FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - FAITH & FEAR

SHOULD A RELIGIOUS BELIEVER BE AFRAID OF DEATH?
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Rant Number 603         7 October 2014

‘I am obviously pretty scared to die’. Thus Peter Kassig, the American hostage threatened with beheading by the Caliphate warriors. Actually Peter no longer but Abd-al-Rahman, because he has embraced Islam.
The priest prays for the poor fellow’s welfare, yet his statement puzzles him a bit. Should a strong believer be afraid of death? In Christianity ‘mors ianua vitae’ – death is the door to a new life. A Christian, whatever the weakness of the flesh, should not fear death. Christ’s resurrection is the proof and pledge that he holds the keys of death and death’s domain for the righteous. Mutatis mutandis, that is the view of Islam, also.
Don’t mean to be callous but…if Abd-al-Rahman has willingly chosen to be a Muslim, why does he fear the next world? The Qur’an is explicit: ‘What is the life of this world but amusement and play? But verily the home of the Hereafter – that is life indeed, if they but knew’ says the Surah of the Spider, v. 64. Hadith literature also contains plenty of exhortations to the same effect. A follower of Islam must ponder such writings. The grave can have no terrors for a sincere believer.
Of course, there is natural, universal instinct of self-preservation. If someone aims a blow at your face, the natural reaction is to flinch, to recoil. That is not incompatible with displaying bravery in battle, for example. External circumstances also matter. Socrates was cheerful and rational at his execution. Held in civilised conditions and surrounded by his doting young admirers, the 70 year-old philosopher spent his last hours calmly discoursing on the immortality of the soul till his painless death by the hemlock. Had he been beaten and brutalised in a dungeon…it might have been different.
What kind of captivity is Kassig enduring? Madame Du Barry, King Louis XV’s mistress, showed great courage when she visited the monarch on his deathbed. Louis was dying of the smallpox, a terrible, often fatal or disfiguring disease but that did not worry the fearless lady. Alas, many years later, when dragged to the guillotine by the vile revolutionary scum and rabble, the elderly Madam Du Barry screamed wildly. Only a heartless idiot would blame her for that. Similarly, no compassionate person could reproach a man fearful of having his neck sliced with a knife, like a butchered animal, by a hooded executioner.
La ikraha fi al-Deen: ‘There is no compulsion in religion’ states the Qur’an (Surah al-Baqara, v. 256.) An excellent remark. The reason given, notice, is not an abstract, theoretical secularist notion of tolerance. It is rather that ‘truth stands out clearly from error’. There is in other words no need to compel anyone to believe what is meant to be self-evident. St Thomas Aquinas’ position is rather different. As faith is a matter of the will, and the will being free, it is a faculty that cannot be coerced, the Saint argues. Nor is it a case of theological relativism…
What sort of crime is Abd-al-Rahman accused of? That matters. Turning to Islam is supposed to cancel the past, to wipe away previous faults. Still, some scholars – not all - of the holy law, sharia, hold that some sins are so grave that no repentance can cancel the condign penalty. Blaspheming Islam’s Prophet is one of them. After Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses some Sunni scholars from London’s Central mosque (among them the distinguished Imam Zaki Badawi, whom I knew) attempted reconciliation between the culprit and his faith. An angry backlash followed. ‘Even if Rushdie repents and becomes the most pious man of his time he must still be killed’, another authority reacted. Rushdie then recanted his recantation. Repentance was not deemed quite enough.
There is another way of looking at this. In converting to Islam ex-Peter, if previously baptised, has reneged on the Christian faith. Technically he is an apostate. Although no ‘Christian’ state (what might that be today, I wonder?) enforces laws punishing apostasy, for the Church it is a severe matter. The voluntary, total forsaking of the faith was called a special type of perfidy. Early Christian writers contended that forgiving those who have so denied Christ is impossible. Excommunication was the chief penalty, plus various civil liabilities when the state was Christian. Still, the Church sometimes affirmed that the apostate could be forgiven if he repented at the time of death.
I doubt Abd-al-Rahman in his Syrian captivity is worried about ecclesiastical excommunication or penalties. Yet, the problem is eschatologically real. At the Last Judgment, when his ultimate supernatural destiny will be in the balance, at whose bar of judgment will he stand? An interesting theological question. Verification will have to wait till…al-Akhira, the Last Day.
‘Death is swallowed up in victory’, exults St Paul, quoting the Prophet Isaiah. And he adds: ‘O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?...Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’(I Corinthians 15:55).
Living up to those words eventually…may God’s grace grant me that.
‘O death, thou shalt die!’
Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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