Theology Today - Vol 41, No. 3 - October 1984 - BOOK REVIEW - Eternal Life? Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem

329 - Eternal Life? Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem

Eternal Life?
Life After Death as a Medical, Philosophical, and Theological Problem
By Hans Küng
Garden City, Doubleday, 1994. 272 pp. $15.95.

In this book, Küng attempts to answer two questions: Upon what rational grounds can one believe in eternal life, and what does such belief mean.? Not surprisingly, he answers the second question more successfully than the first, and it is his explication of the meaning of eternal life for life here and now that makes this book a valuable contribution to contemporary discussions or Christian hope.

Küng begins by asserting that neither the fact nor the meaning of eternal life can be established by the experiences of dying patients reported by Kübler-Ross and interpreted theologically by Raymond Moody and John Hick. Such extra-bodily phenomena are experiences of dying and not of life after death. Neither is the meaning of eternal life to be found in Platonic or Eastern doctrines of reincarnation, nor in Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal recurrence, for these concepts separate the soul and body and thus deny any real hope or fulfillment for personal existence. The meaning of' eternal life for Küng is not to be found in such speculations concerning the other side of death. Of that side one can speak only with the reticence of Scripture and say that life after death is life with and in God.

The meaning of life after death available to analysis has to do with its significance for our present existence. This approach, Küng argues in a curious inversion of Feuerbach's thesis, is required by the fact that hope of eternal life correspond,-, to a universal need for life to possess a conclusion and fulfillment which is not available to historical existence. This same life-directedness of eternal hope also characterizes biblical faith, for it was Judaism's need for political deliverance that gave rise to an apocalyptic hope for eternal life and personal resurrection.

Jesus and his Followers inherited these expectations, but Küng does not believe that the New Testament faith in eternal life was mere wish fulfillment. Christian faith was caused by an event which alone could account for "the almost explosive propagation of this message and community" (p. 97). According to Küng that event was the inspired conviction that "the crucified lives forever with God" (p. 107), and in the light of that faith the earl\ church produced the resurrection narratives. Following present trends of New Testament interpretation, Küng maintains that the empty tomb tradition was not a part of the faith of the original Christian communities and that the ascension stories expressed the church's faith that Jesus ,was raised to exaltation with God.

Küng's primary intention is to present hope in eternal life not as life

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denying, but as life affirming. Thus he asserts that hell as a condition of eternal punishment has no place in Christian faith, and that purgatory simply means (following Greshake) that our final encounter with God must be "profoundly humiliating, painful, and therefore purifying" (p. 139). Because eternal life attaches an infinite value to human life, such hope can prove relevant for a variety of personal and social issues. In a suggestive chapter on medical ethics, Küng shows how this hope can produce a more humane approach to therapy, to counseling the terminally ill, and even to euthanasia, which we ought to approach with "a little less fear and nervousness." In the area of politics, eternal life provides an ultimate meaning and hope for human existence sought but not found in socialism, and because it inspires a love of life, eternal life may become the basis for an integration of the many life-affirming revolutionary movements (such as the "Greens" in Germany,) which combat the forces that threaten the world with military and ecological destruction. Küng's rich and varied exposition of the relevance and utility of eternal hope for the facing of the problems of this life puts the focus of eschatology exactly where it should be, and is the most significant contribution of his book.

The same, however, cannot be said for his attempt to establish apologetically persuasive grounds for such a hope. "It would," he writes, "be disastrous if theologians … were to think that they could solve this difficult question only with appeals to God's revelation, God's 'word, God's 'scripture' … theology cannot avoid the demand for verification of belief in eternity" (p. 73, italics his). Moreover, this verification is to be accomplished "by recourse to human experiences" (p. 75). But it turns out that what Kung means by "verification" is really what he calls-indirect verification" which shows that belief in eternal life, while not provable, "can be shown to be well founded" (p. 75). And the "experiences" referred to cover "not only the sensual but also the mental [that is the subjective] dimension of human reality" (p. 76). For Kung a universal desire for eternal life functions much as Küng's universal moral imperative, offering grounds for God and eternity as rational postulates. Whether it is permissible to substitute hope for morality in Küng's system is arguable. But it is difficult to see how such an argument can produce direct or indirect verification, as it does not appear open to falsification.

This appeal to subjectivity is also present in Küng discussion of specifically Christian hope, which, he claims, is based not on a universal desire. but upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But when Küng investigates the nature of the Easter event, he comes to the rather Bultmannian conclusion that Jesus "rose" in the faith of his disciples and that he "lives forever with God." Thus the basis of Christian faith is merely that faith itself. By so internalizing the experience of Easter, Küng not only denies the at least partially objective character of the event which authorizes Christian faith, but also renders that experience

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inadequate as a reasonable explanation for the "almost explosive" movement that emerged from it.

Finally Küng attempts in an Epilogue to shore up his apologetic by reference to natural science and what are usually called "negative proofs." The fact that we can discover no limits to microcosmic or macrocosmic reality, that we have learned to be skeptical of objective experience (Hume), and that there are limits to scientific investigation (Heisenberg), all lead to the conclusion that even the scientific mind must accept much of reality on trust. And if this is the case, Küng argues, then "a vote of confidence" in eternal life can be justified. One would have thought that we had learned long ago the inadequacy of such stop-gap arguments. It ought to be clear that the axiomatic presumptions necessary for science belong to a different order from those required of religious faith and that our uncertainties concerning finite life provide no warrant for assertions concerning life after death.

Hans Küng's once described Karl Barth as "the doctor utriusque theologiae, the doctor of both theologies, Protestant and Catholic" (Signposts for the Future, p. 105). That title belongs as much, or more, to Kung himself, who more than any other today has sought to produce a truly ecumenical theology. That such an enterprise entails risk is well demonstrated here in an unstable mix of Catholic apologetics and evangelical proclamation, of natural and biblical theology. This instability, however, does not diminish the significance of Küng's interpretation of eternal life. If he has not succeeded in verifying this hope, he has disclosed its meaning, and that for a community of faith is more important.

Alexander J. McKelway
Davidson College
Davidson, North Carolina