Theos Report on AI and the Afterlife

A new report from Theos has been published:

Nathan Mladin, AI and the Afterlife: From Digital Mourning to Mind Uploading (London: Theos, 2024).

More information can be found here, and a pdf of the full report is available here.

Kathryn Mannix on Dying for Beginners

Theos, the public theology think tank, is curating some resources on death and dying.

‘In modern British society, death is out of sight and behind closed doors. Many of us lack direct exposure to the dying process – with all sorts of potential emotional and spiritual consequences for how we grieve our loved ones, as well as how we prepare for our own deaths.’

Dr Kathryn Mannix, who gave this year’s Annual Theos Lecture, narrates a short animation on the process of dying, which is available to watch here.

McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry 23 (2021–22)

The latest McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry is online, containing the below articles along with a goodly collection of book reviews.

Articles and reviews are available to download from here.

Stuart Blythe

Preaching as a Rhetorical Act: Practices and Possibilities with Reference to the Rev. Dr. John Gladstone (1921–2005)

Laura Reece Hogan

Poetry

Vilma Blenman

Poetry

David J. Fuller

Fault Lines in Evangelical Hermeneutics: Divergent Accounts of Patristic and Reformation-Era Interpretive Approaches in Recent Works by Carter and Provan

Earl R. Bunch Jr.

Will the Cosmos Be Destroyed and Re-created or Instead Renovated?

Stephen J. Bedard

Jesus, the Resurrection, and Disabilities in the Afterlife

Reviews

9Marks Journal (December 2020) on Heaven

The latest issue of the 9Marks Journal, available from here in various formats, looks at ‘Heaven: Rejoicing in Future Glory’.

In the Editorial Note, Jonathan Leeman writes:

‘There’s been a lot of talk about politics and pandemics lately. These are important things to talk about. Disciples of Jesus should care about justice in this world and about physical well-being […]

‘Still, unless the saints continually focus the eyes of their hearts on the eternal, we will wrongly prioritize the temporal over the eternal, what we can see over what we cannot see – our present cities over the city whose architect and builder is God (Heb. 11:10).

‘Therefore, as we come to the close of 2020, with all its important talk about politics and pandemics, 9Marks wants to help all of us once again cast our eyes toward the eternal – toward heaven. After a tough year like this one, we need to recalibrate. We need reminding of what’s of first importance, lest we lose our way […]

‘The world yanks our eyes to focus only on right now. But we must always fight to look toward eternity. Only then will politics and pandemics, work and play, the world or life or death or the present or the future, assume their right places (see 1 Cor. 3:22).’

On Dying, Death, and What Comes Before

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

It was Woody Allen who quipped: ‘I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ He echoes the sentiment of many who say they would prefer to die in their sleep, quickly and quietly, with no warning or suffering, and without being a burden to their nearest and dearest. We’d prefer to skip the ‘dying’ part that comes before death.

And yet, for centuries, Christians prayed for the kind of death that most of us would now prefer to avoid. They wanted to ‘die well’ – to have time to get their spiritual lives in order, to make sure loved ones were provided for, to prepare themselves for what lay ahead.

John Wyatt explores this in his moving book, Dying Well (IVP, 2018), reflecting on what it means to die faithfully in the light of the hope the gospel brings. In the 14th century, when the Black Death was sweeping across Europe, killing more than 25% of the population, documents on the ‘Art of Dying’ started to circulate. Essentially, they were self-help manuals encouraging the dying person to prepare for the journey ahead. John Wyatt holds that we have much to learn from the practical wisdom that helped Christian believers of the medieval period face the ending of their lives on earth.

If you’ve read this far, you may feel this is all terribly morbid for a sunny Wednesday afternoon! Except that death really is the one eventuality that none of us can avoid.

While death has largely disappeared from the fabric of our consciousness as a society, we are now having daily reminders of its reality in every news bulletin. Sadly, with the passing of friends and colleagues, some of us have already been bereaved during this period; many more of us know people who have.

Critics of Christianity sometimes claim that belief in an afterlife devalues life in the here and now, and discourages action that would help people live longer and happier. The argument is that those who are fixated on the ‘life to come’ don’t really care about life now.

Just to be clear, the reality is the exact opposite. Many studies show not only that religious people tend to live healthier and more fuflilled lives than non-religious people, but that belief in an afterlife provides a sharper focus about what’s truly important in this life.

For many Christians through the ages, the certainty of death freed them from the mistaken idea that wealth or power would protect them from it, freeing them to live full lives in loving God and serving others. As C.S. Lewis said: ‘If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.’

Indeed, according to the apostle Paul, confidence in what comes after death provides a motivation for how we live now. At the end of his long chapter on our future life, he writes: ‘Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15:58).

By the grace of God, we are able not only to die well but to live well. May it be so.

Russell D. Moore on Life After Death

Russell D. Moore, ‘A Purpose-Driven Cosmos: Why Jesus Doesn’t Promise Us an “Afterlife”’, Christianity Today (27 February 2012).

