christian-afterlife

Always Something Better Ahead

/ Jason Conrad / Leave a comment

What should Christians expect when they die?

We often answer that question by moving immediately to heaven, resurrection, or final judgment. Each belongs to the Christian hope, but moving too quickly can cause us to overlook a beautiful early Christian picture of the righteous between death and resurrection.

Their bodies rest in the earth, but their lives continue. They enjoy blessings already before them while looking forward to greater blessings still to come. Their expectation is itself part of their happiness.

An early third-century Christian work traditionally attributed to Hippolytus describes it this way:

The righteous have lived there from the beginning. They are no longer ruled by necessity, but continually enjoy the sight of the blessings before them. They delight in expecting other blessings, always new, considering what is coming better than what they presently see.

That place brings them no toil. There is neither oppressive heat nor cold nor thorns. The faces of the fathers and the righteous are always smiling as they await the rest and eternal revival in heaven that will follow this place. We call it Abraham’s bosom.

Attributed to Hippolytus, Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe 1, c. AD 200–235

What a remarkable image to carry when we think about death.

The righteous are already enjoying themselves. They are together, at rest, and looking forward. Their present happiness does not diminish their anticipation, and their anticipation does not prevent them from enjoying the present.

They are blessed, and they know more blessing is coming.

This passage does not answer every question about the intermediate state. It does not tell us everything the righteous are doing, precisely what they see, or how they experience the passage of time. It does not, by itself, say that a never-ending succession of new blessings continues throughout eternity. Its immediate horizon includes the resurrection and the heavenly life that follows Hades.

But it gives us the original image: present enjoyment joined with confident expectation of something better.

Other ancient Christian writers help us extend that image. Irenaeus speaks of God always teaching and humanity always learning. Origen imagines discovery and instruction after death. Gregory of Nyssa, recording his dialogue with Macrina, describes souls becoming continually larger through the blessings they receive. Gregory the Great pictures satisfaction that continually renews desire.

These writers are not all describing the same stage of the afterlife, nor do they agree on every detail. Taken together, however, they allow us to construct a compelling Christian vision of the human journey.

God gives.

We receive.

Receiving enlarges us.

Enlargement prepares us to receive more.

There is always something better ahead.

Life in a World of Conflict

We are born into a world in which death is already operating.

Creation points us toward a God who exists and possesses extraordinary power. Paul says that God’s invisible reality and eternal power can be perceived through what has been made.

But the goodness of God is harder to establish by observing nature alone.

We encounter beauty and abundance, but we also encounter disease, violence, predation, natural disaster, suffering, and death. Creation reveals tremendous power, but the world as we presently experience it does not always explain the moral character of the power behind it.

This is why our confidence in God’s goodness must rest on more than our observation of nature. We look to Jesus Christ, to his compassion, his self-giving love, his willingness to enter human suffering, and his victory over death. Through Jesus, we learn to trust the character of the God whose power we recognize in creation.

That trust develops in hostile surroundings.

The New Testament describes a world in which the devil deceives and tempts, people harm one another, and our own desires pull us away from what we know is good. The devil does not possess unlimited authority, but he is pictured as an active enemy who prowls, accuses, tempts, and destroys.

The conflict also reaches into our inner lives. Paul describes it with painful honesty:

I delight in the law of God within myself, but I see another law operating in the members of my body, fighting against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin working within me.

Romans 7:22–23

We recognize the struggle.

We can sincerely desire patience and still speak cruelly. We can know that generosity is good while fearing to give. We can resolve to change and then discover how deeply an old habit has taken hold. We can condemn selfishness in someone else while defending it within ourselves.

The body itself is not evil. God created human beings as embodied creatures, and the Christian hope includes the body’s resurrection. The body belongs to our complete humanity.

Nevertheless, our present embodied lives are marked by mortality, weakness, and disordered appetite. Hunger can become gluttony. Sexual desire can become lust. The instinct for self-preservation can become selfishness. The desire for security can become greed.

Nor does sin arise only from physical appetite. Pride, resentment, envy, vanity, and self-deception also take root in the mind. We are influenced by the world around us, attacked by spiritual powers, and divided within ourselves.

We also live under necessity.

We must eat, sleep, work, find shelter, care for our health, and protect ourselves and the people who depend upon us. Satisfying a need today rarely prevents it from returning tomorrow. Our bodies become tired, sick, injured, and old. Much of life is spent maintaining bodies that are continually moving toward death.

Yet we experience real blessings here.

We love and are loved. We discover truth. We receive forgiveness. We experience friendship, beauty, worship, and moments when the presence of God seems near. We watch children grow, see people change, and discover that acts of charity can bring meaning into places of suffering.

The difficulty is that we often demand too much from a present blessing. We want a relationship, achievement, possession, or experience to provide all the happiness and security we will ever need. Then, when the blessing changes or passes away, we feel that goodness itself has abandoned us.

Christian hope teaches us another way to receive.

We can be grateful for what God has placed before us while recognizing that it is not the completion of our story. We can enjoy today without demanding that today become eternity.

Death Does Not Finish the Human Story

Several early Christian writers described death as a temporary separation of soul and body, followed eventually by their reunion in resurrection.

Irenaeus, writing in Lyon in Roman Gaul around AD 180, grounded this expectation in the journey of Jesus himself. His larger argument was directed against Christians who wanted the soul to pass immediately beyond the created order without waiting for bodily resurrection.

He wrote:

Some people who are considered orthodox disregard the proper order by which the righteous advance. They do not understand that there are different stages through which believers are prepared for incorruption. Instead, they hold heretical ideas because they do not know the arrangements God has made for our resurrection.

Christ himself did not rise above the Father. Neither is a disciple above his teacher. If anyone therefore refuses to accept the resurrection as it was revealed through Christ, that person does not know how the Lord himself rose from the dead.

The Lord went away into the region beneath the earth, into the place where the souls of the dead were. Afterward he rose bodily, and following his resurrection he was taken up.

It is therefore evident that the souls of his disciples, for whose sake the Lord underwent these things, will also go after death to the invisible place assigned to them by God. They will remain there until the resurrection, awaiting that event.

Then they will receive their bodies again. They will rise completely, meaning bodily, just as the Lord arose, and in this condition they will come into the presence of God.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.31.1–2, c. AD 180

For Irenaeus, Jesus establishes the pattern.

Jesus died. He entered the region of the dead. He rose bodily. Those who belong to him will follow the same course.

Death does not end the disciple’s existence. The soul continues in the invisible place appointed by God while the body awaits restoration. The intermediate state is real, but it is not the completion of human existence because the resurrection of the body is still ahead.

Tertullian, writing from Carthage in North Africa during the early third century, described a similar sequence. He objected to the idea that the faithful dead bypass Hades and immediately enter the highest heaven:

With us, the lower regions are not believed to be a bare cavity or some open sewer beneath the world. We understand Hades to be a vast and deep place within the interior of the earth, hidden within its own depths.

We read that Christ spent three days in the heart of the earth, meaning in the inward recesses hidden within the earth and enclosed beneath the lower depths.

Although Christ is God, he is also man. According to the Scriptures, he died and was buried. He therefore fulfilled the law of human death by remaining in Hades in the condition of one who had died.

He did not ascend into the heights of heaven before descending into the lower parts of the earth. There he made the patriarchs and prophets participants in himself.

