Death!: Where Is Thy Victory?

By Douglas Holden

Death is man’s ultimate enemy. Death always brings crisis into his life and continually poses the existential threat to him. Man eternally seeks to probe the meaning of death. Christianity boldly proclaims that It has the answer.

The author writes: “A religion that has as Its theme the death of Its Founder and His subsequent Victory over death must inevitably address Itself to the meaning of death. For it is because of Christ’s meaningful death that the Church can speak to the death of all men. All of Christian theology is related to the Death of Christ, so it is to His Death that the Church must always readdress Itself.”

Time and circumstance have obscured and confused the message of Christ and the teachings on His Death. This book presents an intensive re-examination of the teachings of Jesus as well as profound insight into the meaning of His Death as presented in the Gospels and the Epistles. In a clear, cogent manner the author develops a new and incisive characterization of man’s ultimate enemy, Death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973629900

Douglas Holden

Douglas T. Holden was educated at the University of Michigan (B.A.), Duke University (B.D.), Southern Methodist University (Graduate Studies), and the University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland (Ph.D.). Dr. Holden has had extensive academic experience in teaching and administration at Florida Southern College, Andrew College, Bethune-Cookman University, Ohio University, the University of Kentucky, and Marshall University. His work with the Church and Missions has been wide and varied. As an Elder in the United Methodist Church, he has served or assisted some thirty Churches including Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In the area of Missions, he has led teams to the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

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Copyright © 2019 Douglas Holden.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-2991-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-2992-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-2990-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018913507

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/19/2019

Death is swallowed up in victory.

"O death, where is thy victory?

O death, where is thy sting?"

I Corinthians 15:54-55

Preface

This writing is an outgrowth my own experience with death. Faced with the death of a beloved Grandfather when I was a teenager, I needed answers. I did not find that the Church offered answers for me. College offered no answers for me as well. I went on to seminary and found no satisfying answers. Graduate school offered me an extraordinary opportunity to study Death in Western thought with special emphasis on Jesus and the New Testament. The answers where there! Only Christianity has the answers! My ongoing quest was basically satisfied. I was overwhelmed to discover the total compassion of God as was revealed through Jesus’ Resurrection and His encounter with the dead.

There are three creations of resurrections in the Gospels, Jarius’ daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus. In these three resurrections, we see a rising crescendo of the power of God to overcome death, collimating in the Resurrection of Jesus.

These Miracles really focus not only on the needs of the bereaving—they focus on us! If God would resurrect our loved ones out of His Love, He could do so for you! However, that is not necessary for as believers; we continue to proclaim His Resurrection until He comes. There is a time appointed for everyone who calls upon the name of Jesus to participate in the miracle of Resurrection. The journey begins in the here and now for those who believe and follow Jesus, for they will find fulfillment in the Hereafter. When the End comes, one will be embraced and enfolded in God’s Holy Love.

My prayer is that this simple, writing may assist and encourage the grieving, the Bible scholars, the proclaimers of the Word, and all honest seekers along their pilgrimage to discover solid Christian answers to Death as based on the Bible.

To My Parents

and

My Grandparents

who have given me βíoς

that I may have Zωή

Acknowledgments

He is not here

For He is Risen

(Matthew 28:6 (KJV))

My heart-felt thanks and sincere appreciation go out to the Holden Family, the Wells Family, Mr. and Mrs. Carter S. Roberts, Prof. Russell L. Dicks, Dr. Jacob C. Martinson, Mrs. Arthur Sandy Sewell, Dr. George A. Foster, and the Miracle Workers on the Staff of the Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida — I shall always be exceedingly thankful for their lives and mindful of their kind and generous contributions to my life, my well-being, and this writing.

This small tome would not exist if it were not for a host of dedicated and committed scholarly saints, who mentored me with grace and patience until every stroke of the pen led these words to paper. The individuals who are the most notable are listed here: The Rev. Professor Edgar P. Dickie, M.C., D.D., D. Litt., Professor of Divinity, the University of St. Andrews (Scotland), and Chaplain to Her Majesty, The Queen; The Rev. Professor Matthew Black, D.D., D. Litt., D. Theol., F.B.A., Professor of Biblical Criticism, and Principal, the University of St. Andrews (Scotland); The Very Rev. Professor John McIntyre, M.A., B. D., Principal of Edinburgh University and Moderator of the Church of Scotland; and The Rev. Dr. John R. W. Stott, Rector, All Souls, Langham Place, London, England and Chaplain to Her Majesty, The Queen. They all have run with patience the race set before them and have pressed on to join that Great Cloud of Witnesses.

