World of Love Sess10 - Death in the Age of the Spirit

The emperor Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher who belongs with Socrates to the noblest figures of antiquity ... had the deepest contempt for Christianity. One might think that the death of the Christian martyrs would have inspired respect in this great Stoic who regarded death with equanimity. But it was just the martyrs' death with which he was least sympathetic. The alacrity with which the Christians met their death displeased him. The Stoic departed this life dispassionately, the Christian martyr on the other hand died with spirited passion for the cause of Christ, becaue he knew that by doing so he stood within a powerful redemptive process. -Oscar Cullman ¹

If it is the case that those of us who flee life will also flee death, then it may also be the case that those of us who fully welcome life will welcome death as well. This is not a philosophical speculation or theological proclamation. Fear of death does not exist when a person lives at the peak of happiness. At the moment of high joy, death is neither feared nor ignored, and it is often embraced. - Robert E. Neale ²

For me to live is Christ and to die is profitable. -St. Paul ³

In session 6 we saw why death is the ultimate enemy to be defeated. In the age of the Spirit, stripping the power of death becomes possible for more people. Enlargement, liberation, unification and compassion at work within the human spirit and history can and will eliminate the fear of death, soon for those who live in the new possibility of stage 6-7 existence and the god-self, and eventually for all somewhere beyond this life.

The fear of death with its accompanying abhorrence of finitude is the on-going foundation of evil in the world. It does not directly cause all forms of evil, but underlies every one. Perhaps the existentialist term angst is better than fear. Angst incorporates conscious fear of the afterlife and dread of its alternative - extinction. It also incorporates the anxiety and uneasiness which we cannot label arising from our represssion of these honest feelings.

If God exists and we all dwell within the loving Parent, all of us will eventually be made perfect in love and no past suffering and loss will be remembered as painful, as Paul implies in that symphonic 8th chapter of Romans: "I figure the sufferings of this age are not worth comparing to the glory that is to come."

For those who believe God does not exist and there is no afterlife there is the cosmic nature mysticism of the Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius. Life can be accepted thankfully with daily appreciation for a wholly unmerited gift of fate. Life can then also be laid down with an emotionally fulfilling sense that we have had something wonderful which none of us deserved and are now moving on to make room for others. Without God, life has no enduring meaning anyway, so it might as well be savored as one rolls a rare wine on the tongue.

Such a secular salvation (a healthy, joyous wholeness) is open to atheists and agnostics who rise to stage 6-7 ego development and dwell in the wholistic god-self.

They cannot, of course, achieve it any more than the Christian can. Those who arrive at that exalted stage are opened up to it by the grace poured into their lives by others.

The over-coming of the fear of death -- whether by mystical Stoicism or Christian faith -- is essential to every aspect of quality of life. It is critical to the presence within us of love, joy, peace and the other so-called fruits of the Spirit.

Death is, for the Christian, the opening to another life. We are, through the grace of this inner conviction, able to come to love death. We are able to do this by seeing that she is merely one more mask of the loving Parent. We then can open our arms to her in ecstatic joy when she comes rather than fleeing in terror. We are able, moreover, to accomplish this earlier in our lives by pursuing a stage 6-7 style of life even though we are not yet fully at this level of development.

Some persons do not consider that this is a Christian view, to think in terms of welcoming death joyfully. Jacques Ellul wrote:

Precisely because death has been vanquished in Christ and resurrection is a fact, we can have no illusions about death. We cannot regard it as the natural end of life. We cannot depict it as a friend, solution, sleep. It is the king of terrors. It is a threat to creation. And it becomes the more rigorous precisely because of the resurrection and the victory. The cross of Jesus Christ tears away all illusions about it. our freedom to live is not, then, a suppression of necessities. It is freedom lived out within and by means of necessities. ⁴

Certainly, Ellul is right that death is the king of terrors, the grinning skull superimposed by our overheated imagination upon the fabric of the cosmos. For this very reason, as we have seen in session 6, it is the groundspring of all evil.

He is also right in saying that to be free we must shed all our illusions about death; each of us must face the cosmic skull directly and starkly. On the basis of stage development we can see how as one advances in growth he is forced to face his own personal death because he dwells more in the universal and cosmic.

He is wrong, however, to insist that death remains cold and alien and threatening for the mature person of faith. This is what the good news of the Resurrection is all about. No one has said it better than Paul, "For me to live is Christ and to die is profitable."

Fear of death belongs to stages 1 through 6 of our ego development. Stage 7n, that transcendent, ecstatic, cosmic expansion of the self, which characterizes the god-self, does not fear death, but rather embraces her with joy.