You must therefore understand Hades to be a region beneath the earth. If Christ went there, and if he did not ascend into heaven until after he had descended there, how can anyone suppose that the souls of the faithful deserve a treatment greater than that of Christ and ascend immediately to heaven without waiting in Hades?

Tertullian, On the Soul 55, c. AD 210

Tertullian’s description is more forceful and more physically specific than Irenaeus’s. His larger argument contains details that later Christians would debate. But the basic sequence is clear: death, existence in Hades, resurrection, and the life that follows.

The earliest writers did not treat the separation of soul and body as the final Christian hope.

Humanity was created for embodied life.

The body rests, but it will rise.

A Place Called Abraham’s Bosom

The work attributed to Hippolytus describes Hades as containing distinct regions for the righteous and unrighteous dead. The righteous are conducted toward the right, into a place of light associated with Abraham’s bosom. The unrighteous are kept elsewhere, with the reality of coming judgment before them.

The description of the righteous deserves to be heard in its fuller setting:

Hades is a place within the created world, a region beneath the earth into which the light of this world does not shine. Since the sun does not shine there, darkness must continually remain in that place.

This region has been appointed as a place of custody for souls. Angels are stationed there as guardians, distributing the temporary conditions appropriate to each person’s conduct.

Within this region there is a particular place set apart, a lake of unquenchable fire into which no one has yet been cast. It has been prepared for the day determined by God, when righteous judgment will be pronounced upon everyone.

The righteous and unrighteous are presently kept in Hades, but not in the same place. At the entrance stands an archangel with an army of angels. After the souls have passed through the gate, they do not all continue along the same path.

The righteous are guided toward the right hand, into a region of light. There the righteous from the beginning have lived.

They are no longer ruled by necessity, but continually enjoy the sight of the blessings before them. They delight in expecting other blessings, always new, considering what is coming better than what they presently see.

That place brings them no toil. There is neither oppressive heat nor cold nor thorns. The faces of the fathers and the righteous are always smiling as they await the rest and eternal revival in heaven that will follow this place.

We call this place Abraham’s bosom.

Attributed to Hippolytus, Against Plato, on the Cause of the Universe 1, c. AD 200–235

The precise authorship of this work has been debated, and it circulated under more than one name. It is safest to treat it as an early third-century Christian description traditionally associated with Hippolytus.

The uncertainty surrounding the author does not erase the passage. The text still shows us how an ancient Christian imagined the condition of the righteous between death and resurrection.

They are conscious.

They recognize one another.

They experience fellowship with the fathers and the righteous.

They enjoy the blessings already visible to them.

They are free from oppressive conditions.

They are awaiting resurrection and the life that follows.

And their faces are smiling.

No Longer Ruled by Necessity

One phrase stands at the center of the passage:

They are no longer ruled by necessity.

Our present lives are governed by needs that continually return.

We eat, but hunger returns. We sleep, but tiredness returns. We recover from one illness and remain vulnerable to another. We work to secure our lives, but nothing we accumulate can prevent death.

Necessity also affects our relationships. Fear of scarcity encourages competition. Fear of rejection encourages pretense. Fear of death can make us cling to people and possessions as though we could make them permanent through force of will.

The righteous in Abraham’s bosom are pictured as released from these pressures. There is no oppressive heat or cold. There are no thorns and no exhausting labor. Their happiness is not threatened by the bodily necessities that dominate earthly existence.

The passage does not answer every question about temptation or moral development after death. It does not explicitly explain whether every possible struggle has ended. We should not force it to say more than it says.

But nothing in the description suggests that the righteous remain exposed to the same environment of bodily weakness, spiritual hostility, and fear that governed their earthly lives.

They have entered rest.

That rest does not make them empty or inactive. They see, recognize, enjoy, anticipate, and wait. Their lives have not stopped. A different kind of life has begun.

The Happiness of Anticipation

The righteous do not merely endure the delay before resurrection. They delight in expecting what is coming.

Their anticipation is itself part of their blessedness.

We already know that expectation can produce happiness. Before a journey, we imagine the places we will see. Before a reunion, the thought of being together begins to bring joy before the meeting occurs. Sometimes the weeks of anticipation become part of the treasured experience.

But our anticipation is fragile.

Plans can fail. People can disappoint us. The future can arrive in a form we did not expect. Even when everything goes well, the visit ends, the journey becomes a memory, and we return to ordinary life.

The righteous in Hades await something God has promised.

They do not wonder whether death will defeat them because they have already passed through death and discovered that their lives continued. They do not wonder whether Christ’s promise is stronger than the grave because they now inhabit the world that was previously hidden from them.

The blessing before them strengthens their confidence in the blessing still ahead.

There is a difference between wanting more because we despise what we possess and wanting more because what we possess has taught us to trust the giver.

The first form of desire consumes gratitude. Nothing is ever enough because every present good is measured against something absent.

The second form grows from gratitude. We receive something good, recognize its goodness, and become more eager for the continuing generosity of the one who gave it.

This is the possibility opened by the passage attributed to Hippolytus:

Enjoyment that sustains expectation.

Expectation that deepens enjoyment.

The righteous enjoy the present because it is good, and they welcome the future because they know the goodness of the giver.

Origen: Paradise as a School for Souls

Origen, the Christian teacher associated with Alexandria in Egypt, supplied another way of imagining how life after death could include continuing discovery and joy.

Writing around AD 220–230, he proposed that paradise would be a place of instruction. He did not claim that every detail had been revealed with certainty. His repeated use of phrases such as “I think” and “we should suppose” shows that he was offering a theological proposal.

He wrote:

Some such desire, I believe, was expressed by the person who said, “I am torn between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.”

He knew that when he returned to Christ, he would understand more clearly the reasons for the things that happen upon the earth. He would learn about humanity, the soul, the mind, the work of the Spirit, and the grace of the Holy Spirit given to believers.

He would understand the judgment of divine providence concerning each individual thing. He would learn that nothing happening to human beings occurs merely by accident or chance, but according to a plan so carefully ordered that it does not overlook even the hairs of our heads.

In the present life, this providential order remains a subject of investigation. Then it will be more completely revealed.

We should therefore suppose that considerable time may pass after death while the reasons for the things belonging to this earth are explained to those who are worthy. Through understanding these things and receiving the grace of fuller knowledge, they may experience indescribable joy.

Origen, On First Principles 2.11.5, c. AD 220–230

Origen continues:

I think, therefore, that all the saints who depart from this life will remain in a place Scripture calls paradise. It will be a place of instruction, a classroom or school for souls.

There they will be taught about everything they saw on earth. They will also receive knowledge concerning the things that will follow in the future.

During their earthly lives, they received certain indications of future things, although they saw them only through a mirror and in a dim way. These things will be revealed more clearly and distinctly to the saints at their proper time and place.

If someone is pure in heart, holy in mind, and more practiced in understanding, that person may progress more quickly. Passing through the different dwelling places, the soul will come to understand what occurs in each place and why it occurs.

In this way the saints continue their progress, following the one who passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, who said, “I desire that where I am, they may also be.”

Origen, On First Principles 2.11.6, c. AD 220–230

Origen is not giving us another description of Abraham’s bosom identical to the one attributed to Hippolytus. His account includes its own cosmology, stages of ascent, different dwelling places, and continued instruction.