Also, I wish to offer my very special words of gratitude to my paracletes, the Kutrufis Family, Mr. John D. Wachtel, and Mr. Breno Melo Oliveira.

"An ugly wooden cross became the supreme

symbol of the Christian Faith."

- H. Wheeler Robinson

Contents

Introduction

1      The Concept of Death in the Synoptic Gospels

Jairus’ Daughter

The Son of the Widow of Nain

Summary

2      The Concept of Death in the Pauline Letters

First and Second Thessalonians

First Corinthians

Second Corinthians

Galatians

Romans

The Letters of the Imprisonment

Summary

3      The Concept of Death in the Johannine Writings

The Apocalypse or The Revelation

The Gospel According to John

The Letters

Summary

Conclusions

Epilogue

Bibliography

Notes

Introduction

It is not that the New Testament explains the Resurrection, it is rather that the Resurrection explains the New Testament.

—James S. Stewart

Edinburgh University

DEATH is the most offensive subject confronting contemporary man. Our society, like that of the Greeks of old, is so threatened by the inevitability of death and the failure to believe that there is anything beyond, that man evades death through frantic self-indulgence. Anything which might imply that man must eventually die places an immense question mark before him that negates all his values. Man would rather die than think about death. Death is no longer seen as a portal opening to a greater life but rather as a wall in which there is no exit. If one mentions the word death in polite society, he is considered to be obscene. Perhaps History will distinguish our time by defining it as a death-denying culture.

There is a conspiracy of silence shrouding concepts of death. A child’s first encounter with religion may be through his attitudes toward, or his knowledge of, death. It is dismissed all too soon; the fact that a child can grasp a concept of death as readily as can an adult is not taken into account. Children may first pray:

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Although a parent might be quite willing to teach this simple prayer, a death in the family will evoke an entirely different response. The child is usually not permitted to attend the funeral and is often euphemistically told anything, with the exception that the person did in fact die.

A person may go through life without ever discussing the topic of death in any depth and thus find himself ill-equipped to face it intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually. The offense of death frequently leaves the bereaved alone to work out his grief since there are so few who are willing to share with him or to talk with him meaningfully about death. The horror of death usually isolates the dying from their friends and relatives. The process of dying is managed in institutions by professionals in a remote and often in an impersonal manner. The prospect of dying at home in bed surrounded by one’s family is indeed highly improbable. The individual is frequently denied the privilege of being conscious at his own death. Tolstoy believed death to be the most significant event in life. It is very possible that this is a time of the greatest religious crisis and impact. The Church is often excluded from sharing with the dying when It alone can offer consolation and meaning.

Sociologists continually assert that life has changed drastically since World War II; many never realize that death too has changed. During the medieval period man prayed for a lingering death so that he could be prepared to meet the Christ of Judgment. Today’s man has completely inverted this desire, for he feels that death is so grim that one need not prolong the agony. The sudden, unexpected death, which is usually called untimely or accidental, is rapidly becoming the new standard. Though medical science has made great strides in pushing back the time of death, there is little that medicine can do to check the increasing number of violent deaths. Wars, shootings, bombings, prison camps, diseases, drugs, and automobiles have done much to change the strategy of death. Soon the accidental or violent death will be listed in the obituaries as one resulting from natural causes. The suddenness of death is usually thought to be a blessing in disguise because the deceased is removed from reflection on, and preparation for, death. In the future the increased mobility of life may in fact preclude any prediction of the advent of death for the individual. It would seem then that the wise man would be prepared to meet death at any juncture.

The study of death is as awesome as it is threatening. Since the problem of death will remain intellectually insoluble, it will probably never gain the unlimited attention of philosophers and theologians. Philosophy has stepped lightly around the subject because many philosophers have dismissed it as a proper subject for their inquiries. Death has been relegated to the field of biology, to be studied as an organic process, or to psychology, where it is considered to be our basic anxiety. Since death strikes the totality of man, it calls for a concerted effort of all disciplines related to man. Interest in death per se diminished with the rise of Christian eschatology and its promise of eternal life. With the failure of the Church to make these doctrines relevant for this age, other disciplines such as medicine, sociology, anthropology, spiritualism, and New Age thought have opened the door to speculation and research on the meaning of death.

Death continues to raise many ethical problems which have profound religious implications. Such problems as suicide, abortion, euthanasia, cryogenics, heart transplants, grief, and basic honesty with terminal patients are pressing for answers. These questions have been dealt with basically from a legal standpoint though they are fundamentally theological in origin. Should a Christian family, established on love and honesty deceive the dying one at the end? What consolation does the Church have to offer the bereaved? Does not the Church have an attitude toward the practice of euthanasia and abortion? What will happen to Christian eschatology if the individual can be rejuvenated after being frozen?

