“I have stood at the Crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the blaring tunes of Tina Turner summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with “I did it my way” blaring out across the speakers,” he wrote in his blog on the website for St. Barnabas Church in county of Kent.

His remarks angered bereavement counsellors and humanist groups and prompted much debate over what is appropriate and what is not when it comes to mourning.

“The best our secularist friends (and those they dupe) can hope for is a poem from Nan combined with a saccharine message from a pop star before being popped in the oven with no hope of resurrection”, Tomlinson said.

In a follow up post Mr. Tomlinson said it was never his intention to criticize people’s taste in music. “I was actually seeking to raise a question which is important for all society: What are funerals for?” he said.

The question is a good question. What are funerals, especially Christian funerals, for?

First of all, I believe a Christian funeral offers all who come a chance to worship God and to give him their grateful thanks for the life of the one whose days among us have drawn to a close. It is a chance to remember him or her, to honour him or her, and to commend him or her into the care of a gracious, merciful and loving God.

Secondly, though it would be fair to say that many Christians downplay this aspect of the funeral service, the service provides a special opportunity for those who sorrow to share their grief. Most people, even most Christians, believe that death is inevitable and focus on the unbiblical notion of “heaven when we die”. If our loved one is in heaven “playing bowls”, “at the bar”, or (for those with a more religious bent), “singing hymns with Jesus”, it seems uncharitable to grieve or to wish them back. The truth, however, is that death is “the last enemy” to be finally defeated only when Jesus Christ comes again (1 Cor. 15). Until then the dead are “asleep.” Paul himself tells us that we can and should grieve, though not as if we had no hope (1Thess. 4:13-18). Jesus grieved and wept at the graveside of his friend Lazarus (John 11). Grieving is more than the work of a moment but the funeral service can be an important part of the grieving process, especially when the truth about death is put forth clearly and biblically.

With any death, especially when that death is sudden, there can be a sense of unfinished business, things we wish we had said – or hadn‘t said. A third purpose for the funeral service is to provide a special time and place to say some of the things which we might not want to leave unsaid – to say them before the gathered congregation and/or before God (in this latter instance we may only say them in our hearts, but that’s  OK). This too is a major benefit of a formal funeral service.

To a certain extent the “secular” person can participate in a Christian funeral. He or she will want to give thanks for the life of a departed loved one. He or she will need to grieve. He or she may feel they have things they want to say.

But a fourth and probably the most important reason to meet, from a Christian perspective, is that the funeral service gives mourners who believe the opportunity to refresh their own belief and trust in God; to affirm the Christian conviction that while death is the end of life as we know it, it is not the end of all life, the end of all hope. It is our chance to affirm what Jesus said when he said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live [in the resurrection], even though they die [in this life], and whoever lives [until Jesus comes] and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25). How sad that at many funerals, even Christian funerals, the true hope of a resurrection to eternal life when Jesus comes again, has been almost obliterated by a “pie in the sky when you die” hope which is really no part of the biblical hope at all.

Mr. Tomlinson is (mostly) right. If the best we can offer is a bad poem and a platitude with no hope of resurrection, God help us. We need to be concerned, less with the music we play at funerals, and more with the message we proclaim.

References:

News Posting:

www.news24.com

Original blog posting:

sbarnabas.com/blog/2009/10/05/the-death-of-death/

Updated blog posting:

sbarnabas.com/blog/2009/10/19/clarification-on-funerals/

What follows are Dr. Rollers remarks – Editor.

Question of the Month

Q: What is meant by the biblical expression “the worm dieth not”?

