A Substack meditation occasioned by Philip Roth's Everyman.
On the Fear of Death
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9 responses to “On the Fear of Death”
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“It may be that the fear of death is not revelatory but a groundless fear and that the sense of spectatorship is revelatory. Fearing death, I fear a ghost: I am at my core immortal, either as an individual, or as the universal Atman. The questions arise: Who am I finally? Who dies? What is death?”
I have been up close to death several times in my life, sitting alone with loved ones in the final hours of life and afterward, and the experience of accompanying the dying in these instances, none of which was precisely the same but all of which were laborious and protracted, have left me with the persistent thought that much of the fear of death is, in fact, an entirely rational fear of the hard process of dying rather than of the state that follows it. Except in cases of catastrophic accidents and extreme violence, it is a hard thing for the body to shut down, to stop working. The horrors of dying infect our relation to death itself. And in reflecting on these experiences, I now welcome a quick, relatively painless death, preferably one in my sleep or under anesthesia, which further confirms by conviction that it is dying rather than death itself that I fear. And does the absence or lessened fear of death offer a hint that you might well be right in speaking of this fear as that of a “ghost”? For as you say, “Who dies,” the body or the self? An unsolvable mystery on this plane of existence, one that is, I would argue, made opaquer by horror of dying itself, by the organic miseries of “the casting off of this mortal coil.” -
A beautiful statement, Vito.
>>. . . much of the fear of death is, in fact, an entirely rational fear of the hard process of dying rather than of the state that follows it.<< I agree. It might be reasonable to fear being dead, as opposed to the process of dying, if one is convinced that one will face judgment and possibly be consigned to hell. But if dying issues in the annihilation of the individual self, then the Epicurean argument carries weight: when I am, death is not; when death is, I am not. What then is there to fear? But the issue is more complicated than I am making out, and noted thinkers have considered the Epicurean reasoning sophistical. -
Thanks for the thoughtful response, Bill, especially the following:
“It might be reasonable to fear being dead, as opposed to the process of dying, if one is convinced that one will face judgment and possibly be consigned to hell.”
I agree that the possibility of judgment and consignment to hell make death a grim prospect, one which raises other vexing problems, all of which I am sure you have pondered, such as what one might take to be the profound injustice of assigning a human soul to eternal damnation because of the misdeeds committed during the tiny span of years that make up earthly existence. And in speaking in a “tiny span of years,” I have in mind that of human beings today living seven or eight decades in advanced societies; once we look back and consider the much shorter lives and much more miserable conditions of our ancestors for almost all of human history, the imbalance in the two durations, that of the embodied soul and that of the post-mortem soul in hell, may appear even more unacceptable.
These considerations lead many to propose universal salvation, but such a position raises a series of other, equally vexing difficulties, which extend beyond the tortuous textual reinterpretation of NT passages that clearly speak of the damnation of souls, including, to mention just one, the violation of our innate sense of the righteousness of punishment and retribution for monstrous deeds. -
As for universal salvation, I don’t see how it could be reasonably maintained. Suppose C. Hitchens after he died entered the presence of God and had to admit that God exists. But, like Lucifer, he refuses to accept divine authority: Hitch remains a rebel in death as in life. ‘Surely’ God has to respect Hitch’s free decision to remain in hell! So long as there is one such rebel, hell exists and will be occupied.
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I agree.
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Vito, you astutely referred to the difficulty of interpreting relevant NT texts. There are some passages that seem to indicate an eternal hell, but others that seem to indicate universal salvation. For example, 2 Thessalonians 1:9 seems to indicate an eternal punitive hell. But Romans 5:18 suggests universal salvation.
“They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” (2 Thessalonians 1:9, NIV)
“Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.” (Romans 5:18, NIV)
A straightforward reading of Romans 5:18 indicates that all (merely) human persons are saved on the basis of Christ’s righteous act. Yet a plain reading of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 indicates that some persons will not be saved. In the former verse, Paul seems to claim salvation for “all people.” The Greek ‘pantas’ means “all” or “every.” In the latter verse, Paul seems to say that some – namely, “they” (i.e., the ones who have afflicted and oppressed the Thessalonian recipients of Paul’s letter and those who have refused to recognize God’s authority) – will be punished and separated from God forever.