Stage 5 is liberation from the narrow confines of a particular culture. Stage 6 is a liberation from all interpersonal bondage, in the sense of feeling any compulsion from others. Duty toward others becomes something one accepts freely and not of necessity. From another angle, stage 6 is seen as liberation from cultural chauvinism into a love and appreciation of all peoples, the psychological roots of a truly universal ethics.

Stage 7n, then, may be defined as liberation into the infinite reaches of space and time, the achievement of the power to move freely in and out of comforting self-boundaries without fragmentation or insanity. This involves the conquest, internally, of death and her demonic retainers, anxiety and lust. Stage 7n also is the reality of a power of being which has realized a total detachment from all possessiveness toward people and things; it is the opposite of idolatry.

Fear of death belongs to the fragment self-systems, which are frozen into the anxieties of earlier stages of our development.

Celebrating a Death

I have left instructions with my will to have my body cremated and the ashes scattered by a stranger in some spot only one or two will know, or else strewn in the ocean where they will disperse with the currents around the earth. This is to be done the cheapest possible way so that any financial resources I leave may be used by and for the living.

Then, I have suggested that in my congregation I be remembered during the course of the regular Sunday morning service in the pastoral prayer with a sentence thanking God for my contributions to this world and asking for forgiveness for my many sins.

In place of a funeral I have requested that there be a celebration, something like an Irish wake. I'd like this to be joyous, with celebration and thankfulness to God for life, good food and drink, songs and some memories of warm and humorous events from our lives together.

I know that the purveyors of funerals and caskets and the cluttering of good ground with expensive graves contend that people need "grief therapy," to handle the potential long-range harm from unresolved guilt and unexpressed grief. They need rituals and events during which they are enabled to face the fact that the loved one is indeed dead and to resolve their mixed feelings.

My loved ones don't. They have been prepared over the years by my continual emphasis on the necessity for coming to anticipate death with joy. I have been careful also to do everything possible to be reconciled with them over hurts I have caused. I have forgiven all of them and have received their forgiveness. I leave them no legacy, I sincerely pray, of guilt or rage.

But even if this were not so, would not the prayers and the celebration I have suggested be more effective rituals to deal with guilt and grief than the traditional lugubrious funeral? Many add to grief guilt over the indebtedness they incur in the funeral costs.

The witness of a death in the fullness of agape is one of the best gifts we can give to others around us, empowering them to give up their destructive idolatrous attachments to things, to power, to success and adulation and to other people. To celebrate death is to bathe in the Holy Spirit, to savor the liberation of owning nothing except the superlative excellence of the god-self and truly mature relationships to God, to others and to things.

Beyond Fear of Death

To overcome the fear of death and its poisoning consequences we need not believe in either God or eternity. We have merely to occupy and live in our respective god-selves and put the demonic self-systems to death. The god-self has no fear of death. Not being dependent upon anything or anyone for its power of being, it always has its bag packed and is ready to go at a moment's notice.

In my experience, it is harder for an atheist to experience this liberation, not because formal faith makes life so different, but because a community of faith, hope and love is so vital to moving us by grace from stage to stage and helping us overpower the demonic self-systems. We need the intelligent, focused, loving help of others, even to see ourselves as we really are.

What Must I Do to Be Saved?

When I was preaching in a little church in rural Kansas as an undergraduate in 1947 I announced the sermon topic, "How Can I Know I am Saved?" This was for the Sunday night service which was usually attended by about 15 people. On this occasion it was raining, but 70 came and hung on every word. People do care about their eventual destiny.

This may seem a strange place in which to answer the question from the second chapter of Acts, "What must we do?" But salvation is as much about how to overcome the power of death to fragment and sour our lives as it is about anything. The means by which death is overcome is also the way in which we are saved from evil to become and do good.

Eckhardt's Four-fold Path

When I was a little boy, an evangelist who came to our church to seek and to save the lost, used what was called the five finger exercise. This is a device to burn into the minds of the hearers what is essential to salvation. Holding up five fingers, the evangelist assigned a word to each digit:

FAITH
REPENTANCE
CONFESSION
BAPTISM
GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

The important thing in that stage 3-4 view of God and salvation was to get into heaven at any cost. One was to be convinced, by argument in my church, to believe; then, to express as best one could, sorrow for one's sins; then to confess one's faith before the congregation; and finally to be baptized, after which according to a promise of God which could not be doubted, one received the gifts, guidance and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. But at least, if the first four fingers were activated, entrance into heaven was assured ... although one was also warned that he could fall from grace.

