Friday night.

Frs. Daniel and Jack are seated in the former’s dining room, enjoying a roast. 

DANIEL: It’s been too long since we shared a meal, Jack. Thank you again for having me over.

JACK: Too long, indeed. (Raising his glass.) Thank you for the vino! And thank you as well for providing comments on my sermon. 

He pats the stack of papers laying on the table and then tops off their wine glasses. 

DANIEL: Happy to do so. (Smiling) It was—how shall I put this?—an interesting read.

JACK: Haha, yes. As I said, it came from a place of frustration. I hope that it isn’t entirely off-base.

DANIEL: No, certainly not entirely. Of course, I have some questions and objections. 

JACK: Naturally! That’s why I was keen on sharing it with you. What were the most glaring controversies?

DANIEL: I’m sure you can guess!

JACK: I suppose I can. Let me see—probably the stuff about immortality. 

DANIEL: Bingo! I want to hear more about your objections to the desire for immortality. And I’m also curious whether this is leading you into an outright denial of the doctrine. 

Jack takes a sip of wine. 

JACK: Well, let me start with the latter. I don’t really deny the doctrine of immortality, but I do deny how it has been interpreted. And I would insist those are distinct. 

DANIEL: How do you understand its traditional articulation?

JACK: That is partially the problem: there is no single traditional interpretation. But the prevailing one, at least as far as I can discern, is a form of dualism. I think many people hold that there are two parts of us: our body and our soul. They think the soul somehow leaves the body and is the part of us that persists beyond the death of our body. 

DANIEL: I agree that this is probably the most popular conception. It is, of course, problematic from a scriptural perspective, since scripture teaches the resurrection of the body, not the transmigration of the soul to heaven. 

JACK: Yes, exactly so. And that way of thinking is often coupled with a heretical rejection of the goodness of our materiality. 

DANIEL: On that, I agree. One thing I appreciated about your piece was your insistence that Christ truly died. I think many people would say he didn’t really die; his soul just left his body. 

JACK: Right. 

DANIEL: However, I think I am willing to grant that there is something to that view. The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a middle way between the outright denial of any persistence after death and a strongly dualist perspective.

JACK: If I remember correctly, they appeal to Aquinas’s treatment of the issue.

DANIEL: That’s right. The Catechism says that the soul is the form of the body, and that the body and soul are “truly one,” yet the soul does not perish upon death.¹

JACK: And we are somehow supposed to interpret that in a non-dualistic way.

DANIEL: Yes, though I admit that it is easily interpreted as a form of dualism. (Pauses) The way that I think of it is like this: the form of each person—their soul or life—is something that is remembered, so to speak, by God, even after they die. And it is this memory of the person that will inform—literally!—the resurrected person. 

JACK: That’s a very useful way of putting the matter. I wish more pastors used that language. 

DANIEL: Me too. I’ve always thought of it a bit like how an artist might create something—a sculpture or whatever—and then, if the sculpture is destroyed, it could nevertheless be recreated from memory. It would, of course, be different than the original, in the sense that the recreated sculpture is composed of different material, but it is formally the same sculpture. That is, both sculptures had the same form. 

JACK: Very well put! And that provides me a pivot point on which I can return to your first question. You wanted to know why I object to the desire for immortality. I don’t think many people would be satisfied with your account, even though I think it is quite beautiful. 

DANIEL: I don’t follow. 

JACK: Well, according to your account, since I am a body-soul unity and my soul, or form, only survives as memory in the mind of God, there’s an important sense in which I do not survive death. Only an aspect of me does, and it doesn’t survive on its own. 

DANIEL: Right, but what is so problematic about that?

JACK: Nothing! I actually am willing to say I more or less agree with your account. My point is that I don’t think many other people—professed Christians—would be comfortable affirming it. They want to be immortal in the fullest sense, never really dying. (Pauses) Here’s a way to think about it: I suspect most people have a view of death that is more like Socrates’s than it is like Christ’s and what I think ought to be the Christian view. 

DANIEL: Hmm. You need to say more. What is the difference?

JACK: Well, think about how differently Jesus and Socrates respond to their respective executions. Socrates tells his friends that they shouldn’t be sad about his impending death because he isn’t really going to die. Instead, he is going to finally escape from the prison that is his body. Rather than being sad, they should be happy. Jesus, by contrast, cries out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”²

I think most people prefer to think of their death in Socratic or Platonic terms: that it will simply be a release from the body and the world, and they will ascend to heaven where they continue their conscious careers. 