Its value for our question is more specific.

Origen believed that death would not bring discovery to an end. Questions carried through this life could begin to receive answers. Events that seemed meaningless might be placed within a larger providential order. Knowledge would bring joy, and every new understanding could disclose more of the wisdom of God.

Paradise becomes a place of discovery.

The faithful know truly, and then they learn more.

Irenaeus: God Always Has More to Teach

Irenaeus gives us one of the strongest ancient parallels to the idea that God’s future blessings cannot be exhausted.

His immediate subject is humility.

He is opposing teachers who claim to possess complete knowledge of God’s hidden mysteries. Irenaeus argues that creatures should not be ashamed to admit that some things remain known only to God. Human beings cannot exhaust the meaning of creation, Scripture, or God himself.

Then he carries that humility into the world to come:

Even with respect to creation, there are some things whose knowledge belongs only to God, while other things fall within the range of human understanding.

Why, then, should anyone complain if, while investigating the Scriptures, which are entirely spiritual, we are able through the grace of God to explain some questions but must leave others in the hands of God?

This will be true not only in the present world but also in the world that is coming, so that God will always be teaching and humanity will always be learning what God teaches.

As the apostle said, when other things have passed away, these three will remain: faith, hope, and love.

Faith in our Master will remain firm, continually assuring us that there is one true God and that we should love him forever because he alone is our Father.

Hope will also remain, because we will continually expect to receive more and more from God and to learn from him.

We will continue expecting more because God is good, because his riches have no limit, because his kingdom has no end, and because his instruction can never be exhausted.

If we therefore leave certain questions in the hands of God, we will preserve our faith without injury and continue without danger. All Scripture given to us by God will be found harmonious. The parables will agree with the clear passages, and the passages whose meaning is clear will help explain the parables.

Through the many different expressions of Scripture, one harmonious melody will be heard within us, praising in hymns the God who created everything.

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.28.3, c. AD 180

Irenaeus is not describing Hades here. He is describing the relationship between the infinite God and the finite creature, both now and in the coming world.

His conclusion is extraordinary.

God will always teach.

Humanity will always learn.

We will continually expect to receive more because God’s riches cannot be exhausted.

This is the larger theology that helps us interpret the image in Hippolytus. The righteous can enjoy what is before them while expecting something better because the giver remains greater than every gift already received.

Their future remains open because God remains inexhaustible.

Macrina: Blessing Enlarges the Recipient

In the late fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa recorded a dialogue with his sister Macrina as she approached death.

Gregory had been grieving the death of their brother Basil. When he arrived to see Macrina in Pontus, in what is now Turkey, he found her weak and near death. She responded to his grief by leading him through an extended discussion of the soul, death, purification, resurrection, and the goodness of God.

We should read the work carefully. We do not possess a transcript written as they spoke, nor do we possess a theological treatise written directly by Macrina. Gregory composed the dialogue and placed the teaching in the voice of the sister he honored as “the Teacher.”

Whether every argument preserves Macrina’s exact language or reflects Gregory’s literary development of their conversation, he deliberately presents this vision through the woman he regarded as his spiritual teacher.

In one remarkable passage, Macrina describes intelligent beings as vessels created to receive the blessings of God:

You do not yet understand the purpose toward which every part of God’s ordering of the universe is moving. Everything must be brought into harmony with the divine nature according to the wise design of the Creator.

Intelligent beings came into existence so that the riches of divine blessing would not remain without recipients.

The wisdom that created everything fashioned souls as living vessels possessing free will. They were made capable of receiving God’s blessings and of becoming continually larger as the stream of goodness flows into them.

This is what participation in divine blessing accomplishes. It makes the person receiving it larger and more capable.

The capacity to receive becomes an actual increase within the recipient. The person does not remain the same size after receiving from God.

The fountain of blessing flows without ceasing. The recipient’s nature finds nothing useless in what it receives. Everything entering the soul becomes part of its enlargement.

The soul therefore becomes more eager to receive the higher nourishment and more capable of containing it.

Both grow together: the capacity nourished by the abundance of blessings and the supply of goodness that continues to flow in proportion to those expanding powers.

No limit can be found that would bring this growth to an end.

Gregory of Nyssa, placing this teaching in the voice of Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection, c. AD 380

Gregory then has Macrina connect this enlargement of the soul with death and the restoration of the body:

With such a future before us, why are you angry that our nature advances toward its goal along the path appointed for it?

We cannot complete this journey unless the weight that presently burdens the soul is first removed. Nor can we enter the purity suited to our true nature unless we are cleansed from the attachment we formed during life toward what is earthly and corruptible.

But if your attachment to the body causes you sorrow, and if separation from this beloved companion fills you with pain, do not despair.

You will see this bodily covering, which death now dissolves, woven together again from the same elements. It will not return with its present grossness and heaviness. Its composition will be restored in a more refined and glorious condition.

The body you love will be returned to you with a brighter and more beautiful form.

Gregory of Nyssa, placing this teaching in the voice of Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection, c. AD 380

This is one of the clearest ancient expressions of the idea we are exploring.

God pours blessing into the person.

The person receives and enjoys it.

The blessing changes the person by enlarging the capacity to receive.

The enlarged person becomes capable of receiving more.

The next blessing does not erase the former blessing. It builds upon it. What was previously received becomes part of the person’s expanding capacity for God.

The soul does not move forward because the previous blessing failed. It moves forward because the previous blessing succeeded.

It awakened a greater capacity to recognize, desire, and receive goodness.

Resurrection: Humanity Restored and Enlarged

The righteous in the intermediate state have not yet received the completion of embodied human life.

Death has separated what God created to exist together. Resurrection heals that separation.

Macrina defines resurrection this way:

Resurrection is the reconstitution of our nature in its original form.

In the form of life created by God, there was no aging or infancy, none of the sufferings arising from our present weakness, and no bodily affliction. It is reasonable to believe that God was not the creator of these conditions. They entered human life with corruption.

When our nature is restored to its original form, it will be delivered from everything that became attached to it through corruption.

Gregory of Nyssa, placing this teaching in the voice of Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection, c. AD 380

Paul describes the transformation:

What is sown is perishable, but it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, but it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, but it is raised in power. It is sown as a natural body, but it is raised as a spiritual body.

1 Corinthians 15:42–44

The sequence moves from corruption to incorruption, weakness to power, and dishonor to glory.

A spiritual body does not mean an unreal body. It means a body transformed and brought fully under the life-giving power of the Spirit.

The resurrected body no longer moves toward death. It no longer burdens the human person through disease, deterioration, exhaustion, or disordered appetite. Soul and body are reunited, but their relationship has been healed.

At resurrection, we do not become less human.

We become human in a form closer to what God intended humanity to be.

Judgment belongs to this transition as well. The Christian hope does not make our conduct irrelevant. The New Testament repeatedly says that every person, including the Christian, will answer for how he or she has lived.

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each person may receive what is due for what was done through the body, whether good or evil.

2 Corinthians 5:10

Everything hidden will be brought into the light. Evil will be exposed. Faithfulness will be revealed. Wrongs will not disappear into history without an answer.

For the righteous, judgment also includes vindication. The God who saw every hidden act of love, every resisted temptation, every sacrifice, and every suffering endured in faithfulness will reveal the truth.

