Credo: A 12-part series on the creed
Editor's note: This article is the tenth of 12 in a new series on the Creed by Deacon Matthew Newsome. Explore the series
Belief in an afterlife is not unique to Christianity. Almost all ancient pagan religions expressed belief that the human soul (that spiritual part of ourselves) continues to exist after the death of the body. Most held that our experience of the afterlife could either be pleasant or painful depending upon whether we lived a just life, had adequately appeased the gods, or other factors. And for most religions, that’s about as far as it went. The best one could hope for was to be a happy ghost in the fields of Elysium, to use the Greek name for paradise.
Some believed in reincarnation, according to which theory the deceased may be reborn into this world in a different body, not their own – and not necessarily even human! But among the tribes of Israel, as part of God’s revelation, there began to emerge a sense that human beings were destined for something more: not for an endless cycle of different lives, nor an eternal half-life as ghosts, but eternal life as fully human beings with the body God had given us. This was something new and radical!
It had been revealed in Genesis that God’s original plan for mankind was to live forever, and that death had entered human experience only after the Fall. The Book of Wisdom confirms that “God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the destruction of the living. For He fashioned all things that they might have being” (Wis 1:13-14a). The prophet Daniel foretold that the dead would one day rise, some to everlasting life, others to everlasting disgrace (see Dn 12:2). That this everlasting life would include a restoration to our physical bodies is made evident when God tells the prophet Ezekiel in a vision to speak these words over a field of dry bones: “I will put sinews on you, make flesh grow over you, cover you with skin, and put breath into you so you may come to life” (Ez 37:6). “You shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and make you come up out of them, my people” (Ez 37:13)!
Belief in resurrection is what gave courage to the martyrs we read about in 2 Maccabees. Seven brothers are arrested along with their mother and forced to eat pork in violation of Mosaic law. Their refusal leads to torture and execution. As he is about to have his hands severed, one of the brothers says, “It was from Heaven that I received these … from Him I hope to receive them again” (2 Macc 7:11). Before he is killed, he tells his executioner, “It is my choice to die at the hands of mortals with the hope that God will restore me to life; but for you, there will be no resurrection to life” (2 Macc 7:14).
Faith in resurrection was not universal among the Jewish people at the time of Christ. The Sadducees’ denial of the resurrection lies behind their interrogation of Jesus recorded in Mark 12 and Matthew 22. Among those who did believe in resurrection was the family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus at Bethany. After Lazarus dies, Jesus comforts Martha by saying her brother would rise again. Martha replies, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day” (Jn 11:24). It is then Jesus reveals to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live” (Jn 11:25), and calls Lazarus forth from the tomb.
Jesus affirms the resurrection of the dead not only by His words and miracles, but in His very person. After suffering death Himself, Christ rose from the tomb. Unlike Lazarus and others Jesus raised from the dead, however, this was not a restoration back to this life, but a resurrection to a new glorified life. St. Paul calls Jesus “the first fruits” of the final resurrection (1 Cor 15:20). Our hope is that if we die with Christ – that is, as members of His mystical Body – we will also live with Him (see 1 Tim 2:11, Rom 6:8). “We know that Christ, raised from the dead, dies no more; death no longer has power over him” (Rom 6:9). And neither will death have power over us.
Quoting the fourth Lateran Council, the Catechism teaches that Christ “will change our lowly body to be like His glorious body” (CCC 999) and that this will definitively happen “at the last day, at the end of the world” (CCC 1001), when all of the dead will rise, “those who have done good deeds, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked deeds, to the resurrection of condemnation” (Jn 5:29).
This fundamentally changes how we relate to our bodies. Far from being mere shells we inhabit only for a time, to be discarded upon death, as the pagans teach, our bodies are integral to our identities both here and in the hereafter. This informs how we treat our bodies in this life, as reflected in the moral teachings of the Church, as well as how we treat our bodies after death, as reflected in our funeral rites.
Those who rise to new life in the resurrection will not only receive glorified bodies but will inhabit a new and glorified earth. But before this can happen, the old creation must pass away. Just as our bodies must experience death before rising again, so, too, the universe itself. What the Church teaches this heavenly existence will be like is the subject of the final installment of our series on the Creed. In the meantime, the Catechism reminds us that “in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ” (CCC 1002).
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the author of “The Devout Life: A Modern Guide to Practical Holiness with St. Francis de Sales,” available from Sophia Institute Press.
Credo: A 12-part series on the creed
Editor's note: This article is the tenth of 12 in a new series on the Creed by Deacon Matthew Newsome. Explore the series
When early 20th-century English writer G.K. Chesterton was asked why he became Catholic, his answer was characteristically pithy: “To get rid of my sins.” While in an essay entitled, “Why I Am a Catholic,” he would articulate many reasons to become Catholic (which he said all amount to one reason: that Catholicism is true), the forgiveness of his sins was perhaps his most personal motivation for conversion.