These are some of the questions that cry out for insight. The Church can begin to answer them only when theologians attempt to discover the meaning of life and death. The path is long and difficult, but perhaps it is the most important and most necessary inquiry in our time. If the Church does not soon speak to these issues with wisdom, compassion, and insight, It will lose the opportunity to speak at all. Certainly the Christian Church, of all the institutions, should be able to face death.

With the implications of the problem, of death pressing relentlessly upon the Church, there is much groundwork to be done. The theologian is so often engrossed in theological detail that he forgets people die daily. It is an answer to these practical problems that society demands of theology. The great task before the Church is to find out what It really has to say in regard to death. What is death? What does the Death of Christ mean? What are the implications of the Death of Christ for the individual believer? All these questions are primary and fundamental for the completion of the Christian perspective toward death.

It would seem that the Christian perspective on Death has become more obscure over the years. What the Church saw so clearly and proclaimed so forcefully has become fuzzy and vague. Christian theology has become so fused with Greek philosophy that it has reared individuals who are a mixture of nine parts Greek thought to one part Christian thought. This could be considered the Greeking of Christian Thought.

Thus the Church on any given Sunday is more likely to proclaim immortality rather than Resurrection. It can no longer affirm a creed that gives assent to Victory over death and yet find Itself speechless when confronted by death. The Church’s silence on the issues of death has caused the majority of people since World War II to find the meaning and purpose of life and death outside the confines of Its walls. The Church was not unscathed by warfare—more individuals died for the sake of Christ in the 20th Century than in all previous centuries combined.

Christians faced more persecutions and killings in the 20th Century than in all the previous centuries. It is becoming a very dangerous time for professing Christians, especially in the Middle East and the Far East. Christians in the West basically rest in our comfortable pews, while our brothers and sisters in Christ have targets on their backs. On December 26, 2016 Pope Francis said, The Church has more martyrs today than the early Church. (Amy Kellogg, Fox News, following an article in the Christian Post). Previously, Pope Francis had stated, We will see today our persecuted brothers, decapitated and crucified for their faith in you (Jesus), before our eyes and often with our complicit silence. (April 4, 2015, BBC News).

Breitbart News reported in an article by Dr. Thomas D. Williams, on January 1, 2017, that during the year 2016 over 90,000 Christians around the world were killed for their faith. According to a new study from Turin, Italy done by the Center of Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), this Center’s Director, Dr. Massino Introvigne, reported that Christians are the most persecuted Religious group in the world, and the numbers of those afflicted are staggering. The article goes on to suggest that 90,000 Christians killed is a low number because there is no data forthcoming from China and India.

If the Church dares to ask individuals to hold the Faith even in death, should not the Church have the courage in peaceful times to establish what It believes about death?

The topics raised here are deep and searching. No man could attempt to answer all of them. It will take the prolonged devotion of many dedicated men to reach even a tentative formulation. The task is not hopeless, however, because it is God who has given death meaning and it is He who bids us to come. Individuals come to the Church seeking answers to their problems with death. The Church must stand ready to meet them, with the realization that It was born out of death and that it is Christ who has ultimately changed the meaning of death. Thus man should come to the Church to find the meaning of both life and death, for the Christian message speaks directly to both.

This life is shared with death; if one is realistic, the whole of life must be thought out in terms of death. The fact of death alone gives true depth to the question of the meaning of life. It is from the perspective of death that the Christian learns to live. One learns to value every moment, thought, and deed as if it were the last. One learns to trust God in death as he has in life. If man is not prepared to die today, certainly he will not be prepared to die tomorrow? If he is not prepared to live today, how can he expect to be prepared to live tomorrow?

In order to find where the Church stands today, one must first discern where It stood in the past. The writings of the Church have frequently been concerned with the subject of death; therefore, the Church has a theology of death that is implicit in all Its writings but has become repressed with time. The task is monumental but absolutely necessary. A religion that has as its theme the Death of its Founder and His subsequent Victory over death must inevitably address Itself to the meaning of death. For it is because of Christ’s meaningful death that the Church can speak to the death of all men. Any failure to do so ultimately weakens Christianity at its strongest point. To remove, to belittle, or to deny the Christian beliefs concerning death is to disembowel the Church and to cause the whole superstructure of the Church to come tumbling down. Failure to speak to death realistically and unashamedly is in fact a denial of Christianity.