DANIEL: Haha, “conscious careers.” Yes, I suppose you’re right. They think they will be reunited with their families and pets and so forth. It is certainly safe to say that at least some people think along those lines. (Pauses) Does it really ultimately matter whether people think of it in the one way or the other? 

JACK: I think so! If people think that this life is just a temporary form of existence and that their “real” life is to be in heaven, they are likely to be quietistic. 

DANIEL: Ah, yes, I suppose that’s why you included that hymn at the beginning of your essay: “The World Is Not My Home.”

JACK: Yes, though I should note that I am more concerned with the idea expressed in that hymn when it is taken up by those who are well-off. I’m less concerned when the sentiment is an expression of a yearning for justice. 

DANIEL: I gathered that from what you wrote. However, I did wonder whether it might be uncharitable to suppose that  the motivations of those who are well-off and those who are oppressed are wildly different. I think we all experience life as hard and incomplete, and the yearning for completeness is more or less universal. 

JACK: Perhaps, though I am increasingly concerned that such a desire misses the mark. (After a pause.) At bottom, what really bothers me, wherever it crops up, is the elevation of lassitude with respect to this life to the status of a religious norm. I understand that people find themselves experiencing world-weariness—I certainly do!—but I don’t think we should assume that such ways of thinking and feeling are how things ought to be. The fact that the world is wearisome is something to fight against, not something to which we should acquiesce.  Acquiescing to world-weariness strikes me as a failure to be alive in the Holy Spirit. 

DANIEL: Okay, yes, I can see that. 

JACK: Whenever we become unconcerned with life and replace that with  a concern to get to heaven and take as many people along as we can,³ we pollute the Good News. We should be helping people here and now. We should be fully engaged with life.

DANIEL: Arguably, we should think of those as the same thing. Realizing heaven and engaging with life aren’t supposed to be dichotomies. 

JACK: Yes, I agree. However, I think the way we speak about things matters. If the whole “getting to heaven” formulation is leading people to relegate actually loving strangers to a secondary place, then it is a stumbling block. 

DANIEL: I suppose I can agree with that. I’m less concerned than you are that it leads people into some kind of profound disengagement, or quietism, as you put it. 

JACK: Really? I think a substantial number of Christians support the actions of the Israeli government precisely for apocalyptic reasons.⁴ Others—or maybe the same people—offer up prayers for children who are slaughtered by their peers, but they do woefully little to contribute to efforts to bring these problems to an end. Many don’t even bother to offer up prayers for those who are victims of police brutality. 

DANIEL: Those are all very complex issues.

JACK: They are indeed, but I don’t think that entails that the response needs to be overly complicated. Such evils simply should not be, so quite literally the very least we could do—and it is woefully inadequate—would be to express, with our words and our actions, that they are intolerable. These are things to which we should be opposed. They are absurdities, totally meaningless in the worst possible sense. 

DANIEL: I only meant that I think their complexity—perhaps even their absurdity—makes it difficult for people to know how to respond. 

JACK: I acknowledge the possibility that some people, maybe even most people, find it overwhelming as they observe these things unfolding. They may very well not know how to respond. I certainly admit to such feelings myself. But there is a very minimal thing that we can and should do—an extraordinarily low bar: we should listen to those who aren’t merely observers, but who are directly targeted and impacted. This often doesn’t happen. And what’s more, significant numbers of people aren’t simply ambivalent or torn; instead, they ridicule those who try to care, and they rally against efforts to seek solutions. 

DANIEL: Pastorally, the challenge is to meet people where they are at and help them grow into their faith and act accordingly.

JACK: I find that increasingly difficult. Perhaps my frustrations are my own sort of stumbling block. (After a pause.) When I attempt to address these things with my congregation, they get angry. They literally leave. 

DANIEL: Do you think there’s a way you could more effectively meet them where they are at?

JACK: I don’t know. I hope so. But I really don’t know. (After a pause.) It is really disheartening to watch as other pastors and ministers can get their congregations whipped into a frenzy over a so-called “culture war” while dispossessed  and reviled people are literally being massacred. 

DANIEL: Yes. It really is. 