The good news of Jesus Christ cannot be rightly understood apart from the concept of forgiveness. Through His passion and resurrection, Christ saves us from our sins and from the wages of sin, which is death (cf. Rom 6:23). One of the chief challenges for evangelists today is proclaiming this good news to a population who no longer believes in sin, at least of the personal sort. We have no problem accepting the idea of societal sins, such as racism, environmental exploitation, wars of aggression and unjust distribution of resources, but when it comes to personal morality, the general feeling is “I’m OK, you’re OK.” To each his own! Whatever floats your boat! The one personal sin we do recognize is the sin of judgmentalism, which curiously is found only in others.
Before we can talk about forgiveness in Christ, we need to establish what is being forgiven. Sin is defined in the Catechism as “an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience” and “a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods” (CCC 1849). There are multiple Hebrew words for sin used in Scripture, which may be translated into English as “iniquity,” “trespass” or “to fail.” The Hebrew word “hata” literally means “to miss the mark.”
This provides us with a good visual. Imagine you are an archer shooting at a target. You aim for the center, so anything other than a bullseye is missing the mark. But you can miss by varying degrees. Your arrow may land just a little off-center, missing the mark but still on target. If, on the other hand, you aim your arrow in the complete opposite direction of the target, not only will you miss, but you’re likely to cause serious harm by hitting something (or someone) you shouldn’t! Sin is like this, only the target we are aiming at is love. The bullseye is to “be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48).
All sin is a failure to love as we ought. When Adam and Eve trusted the serpent’s conniving words more than they trusted their Creator, that was a failure to love the God who made them. When Adam subsequently blamed Eve for his transgression, that was a failure to love his wife. When a man commits adultery that is a clear failure to love, but when he ignores his wife because of a “perverse attachment” to the football game he’s watching, that’s also a failure to love, but to a lesser degree. None of us consistently hits the bullseye of perfect divine love, and so “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). This means we all need forgiveness.
But what does forgiveness gain for us? As sin is an offense against love, its negative effects damage our relationships. Serious sin can rupture relationships entirely. Forgiveness is necessary to restore those relationships.
Many erroneously equate forgiveness with the idea of “getting over” emotional harms. It can be hard to reconcile this with Jesus’ command to forgive, and with our need for forgiveness from God. When Jesus speaks about forgiveness in the gospels, he often uses the image of monetary debt. This makes the nature of forgiveness easier for us to understand. If I loan you $100 and you fail to pay it back, you have made me $100 poorer. That unresolved debt now hangs over our relationship like a dark shadow. By forgiving your debt, I accept the loss of $100 and release you from any expectation to pay it back. The act of forgiveness restores the borrower to good standing in the eyes of his debtor. Forgiving non-monetary offenses such as betrayal of trust or other kinds of personal harm works in the same way, even if you can’t put a dollar sign on it. To forgive means accepting the harm and letting go of any claim on repayment for the damage.
So why do we need forgiveness from God? Any time we act unjustly or unlovingly toward our neighbor it is also an offense against God, because we are made in God’s image and God commands us to love one another. Our sin does not harm God in the literal sense – God is perfect. But it does harm our relationship with God by turning our hearts away from His goodness (see CCC 1850). Only God can forgive the debt we owe for disobeying His divine will. This is why when Jesus tells the paralytic man that his sins are forgiven, the scribes accuse Him of blasphemy (Mt 9:3).
The scribes were correct that only God can forgive sins. They were incorrect in their understanding of who Jesus was (and is). Jesus healed the paralytic to show them that “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mt 9:6). Jesus bestowed that same authority on the Apostles on the day of the resurrection, telling them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn 20:22-23).
The successors of the Apostles today continue to carry out this mission of mercy and forgiveness. We receive God’s forgiveness initially through baptism, which cleanses us of original sin, and subsequently through the sacrament of penance (confession) which reconciles us to the Father any time we repent of sins we have committed after baptism. Repentance means turning away from our sins and turning back to God and His goodness, which is what the Christian faith is all about – “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:14).
Heaven is eternal union with God, which makes the forgiveness of sins essential to our salvation. As St. Augustine rightly preached, “Were there no forgiveness of sins in the Church, there would be no hope of life to come or eternal liberation. Let us thank God who has given His Church such a gift” (Sermon 213, as quoted in CCC 983).
Deacon Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the author of “The Devout Life: A Modern Guide to Practical Holiness with St. Francis de Sales,” available from Sophia Institute Press.