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Religion

2006-12-01 09:28:00

Is the soul AND the body in Heaven or Hell before the end of time?

In Luke 16:19, Jesus speaks a parable about the rich man and the poor man Lazarus. At the end of this parable, after both die, the rich man sees Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, and begs Abraham to allow Lazarus to dip his finger in water to cool the rich man’s tongue. I know that at death, the soul separates from the body. The soul is judged and goes to eternity. The body goes to the grave. At the end of time, both the body and soul will be reunited and spend eternity together, either in eternal bliss or in eternal torment. Since the end of time has yet to arrive, how could the rich man want his tongue to be cooled, when the only part of his being in hell is his soul?

ANSWER: Note that Jesus is teaching with a parable. In his gospel, St. Matthew (13:34-35) states that “Jesus taught the crowds in the form of parables. He spoke to them in parables only, to fulfill what had been said through the prophet (Psalm 78:2): ‘I will open my mouth in parables, I will announce mysteries from of old.’” The definition of a parable is: A short, simple tale based on familiar things, meant to convey a moral or religious lesson. Thus a parable is not necessarily the narrative of an historical or scientific fact. It is a manner of teaching a lesson in the context of a story or images, which the hearer or reader can easily understand. The parable utilizes ordinary human terms and expressions, e.g. we speak of sunrise and sunset, although we know that the sun does not rise or set, even if it appears to do so; rather the earth revolves around the sun, which is fixed in our galactic system. In this parable about the diverse fates of the unnamed rich man and the poor man Lazarus, Jesus was accommodating his teaching to the common understanding of his listeners. Jesus was not giving a philosophical discourse about the separation of soul and body at death. Those who heard Jesus speak had no experience of either heaven or hell, or of the human soul separated from it’s body. So Jesus was telling his audience about what will happen to those people, who have an abundance of material things, and ignore the real needs of poor people. You are correct that only at the end of time will the body be reunited with the soul. Meanwhile the rich man is in hell and experiencing terrible suffering. His extreme thirst is only one of the kinds of suffering he has to endure. He is also lonesome for human companionship, and greatly desires to experience some kind of mercy and goodness, represented by Lazarus. But his fate was sealed at the time of his death. All his riches and fine foods cannot help or satisfy his hunger and thirst in hell. Abraham speaks for God in telling the rich man that there is no communication between the people in heaven and those who are damned in hell. The rich man enjoyed lots of pleasures when he was in this world, and he didn’t give a damn about the poor represented in the person of Lazarus. After death their situations are reversed. As Jesus had stated at the beginning of his sermon on the Plain: “Blessed (happy) are you poor: for the kingdom of heaven is yours” (Luke 6:20). A few sentences later Jesus states: “But woe to you rich, for your consolation is now. Woe to you who are full: you shall go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now: you shall weep in your grief” (Luke 6:24-25). While you are correct that in hell the soul separated from its body doesn’t have a tongue, it is easier to understand the lesson by imagining the damned person as he was in this world and as he will be again, when soul and body are re-united, at the end of time. Notice in that parable of Jesus that the rich man is not condemned for kicking Lazarus or ordering his servants to remove the poor man from his gate; he is condemned simply because he didn’t have concern for his poor neighbor, whom he could have helped but didn’t.