In today’s episode, a theologian and a philosopher explore what happens when we die. They discuss questions like, Is death the end, or is it the beginning of something new? And how do Christian claims about Jesus’ Resurrection change the way we think about death today?
You’ll hear from N. T. Wright, a New Testament scholar at Oxford, and Shelly Kagan, a philosopher at Yale. In this lively conversation moderated by Columbia medical ethicist Lydia Dugdale, they explore death, the afterlife, Jesus’ Resurrection, and how our views on these subjects influence the way we live right now.
This forum was held at Yale in 2014. Thank you to the student planning team for making this event possible.
Lydia Dugdale
It's impossible to explain historically why early Christianity existed and why it took the specific shape it did unless you say that something quite extraordinary happened a few days after Jesus was executed. And when you focus in on what that extraordinary thing was, all the evidence is that—despite their expectations and our expectations—he really was thoroughly alive again three days after his death.
The nature of power itself has been redefined in Jesus. In the New Testament, power is not about sending in the tanks and blasting everything out of the way. It's about self-giving love and the love we see when Jesus dies on the cross.
Resurrection isn't resuscitation. People often say, "So you're saying Jesus just came back to life again." And the answer is no, that's not what the texts say. He went through death and out the other side into a new sort of body.
If we believe that there is a God who, in Jesus, has revealed a new creation, then the New Creation has already begun, and we are invited to be part of it. Part of the Christian belief is that we are not simply pushing back the dark. We are actually, tremblingly, vulnerably, often getting it wrong, being people of new creation here and now, which means being people of healing, forgiveness, and hope.
If you believe that there is a creator God who is going to make the whole cosmos over again out of the present one, not scrap this one, that is a revalidation of the goodness of the created order and material order.
In creation, God really does seem to care about the specificity of things in general and of humans in particular. The uniqueness of humans is something which seems to be strongly affirmed.
Grief is the shadow side of love.
