“At the end of the messianic era, the “day of the Lord” will bring a time of judgment to all humanity. Every person who has ever lived will be resurrected from his grave for a final judgment, which will take place on Mount Zion in Jerusalem….Those who are judged worthy will be rewarded with eternal life in the heavenly paradise. Those who are judged as unredeemed sinners will be condemned to Gehinnom, a nether world where the evil suffer eternal torment.”

I was immediately struck by how close this was to what Christians believe. After all, Christians did not invent the doctrine of the Resurrection. The resurrection of the dead was a common expectation among Jews of Jesus’ time.

When Martha meets Jesus on the road and rebukes him for delaying his arrival until after the death of Lazarus, Jesus assures her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha responds, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” I have always thought that Martha is really saying that the Day of Resurrection is a long time to wait, and that she is grieving now! Nevertheless, as a first century Jew, she does not question that the dead will be raised.

Resurrection is only one of a number of scenarios of what happens to human beings after death. In much of the Old Testament, the expectation is that the dead rest forever in “Sheol”—which is neither Heaven nor Hell, but a shadowy existence beneath the earth not so different from the Greek belief in Hades described in Homer’s Odyssey.

Sheol and Hades have long since passed from fashion. Today there are four basic options for making sense of what happens after death: (1) annihilation, (2) reincarnation, (3) immortality of the soul, (4) resurrection.

1. Annihilation

The first answer to the question, “what will happen to me when I die?” is the simplest: “Nothing at all.” Bart Erhman was raised Episcopalian. He became a “born again” Evangelical as an adolescent and eventually earned his Ph.D. at Princeton Theological Seminary. His graduate work in Textual Criticism (the analysis and comparison of the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament) prompted him to question his convictions about Biblical authority and ultimately lose his faith altogether. He now teaches religion at the University of North Carolina, and writes popular books that debunk what he views as naïve Christian beliefs about faith and the Bible. An admiring article from the Washington Post (entitled “The Book of Bart”) reports that so far as Ehrman is concerned, “there are no Pearly Gates.” When we die, says Ehrman, “I think you just cease to exist, like the mosquito you swatted yesterday.”

2. Reincarnation

The notion that the self is annihilated at death – so glibly asserted by Bart Ehrman – is widespread in our secular era. Yet the dominant outlook today is not so much secular as “spiritual-but-not-religious.” In this environment many are intrigued by the notion of reincarnation. This is the view, borrowed from Hinduism and Buddhism, that after death we are reborn in another body, propelled by the momentum of Karma, the deterministic moral law of action and reaction.

Many modern people find this intriguing, and people often speculate about their previous lives or what future lives might lie ahead. In college I remember experimenting with techniques intended to enable one to recollect earlier lives (with inconclusive results).

Hindus and Buddhists are not so giddy about the prospect of reincarnation. Traditionally understood, the endless cycle of death and rebirth confines sentient beings within an eternity of suffering – what Buddhists call “Samsara.” The whole point of enlightenment is to escape the cycle of rebirth forever.

For Hindus and Buddhists reincarnation reflects an underlying pessimism about the world. It nevertheless fits within their cyclical cosmologies, in which time moves in repeating cycles. In the Biblical cosmology, in which time and history are linear with a beginning and an end, reincarnation is less of a fit. So, as the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it, “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”

3. The Immortality of the Soul

A third option for understanding survival after death is the Immortality of the Soul. This is the “dualistic” view that the self consists of two parts, a physical body and an inward spiritual essence called the “soul.” The classic exponent of this view is the Greek philosopher, Plato, for whom “the soul resembles the eternal Forms, which are the proper object of all its attentions.” The body, on the other hand, is a mere container that imprisons the soul and keeps it from its ultimate spiritual destiny. According to Plato, “Every seeker after wisdom knows that up to the time when philosophy takes over, his soul is a helpless prisoner, chained hand and foot inside the body, forced to view reality, not directly, but only through the prison bars, and wallowing in utter ignorance.”

The notion of the immortality of the soul, at least as Plato presents it, entails a devaluation of the material created order, which is merely an inferior copy and shadow of the realm of pure spiritual forms. By contrast, the Christian doctrines of Creation, in which God’s work of creation is “very good,” and Incarnation, in which the “Word becomes flesh,” invest the material world with great value. Hence, at the Resurrection, both body and spirit, material and immaterial, are raised to new life.

Nevertheless, many Christians believe that the notion of an immortal soul is fundamental to the Christian faith. After all, if the soul does not exist as a separable spiritual essence, what sense does it make for us to speak of “going to Heaven”?

4. Resurrection

The Bible does not actually say much about “going to Heaven,” but it says a great deal about resurrection. Christians all know that Jesus was resurrected after his death, and that this assures our own eternal future. Beyond this, however, many Christians are not clear about how “resurrection” relates to what we speak of as “going to heaven.” Is “resurrection” simply another way of talking about “going to heaven” or is it something different?

The problem has to do with the sticky problem of the body. When Jesus is raised, he has a body. The tomb is empty, and Jesus’ body is reanimated so that he is able to move among his disciples and even share in their meals. But everyone knows that when the soul goes to heaven, the body remains in the grave.

Jesus himself seems to speak of a disembodied soul after death when he tells the good thief on the cross, “this day you will be with me in Paradise.” Paul alludes to a similar state when he says, “If I am to live in the flesh that means fruitful labor for me. Yet….my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” Neither Jesus nor Paul appear to be talking about resurrection, but rather something that seems far more like the soul leaving the “flesh” and going to heaven.

This quandary disappears when we recognize that the doctrine of the Resurrection includes two distinct timelines. One is the individual’s transition from this life to the new life of the Resurrection. At the same time, the Resurrection is the climactic point in an end time scenario that involves the return of Christ, the Judgment, and the manifestation of a New Heaven and a New Earth. Linking the two is what theologians call the “Intermediate State,” in which the departed rest in a disembodied state prior to the Day of Resurrection.

This Intermediate State corresponds to what Christians commonly describe as “going to Heaven.” It is the Paradise that Jesus promises “this day” to the thief on the cross, and the state of “being with Christ” that Paul values above “life in the flesh.” The ultimate Christian hope, however, is not heaven, but what comes next, the embodied life of Resurrection – what N.T. Wright calls “Life after life after death.”

Finally, resurrection involves both continuity and discontinuity. There is continuity, in so far as the dead return to an embodied state when the physical body is raised to new life. But there is also discontinuity – resurrection is not resuscitation. It is not a return to the life that preceded our death. Resurrection is a new glorious order of being – it has, you might say, its own physics, and lies outside of the realm of our experience or understanding. The Apostle Paul says, “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.”

The Ven. Dr. Brown is Rector of Trinity Church, Potsdam, and a regular contributor to The Albany Episcopalian