Scrolling through Facebook recently I saw the following passage, a quotation attributed to Joseph Campbell:
"The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another - but it's predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment." (Attributed to Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth.")
I see these types of things on Facebook all the time. I know nothing about Joseph Campbell, or the page where it was posted (called "Philo Thoughts"). It just struck me that I should organize some of the many thoughts that came flooding into my head when I read it, particularly after I saw who had posted it. This person, a friend of mine, has been fighting cancer for a good long while now. I suspect that she is tired; I suspect that she is also afraid. And, like the rest of mankind faced with their own mortality, I suspect that she is looking for something comforting to grab onto; Based on the content of the quotation, something that reassures her that death is not a terrible enemy to be feared, and that we will continue on in some way in another form, in another realm.
The problem with this is, however, that Joseph Campbell's quote presented here is anything but comforting. He comes to a couple of conclusions that give me pause. First, in the first portion of the quote, he declares that we are not our bodies. Second, in the second portion of the quote, he declares that our consciousness will continue on; When our bodies "drop off," our consciousness will remain. Then our consciousness will "rejoin consciousness" in another place. It sounds profound. It is certainly well-written and compelling. But is it true? And, if it is true, is it comforting? Well, I won't keep you in suspense as to what I think. The duality of body and consciousness that Mr. Campbell describes is not true, though we have been conditioned to think that it is, to differing degrees. And the gradual loss of one's corporeal form, and the merging of one's defining characteristic, to wit: one's consciousness with some kind of cosmic "consciousness" is the opposite of comforting. This is Gnosticism-meets-eastern-mysticism. Again, it all sounds very clever and profound until you start to examine it more closely. In my opinion, that's when it falls apart.
As Christianity expanded throughout the Roman Empire, Gnostic sects adopted Christianity's flavor to benefit from its popularity. Certain gnostic sects, notably the Manacheans, characterized their teachings in Christian terms. Because of St. John's use of light/darkness imagery, the Manacheans tried to claim John's Gospel as support for their heretical theology of Dualism. (Naumann, 2023).
The Manacheans taught that there were two opposing powers in the universe, one dark and one light. The Manacheans taught that these powers were equals; both were described as gods. The Manacheans falsely used the light/dark imagery in John's Gospel as a support for their teachings. (Naumann, 2023).
This philosophy/theology is called dualism. C.S. Lewis describes dualism as the belief that there are two equal powers behind the universe. One power is good; one is bad. The universe is where these powers fight it out. He points out that, though this seems similar to Christianity, it is monumentally different. God is the good power. He is all-powerful, omniscient, and infinite. The devil is not those things. He is a creation that went wrong. The devil is subject to God. They are not of equal power or nature. (Lewis, 1960).
Dualism is a perversion of Christian theology. In reality, evil, C.S Lewis says, is spoiled goodness. What he means is that there must be something good to be spoiled in the first place. There is no stand-alone evil. Evil, or "badness," which was the term Lewis used in Mere Christianity, can't just exist by itself like "good" can. "Good" is the baseline. This is how the bad power (Satan) is inferior to the good. Evil is a parasite to good. This is the fatal flaw of the philosophy of dualism. (Lewis, 1960).
One of the things perverted by gnosticism is the nature of man's existence. This idea that man is this dual creature, a soul or spirit that merely inhabits a body as a vehicle, is quite a gnostic idea. The gnostics taught that the physical world was evil, and the spiritual world was good. Consequently, to the gnostics it was a good thing to be rid of this evil body, and have one's spirit freed from it's prison. At first glance there is a lot there that might sound good to Christians. We are, in fact, made up of a body and a soul. Every Christian knows about the struggle between the sinful flesh and its desires against the Inner Man and his spiritual desires. The lie enters in when you try to assert one part of us (the body) is evil, and one part of us (the soul) is good simply by virtue of being "spirit," and is truly who we are. Scripture teaches that God created man out of the dust and breathed the breath of life into him. God created Adam, as is asserted in the Athanasian Creed when it confesses the personhood of Jesus, "a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting." In other words, the two things are equal to more than the sum of their parts. When God created man, and combined his soul with his flesh, He did not intend for them to be ripped apart. That is the thing that makes death so hideous and unnatural. When sin entered into creation by the disobedience of Adam it brought death with it. That is why God had to fix the problem of sin Himself. He had to send His Only-Begotten Son into the flesh Himself to bear our sin and be our Savior.
