. 

The offer still stands, and can still (in principle) instantaneously be accepted - and then the expectation of Heaven can still begin its inevitable (but unpredictable, because so wide-ranging) working-back to transform a Man's pre-existing convictions... 

Yet the Good News of Jesus Christ cannot nowadays simply add-onto and re-shape existing religious convictions because there are none, and even the basis for religion is destroyed and replaced by a secular, materialist, leftist ideology*.

(An ideology which is in-actuality a mostly-covert Satanism - not neutral but evil.)

The potential follower-of-Jesus ("convert") must also choose to reject many foundational modern metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality; and choose instead to adopt beliefs within-which Christianity makes sense, and can do its work. 

And against the background of evil materialistic nihilism - this must indeed be a conscious choice; and (because the world of institutions and rules opposes it) this conscious choice must be personal - that is, individually-motivated. 

The essence of Christianity remains the same as ever - what makes a huge and adverse difference is that Modern Man is deeply damaged by this-worldly materialism, a nihilism that is deep and habitual, and by a tacit-and-denied allegiance to the evil agenda of Satan. 

*Note: This is why I regard it as a misleading error to call the global, mainstream modern ideology of 'leftism' (or political correctness, or 'woke') "a religion" as so many of those who oppose it do. Despite some superficial resemblances, the leftist ideology is not a religion, it is instead anti-religion - the negation of religion. This is proved by the fact that it cannot (like Judaism, Greek or Roman Paganism etc) be added-to by Jesus, to make someone a real Christian. Precisely because leftist-ideology is Not a religion; if you "add Jesus" to leftist ideology you merely get a fake-Christianity. You get that Christianized-leftism of the kind propagated by the leaders of the major Christian churches and denominations.