Suffering still in the intermediate state?
Posted on November 28th, 2012
Matthew Levering, in his Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, and the Fate of the Christian, surveys the various approaches to the intermediate state before and after the death and resurrection of Jesus. He affirms, as do I, that the death of Jesus affected a change for those who died in the faith before the passion of Jesus.
Is it legitimate to imagine the joy of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—that is, the inauguration of the “consolation of Israel” and the “redemption of Jerusalem”—when Christ Jesus came to them in the intermediate state? If one holds with Wright and Metropolitan Hilarion that there is an intermediate state, as I do, then it should indeed be a place of joy for those who love God. Even so, the waiting of holy Israel in the intermediate state, like that of Simeon and Anna in the Temple, must have entailed some suffering “through their glory being delayed.” Aquinas adds, however, that their suffering would have been mitigated by having “great joy” from the faithful hope with which they awaited the Messiah’s victory.
Wouldn’t there be a sense in which the faithful in the intermediate state even now suffer, if only in that they are not yet what they will be in the resurrection? Or perhaps it’s more like the stupor of anesthesia after a surgery: you are not yet healed, but experience no pain, only a sleepy euphoria. Jesus does call the intermediate state “paradise,” but we know there’s a greater paradise yet to come in the resurrection.
Thank you brother Esget — as youngsters in the LCMS we were not taught this way (at least I wasn’t), and I suspect there is still considerable resistance to this idea. Indeed we are in a realm of mystery when speaking of the intermediate state, but the notion of the holy ones of the old covenant waiting for their redemption in Sheol / Hades is deeply embedded in the earliest traditions of the Church. Only a too woodenly literalist application of the principle of “sola Scriptura” mitigates against it. Blessed Wilhelm Loehe strongly affirms it in a Good Friday sermon that I saw published some years ago (no longer have the source). And of course it is beautifully portrayed in every Eastern ikon of the Resurrection. — Your thoughts about “the faithful in the intermediate state even now” are bound to raise some hackles as well, certainly providing justification for the Church Universal’s constant tradition of prayers for the dead, which our Confessions specifically permit (even if somewhat grudgingly, because of mediaeval abuses).
Where do our Confessions permit this? Also, to your knowledge (or yours, Pastor Esget), do Luther, Gerhard, Chemnitz or others opine on/exposit the topic further?
How and in what ways is this teaching different from the Roman teaching concerning purgatory?
Thanks.
My apologies — my question was specifically about prayers for the dead. I might ask further — why would we pray for them? And what would we pray for them?
Pr. Esget,
would you be willing to explain further about this suffering in the intermediate state? And how would Rev. 7:9-17 fit into this idea?
Thanks.
I’m not sure I can say more–because Scripture doesn’t–other than that there is something yet unfolded before the resurrection.
As to the timing of anything in Revelation, I hesitate to state anything definitively. St John sees a vision about what has been, is, and is to come. I rarely feel confident in that book enough to say which is when.