Resurrection and judgment therefore mark a tremendous transition in human existence.

In Hades, the righteous enjoy rest, fellowship, and anticipation while separated from their bodies.

At resurrection, the whole human person is restored. The body is returned, healed, transformed, and made capable of participating in life without corruption.

Human joy is not reduced.

Its capacity is greatly enlarged.

Resurrection Does Not Exhaust the Future

Resurrection is a decisive restoration, but it does not exhaust the goodness of God.

The resurrected person possesses a greater capacity for life, knowledge, communion, and joy. Yet even glorified humanity remains created, while God remains infinite.

No created mind can reach the end of God’s wisdom.

No created person can exhaust his beauty.

No experience can contain the entirety of his goodness.

This is where Irenaeus’s vision of God always teaching and humanity always learning becomes important. Resurrection is not the moment when God has nothing further to disclose. It brings the human person into a condition better suited to receive.

The resurrection of the body can therefore be understood as another great enlargement.

The person becomes more fully alive and therefore more capable of participating in the life of God.

Gregory of Nyssa: The Desire to See More

Gregory of Nyssa developed this vision further in The Life of Moses.

Moses repeatedly encounters God, but every encounter draws him further. He receives what God reveals, yet what he sees awakens a still greater desire. His progress does not end because the God toward whom he moves has no boundary.

Gregory writes:

The divine nature is unlimited, so it cannot be completely grasped. Nothing can measure it, and no boundary can be found around it.

Therefore, the desire of the person who seeks God does not stop after one discovery. Every good that the soul receives produces a desire for a still greater good.

The soul continually moves forward. Every step already completed becomes the beginning of another ascent.

The person rising toward God never stops beginning again. The desire for the good continually expands with every new participation in it.

This is the true vision of God: never becoming satisfied in the desire to see him. By looking at what can presently be seen, the soul continually rekindles its desire to see more.

No boundary can stop its growth toward God because no limit can be found in the Beautiful. Increasing desire for the Beautiful is never brought to an end by satisfaction.

Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses 2.231–239, c. AD 390

This is not specifically a description of Hades. Gregory is describing the soul’s movement toward God and using Moses as the pattern.

But his explanation helps us understand how complete enjoyment and continuing growth can belong together.

The soul does not abandon one blessing because it proved inadequate. The blessing reveals a goodness still greater than the soul could previously comprehend.

Every arrival becomes another beginning.

Gregory the Great: Satisfied While Still Desiring

A later Christian writer expressed the relationship between satisfaction and desire with particular clarity.

Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome at the end of the sixth century, considered how the angels could already behold God while still desiring to behold him.

Scripture says that the angels continually see the face of God. It also says that they desire to look into the mysteries of salvation. Gregory asks how both statements can be true.

He answers:

The angels both see God and desire to see him. They thirst to behold him, and they behold him.

If they desired to see God but never received what they desired, their desire would contain anxiety without fulfillment. Such anxiety would be a form of suffering, and suffering cannot belong to perfect blessedness.

But if we say that the angels are satisfied by the vision of God, we must also consider whether satisfaction might produce weariness or disgust.

Therefore, so that desire contains no anxiety, they are satisfied while they desire. And so that satisfaction produces no weariness, they continue desiring while they are satisfied.

They desire without suffering because fulfillment accompanies their desire. They are satisfied without boredom because their satisfaction continually kindles further desire.

This is how we too shall be when we reach the fountain of life.

We shall experience thirst and satisfaction together. There will be no painful need in our thirst and no weariness in our satisfaction.

Even while thirsting, we shall be satisfied. Even while satisfied, we shall continue to thirst.

We shall see God, and this vision will be the reward of our labor. After the darkness of this mortal condition, we will rejoice as we draw near to his light.

Gregory the Great, Morals on the Book of Job 18.91, c. AD 590

Gregory is describing heavenly blessedness broadly rather than the intermediate state.

His contribution is to explain how enjoyment and continuing desire can coexist without contradiction.

In our present experience, desire can hurt because something good is absent. Satisfaction can also decay into boredom because we become accustomed to what we possess.

Gregory imagines desire freed from absence and satisfaction freed from boredom.

The blessed possess what they love, but possessing it does not exhaust its beauty. Enjoyment continually awakens deeper enjoyment.

A Christian Vision of the Human Journey

These sources do not give us one uniform map written by a single author.

Hippolytus describes the righteous in Hades.

Origen imagines paradise as a school for souls.

Irenaeus says that God will always teach and humanity will always learn.

Gregory of Nyssa presents human beings as vessels enlarged through receiving divine blessing.

Gregory the Great explains how satisfaction and desire can remain alive together.

By bringing these passages into conversation, we can construct a coherent Christian vision of the human journey.

We begin in a world where blessing is experienced amid conflict. We contend with spiritual enemies, social pressures, bodily weakness, disordered desires, suffering, and death. Through Christ, we learn to trust the goodness of God even when that goodness cannot be read clearly from every event in nature.

At death, the body returns to the earth and rests. The conscious soul enters the invisible place appointed by God. In the early Christian picture we have examined, the righteous are released from many of the bodily necessities and hostile conditions of the present world. They enter fellowship with the righteous, enjoy the blessings before them, and delight in what remains ahead.

At resurrection, the human person is restored as an embodied being. The body is not merely returned in its former weakness. It is transformed. Corruption gives way to incorruption, weakness to power, and mortality to immortality.

Judgment brings every human life into the light. Evil is exposed, faithfulness is revealed, and the righteous enter more fully into the life God has promised.

Yet even resurrection does not exhaust the riches of God.

The whole person has been restored and enlarged, making a deeper experience of life possible. The blessed continue receiving from the God whose instruction, goodness, and beauty have no limit.

The pattern continues:

God gives.

We receive.

Receiving enlarges us.

Our enlargement makes us capable of receiving more.

The blessing before us strengthens our confidence in the blessing still ahead.

Can This Life Begin Now?

Something of this pattern can begin before we die.

Gregory the Great explained why spiritual blessings differ from bodily pleasures:

Bodily pleasures often awaken strong desire before we possess them. But after they are obtained and consumed, satisfaction can quickly turn into weariness.

Spiritual pleasures work differently. When they are unknown, we may feel little desire for them. But once they are experienced, they awaken greater desire.

With bodily pleasures, appetite produces satisfaction, and satisfaction can produce disgust. With spiritual pleasures, appetite produces satisfaction, and satisfaction produces appetite.

Spiritual delights increase desire within the soul even while satisfying it. The more their sweetness is experienced, the more clearly the soul recognizes something worthy of greater love.

Gregory the Great, Homilies on the Gospels 36.1, c. AD 591

We already know experiences that resemble this.

Learning to appreciate music enables us to hear more within it. Knowing another person more deeply can enlarge our capacity to love. Receiving forgiveness can make us more capable of extending mercy. Practicing charity can awaken us to needs we previously failed to notice.

A spiritual blessing does more than give us a pleasant moment. It can change the kind of person who receives it.

This is how we can begin practicing the life we hope to experience more fully after death.

We receive a moment of understanding and allow it to encourage further study.

We receive forgiveness and allow it to awaken a deeper desire for holiness.

We experience Christian fellowship and allow it to enlarge our love for people beyond our familiar circle.