The five finger exercise is not wholly wrong, especially if it keeps the individual within a community where life-giving graceful faith, hope and love are exchanged. But its deficiencies are considerable. For one thing, we don't whip up a mature faith out of the ingredients around us. We still have to ask, rather pointedly, "Which God do you have faith in? How big is your God?"

This whole notion of salvation rested on a literal interpretation of certain Bible passages. The reasoning was this: God would not leave us uncertain about the way to salvation. It has to be crystal clear. So we will dig out the specific commands and do our best to obey them, then we can be sure God will keep his side. He can be counted on to keep his promises if we do our part.

But suppose, as this study urges, salvation ultimately means more basically becoming like God, and only incidentally going to a place called heaven. Then, notice how much more relevant Meister Eckhardt's four-fold path, as summarized by Matthew Fox, becomes.

1. The via positiva, the befriending of creation.⁵

This then is salvation: When we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise their Creator.

⁶

If the only prayer you say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.-Meister Eckhardt ⁷

This attitude and practice prepares the way for a total process of development in life which confers the power to overcome death and evil individually, and lays the groundwork for a sustained struggle for justice for all.

It also undergirds and sustains a nurturing relationship to creation, to both life and nonlife, where one lives out a sense of oneness and interdependent symbiosis rather than alienation and misuse.

2. The via negativa or befriending the darkness.

God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by a process of subtraction.

⁸

What is the darkness? What is its name? Call it an aptitude for sensitivity. Call it a rich receptivity which will make you whole. Call it your potential for vulnerability.

⁹

Freedom from all forms of idolatrous dependence is essential to the ultimate liberation. Eckhardt likes to speak of it as sinking into God, rather than a climbing or rising. There is a passive element in the negative way often criticized by activist westerners. But it reflects the reality of our situation and nature. The Taoists and the Zen Buddhists understand this movement of the soul better than we western activists.

But it is also true, and a vital truth, that this is only one of four movements. This is why I do not say that Taoism and Zen are adequate as paths to godlikeness. The passive negative way, our descent into the darkness of the non-being outside our constricted self-systems, is that which shatters our false pride. Unless and until that happens there is no further growth along the stages, and the demonic self-systems continue to block the way inward to the god-self.

3. The via creativa, befriending our divinity.

The soul among all creatures is generative like God.

¹⁰

Asceticism is of no great importance for it creates more, instead of less, self-consciousness

¹¹

What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth

¹²

What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the son of God fourteen hundred years ago and I do not also give birth to the son of God in my time and my culture?

¹³

This is also, as Eckhardt recognizes, the flowering of creativity within us. As God eternally gives birth to the new, we come also to rejoice in joining God as co-creators into eternity.

4. The via transformativa, befriending new creation.

Compassion means justice. ... The person who understands what I have to say about justice understands everything I have to say.

¹³

When people grow and become rooted in love and in God, they are ready to take upon themselves every attack, temptation, vexation and painful suffering willingly and gladly, eagerly and joyfully, as the prophets did.

¹⁴

The burgeoning creative love of the new being presses us constantly and joyously (not a spirit of grim duty) into the expression of compassion toward all and the struggle for justice, peace and equality. Suffering which comes in this path is accepted willingly, if not always gladly, because it is filled with eternal, redemptive meaning.

One Way, Four Movements

Perhaps they could be thought of as processes of opening outward and inward, more as attitudes and qualities of relationship to events and others. This seems to be suggested where Eckhardt refers to the negative way as a "sensitivity" and a "vulnerability." These movements all involve a risky opening up to the threatening non-being in and around us. Unless we drop the walls behind which the demonic self-systems crouch, sheltering themselves from both death and abundant life, there is no qualitative change in the direction of wholistic new being.

Atonement to Sanctification

This way of salvation is consistent, it seems to me, with what Garrett Green writes:

Salvation must ... take the form of something that can release the imagination from its bondage to false images. ... Everything depends on the organization, the pattern, the gestalt. Sin, like heresy, is a "paradigmatic" disorder: it appropriates the parts to misrepresent the "whole." Like the face hidden in the leaves of the tree in children's puzzle books, all of the elements may be present without our being able to see the proper "aspect." The decisive point theologically is that the image of true human nature in its relation to God is so distorted by sin that the resulting pattern ceases to mediate God to the human imagination. ¹⁵

I do not wish to distort Green's position; his view of the image of God is somewhat different from mine. However, at this point I agree with him fully.

