What Happens after Death According to the Hymns in the LSB What follows is meant to be proactive, meaning that I intend it to be a guide for those who write hymn texts and for those who select hymns for publication in the future, rather than a critique of texts that have been written and published in the past. I have wanted to do a study like this ever since seminary days when I heard professor Arthur Carl Piepkorn say that the laity in our Church get their theology primarily from hymns. That struck me as true then, and I think it is still true today. If it is true, then what follows should be of interest to anyone who writes hymns texts, translates them from other languages, edits earlier translations, selects hymn texts for publication, or reviews them for doctrinal correctness, as well as to everyone who uses them in worship, mediation or prayer. In my own case, before I got to the seminary, I believed that at death believers go immediately to heaven in the full sense of the word, a belief held by many of our lay people and many pastors. This is not surprising since the Book of Concord, which we believe is a correct and authoritative interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures, states: “We grant that the angels pray for us . We also grant that the saints in heaven (in coelis, im Himmel) pray for the church in general, as they prayed for the church while they were on earth. But neither a command nor a promise nor an example can be shown from Scripture for the invocation of the saints; from this it follows that consciences cannot be sure about such invocation.” (My italics. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, 21, 9.) Therefore there is good precedent for saying that at death believers immediately go to heaven and I am not criticizing anyone for saying that. However, the word “heaven” has two meanings. One is simply “where God is.” We use that meaning when we pray “Our Father, who art in heaven,” because we believe he is everywhere. The other meaning of the word “heaven” is what I refer to below as “heaven in the full sense of the word.” By that I mean the heaven that believers will be in after all who have died have been raised from the dead and all who are still alive have been “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet with their Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17). This implies that there is an intermediate state of some sort between death and resurrection on the last day. Blessed Martin Luther spoke of that state when he asserted, as he did repeatedly, that the dead do not experience time, hours, days, or years, and the time between a person’s death and resurrection would appear to pass as quickly as a moment, a half hour, or a night of sleep. (Philip J. Secker, “Martin Luther’s Views on the State of the Dead,” Concordia Theological Monthly, 38:7, July-August 1967, pp, 427-28, here p. 427.) On one occasion he wrote “We depart, and we return on the Last Day, before we are aware of it. Nor do we know how long we have been away.” (Secker, p. 427. See also LSB hymn 938, which he wrote, which is in Category I, A of Appendix A.) In other places, Luther wrote that “God talks with the dead,” that the dead “hear,” “think” and “see,” that they “experience visions and the discourses of the angels and of 2 God,” that God opens the eyes of the dead, and they” see with spiritual eyes after death.” (Secker, p. 432.) Elsewhere Luther wrote that between their death and resurrection believers “enjoy everlasting peace and safety,” embrace death as “the most joyous peace,” and take delight in Christ’s embrace.” (Secker, p. 432.) Of course, Lutherans are only obligated to believe what Luther wrote or said in the Lutheran confessional documents that are in the Book of Concord. When those documents were written, both the Reformers and those who remained loyal to the pope agreed that there was an intermediate state. So it is not surprising that Luther does not even bring the matter up in his discussion of the third article of the creed in the Large Catechism. On the other hand, Philip Melanchthon is talking about the intermediate state in his arguments against purgatory and masses for the dead in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. (24, 89-99) It is an argument from silence, but if Melanchthon believed that at death believers go immediately to heaven in the full sense of the word, he undoubtedly would have used that as an argument against purgatory and masses for the dead, but he did not do that. When John Bugenhagen Pomeranus,who was Luther's pastor and confessor, preached at Luther’s funeral, he referred to what he called an “interim period”: But we should also rejoice with our dear father Luther that he left and departed from us to the Lord Christ in the highest apostolic and prophetic office in which he faithfully accomplished what he was commanded. For with Christ are the holy patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and many to whom he preached the Gospel, all the holy angels, Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham, that is, in the eternal joy of all believers. We will experience what this interim period until the Day of Judgment is like, as Paul says in Philippians 1: “I desire to depart and to be with Christ;” and as Stephen also says in Acts: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;” and Jesus to the thief: “Today you will be with me in paradise." For there is no doubt, just as the spirit of Christ was in the hands of the Father until the resurrection on Easter, since he said: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, etc.," so will our spirits be in the hands of Christ until our resurrection. For that is the meaning of the words of Lazarus: "But now he is comforted while you are tormented." What kind of peace or comfort the believers have and what kind of anxiety or torment the unbelievers have in the meantime, until the day of judgment, we cannot say so precisely on the basis of Scripture. Scripture says that they are asleep, as Paul says in Thessalonians, "concerning those who are asleep." However, just as in natural sleep the healthy rest in a sweet sleep and are thereby refreshed and become stronger and healthier, while the sick or the sorrowing and especially those who are in the terror or fear of death sleep with difficulty, with horrible dreams, and restlessly so that sleep is not rest for them but a more frightful, more desolate unrest than being awake, in the same way there is a difference between the sleep of the believers and the godless. But about this we cannot speak further or infer other than what the words of Scripture say. Our dear father Dr. Martin Luther has now attained what he often desired. And if he were to return to us again now, he would reprimand our mourning and faint-heartedness with the word of Christ from John 16: "If you loved me you would rejoice because I go to the Father, and you would not begrudge me this eternal rest and joy." Christ has conquered death for us. Why, then, are we afraid? The death of the body is for us a beginning of life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord, who has become for us a noble, precious sacrifice. (My italics. “A Christian sermon over the body and at the funeral of the venerable Dr. Martin Luther,” preached by Mr. John Buganhagen Pomeranus. Printed in Wittenberg by Georg Rhau, in the year 1546. The complete text is at: http://beck.library.emory.edu/luther/ luther_site/luther_text.html. I have not seen the German original.) 3 Luther referred to death as sleep so often that a strong case can be made that doing that was his characteristic way of speaking about death. In some places he seems to be saying that believers who have died are literally asleep until the day of resurrection. In other places, however, he is clearly speaking metaphorically or euphemistically. In still other places he qualifies his assertion that the dead are asleep, or denies that the dead are asleep at all. (Secker, pp. 427-35) Francis Pieper (1872-1931) taught at the St. Louis seminary from 1878 to 1931, served as its president from 1887 to 1931, and as president of the Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other states from 1899 to 1911. Pieper’s three volume dogmatics, translated into English as Christian Dogmatics, is still considered the standard dogmatics of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. In the chapter entitled “The State of Souls between Death and Resurrection,” Pieper states that the souls of unbelievers are kept in prison, a place of punishment, according to 1 Peter 3:19-20. The souls of believers, Pieper adds, are “in God’s hand” (Acts 7:59, Luke 23:46), “dwell with Christ and in Paradise,” and that this is far better than being here (Phil. 1:23). He adds that “a soul sleep which includes enjoyment of God (says Luther) cannot be called a false doctrine.” (Volume III, pp. 511-12) Many people assume that “paradise” is another name for heaven in the full sense of the word. But the footnote on Luke 23:43 in The Concordia Self-Study Bible states this about the word: paradise: In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) the word designated a garden (Genesis 2:8-10) or forest (Nehemiah 2:8), but in the New Testament (used only here and in 2 Corinthians 12:4; Revelations 2:7) it refers to the place of bliss and rest between death and resurrection (cf.