We perform an act of charity and become more attentive to the suffering around us.

We encounter Christ by faith and desire to know him more.

Gratitude and expectation begin growing together.

This does not mean expecting every earthly circumstance to improve. Christian hope has room for grief, unanswered questions, physical decline, and days when joy is difficult to feel. Illness may worsen. Relationships may remain broken. Faithfulness may cost us something we wanted to keep.

Our confidence concerns the future revealed through Jesus.

His resurrection gives us reason to believe that suffering and death cannot determine the final condition of those who belong to him.

Because our future does not end here, we can receive a present blessing without demanding that it provide everything. We can mourn what passes away without concluding that all goodness has ended. We can remain attentive to our present responsibilities while trusting that the story continues beyond what we see.

This hope should also make us more generous.

If God’s future is abundant, we do not have to clutch every present possession as though it were our final opportunity for happiness. We can share our time, resources, knowledge, and attention.

The communion we anticipate among the righteous is something we can begin practicing now through patience, reconciliation, hospitality, and charity.

We prepare for the life of love by learning to love.

The Faces of the Righteous Are Smiling

Return once more to the original image.

The righteous are together.

They are no longer ruled by necessity.

They enjoy blessings already before them.

Their faces are smiling.

And the prospect of further blessing adds to their happiness.

It is a picture worth carrying when we think about death. It invites us to imagine a future in which gratitude and expectation no longer struggle against each other. What is present can be enjoyed fully, and what is coming can be welcomed without fear.

Resurrection belongs to that future as the restoration and transformation of the whole person. Judgment reveals the truth and sets creation right. Beyond that transition stands the inexhaustible God.

Irenaeus tells us that God will always teach and humanity will always learn.

Gregory’s account of Macrina gives us the image of recipients enlarged by everything they receive.

Gregory of Nyssa shows us every arrival becoming another beginning.

Gregory the Great describes satisfaction that keeps desire alive.

Together, these passages allow us to express a profound Christian hope:

We can be completely satisfied without reaching the end of God’s generosity.

That conviction can shape the way we receive this day.

We can notice what is good, give thanks for it, and allow it to enlarge our capacity for love. We can share what we receive rather than anxiously trying to secure every possible happiness for ourselves. We can face death without pretending to understand every detail of what lies beyond it.

And we can entrust what remains hidden to the God made known in Jesus Christ.

The blessing before us is worth enjoying.

The blessing ahead is worth anticipating.

God is not finished.

Christ Went First: What the Resurrection Reveals About Our Future

/ Jason Conrad / Leave a comment

Human beings have always wondered what happens when we die.

Some have imagined that the dead continue as shadows. Some have believed that the soul leaves the body and enters another world. Some have described places of reward and punishment. Others have concluded that death ends consciousness completely.

Christianity enters that ancient conversation with a different kind of claim.

It does not begin with a philosopher reasoning his way toward the afterlife. It does not begin with a poet imagining the world below. It does not even begin with Jesus giving his followers a complete description of everything they will experience after death.

It begins with Jesus himself.

Christians believe that Jesus entered human life, truly died, passed into the condition of the dead, and rose again in the body. He did not merely offer an opinion about what might happen. He went first.

That does not mean Christians understand everything about death. It means they believe that death has already been entered, crossed, and overcome by the one they follow.

This study will not answer every question about Hades, paradise, judgment, or the condition of the dead between death and resurrection. Those questions require careful studies of their own. This study establishes the foundation from which all of those questions must be approached.

Before attempting to map the world of the dead, we must begin with the one Christians believe entered it and returned.

Jesus showed us what is coming, even where he did not explain every detail.

He Brought Life and Incorruption to Light

One of the most powerful statements in the New Testament appears in Second Timothy:

“God saved us and called us with a holy calling, not because of anything we had done, but according to his own purpose and grace. This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus. He rendered death powerless and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.”

Second Timothy 1:9–10, first or early second century

The letter presents itself as written by Paul, although its authorship and precise date are disputed. For the present question, that dispute does not take away the importance of the passage. If Paul wrote it, this is an apostolic statement from the first century. If it was written somewhat later by an early Christian within the Pauline tradition, it still shows how ancient Christians understood the significance of Jesus.

The passage does not say that Jesus invented the idea of life after death. Jewish and Greek writers had been discussing death for centuries. It says that Jesus brought life and incorruption into the light.

Something that had been hidden, uncertain, or seen only dimly had now become visible.

The word often translated “immortality” can also be rendered “incorruption.” It does not merely mean that some invisible part of us continues to exist. It points toward life that can no longer decay, deteriorate, or die.

Jesus brought that life into the light because Christians believed that it had appeared in him.

He died, but death did not keep him.

His body was buried, but his body was not abandoned to decay.

He rose, not merely by returning to the mortal life he had before, but by entering a life over which death no longer had authority.

This is also why saying that Christ “abolished death” cannot mean that people immediately stopped dying. Christians continued to die. The apostles died. The people who first read Second Timothy died. We continue to bury those we love.

Death was rendered powerless in the sense that its final authority was broken. Death remained an enemy, but it was no longer an undefeated enemy. Its end had been revealed in advance.

Christianity Places the Claim in History

A critic is entitled to ask whether Jesus actually rose.

Christianity cannot claim that Jesus demonstrated victory over death and then protect that claim from historical examination. If he remained dead, the entire argument collapses. Christian confidence about what comes after death depends upon what happened to Jesus within history.

That is why the earliest surviving Christian letters matter so much. They show that resurrection was not a decorative belief added after Christianity had already developed. It was the proclamation around which the movement understood itself.

Paul reminds the Corinthians of the message he had received and passed on to them:

“I handed on to you, as of first importance, what I had also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve.

After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom were still alive, though some had died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared also to me.”

First Corinthians 15:3–8, c. AD 54–55

Paul is not discussing a general hope that the soul survives death. He is handing on a proclamation about a particular person. Jesus died. Jesus was buried. Jesus was raised. Jesus appeared to named people and groups.

The Christian claim can be investigated because it is attached to history. We can ask how early this proclamation arose. We can ask what Paul believed he experienced. We can ask why Cephas, James, Paul, and the other followers became convinced that Jesus had appeared to them alive.

The evidence must be examined honestly. But we should also understand what the evidence is evidence for. The earliest Christians were not merely claiming that the teachings of Jesus lived on after him. They believed that Jesus himself had passed through death and returned.

If that claim is false, Jesus did not show us what comes after death.

If that claim is true, death has been entered and overcome within human history.

The Firstfruits of Those Who Have Died

Second Timothy says that Jesus brought life and incorruption to light. First Corinthians explains why his resurrection reveals something about our own future.

Paul calls Christ the “firstfruits” of the dead:

“But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have died. Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being. As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

But each will rise in the proper order: Christ the firstfruits, and then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands the kingdom over to God the Father, after destroying every ruler and every authority and power.

He must reign until God has placed every enemy under his feet. The final enemy to be destroyed is death.”

First Corinthians 15:20–26, c. AD 54–55

Firstfruits are not an isolated crop. They are the beginning of the harvest.

When Paul calls Christ the firstfruits, he is saying that the resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of what will happen to those who belong to him. Christ rises first. His people rise when he comes.

That is the pattern.

