Two weeks ago, the Church reminded us of our mortality by tracing ashen crosses on our foreheads. During Lent, we’re reflecting on what that encounter with mortality should mean.

Last week, we posed the question of whether we truly, on a real and not just notional level, believe that there is something beyond this life. Do we believe that we are actually preparing for something? Or “is this all there is?” Or do I hold to some kind of agnosticism seasoned with a dash of Pascalian wager (“all things considered, it’s better I bet on there being a life, because I lose more if there is-and-I-don’t-believe than if there-isn’t-and-I do”)?

Philosophers have long argued to the reasonableness of some kind of continued existence by the fact that some kind of belief/conviction/hope in immortality is found in almost every culture throughout history. Granted, in much of history those beliefs/convictions/hopes have been somewhat inchoate and opponents would say “that don’t prove much.”

Prove, perhaps not. But if we consider that almost every man throughout history has hoped somehow, in some way, to continue to be rather than not to be, and had striven in some way to realize that hope — whether it be through belief in personal immortality in some paradise or via communal immortality in what’s left behind, i.e., progeny or material things — then we face a paradox. Either there is something to that aspiration, or humanity is almost totally and universally perverted pervasively about a most basic aspect of human existence. Do we really want to believe that practically all of humanity has almost always lived under and acted an illusion?

But it’s not just a matter of what we hope for. It’s also a question of the basic wiring of our mind, soul and existence. What do I mean? Simply that man cannot conceptualize non-existence.

The modern Lublin Thomist, Dominican Father Mieczysław Krąpiec, made that observation in his book about philosophical anthropology, I-Man. Put bluntly: human beings are hard-wired in such a way that they cannot conceptualize non-existence. They can imagine what they think non-existence might be like, but their ideas cannot escape the fact that there is a living mind and soul thinking about what some pretend not being might be like. Living people neither have nor can have any experience of non-existence. One who is cannot formulate, cannot conceptualize any real idea of what not to be is.

Being is inescapable. Look even at that last sentence: “what not to be is.” Our language and ideas can only articulate and conceptualize non-being in terms of being. So either there is something to being or the flaws of human beings lie even deeper than their false hopes about immortality. They are intrinsically warped down to the very construction of their spirits, psyches, and being, incapable of any other conceptions. (By the way, if you hold the latter view that people are so warped, then stop bothering to convince others of your nihilism — you also share in that intrinsically warped humanity, and their minds are too far deformed for your “logic.”) 

I want to clear the deck of that lingering nihilism, because there is a certain mindset that revels in intellectual sloth as some kind of knowing cynical insight. Margaret Renkl’s pre-Lenten New York Times essay this year illustrates this. Seeking to justify her fallen-away Catholicism while still wanting to keep some trappings of Lent, she assures us she’s made “peace with the dust to which I will return.” She claims to have “thrown in my lot with immortality,” but her quest seems content with thin beer: “to believe, to be better, not to give up hope.” What? Why? Because you may be stardust or maybe something more substantial? Or because humanity might one day be enlightened? And where, in all of this, will be you? Where are you in the “immortality” with which you’ve thrown your lot?

“’It’s okay. Don’t worry. It’s okay,’” she says she believes.

The whole question of death begs to differ with I’m Okay/You’re Okay “theology,” because the fact of death tells us it isn’t okay, and our inescapable bias towards being says there’s something wrong with the status quo we cannot escape but cannot fix alone. 

So, let’s think about how people have grappled with that question of death.

As noted, the idea of some kind of survival is discernible early in human history. Consider its expression in the cultural streams that formed us: the Greco-Roman and Jewish. 

Both cultures developed some idea of life after death. Neither idea was, however, particularly attractive, and both quickly ran into further problems.

In ancient Greek culture, Hades was where the dead lived. (Note the bias towards being: “where the dead lived”)? Hades (the god of that eponymous abode, the Roman Pluto) ruled it. All who entered death entered it. 

In Greek mythology the three brothers who overthrew their father Cronus — Zeus, Poseidon and Hades — subsequently divided up the realms among themselves. Zeus got the sky, Poseidon the sea, Hades the underworld. So, while much of their interaction occurs in the mortal realm of the earth, the sky, sea and underworld are three distinct realms and the dead go into one of them.

Let’s think a little more deeply about this Greek mythology. First, this basic understanding of death encompasses two aspects:

• everybody somehow continues some form of post-mortem existence and
• the relationship of this post-mortem existence to mortality is not at first clear.

Everybody dies. Everybody somehow goes on in Hades.

Because everybody goes to Hades, it is the realm of the dead at-large. Some kind of existence continues there. It is not a desirable one, but paradoxically one whose taste already corrupts one for life in this world. That’s why Persephone, the daughter of Ceres, cannot return to live in world of the living permanently: having eaten pomegranate seeds, the food of the dead, she cannot permanently escape the realm of death. 

(Is there something to be said about today’s advocates of the culture of death who, feasting on death and its “benefits,” likewise seek to taint our living culture with them?)

For the ancient Jews, and much of the Old Testament, the afterlife was likewise a murky concept. The dead dwelled in Sheol, the abode of the dead, but its existence was in no way attractive. Indeed, when introduced to the concept of Sheol, most students have a problem grasping it because, though its half-existence provided for some kind of continuity, it was one that was neither clear nor appealing. That’s why, for most of the Old Testament, immortality was sought above all by living continuity in this world. Long life was a blessing. So, too, was health, prosperity and comfort. And continuity through one’s numerous offspring was the supreme blessing. “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so shall your descendants be” (Genesis 15:5) is the ultimate early Old Testament response to — and lasting covenantal promise against — death.

So we see that, consistent with how human beings are built and think, the idea that death is not the end of it all has been pervasive throughout the ages. 

But both Antiquity and ancient Israel both stumbled on another problem: justice. There are good people and there are bad people, but the undeveloped concepts of Hades and Sheol both leave us with another problem of existence that offends a basic human sense: morality. Hades and Sheol cannot be just a change of location extended out indefinitely. If everybody winds up in Sheol, if the fate of all is undifferentiated in Hades, is there any justice to life? 

Next week, we’ll probe that question more deeply and see how the Bible answered it, giving us further insight into the Catholic understanding of death and its meaning.