Your body is good, even though it is corrupted by sin and subject to death. And your body is who you are. It isn't merely a shell. It is a component part of an entire being. This body that Mr. Campbell describes as falling apart and away like an old broken down car is as much who you are as your soul. One hears this a lot at wakes. People say things like, "That isn't so-and-so in the casket. It's just his body." Well, if it isn't him, who is it? What people who say that are expressing is the gnostic idea that the flesh is temporary, and to be discarded. But Christianity teaches no such thing. We still need our bodies. Christ has redeemed them along with our souls; He has redeemed whole people, not merely the spiritual parts of us. The ultimate aim of the Christian isn't to be a disembodied spirit living with God in heaven. It certainly doesn't bear any resemblance to pop conceptions of the afterlife, like floating around on clouds with wings, playing harps and wearing white robes.
No, Christ will return with the sound of the trumpet and with the shout of the archangel and He will raise the dead. All of them. He will judge everyone, those who are still living at the time of His return and those whom He raised to life again. The ones who have been baptized into His death and resurrection, who have been clothed with His righteousness, will go into everlasting life "reasonable soul and human flesh" joined together never to be torn apart again. Those who have rejected His gift of forgiveness, life, and salvation will go into everlasting death. And both groups will do it with their actual physical bodies. That is what Jesus has promised us.
Actual Christian theology is much more comforting than the mystical gnostic crap that human being come up with. The reason it is so comforting is two-fold. First, we have real hope in Christ and not just some nonsense about our consciousness merging into some bigger consciousness. Oblivion is not comforting. He is the resurrection and the life. He who lives and believes in Jesus will never die. He has destroyed death. We will not all sleep in the dust. We will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised utterly changed - imperishable. Immortal. We will be ourselves, but free from sin, and disease, and we will live that way with each other, and with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit for eternity in the renewed and remade creation.
The second reason the truth of Christianity is so comforting is because that's what it is - the truth. Prove to me all that stuff about the consciousness, or any other New Age mystical bilge we print on funeral cards to distract ourselves from the reality of death while we're staring it in the actual face at a wake or a funeral. You can't. That's because it isn't true.
But I can hear someone say, "You can't prove Christianity either! You're just accepting it on faith. You only believe in Jesus because you were taught to." My answer: Jesus rose from the dead. It isn't mythology, as Joseph Campbell liked to study. Jesus isn't an archetype, or a story, or the legend of a good teacher whose followers exaggerated what He did after His death. He is God incarnate, who came to earth as a human being to die as a ransom for many. He proved it by rising from the dead after being crucified, as He said He would. The events surrounding Jesus, His birth, life, death, and resurrection all happened in a real place and time. They were attested to by friend and foe alike. And, I can't stress this point enough, He rose from the dead.
I certainly was not an eye-witness of the resurrection. I am taking the word of others. And it is true that someone might even die for a lie that they believe to be true. But men will not die for a lie that they know to be a lie. That is the category into which the Apostles and first generation martyrs fall. Jesus' Twelve Apostles all suffered gruesome deaths for proclaiming the good news that Jesus died for the sins of the world and rose from the dead for our justification, with the exception of John. All they needed to do to avoid torture and death on a cross, or by the sword, or in the jaws of wild beasts was to simply admit that it was a lie. Worship the emperor. They could have probably even continued to worship Jesus. They just couldn't worship Jesus alone. But they refused to do so because it wasn't a lie. They happily went to their temporal fate knowing that because Jesus lives, they too would live. They would, for a time, be separated, body from soul. But they knew that He who made the promise was trustworthy.
We can know that too. We pray for the balm of healing while we are in this life, but there will come a time when God won't heal us physically. We will die, unless Jesus returns before we do. God cares for us and hears our prayers. The balm and healing for which we pray is ours and will come to us at the resurrection. The Christian still has life even when his body is decaying in the grave. The Christian's body and soul will be reunited perfectly forever because of Jesus' death and resurrection. This is the true healing that Jesus promises us, and that He has accomplished for us. He gives it to us in His word, and in His word connected to the waters of baptism, and in His body and blood in the Lord's Supper. We will take possession of it on the Last Day. (Koester, 2022).
For the Christian, death has been transformed into a portal through which they pass into life. According to one theologian, the fear of God's wrath is what made death terrible (Pieper, 1953). Since Christ has made atonement for sin, that fear disappears. Without having to fear God's wrath and punishment, the Christian can look at death as a slumber from which we will awaken at Christ's return and enter into eternal life. ###
1986. "Luther's Small Catechism with Explanation." St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. The Apostles' Creed: IV. The Resurrection of the Body, 187-189.
Koester, Rev. Kevin M. February 17, 2021. "Sermon for Ash Wednesday." St. Paul's Ev. Luth. Church, Brookfield, IL.
Lewis, C.S.. 1960. "Mere Christianity Book 2, Chapter 2." New York: Macmillan. Audible: Blackstone Audio.
Naumann, Rev. Edward. 17-Sep-2023. "Lectures on the Gospel of John Chapter 1." St. Paul's Ev. Luth. Church. Brookfield, IL.
Pieper, Francis. 1953. "Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3." St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House.