Jesus is not simply one exceptional person who escaped death while everyone else faces a different destiny. His resurrection begins the resurrection of humanity. What happened to him reveals what God intends to do for those who belong to him.

This does not mean that every detail of Jesus’s experience will be repeated identically in every person. We are not crucified under Pontius Pilate. We do not remain dead for exactly three days. We do not become the Savior of the world.

The shared pattern is more fundamental:

  1. Jesus truly died, and we truly die.
  2. Jesus was not erased by death, and those who belong to him are not lost to him in death.
  3. Jesus rose bodily, and the dead will be raised.
  4. Jesus entered incorruptible life, and our mortal bodies will be transformed.
  5. Jesus’s resurrection began the defeat of death, and death itself will finally be destroyed.

The firstfruits tell us what kind of harvest is coming.

His Body Shows Us the Future of Ours

The Christian hope is not merely that the mind or soul will continue somewhere after the body dies. Paul directs attention to the body of the risen Christ.

He writes to the Philippians:

“Our citizenship is in heaven, and from there we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform our lowly body so that it will be conformed to his glorious body, by the power through which he is able to bring all things under his rule.”

Philippians 3:20–21, c. AD 60–61

Paul does not say that Christ will permanently remove us from bodily existence. He says that Christ will transform our bodies so that they correspond to his glorious body.

Jesus is once again the pattern.

Christ’s resurrection does not teach us that bodies are disposable prisons from which souls must escape. It teaches us that God can take a mortal body, raise it, transform it, and fill it with a life no longer subject to death.

Paul develops the same thought at greater length in First Corinthians:

“So it is with the resurrection of the dead. 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. It is sown as a natural body; it is raised as a spiritual body.

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. As it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being.’ The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit. But the spiritual did not come first. The natural came first, and afterward the spiritual.

The first man was from the earth and made of dust. The second man is from heaven. Those who belong to the dust are like the man of dust, and those who belong to heaven are like the man from heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man from heaven.”

First Corinthians 15:42–49, c. AD 54–55

A “spiritual body” does not mean no body. Paul’s contrast is not between something physical and something nonexistent. It is between the body as it now exists, mortal and perishable, and the body as it will exist when animated and transformed by God’s Spirit.

The body is not discarded. It is raised.

Weakness gives way to power. Dishonor gives way to glory. Corruption gives way to incorruption. The image of Adam gives way to the image of the risen Christ.

This is what Jesus brought into the light.

“Since We Believe That Jesus Died and Rose Again”

The same logic appears in one of Paul’s earliest letters.

Christians in Thessalonica were grieving because members of their community had died before Christ returned. They feared that the dead might somehow miss the kingdom for which they had been waiting.

Paul does not answer by giving them a complete description of Hades. He points them back to Jesus:

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to remain uninformed about those who have died, so that you do not grieve like those who have no hope.

Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we also believe that through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. This we declare to you by a word of the Lord: we who remain alive until the Lord’s coming will certainly not precede those who have died.

The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a commanding cry, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. The dead in Christ will rise first. Then those of us who remain alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. In this way we will always be with the Lord.

Therefore, encourage one another with these words.”

First Thessalonians 4:13–18, c. AD 50–51

The entire consolation rests upon one sentence: “Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again.”

Paul does not tell the grieving Christians that death is harmless. He does not tell them to stop grieving. He tells them not to grieve as people without hope because the death and resurrection of Jesus have changed what their own deaths mean.

The dead have not missed the future. When Christ comes, the dead in Christ rise first.

Once again, Jesus’s resurrection is not merely evidence that unusual things can happen. It is the ground of the Christian expectation that the dead will rise.

Christ went first. Those who belong to him follow.

Rome to Corinth: Clement Repeats the Firstfruits

This way of reasoning did not disappear when Paul died.

Around the end of the first century, the church at Rome sent a letter to the church at Corinth. The letter is traditionally associated with Clement of Rome. It shows Christians in one of the empire’s greatest western cities writing to Christians in Greece and repeating the same resurrection pattern Paul had proclaimed to that congregation decades earlier.

“Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord continually shows us that there will be a future resurrection. He made the Lord Jesus Christ the firstfruits of that resurrection by raising him from the dead.

Let us consider the resurrection that takes place continually before our eyes. Day and night show us a resurrection. The night falls asleep, and the day arises. The day departs, and the night returns.

Let us consider the crops. The sower goes out and casts seed into the ground. The seeds fall into the earth dry and bare, and there they dissolve. But from their dissolution, the mighty providence of the Lord raises them again. From one seed, many more grow and produce fruit.”

Clement of Rome, First Clement 24, c. AD 96

Clement does not present the resurrection of Jesus as an isolated miracle. He calls Jesus the firstfruits of the future resurrection.

Paul had used that language in Corinth around AD 55. Several decades later, Christians in Rome could use the same language when writing back to Corinth.

Clement sees the death and resurrection of Jesus as the beginning of a much greater work. Just as the first growth from the earth promises the harvest still to come, the risen Jesus promises the resurrection of the dead.

Antioch to Asia Minor: Ignatius Insists That Jesus Rose in the Flesh

Only a few years later, Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch in Syria, traveled through Asia Minor as a prisoner on his way to execution in Rome. During that journey, he wrote to several churches.

Ignatius was confronting people who said that Jesus only appeared to possess a body and only appeared to suffer. Against them, he insisted that the death and resurrection of Jesus happened in reality:

“I glorify Jesus Christ, the God who made you wise. I know that you have been completed in an unshakable faith, nailed in body and spirit to the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, and established in love by the blood of Christ.

You are fully convinced concerning our Lord that he truly came from the family of David according to the flesh, while being the Son of God according to the will and power of God. He was truly born from a virgin. He was baptized by John so that all righteousness might be fulfilled by him. Under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, he was truly nailed to the cross for us in the flesh. From the fruit of that divinely blessed suffering, we receive our life.

He suffered all these things for our sake so that we might be saved. He truly suffered, just as he also truly raised himself. His suffering was not merely an appearance, as some unbelievers claim.

I know and believe that after his resurrection he was still in the flesh. When he came to those who were with Peter, he said to them, ‘Take hold of me and touch me. See that I am not a bodiless spirit.’ They touched him and believed, being convinced by both his flesh and his spirit.

Because of this, they also despised death and became conquerors over it. After his resurrection, he ate and drank with them as one who possessed flesh, although spiritually he was united with the Father.”

Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 1–3, c. AD 107

Ignatius will not allow the resurrection to become an idea detached from the body of Jesus.

Jesus truly suffered. Jesus truly died. Jesus truly rose. He could be touched. He ate and drank with his disciples. The one who emerged from death was the same Jesus who had entered it.

Ignatius then makes a remarkable connection between the disciples’ conviction and their courage. Because they encountered Jesus alive in the flesh, “they also despised death and became conquerors over it.”

The resurrection did not merely answer an intellectual question. It changed how they faced their own deaths.

Jesus had shown them that death was not the end.

The Prophets Awaited Their Teacher

In another letter from the same journey, Ignatius makes an even more astonishing statement. He is discussing the new hope that has appeared in Christ and the life Christians now share through his death and resurrection:

“If those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come into the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath but living according to the Lord’s Day, on which our life arose through him and through his death, how can we live apart from him?

