Stories of people seeing Jesus, heaven or even hell after being declared clinically dead can be compelling. But should Christians treat near-death experiences as evidence of the afterlife? NT Wright and Mike Bird offer a fascinating response that is open, hopeful and surprisingly cautious.
What happens when we die? It is one of humanity’s oldest questions, but a growing fascination with near-death experiences has given it a new urgency.
People who have come close to death have reported extraordinary encounters: brilliant light, overwhelming love, deceased relatives, visions of Jesus and, in some cases, terrifying experiences interpreted as hell. For Christians, these stories raise an intriguing question. Are people actually catching a glimpse of what awaits us beyond death?
In a new episode of Ask NT Wright Anything, theologian NT Wright and biblical scholar Mike Bird approach the subject with striking openness, but also considerable caution.
Wright begins by making an important distinction. Whatever happens immediately after death, he argues, should not be confused with the ultimate Christian hope.
“The resurrection, the final resurrection, is going to be at the end when God renews the whole creation,” Wright explains.
Christian hope, in other words, is not ultimately about escaping our bodies and living forever as disembodied souls in heaven. The New Testament points towards resurrection and a renewed creation.
There is, Wright believes, an intermediate period between death and resurrection. But exactly what that experience is like remains mysterious.
That does not mean he dismisses near-death experiences.
Wright recalls a former student who had been a young pilot during the Second World War and was shot down. The man was technically dead before unexpectedly recovering.
“He had wonderful experiences of the love and presence of God,” Wright remembers. The experience profoundly affected the man’s life and helped lead him eventually towards Christian ministry.
“I was very moved, and still am very moved by that and similar things,” Wright says.
Yet personal testimony, however powerful, is not enough to construct a theology of the afterlife.
“Whether one can then build anything on that in terms of what the interim state is actually like, I would be very, very cautious,” Wright warns.
Some experiences could involve processes occurring in the brain as a person approaches death. Others may reflect memories, fears, hopes or previous beliefs. Wright therefore resists confidently declaring either that all NDEs are supernatural or that all are merely neurological events.
“If God wants to give that person, as they are making this awesome transition, a sense of beauty, of love, of a new creation, if you like, then that’s entirely God’s business.”
But he adds an important qualification: “We cannot and should not base any of our beliefs about future life… on such experiences.”
Mike Bird describes their position neatly as “potentially open but cautious”.
Bird is willing to entertain the possibility that some people have “had a brief glance into that mystery”, but he becomes more sceptical when extraordinary experiences are commercialised or when claims appear to contradict scripture.
One particularly provocative example concerns accounts of people claiming to have visited hell.
“I don’t think hell exists yet or is occupied,” Bird says, pointing to Revelation’s picture of Hades eventually being thrown into the lake of fire at the final judgement.
“So when people talk about what it’s like in hell as if they’re giving a postmodern version of Dante’s Inferno, I’m a little bit sceptical.”
Wright similarly warns against treating biblical descriptions of the final judgement like straightforward photographs of another world. Revelation frequently uses dramatic imagery to describe realities for which ordinary language is inadequate.
So, do near-death experiences prove heaven exists?
For Wright and Bird, that goes too far.
But neither are they prepared simply to dismiss experiences that can radically transform people’s lives.
The centre of Christian hope, Wright insists, lies somewhere firmer than extraordinary testimony: “The important thing is to cling onto the ultimate hope of new creation and resurrection.”
Near-death experiences may remain mysterious. For Christians, however, death itself does not have the final word.
Watch NT Wright and Mike Bird discuss this and lots more here: Near-Death Experiences, the Eternal Son: Could Satan have thwarted Jesus? Ask Tom Wright