Note that when this definition of the way of salvation is adopted we drift away from Luther and Calvin over more to the viewpoint of the left wing of the Reformation and the spiritual reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries. There is a gestalt shift from atonement to sanctification. The role of Christ as pattern of the divine becomes central and his sacrifice on the cross only a part of the pattern. Formal, doctrinally correct faith is not important compared to actually being conformed to God's inner nature as seen in Christ. The former without the latter is empty, as the spiritual reformers so often contended. See session 18.

What Must I Do?

The one vital thing which is in our power to do immediately is to put ourselves where grace is operating. This is the first action. Since the new, innovative, liberating possibility comes to us from others, we need to go where we are challenged by the different, by those who are trying to love one another maturely and are striving for social justice.

Note how the following relate to Eckhardt's four-fold path and also fulfill the requirements of Green, that of involving the imagination and a new transforming way of "seeing" reality revealed by more accurate paradigms

One essential way of putting ourselves in the path of grace is to become a member of a community of faith, hope and love which will constantly call us into loving and meaningful action. This distracts us from the siren voices of the demonic self-systems.

This is a modern form of the old admonitions about resisting temptation. It is also the inner meaning of Paul's counsel that we put the old person to death. We kill off the old person through persistent neglect.

We do not resist temptation by thinking about it, by dwelling on sins and weaknesses. This achieves the opposite effect; it causes us to be preoccupied with the temptation.
Rather, demons within should be disarmed and weakened by concentrating on those actions which are filled with wholeness, justice, love, creativity, ecstasy and play.

Prayer and meditation and the reading of the Bible and devotional literature are ways we remove ourselves from the temptations of the demonic self-systems. It is good always to start the day this way.

Another way we open our lives to grace is through intimate relationships with other individuals. We open our innermost selves to them and they to us. We confess our sins to each other and give each other absolution. We share our dreams, we weep and mourn, we sing, we dance, we play together. This is missing conspicuously from the churches.

Another place we go to receive saving grace is the world of visual arts, drama, fiction, poetry, music, dance, all the creative arts. I do not speak of this as the realm of creativity, because every aspect of life can and should be creative, including especially interpersonal relationships. Not everyone can be a great artist, but everyone can be a devoted and creative friend.

Last, and in no way least among the luminous paths of grace, is to put ourselves in the path of the special liberation which comes from the poor, the oppressed, those in immediate, pressing need. They have the power uniquely to break us out of the shell of our egocentrism, self-pity and defeatism. This is especially critical in effective movement from stage 5 to stage 6, so that we can come to live a full, gut-felt commitment to the equality and God-loved infinite value of every person, and not just a head trip through an ivory tower.

The god-self which embodies agape is instinctively dedicated to justice without equivocation or hesitation. Love cannot be experienced sincerely and wholistically without our feeling so acutely the sufferings of the victims of injustice that we must participate in the struggle.

In this above involvements and actions all forms of liberation theology find their unification with true pietism, true mysticism, and a faith of joy, hope, and playful creativity.

Conclusion

To become godlike, to enter in and dwell exclusively in one's god-self, brings the actual experience of transcending all anxiety and fear relating to death and all resentment over finitude. This strength can be ours here and now. This is the ground of the only true, full and enduring liberation we can know. And this total liberation underlies all virtue, mature love and effective ethical behavior. These fruits can appear only on the tree rooted in agape in its wholistic, four-gated god-pattern.

Questions for Thought

Consider or discuss: Review sessions 5 and 6. Read again the Jacque Ellul quote above. Is he correct about the Christian's view of death? What difference does it make?

Contact the author at: vjross22@swbell.net

1. Oscar Cullman, "Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?," Death in the Western World: Two Conflicting Currents of Thought , edited by Krister Stendal, MacMillan, NY, 1964, page 46
2. The Art of Dying, Harper and Row, NY, 1973 (1976), page 43
3. Philippians 1:32. My translation.
4. The Ethics of Freedom, page 75
5. These headings and quotations are taken from Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, A Primer in Creation Spirituality, Bear & Company, Santa Fe, NM, 1983. I came upon this and the later Fox editing of Eckhardt's sermons after most of this had been written. Some of the basic concepts of the course, from Nicholas Berdyaev, evidently came to Berdyaev from Eckhardt or from Eckhardt's disciple, Tauler. I am glad to give the credit to Eckhardt, though Berdyaev also has many additional important things to say to us today.
6. Ibid., page 118
7. Ibid., page 109
8. Ibid., page 132
9. Ibid., page 157
10. Ibid., page 178
11. Ibid., page 201
12. Ibid., page 220
13. Ibid., page 221
14. Ibid., page 286
15. Imagining God, pages 90-1

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