Even the prophets were his disciples in the Spirit and awaited him as their Teacher. Therefore, the one for whom they rightly waited came and raised them from the dead.”

Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Magnesians 9, c. AD 107

This passage deserves more attention than we can give it here.

Ignatius does not portray the prophets merely as members of an unrelated religion who happened to predict a later Christian Messiah. He calls them disciples of Christ in the Spirit. They lived before the earthly ministry of Jesus, but they already belonged to the history that reached its fulfillment in him. They awaited Christ as their Teacher, and when he came, Ignatius says, he raised them from the dead.

This resembles a pattern already visible in Paul. Abraham belongs to the family of faith. The promise came before the law. Those who live by faith are called the children of Abraham. Israel’s Scriptures become the story that reaches its center and fulfillment in Christ.

Ignatius’s brief statement opens several enormous questions. In what sense could the prophets be disciples of Christ before his birth? What did Ignatius believe Christ did among the dead? Whom did Christ raise? How did early Christians understand the faithful people who lived before Jesus?

Those questions deserve a separate study. For the present argument, the passage shows that very early in the second century, Ignatius understood Christ’s victory over death to reach backward as well as forward. Christ was not only the hope of those who came after him. He was the Teacher and hope of the faithful who had awaited him before his coming.

Smyrna to Philippi: God Will Raise Us as He Raised Jesus

Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor, wrote to the church in Philippi in Macedonia. Once again, the same resurrection pattern appears:

“Believe in the one who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead and gave him glory and a throne at his right hand. Everything in heaven and on earth was subjected to him. Every living creature serves him. He is coming as the Judge of the living and the dead, and God will require his blood from those who refuse to believe in him.

The one who raised him from the dead will also raise us, if we do his will, walk in his commandments, and love what he loved. Therefore, we must keep ourselves from all unrighteousness, greed, love of money, evil speech, and false testimony. We must not return evil for evil, insult for insult, blow for blow, or curse for curse.

Instead, we must remember what the Lord taught: ‘Do not judge, so that you will not be judged. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Be merciful, so that you may receive mercy. The measure you use will be measured back to you.’ And again: ‘Blessed are the poor and those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of God.’”

Polycarp of Smyrna, Letter to the Philippians 2, c. AD 110–140

Polycarp states the pattern with beautiful simplicity: “The one who raised him from the dead will also raise us.”

But notice what Polycarp does next. He immediately connects resurrection hope with the way Christians live.

The God who raised Jesus will raise us if we do his will, walk in his commandments, and love what Jesus loved. Polycarp then names the conduct that must be rejected and recalls the commands of Jesus concerning judgment, forgiveness, and mercy.

For Polycarp, resurrection is not merely information about what will happen after death. It places the Christian under the authority of the risen Jesus, who will return as Judge of the living and the dead.

If we expect to be raised as Jesus was raised, then we must learn to live as Jesus lived.

The future resurrection creates a present obligation.

Justin Presents the Resurrection to the Roman World

By the middle of the second century, Justin Martyr presented the Christian hope directly to the Roman emperor and the educated pagan world.

Justin did not pretend that the resurrection of the body was easy for everyone to believe. He knew that many people considered it impossible. He therefore began with ideas and practices already familiar to his pagan readers:

“Consider the deaths of the rulers who came before you. They all died the death common to humanity. If death ended in complete unconsciousness, that would be a great advantage to every wicked person.

But consciousness remains for those who have lived, and punishment is prepared for the wicked. Do not neglect being persuaded that these things are true.

Consider even the practices familiar to you: necromancy, the calling up of departed human souls, those whom magicians call dream-senders and assisting spirits, people seized and disturbed by the spirits of the dead, the oracles you honor, and the teachings of your own writers, including Empedocles, Pythagoras, Plato, and Socrates. Consider also Homer’s pit and the descent of Odysseus to see the dead, along with everything else of this kind.

Give us the same hearing you give to them, because we believe in God more firmly than they do. We expect to receive our own bodies again, even though they have died and been placed in the earth, because we maintain that nothing is impossible for God.

If we did not already possess bodies, and someone showed us a small drop of human seed and a picture of a fully formed person, saying that such a person could develop from that tiny beginning, would we believe it before seeing it happen? No one would dare to say that such a claim would be easy to believe.

In the same way, because you have never seen a dead person rise, you now assume that resurrection is impossible. But just as you would not originally have believed that complete human beings could develop from such small beginnings, yet now see that it happens, you should recognize that bodies which have died and been scattered into the earth can, at God’s command, rise again and put on incorruption.”

Justin Martyr, First Apology 18–19, c. AD 155

Some of Justin’s examples reflect the beliefs and practices of his own world. His central argument, however, is clear.

Christians do not merely expect their souls to continue existing. They expect to receive their own bodies again.

Justin also distinguishes between two questions that Christians sometimes confuse. One question is whether some conscious aspect of the person continues after death. Another is whether the complete human being will be raised.

For Justin, the survival of the soul is not yet the resurrection. Resurrection occurs when God restores the complete human person and clothes the body with incorruption.

Justin is speaking to critics, not hiding the Christian claim from them. He knows it sounds astonishing. He asks them to consider whether the God who produced the body in the first place is unable to raise it after death.

Irenaeus: We Will Be Raised in the Flesh

By the late second century, Irenaeus was serving as bishop of Lyons in Gaul, far to the west of the churches of Syria and Asia Minor.

Irenaeus had grown up in Asia Minor and remembered hearing Polycarp. He therefore joins several regions of the early Christian world. He knew the churches of Asia Minor, ministered in Gaul, and communicated with the church at Rome.

When Irenaeus defended the resurrection of the body, he again reasoned from what happened to Jesus:

“Some people say that the one who was raised was a different Christ from the one who died. But there is only one Christ, who suffered and rose again.

The apostle says, ‘If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is empty and your faith is empty.’

Since Christ rose in our flesh, it follows that we will also be raised in the same flesh. The resurrection promised to us does not refer to spirits that are naturally immortal, but to bodies that are mortal in themselves.”

Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 5.7.1, c. AD 180

Irenaeus sees the connection as unavoidable.

Christ rose in human flesh. Therefore, human beings will be raised in the flesh.

The resurrection cannot refer merely to the continued existence of a spirit, because a spirit that continues after death has not been bodily raised. Resurrection concerns what was mortal. It concerns what died.

What happened to the body of Jesus reveals what God will do with ours.

Irenaeus: The Disciples Follow the Master

Irenaeus then takes the pattern one step further.

First Corinthians clearly establishes Christ as the firstfruits of the future resurrection. It says less about the condition of the dead while they await that resurrection. Irenaeus uses the experience of Jesus to explain what he believes happens to Christ’s disciples between death and resurrection.

As you read, notice how many times Irenaeus moves from what happened to Jesus toward what will happen to his disciples:

“If the Lord followed the law of the dead so that he might become the firstborn from the dead, and if he remained until the third day in the lower parts of the earth, and afterward rose in the flesh, even showing the marks of the nails to his disciples, and then ascended to the Father, how can those people avoid error who say that the ‘lower parts’ refer only to this world and that the inner person leaves the body here and immediately ascends beyond the heavens?

The Lord went into the midst of the shadow of death, where the souls of the dead were. Afterward he rose in the body, and after his resurrection he was taken up into heaven.