Now, it can’t be the case that all are saved and that some aren’t. That’s a contradiction. What are some options for rendering these verses consistent? Here are two:
1. Romans 5:18 does not refer to absolutely every human person across history, but rather only to some people from every category of person, or perhaps to everyone from only one category.
These interpretations seem strained. For one reason, the correlative conjunctions “just as” and “so also” indicate that Romans 5:18 contains a parallelism. “Just as” all people have been condemned, “so also” all will be saved. It is uncontroversial that the first “all” is a universal quantification; “all” refers to every merely human person. To maintain the parallelism, the second “all” requires the same universal quantification. For another reason, if Paul meant “all” in a limited sense, he likely would have made those limits evident. But he didn’t.
2. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 does not teach an absolutely everlasting punishment. The Greek word translated as “everlasting” is ‘aiónios,’ which can mean “absolutely everlasting” or “literally forever,” but can also mean “lasting throughout an age” or “lasting for a long but finite period of time.” The word itself means “age-long” or “lasting for an era, eon, or time-span.” On this interpretation, in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, ‘aiónios’ means “lasting for a finite age” and does not mean “absolutely forever.”
One might interpret the verses as follows: Romans 5:18 teaches that, ultimately, every human person will be saved, but that some will experience a post-mortem, finitely age-long punishment before receiving salvation. -
Vito insightfully writes:
>>…such as what one might take to be the profound injustice of assigning a human soul to eternal damnation because of the misdeeds committed during the tiny span of years that make up earthly existence.<< One might reasonably hold that just punishment requires that the punishment fit the crime. It seems that an infinitely long period of severe punishment does not fit a finite set of crimes, with some being more and others less severe. The severity of the punishment would seem to outweigh the severity of the crimes, thus making the punishment unjust. Since God cannot be unjust, God would not use such a punishment. Or so one might argue. -
Bill makes the following good point:
>>As for universal salvation, I don’t see how it could be reasonably maintained. Suppose C. Hitchens after he died entered the presence of God and had to admit that God exists. But, like Lucifer, he refuses to accept divine authority: Hitch remains a rebel in death as in life. ‘Surely’ God has to respect Hitch’s free decision to remain in hell! So long as there is one such rebel, hell exists and will be occupied.<< The matter of libertarian* free will is very important here. Supposing that we retain (libertarian) free will in the afterlife, it seems at least possible that the (human) denizens of hell can freely accept divine authority and stop being rebels. Hence, universal salvation seems possible, given free will and God’s benevolent acceptance of the humble repentance of human hell dwellers. Whether universal salvation is actual depends on whether or not at least one such rebel remains forever rebellious, which seems possible, given free will. But think about what it would be like for a human person to remain freely rebellious forever. That would seem to be a case of a human will, finite in volitional power, outlasting and overpowering the omnipotent and omnibenevolent divine will, which wants all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). A human who freely chooses endless rebellion would be a seriously hellish case of sitzfleisch. I find it hard to believe that someone would freely choose to reside as a rebel in hell for a potentially infinite number of moments. Such a case would seem irrational, unfree, and beyond the capacity for free human willpower. *It seems the free will would have to be libertarian. A compatibilistic sense of free will would indicate that the residents of hell could choose to accept God’s authority were they to have the appropriate desire to do so. God could give them the appropriate desire and thus could save everyone by fixing their desires. Since God wants to save everyone (1 Tim. 2:4), and God could save everyone by fixing their desires, it seems to follow that, on compatibilism, God would save everyone. Hence, if compatibilism is true and God does not save everyone although he could have, it seems God does not want to save everyone, which contradicts 1 Tim. 2:4 and threatens divine omnibenevolence and justice. -
Elliot & Vito:
Unfortunately, Aquinas argues from the infinite majesty of the divine nature to the justice of an infinite punishment for any (unforgiven, mortal-sin) slighting of said nature.
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