A: In Mark 9:48, Jesus quotes Isaiah 66:24, a passage in which Isaiah presents the LORD (see Isaiah 66:23) as predicting something that will take place on the “new earth” (see Isaiah 66:22). He says that “they [referring to the ‘all flesh’ mentioned in Isaiah 66:23] shall go forth, and look upon the CARCASES [not ‘immortal souls’] of the men that have transgressed against me: for their WORM [the maggot that feeds on those ‘carcases’] shall not die, neither shall their fire [the fire that burns up those ‘carcases’] be quenched: and they [the people that have transgressed against God] shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.” This “picture” is that of a city dump, where maggots feed on dead bodies and fire burns up trash: it is not a picture of a torture chamber where demons with pitchforks prod living human beings into fires that burn them alive but never actually harm them (because, if they did, they would eventually destroy them altogether). I can’t imagine that Jesus, in quoting the passage, meant to teach anything other than what the passage itself taught: so Mark 9:48 must mean the same thing that Isaiah 66:24 means. The idea of the “never-dying worm” is a symbol for the fact that as long as there is a dead body to be chewed on, there will always be a worm to do the chewing – not that any individual worm is immortal! Anyway, the human being in this picture is most definitely DEAD, not alive. “Carcases” don’t suffer pain, and they aren’t aware that worms are eating them; and, after they have been in fires for a while, they burn up, and they don’t exist anymore. I see NO justification for “natural immortality” in either of these verses, and I can’t imagine how anyone who reads Hebrew and Greek could.

Loose Lips?

Justin speaks in various ways of the evildoers’ “punishment in eternal fire” and of “eternal punishment”. He says that “the sword of God is fire, of which they who choose to do wickedly become the fuel.” These are not just “big words and bugbears”, says Justin, as if Christians wished only to scare people into living a virtuous life, rather this punishment reflects the reality of God’s justice. While the language of “eternal punishment” and “eternal fire”, as it is found in Scripture, is adequately explained by Conditionalist writers, either as referring to the result of the judgment, or to its sharing in the quality of the “age to come”, there are, however, some more explicit statements of Justin’s which seem to conflict, and therefore need to be reconciled, if possible, with what we have seen above of Justin’s beliefs.

He says:

“For among us the prince of the wicked spirits is called the serpent, and Satan, and the devil, as you can learn by looking into our writings. And that he would be sent into the fire with his host, and the men who follow him, and would be punished for an endless duration, Christ foretold.”

“[Jesus] shall come from the heavens in glory with his angelic host, when he shall raise the bodies of all the men who ever lived. Then he will clothe the worthy in immortality; but the wicked, clothed in eternal sensibility, he will commit to the eternal fire, along with the evil demons”.

“Some are sent to be punished unceasingly into judgment and condemnation of fire; but others shall exist in freedom from suffering, from corruption, and from grief, and in immortality.”

Justin’s use of such words as “unceasing” and “endless” in connection with the future punishment of the wicked may seem to contradict his annihilationist stance. His attribution of “eternal sensibility” to the wicked prevents us seeing this language as referring only to the result of the predicted punishment.

In ordinary conversation, however, we use such terms as “forever,” “eternal,” “ceaseless” etc loosely, without intending to convey the idea of absolute endlessness. This is especially so when we use language more for its rhetorical effect than its scientific accuracy. Thus Jeremiah can speak of a wound being “incurable” and an injury “beyond healing” and but a moment later assert, in the name of the Lord, “I will restore you to health and heal your wounds” (Jer. 30:12, 17).

Without doubt Justin can be numbered among those Fathers who employ, in a limited sense, words that seem to assert the opposite. It needs to be noticed that among the Fathers of the early church there are a multitude of examples where such language is applied to things which are temporary and do in fact come to an end. Not even those in the early church who were Universalists (believing that everyone would eventually be saved) hesitated to use such language to speak of future punishment. This is significant because far from proving the traditional creed, this fact shows that for many in the early Greek speaking church these terms carried connotations of finitude that our English words do not have. It is as if the language is always limited by the nature of the thing in question.