He tightens his lips as he turns something over in his mind. 

I’ve been trying to reckon with the possibility that the one is feeding the other. The specific worry at the front of my mind is the possibility that the way ministers are, as you say, whipping people into a frenzy over gender and sexuality might be contributing to the violence that is perpetrated against folks who are transgender.⁵ And I recognize that is of a piece with the ways in which our religion has been used to justify violence against other people: women, gay men, lesbians, Jewish people, Muslims.⁶ The list is overwhelming.

He sighs and rubs the back of his neck.

I suppose I agree with you on everything you just said. It is hard for me to acknowledge it, though. (After a pause.) I want their to be a loving and pastoral way forward. 

JACK: I have to confess, I’ve started wondering whether my commitment to pastoralism is a form of idealism—by which I mean, it is disconnected from material reality. 

DANIEL: It is aspirational. I suppose I don’t think it is wrong to try to appeal to and help people realize the “better angels of our nature.”⁷  

JACK: There is a bitter irony in quoting Lincoln in that regard.

Daniel initially cocks his head in confusion, but he quickly catches the point. 

DANIEL: Ah, yes. Bitter, indeed.

JACK: At what point do we re-evaluate and acknowledge that he was mistaken in registering that “the mystic chords of memory” would “surely” succeed in that regard?⁸ The only sure thing is that they haven’t. 

DANIEL: I don’t know. It sounds trite, but I continually hope. 

JACK: What I have been wrestling with is the question of what we are to hope for—or hope in. I think it would be safe to say you and I both hope that love will prevail.⁹ But conditions have to be ripe for that to be the case, and I do not think the conditions are ripe. 

DANIEL: And you don’t think pastoral work can bring about such conditions?

JACK: At the margins, perhaps. But across the board? With respect to the vast majority? With respect to those in power who manipulate the majority? No. I don’t think so.

They both sit in silence. After awhile, Jack continues. 

I have been trying to come to a clear understanding of what I take to be fundamental problems with the ideological elements of our religion—or “ideational” elements, if you prefer. I’ve come think of this as a form of decluttering or clearing away, which is ordered to helping me discern what I should be doing—materially. I think of it as a way of trying to check my tendency to think in doxastic terms so that I can begin thinking more in terms praxis.

DANIEL: Has it helped? I recall that you said the essay was an exercise in sublimation. 

JACK: (He shrugs.) I think it has helped me gain clarity about what I am concerned with and why. It certainly hasn’t helped me feel more content, though. Quite the contrary. (After a pause.) I have written quite a bit more than what I shared, and some of it may very well have further contributed to my discontent. 

DANIEL: It is difficult balancing a sense of righteous or appropriate indignation concerning the status quo with the gospel message to trust in the Word. 

JACK: Yes it is. 

DANIEL: What kinds of “ideational” problems have you gained clarity on? 

JACK: Well, the main thing is that I think Christians actively, though admittedly unknowingly, contribute to the bastardization of the faith. I don’t think correcting that is sufficient, but I think it is necessary.

DANIEL: Oof. We’re definitely a community of sinners and, as such, we often miss the mark. 

JACK: Yes, alas. What really galls me is the lack of admission on the part of Christian communities to that self-criticism. The only times I hear churches affirming their own sinfulness is in response to charges made by other people—their critics. Too often, when a church does something bad, they seek to excuse their bad behavior by appeal to their sinfulness.  I suppose that’s not wrong, as far as an explanation goes, but it would be better if they would be proactively concerned with the omnipresent possibility that they are erring. We should be a community that is hellbent on self-correction and self-criticism. 

DANIEL: In the essay, you expressed that point by saying that we should be a community that actively wonders whether we are embodying love. I appreciate the point—even more so now, as a result of this discussion—but as I wrote in my comments, I wonder whether you are trying to get us to be an anxious community. I’m inclined to think that would be a mistake. Hope and faith seem the opposite of anxiety and fear. 

JACK: I agree with that. The best way to state my view is that I think we need to humbly doubt the appropriateness of our actions. Doubt isn’t the same thing as anxiety, though I grant that it can give rise to it. 

DANIEL: Many people probably think doubt is the opposite of faith. 

JACK: Well, on that point, I think we need to steadfastly proclaim they are mistaken. 

