Riddle Resolved
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:55-57 NIV
Sting – Abraham Heschel once described Christianity as a religion of death. On the surface, that might seem harsh, but if you consider the Christian fixation on the crucifixion, you may come to the same conclusion. There is, however, a much deeper connection between death and the Christian faith. In fact, this connection is true of all religions except Judaism, and this exception tells us why Judaism is so unique.
Note the comments of Heschel and Soloveitchik:
“Seen from God, the good is identical with life and organic to the world; wickedness is a disease, and evil identical with death. For evil is divergence, confusion, that which alienates man from man, man from God, while good is convergence, togetherness, union. Good and evil are not qualities of the mind but relations within reality. Evil is division, contest, lack of unity, and as the unity of all being is prior to the plurality of things, so is the good prior to evil.”[1]
“Many religions view the phenomenon of death as a positive spectacle, inasmuch as it highlights and sensitizes the religious consciousness and ‘sensibility.’ They, therefore, sanctify death and the grave because it is here that we find ourselves at the threshold of transcendence, at the portal of the world to come.”[2]
Perhaps this is the reason Ignatius longed for martyrdom. Death is the blessed exit from this temporal, corrupt realm. Death is doorway to a better life. All your troubles vanish at the moment you expire. You enter a new world, a world where the divine presence suffuses all. What could be better?
Ah, but consider Soloveitchik’s insight: “Authentic Judaism as reflected in halakhic thought sees in death a terrifying contradiction to the whole of religious life. Death negates the entire magnificent experience of halakhic man.”[3] Why? “ . . . halakhic man prefers the real world to a transcendental existence because here, in this world, man is given the opportunity to create, act, accomplish, while there, in the world to come, he is powerless to change anything at all.”[4]
“Halakhic man’s relationship to transcendence differs from that of the universal homo religiosus. Halakhic man does not long for a transcendent world, for ‘supernal’ levels of a pure, pristine existence, for was not the ideal world—halakhic man’s deepest desire, his darling child—created only for the purpose of being actualized in our real world? It is this world which constitutes the stage for the Halakhah, the setting for halakhic man’s life. It is here that the Halakhah can be implemented to a greater or lesser degree. It is here that it can pass from potentiality into actuality. It is here, in this world, that halakhic man acquires eternal life! ‘Better is one hour of Torah and mitzvot in this world than the whole life of the world to come,’ stated the tanna in Avot (4:17), and this declaration is the watchword of the halakhist. Not only will the universal homo religiosus not understand this statement, but he will have only contempt for it, as if, heaven forbid, it intended to deny the pure and exalted life after death.”[5]
Halakhic man, the man whose paradigm is shaped by devotion to the revealed truth of Torah, recognizes that this world is the place where mitzvot matter. Purpose is born here, in the world of trouble. Death isn’t a doorway to a more fulfilling experience. It is the termination of the opportunity to make a difference. And this, of course, means that death is an enemy, not a rescuer.
If this is true, then how is it possible for Paul to write, “Where, O death, is your victory?” The answer rocks the foundations of this world. I don’t mean that we suddenly proclaim, “Oh, there’s another life coming and the resurrection proves it.” That would be no different than the death cult of homo religiosus. The reason Paul can write these words has nothing to do with life after death. It has everything to do with life after birth!
Soloveitchik wrote: “Death and holiness constitute two contradictory verses, at it were, and the third harmonizing verse has yet to make its appearance.”[6] But the third harmonizing verse has appeared. “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes will have eternal life in Him” (John 3:14-15). Yeshua’s death on the cross was not about a gateway to heaven. Eternal life doesn’t start when you die. It starts when you are believing (the English grammar is bad but the idea is a verb, not a noun). How can this be the case? The death of Yeshua—and the subsequent resurrection—demonstrates that the divine plan, the ideal world of Torah, is, in fact, coming to be in concrete reality. The end of death in the resurrection is the proof not of heaven but of purpose. Death and holiness are no longer contradictions. Death has lost its victory because it has been subsumed in the divine plan of restoration. It doesn’t sting because it doesn’t matter. What we do here makes all the difference. That’s what the Messiah demonstrates. That was his purpose. And now it’s ours.
Topical Index: death, resurrection, eternal life, halakhic man, purpose, 1 Corinthians 15:55-57
[1] Abraham Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 120.
[2] Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man (JPS, 1983), p. 31.
[3] Ibid., p. 31.
[4] Ibid., p. 32.
[5] Ibid., p. 30.
[6] Ibid., p. 36.