Conclusions

Having looked at what Justin taught on matters which are dear to us I will now draw some conclusions (in more or less reverse order, when compared to my presentation in this article):

1. Justin’s use of such words as “unceasing” and “endless” in connection with the future punishment are taken by some as proof that he believed in the eternal torment of the wicked. In the Fathers, however, there are a multitude of examples where such language is applied to things which are temporary and do in fact come to an end. This shows us that we need to be careful in interpreting Scripture and the writings of the Fathers and not just to seek to confirm therein our own prejudices.

2. Given that Justin, along with most of the Fathers of the early Church, held that the souls of the dead were gathered to some subterranean locality, neither heaven nor hell, to await the resurrection and that they condemned the belief that the dead go immediately to Heaven or Hell, by what right do the so-called “orthodox” of today condemn the Conditionalist for not believing in the traditional view of the church. The proponents of what is today wrongly called “the traditional view” are in fact putting forth what might better be called the Modern or at least the Reformation view. They are as “guilty” (if guilt is the right word) as the Conditionalist of departing from the tradition of the church.

3. Likewise, Justin’s testimony suggests that belief in conditional immortality (or at least belief in the natural mortality of the human soul) was wide spread among Christians in Justin’s day. It may have been the “default” view. If so, it is the notion of the natural immortality of the soul that is in fact a departure from the tradition of the church. Many critics of Conditional Immortality demand that we Conditionalists explain how we can feel free to depart from the traditional view of the church. At this point it is the critics however that have departed from the traditional view of the church and must explain themselves!

4. Given that life in immortality is a gift to the righteous alone, and that the soul, not being innately immortal, exists only as long as God wills it to exist (as Justin argues), will anyone argue that a loving God would wish the soul of any human being alive throughout endless ages for no other purpose than to inflict upon them perpetual torment? Yet the modern believer in eternal torment must accept either that the souls of the wicked are innately immortal such that God cannot destroy the wicked even did he wish to do so; or that the souls of the wicked are actively sustained by God throughout endless ages for no other purpose than to inflict upon them perpetual torment. Neither of these options is consistent with the notion of an all-powerful, all-loving God. The idea of eternal torment thus fails the test of Scripture, theology, history and logic.

5. Justin sought to communicate the Gospel in terms that would make sense to the people of his day. We must do likewise otherwise we lose our ability to communicate effectively. At the same time, we must do so in such a way that our culture does not so influence the way we present the message that the truth gets subtlety distorted.

Justin was chiefly concerned to establish the fact that Christ has come, in fulfilment of the Scriptures, to bring life to the world, not to speculate on matters theological. We too should seek to present Christ as “Life” persuasively not just to win theological arguments.

¹A representative sample might include 1 Apology, 12, 13, 45, and 2 Apology, 1, 2, 7 and 8.

²Justin Martyr, 1 Apology, 44.

³Justin Martyr, 2 Apology, 9.

⁴Justin Martyr, 1 Apology, 28.

⁵Justin Martyr, 1 Apology, 52.

⁶Justin Martyr, Dialogue, 45.

⁷Thomas Allin, Christ Triumphant or Universalism Asserted as the Hope of the Gospel on the Authority of Reason, the Fathers, and Holy Scripture online at:

http://www.tentmaker.org/books/ChristTriumphant.htm.

General Resurrection

Though earlier chapters of Acts do not speak of Paul talking about the General Resurrection, (though he made much of Christ’s resurrection), his speech to the philosophers on Mars’ Hill, includes the declaration that judgement is ordained through “that man”, of which the proof is that “he hath raised him from the dead.” Obviously, that judgement could not come about unless men were raised from the dead, so the general resurrection is inferred here (Acts 17:31).

In his defence before Felix, Paul stated that he believed all the things which were written in the law and the prophets, and went on to say. “And have hope towards God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.” (Ac.24:14, 15). Paul was thus insisting that what he preached was only what was found in the Old Testament Scriptures, and though the Sadducees present might not believe this, any Pharisees there did so (Ac.23:8).