While the face of death changes and the time of death is in retreat due to the fantastic strides in medical research, however man’s inhumanity to man continues to rear its ugly head. Christians find themselves as targets the World over. Even a priest has his throat slashed while celebrating Mass in Normandy, France. Barbaric executions of Christians are being practiced in ways not seen since medieval times and are becoming common in the Near East. Congregants who survive assaults become refugees while their historic Churches, businesses, and homes are destroyed. The Cost of Discipleship is becoming more real, more expensive, and certainly more deadly. Martyrdom is not simply a relic of the Early Church!

It was by no means conceived that this one writing could answer all the questions concerning Christian beliefs in regard to death. The theme presented here is a survey of New Testament thought which demonstrates the basic attitudes toward death in the New Testament writings. No Christian perspective could be found without dealing with the fundamental concepts herein. This book is simply a start, but nevertheless it is a basic start. All of Christian theology is related to the Death of Christ, so it is to His Death that the Church must continually readdress Itself. If the Church bold enough to hold before the World the symbol of a Crucified and Risen Savior, could It not also have the audacious spirit to proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes?

The Christian persecution we read about in Scripture and history books is not a thing of the past. It still exists! Today, in the 21st Century, we are living in a time when persecution against Christian believers is the highest in modern history. An in-depth investigative report focusing on global Christian persecution—persecution is increasing at an alarming rate. Research for the List indicate that each day, a staggering 11 Christians are killed¹ for their faith in the top 50 countries ranked on World Watch List, (March 13, 2019) by Lindy Lowery, Open Doors’ 2019 World Watch List. There are a number of countries in the World which are dangerous places to be a Christian—countries where saying yes to following Jesus is truly a life-or-death decision! According to the Open Doors’ 2019 World Watch List the most dangerous places to be a Christian are: North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen, Iran, and India.

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The Concept of Death in

the Synoptic Gospels

The word they preached was the very thing which had once made them afraid to speak.

—James Denney

The Death of Christ

The inevitable question of death raised its ugly head rapidly within the Early Church. The concept of death was no longer answered by a logical extension of the love, the power, and the justice of God, but was answered by a direct result of the emphasis on Christ’s teachings and Resurrection. The Resurrection of Christ gave substance for profound speculation, which must have provoked discussions and opened ramifications far beyond those proposed by the Jewish rabbis. Eschatology is the doctrine of the Last Things, which includes concepts of death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Eschatology in a real sense had been uprooted and replanted from a point completely outside human History into the very center of men’s lives and activities. The Resurrection for the Jews would come during the Day in the distant future, but now it presented Itself before their eyes and within their hearts. The Kingdom of God, the Resurrection, and Judgment focused in on the humdrum of daily existence. Man could no longer put these questions aside as he had formerly done, because they drew near with terrifying intimacy. Surely, the last things, death, judgment, heaven and hell, had now been placed first, for in a real sense the World had been turned upside down. The conversion of the World began with inversion of the World—it all pivoted on the Resurrection of Christ.

It was sincerely and hopefully felt that this same Jesus, Who had somehow returned from the very jaws of death, would come again in the immediate future and draw these faithful individuals to Himself, hopefully while they lived. Thus, every day was eked out under the anxiety of waiting and the anticipation of the end of hopeful longings. However, in a much more practical way, the hard reality of death continued to take the lives of the faithful, thus, the Church had to address Itself to this very pressing question that challenged the meaning, purpose, and nature of Christ’s Resurrection. The very foundation of Christianity was under attack. The point of the Resurrection had to be dealt with not only for those outside the Church, who used the Resurrection for the aperture to attack, but especially for the believers who had made the Resurrection the core and the crux of their conviction and the spark that kindled their message. In outward appearance the death of a Christian was no different from the death of any other individual. Again and again the question arose as to what in fact was to happen to Christians when they died.

The concept of death in New Testament times came in a much more natural way than it was to be received by succeeding generations of Western Civilization. By natural, the implication is that death was very common to everyday experience and frequently occurred early in life. Thus, the whole aspect of death must be seen from the naturalness that remains behind every human death.

When Jesus lived on Earth, mortality rates were high and life expectancy was low. Those Jews who were able to avoid many diseases were subject to the numerous and frequently bizarre cruelties of their foreign conquerors. Untimely and unexpected death was a constant threat. During the time of Jesus life expectancy ranged between 30/35 years if one had survived childhood. Therefore at age 33 Jesus could have been considered a senior citizen. A Jew usually had a higher life expectancy than the Romans due to Jewish strict laws of hygiene and sanitation.

Certainly as a far greater menace to life and as a far more frequent visitor than we can realize, death came to take a more active part in the thought, the liturgy, the social customs, and generally the whole gamut of Jewish