For All the Saints: Remembering the Christians Departed

by N.T. Wright

‘Going to heaven when you die’ is not held out in the New Testament as the main goal. The main goal is to be bodily raised into the transformed, glorious likeness of Jesus Christ.

there is no reason in the foundation documents of Christianity to suppose that there are any category distinctions between Christians in this intermediate state. All are in the same condition; and all are ‘saints’.

We might add the fact that nothing is said in the New Testament or very early Christianity about the death, or the state thereafter, of the mother of Jesus. There is no hint in early Christianity of the view which came to dominate the Roman, western church in the Middle Ages, and which some are eager to develop and propagate in our own day, that Mary was taken up, ‘assumed’, into a special, unique place, as it were a saint among saints. And we might note that the Eastern Orthodox churches, on this as on some other things, agree with the Reformers here against the Latin west. Though attempts are made to align the ‘dormition’ of Mary (her ‘falling asleep’, i.e. her death) with her ‘assumption’, the two are in fact significantly different. The Orthodox say Mary died, and that her body is resting and will eventually be rejoined with her soul; the Romans say she didn’t die, and that both her body and soul are already in heaven.

Here we must bring into play the words of Jesus about people who prefer human traditions to the Word of God (e.g. Mark 7.6–13). These human traditions are not just nice bits and pieces which it does no harm to people to believe. They affect the very centre of Christian faith.

The idea that Christians need to suffer punishment for their sins in a. post-mortem purgatory, or anywhere else, reveals a straightforward failure to grasp the very heart of what was achieved on the cross.

In fact, Paul makes it clear here and elsewhere that it’s the present life that is meant to function as a purgatory.

What I do not find in the New Testament is any suggestion that those at present in heaven/paradise are actively engaged in praying for those of us in the present life.

If we use the word, many readers will get the impression that I believe that every human being comes already equipped with an immortal soul. I don’t believe that. Immortality is a gift of God in Christ, not an innate human capacity (see 1 Timothy 6.16).

grief could almost be defined as the form love takes when the object of love has been removed; it is love embracing an empty space, love kissing thin air and feeling the pain of that nothingness.