Again, in Acts 26, when Paul defends himself before Festus, King Agrippa and Bernice, knowing that King Agrippa had some knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures and customs, he said, “I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers: …”   We might think that he was referring to the promise of a coming Messiah.   However, he goes on to question, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?” Acts 26:6, 8. Obviously he is stating that the hope included the raising of the dead, in this case, the raising of Jesus of Nazareth.   Further, in v.22 he emphasises that he was teaching nothing different than what was in the prophets and Moses, “that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead …”  Note that he not only spoke of the resurrection of Christ as being taught in the Old Testament, but also said “that he should be the first that should rise from the dead”, thus inferring that the Scriptures spoke not only of the Messiah’s resurrection, but of other resurrection(s) to follow.

Two incidents of resurrection are recorded in the book of Acts.   When Peter was in Lydda, the Christians in Joppa sent to inform him that a well-loved woman had died.   She was one who was very forward in good works, helping clothe widows and children.  Her name was Tabitha or Dorcas.

Peter responded to their call, sent all of them out of the room, prayed, and spoke to the corpse, saying, “Tabitha , arise.”  She opened her eyes and sat up.  He took her by the hand, called the weeping Christians, and delivered her to them.  (Ac.9:36-42).

When Paul was returning to Jerusalem from his third missionary journey, he stopped at Troas.    A young man, Eutychus, was sitting in a window listening to Paul’s long oration.  Overcome by the heat from the gathered crowd and the many lamps, he fell asleep, dropped out of the third-storey window, and “was taken up dead.”  Paul went down and embraced him, and delivered him alive to the gathering (Ac.20:10).

However, these again were only temporary resurrections, as these people will have again died in the ordinary order of life and death.

Resurrection of Christ

In the very first chapter of Acts, we see the importance which the apostles placed on the resurrection of Christ, when they insisted that one of the qualifications for the man to replace the dead Judas of Iscariot was “to be a witness with us of the resurrection.”  (v.22)

In the various sermons recorded in Acts, the resurrection of Christ is emphasised. On the Day of Pentecost, after accusing the Jews of having delivered up Jesus of Nazareth to death (by the counsel and foreknowledge of God), Peter goes on to declare that God had raised Him up “having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should beholden of it.”  (Acts 2:24).  In v. 27  he then goes on to quote the Psalm of David which we have already mentioned above under the Poetical books, (Ps. 16:8-11) with particular emphasis on the fact that He was not left in hell, nor saw corruption.  Peter is careful to point out to his hearers that David, who wrote the Psalm, was both dead and buried and they knew where his grave was right up to that day, (v. 29).   So David could not possibly have been referring to himself.  Who then, was he referring to?   The Messiah, who was none other than Jesus of Nazareth, now raised from the dead by God (vv. 30 – 32).

In the next chapter, Peter and John, in the name of Jesus Christ, enable the man lame from birth to walk.   The crowds come together, and Peter addresses them, telling them firmly that this has been done, not in their own power, but in the name of the Son of God, Jesus, the Prince of life, whom they had delivered up to Pilate, and whom “God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.” (Acts 3:15).  He finished his sermon with a further reference to the resurrection of Christ, “Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus…” (v. 26).   This, he is pointing out, was to give them the opportunity to turn away from their sins.

The complaint the Sadducees had against the apostles was that they “preached through Jesus the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 4:2). Says the New Bible Commentary about this verse, “… it was the adherents of the Sadduccean party who objected most strongly to the apostles’ preaching, in view of their insistence on the resurrection of Jesus, which naturally involved the general principle of resurrection …” Their preaching of the resurrection of the Lord not only revealed Him as the Messiah, the Son of God, but also called attention to the fact that if He was resurrected, He had power to resurrect those who believed in Him.

Beryl Ching, spent over 40 years on the mission . Returning to New Zealand to “retire”, Beryl was for a long time secretary of the Conditional Immortality Association. ‘Resurrection as Revealed in the Old Testament and Confirmed in the New testament’ is the full title of her Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Freelandia Institute Biblical Theological College in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree Master of Biblical Studies.