It is therefore clear that the souls of his disciples, for whose sake the Lord underwent these things, will also go into the invisible place assigned to them by God. They will remain there until the resurrection, awaiting that event.

Then they will receive their bodies and rise completely, that is, bodily, just as the Lord arose. In this way they will come into the presence of God.

For no disciple is above the Master, but everyone who is fully trained will be like the Master. Our Master did not immediately fly away to heaven. He awaited the time of his resurrection appointed by the Father, which had also been foreshadowed through Jonah. After rising on the third day, he was taken up into heaven.

In the same way, we should await the time of our resurrection appointed by God and foretold by the prophets. Then, when we rise, those whom the Lord considers worthy will be taken up.”

Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 5.31.2, c. AD 180

Irenaeus could hardly make the pattern clearer.

The Lord died and went where the dead were. The Lord remained there until his resurrection. The Lord rose bodily and ascended.

Therefore, Irenaeus says, the disciples also pass into the invisible place assigned by God. They remain there while awaiting resurrection. Then they receive their bodies and rise completely, just as the Lord arose.

Irenaeus is not merely speculating about the soul. He is reasoning from Christ.

The disciples follow the Master.

We should still distinguish Irenaeus’s interpretation of the intermediate state from the earliest proclamation itself. First Corinthians clearly says that Christ is the firstfruits and that those who belong to him will be raised. It does not give the same description of the invisible waiting place that Irenaeus provides.

That distinction does not make Irenaeus’s testimony unimportant. It helps us see exactly what he is doing. He takes the accepted resurrection pattern and extends it into an explanation of what happens between death and resurrection.

That explanation will become important when we turn directly to Hades and the condition of the dead.

One Pattern Across the Christian World

Look at how widely this conviction appears.

Paul wrote to Corinth in Greece and to communities in Macedonia and Rome. Clement wrote from Rome back to Corinth. Ignatius traveled from Antioch in Syria through Asia Minor, writing to churches as he went. Polycarp wrote from Smyrna in Asia Minor to Philippi in Macedonia. Justin was born in Samaria and later presented the resurrection to the Roman world. Irenaeus came from Asia Minor and eventually served the church in Lyons in Gaul.

These writers did not answer every question about death in exactly the same way. We should not pretend that they left us one perfectly developed map of Hades or the intermediate state.

But beneath their developing explanations stands a remarkably stable center:

Jesus truly died. God truly raised him. He rose in the body. His resurrection defeated the finality of death. Those who belong to him will also be raised. Their bodies will be transformed into incorruptible life. The risen Jesus will judge the living and the dead.

Therefore, resurrection hope must transform the way Christians live now.

From Greece to Rome, from Syria to Asia Minor, from Macedonia to Gaul, Christians continued to return to the same event and the same person.

Christ went first. His people would follow.

What Jesus Showed and What He Did Not Explain

At this point, we need to resist two opposite mistakes.

The first mistake is to say that because we do not understand every stage after death, we therefore know nothing.

The second is to take scattered biblical images and later Christian explanations and turn them into a detailed map that the earliest sources themselves never provide.

The resurrection of Jesus gives Christians a pattern. It does not answer every question about the interval between death and resurrection.

The earliest texts allow us to say confidently that Jesus truly died, was buried, was raised bodily, and entered a life no longer ruled by death. They also allow us to say that those who belong to him will be raised and transformed when he comes.

But what precisely happens during the waiting period?

Where are the dead?

Are they all in Hades?

Is paradise a region within Hades, another name for the presence of Christ, or something that cannot be described spatially?

Are the dead conscious of time in the same way we are?

What did Jesus do among the dead?

Whom did he address there?

Has judgment already begun in some preliminary sense, or does it occur only when Christ returns?

The New Testament gives us passages that bear upon these questions, but it does not arrange them into a single systematic explanation.

Paul says that he desires “to depart and be with Christ,” which suggests that death will not separate him from the Lord. He also says that the dead in Christ still await the future resurrection. The Christian dead are with Christ, yet their hope is not complete until the body is raised.

That distinction is essential.

Whatever happens immediately after death is not yet the resurrection. Whatever comfort the faithful dead experience is not yet the completion of Christian hope. The final hope remains bodily, communal, and future.

We Know the Person Better Than We Know the Place

Christians sometimes become preoccupied with constructing the geography of the unseen world.

Where exactly is Hades? Where is paradise? Where are the righteous dead? What are they experiencing? How does time pass for them?

Those are legitimate questions, and the early Christians tried to answer them. We will examine their answers. But the center of Christian confidence does not lie in possessing a perfect map.

It lies in knowing who went first.

Paul does not console the Thessalonians by explaining every feature of the intermediate state. He says, “Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again.”

Second Timothy does not give a tour of heaven and Hades. It says that Christ rendered death powerless and brought life and incorruption into the light.

First Corinthians does not tell us everything the dead experience while they wait. It says that Christ is the firstfruits and that those who belong to him will rise at his coming.

Philippians does not explain where Paul expects to be during every moment after death. It says that Christ will transform our lowly bodies so that they correspond to his glorious body.

Clement repeats that Christ is the firstfruits. Ignatius insists that the risen Jesus remained in the flesh. Polycarp says that the God who raised Jesus will also raise us. Justin tells the Roman world that Christians expect to receive their own bodies again. Irenaeus declares that the disciples will rise bodily just as their Master arose.

The person is clearer than the place.

The resurrection is clearer than the interval. The final hope is clearer than the path by which each person reaches it.

Christian faith does not require us to pretend that unanswered questions have already been settled. It calls us to build our hope upon what Christians believe God has already revealed in Christ.

He Showed Us

Human beings can imagine many things about death.

We can imagine shadows wandering beneath the earth. We can imagine souls rising immediately into heaven. We can imagine unconscious sleep until the end of history. We can imagine judgment, reincarnation, restoration, extinction, or endless worlds beyond our sight.

But Christian hope does not finally rest upon the power of imagination.

It rests upon Jesus.

Christians believe that he did not stand at a safe distance and explain death to us. He entered it.

He did not tell grieving people that death was unreal. He submitted to it. He did not abandon the body as worthless. He rose in it. He did not return only to die again. He entered incorruptible life. He did not keep that life as an isolated exception. He became the firstfruits of those who have died.

This does not mean that we understand everything. We do not know exactly how the dead experience time. We cannot draw the borders of Hades. We cannot describe the invisible place with the confidence of someone describing a country he has visited. We should admit where the sources leave questions unresolved.

But ignorance about the interval does not erase what the resurrection reveals about the destination.

If Jesus rose, then death is not disappearance. If Jesus rose, then the body is not disposable. If Jesus rose, then corruption is not permanent. If Jesus rose, then those who belong to him have not reached the end when they die. If Jesus rose, then resurrection is not merely an idea about the future. It has already begun in one human life. That is why Jesus stands at the center of every Christian question about death and everything after it.

Before we ask where the dead go, we begin with Jesus. Before we ask what Hades is, we begin with Jesus. Before we ask what happens between death and resurrection, we begin with Jesus. Before we ask what kind of body will rise, we look at Jesus. Before we ask how we should live while awaiting judgment, we listen to Jesus.

He brought life and incorruption into the light. He became the firstfruits. He showed us what is coming.

Christ went first.