DANIEL: Perhaps. But how we proclaim that is worth considering. It would probably be better to model faithful doubting than it would be to simply tell people that they should doubt. In fact, I think “faithful doubting” might be a useful synonym for “discernment,” at least in some sense. 

JACK: I like that. 

After a lull during which they both polish off their wine—

JACK: I recently revisited both The Brothers Karamazov and The Screwtape Letters. It had been years since I read them. Reacquainting myself with them inspired me to pursue an odd project that is related to what we’re discussing.

DANIEL: Oh?

JACK: (He laughs.) I wrote a satirical little treatise on how to be an effective antichrist.

DANIEL: Oh good grief.

JACK: I know it sounds bizarre. 

DANIEL: I’ve come to expect nothing short from you!

JACK: It’s very much in the spirit of Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. 

DANIEL: As in, it’s a correspondence between demons?

JACK: No, but the “author” takes himself to be an antichrist, though not in some supernatural sense. I think of him more like an antichrist philosopher who is writing something like a self-help manual for people trying to become antichrists. 

DANIEL: Haha. You’ll have to share it with me sometime.

Jack wrinkles his eyebrows and rubs his beard. 

JACK: I’ve been a bit embarrassed to discuss it or share it,  but I think you, of all people, would take it for what it is and understand my intention. (Bites his lip.) You know what? Rather than sending it to you, I think I would prefer to read it  to you. Would you mind?

DANIEL: Is it very long?

JACK: Hah! It’s probably longer than it should be.

DANIEL: In that case, can we get comfortable and uncork that second bottle?

JACK: Yes, let’s go into my study.

They get up from the table and head into the room adjoining the dining room. Jack walks over to his desk and produces a papaper-clipped stack of papers. Daniel’s eyes widen.

JACK: Don’t worry!

Daniel laughs and they each select an overstuffed chair and settle in. Jack uncorks the bottle of wine and places it on the table situated between the chairs.

Though, if you had comments on the sermon, you’re probably going to have reams of them in relation to this.

DANIEL: (Laughing.) Alright, then I’ll take notes. 

He pulls out the small notebook and pen that he keeps in his pocket. 

Okay, lay it on me!

Jack settles in and begins reading. 

Notes

1. United States Catholic Council, Catechism of the Catholic Church (Doubleday, 1995), section 362 and 366.

2. Contrast Plato, Phaedo 63a-63e and 117ff with Mark 16:33-34 and Matthew 45-46. Luke 23:46 and John 19:30 depart from the other two gospels, making Jesus’s lament more ambiguous. Of Jesus’s actions as portrayed in Mark, Cave remarks, “This is not the behavior of one who believes death is liberation of the soul; for Jesus, unlike Socrates, it meant death and extinction.” Stephen Cave, Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization (Crown, 2012), 98.

3. This phrase, which is associated with the Baltimore Catechism, is found in Francis Xavier Lasance, My Prayer Book; Happiness in Goodness: Reflections, Counsels, Prayers and Devotions (Benziger Bros., 1908), section 25.

4. See, for example, Adam Gabbatt, “‘This War Is Prophetically Significant’: Why US Evangelical Christians Support Israel.” The Guardian, October 30, 2023, sec. World news. theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical-christians-israel-hamas-war.

5. TIME. “Anti-Trans Violence and Rhetoric Reached Record Highs Across America in 2021,” December 30, 2021. time.com/6131444/2021-anti-trans-violence/. MSN, “Wave of Transgender Slayings in Mexico Spurs Anger and Protests by LGBTQ+ Community.” msn.com/en-us/news/us/wave-of-transgender-slayings-in-mexico-spurs-anger-and-protests-by-lgbtq-community/ar-AA1n1Bcu.

6. Elizabeth Johnson writes, “At root the difficulty lies in the fact that Christology in its story, symbol, and doctrine has been assimilated to the patriarchal world view, with the result that its liberating dynamic has been twisted into justification for domination.” Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, Tenth Anniversary Edition (Herder & Herder, 2005), 151.

7.  Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, delivered March 4, 1861.

8.  Ibid., emphasis added. 

9.  “Whatever one may make of hope,” writes Eagleton, “it is certainly not a question of optimism.” Optimism is “too complicit with the status quo…” Terry Eagleton, Hope without Optimism (University of Virginia Press, 2015), 38.