The gospel of the kingdom, says Russell Moore, doesn’t shy away from questions about the inevitability of our own deaths or the seeming meaninglessness of the cosmos, ‘but our preaching tends to swerve around the answers it gives’:

‘Often we Christians start our gospel proclamation with triumph over sin. Fair enough: The gospel of Christ is indeed the reversal of sin, and of death and hell. But without a broader context, such teaching can treat Christ as a means to an end, a step from the alpha of Eden to the omega of heaven. In a truly Christian vision of the kingdom of God, though, Jesus of Nazareth isn’t a hoop we jump through to extend our lives into eternity. Jesus is the kingdom of God in person. As such, he is the meaning of life, the goal of history, and the pattern of the future. The gospel of the kingdom starts and ends with the announcement that God has made Jesus the emperor – and that he plans to bend the cosmos to fit Jesus’ agenda, not the other way around.’

In line with work published more fully elsewhere, Moore writes about the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of the kingdom of heaven, a necessary tension which ‘seeks to avoid bringing the kingdom too near (in utopianism or political gospels) or keeping it too far (in prophecy-chart fixations or withdrawal from society)’.

Meanwhile, he says, every aspect of my life – my relationships, job, family, suffering – ‘is an internship for the eschaton, preparing me in some way to rule with Christ’. Moreover the world around us isn’t just a temporary environment, but part of our future inheritance in Christ.

We are betrayed, Moore notes, in how we speak about the ‘afterlife’ – as that which happens after we’ve lived our lives:

‘The kingdom, then, is like a high-school reunion in which middle-aged people stand around and remember the “good old days.” But Jesus doesn’t promise an “afterlife.” He promises us life – and that everlasting... For too long, we’ve called unbelievers to “invite Jesus into your life.” Jesus doesn’t want to be in your life. Your life’s a wreck. Jesus calls you into his life. And his life isn’t boring or purposeless or static.’

Princeton Theological Review 18, 1 (Fall 2011)

The most recent Princeton Theological Review (available here as a pdf) is devoted to ‘God, Death, and the Afterlife: Reflections on Time and Eternity’. (The cover indicates this one is volume 17, Number 1, but I think that’s an error considering the previous issue was Volume 17, Number 2.)

It contains the following essays (summaries are taken from the editorial):

Adrian Langdon

Our Contemporary from Now until Eternity: Christological Recapitulation of Time in Barth

Adrian Langdon argues for a new interpretation and critical correction of Barth’s theology of time and eternity. Reflecting on the way in which Jesus’ history as the second Adam relates to our own, Landgon argues that Christ’s corporeal resurrection and unique temporality calls into question Barth’s notion of ‘ending time’ and death as the positive completion of human life. While uncovering possible deficiencies in Barth’s anthropology as it is patterned on his Christology, Langdon also hints at possible resources within Barth’s theology for constructing a new resurrection theology.

Daniel J. Pedersen

Paul Tillich on Eternal Life

Daniel Pedersen examines Paul Tillich on eternal life, demonstrating the christocentric nature and universal scope of Tillich’s modern understanding of eternal salvation. For Tillich, eternal life is preeminently concerned with Christ and his universal permeation of this life and the everyday aspects of historical existence.

Adam Kotsko

The Resurrection of the Dead: A Religionless Interpretation

Kotsko argues that the locus of action in the post-resurrection accounts of the gospels shifts from the ministry of Jesus to the ministry of his disciples, who are pushed into the exigencies of the unknown through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matthew P. O’Reilley

Toward an Eschatology of Hope: The Disappearance of the Sea in Revelation 21:1 and its Significance for the Church

O’Reilley hones in on the ancient metaphorical significance of disappearance of the sea in Revelation 21:1. He concludes with some ethical and theological implications for Evangelical churches in North America today.

Kenneth B.E. Roxburgh

Dying Well before Family, Friends, and the Community

With comfort, certainty, and hope in God’s suffering, dying, and life-giving presence in Jesus Christ, Roxburgh suggests that the uncertainties of death and life after death shouldn’t keep us from living and loving with simplicity in the power of the resurrection today.

Bradley East

Turn, Turn, Turn, Turning No More: An Eschatological Reflection on Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

Brad East considers the implications of Christ’s death and resurrection for a world which is searching for comfort in sterile predictability and/or resignation in the face of hapless unpredictability. The satisfaction of the Christian, East argues, comes only in the disruption of this world’s death-dealing habits and faithless acquiescence to ‘more of the same’.

David W. Congdon

The Myth of Heaven: Demythologizing and Remythologizing

David Congdon critically reviews Christopher Morse’s recent book, The Difference Heaven Makes, along with the 25th anniversary edition of J.T. Robinson’s classic, In the End, God. Congdon evaluates the historical judgments and theological interpretations of Morse and Robinson while also offering his own account of the theological and ethical significance of heaven in a ‘world come of age’.