Death and the afterlife

• final judgement

  The judgement of people at the end of time.
• particular judgement

  The judgement of individuals at the moment of death.
• beatific vision

  The state of eternal happiness when we come face-to-face with God and exist eternally in his presence.
• redemption

  Having a debt paid off; in Christian contexts, the debt of Original Sin.
• universalisation

  The idea that all people are saved.
• election

  The idea that God chooses where we go after death.
• limited election

  The view that only a few Christians will be saved.
• double predestination

  The view that God chooses those who go to heaven and also those who go to hell.
• single predestination

  The view that God chooses those who go to heaven.
• unlimited election

  The view that salvation is offered to everyone but only some will accept the offer and choose to be saved.
• The Sheep and the Goats

  -in Matthew 25:31-46 we read Jesus' parable on Final Judgement, known as The Sheep and the Goats

  --> contains number of teachings on death & afterlife & talks of Jesus, the Son of Man, sitting on a throne of judgement

  -key teachings:

  --> 'all the nations will be gathered before him' - all people, Christians & non-Christians will be judged together

  --> people will be divided in same way a shepherd separates sheep from goats - a shepherd wants to protect sheep & get rid of goats: like shepherd's crook catching a goat by its neck & pulling it away from sheep

  --> those on right invited to heaven. They're described as 'blessed' & offered their inheritance: 'the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world'. Some might interpret this as suggesting some people are predestined for heaven
• The Sheep and the Goats further teachings

  --> those on right seen to be blessed because of what they've done: they've looked after the hungry, the thirsty, strangers & all those in need because in helping those in need they have acted as if the needy were Jesus himself

  --> those on the left are condemned to hell, which is described as 'eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels'

  --> those condemned haven't looked after those in need

  --> heaven (where sheep go) is described as eternal life & hell (where goats go) is described as eternal punishment

  -parable reminding hearers that judgement is based on what is on the inside, which God knows, & not what is on the outside - what can be seen by others. It teaches that judgement is based on people's actions first & foremost and not their faith
• other teachings on judgement

  -in the surrounding passages in the Gospel we can see Jesus teaches about how the time of judgement is unknown & we have to be ready for it to come at any time

  -good actions are therefore necessary all through life

  -parable immediately before The Sheep and the Goats teaches we must use what God has given us for good & not hide our talents - helping others, therefore, is seen to be something everyone must do, whatever their skills
• judgement

  -in the parable, judgement seen to happen at the end of time

  -some Christians believe death is a state of sleeping while we wait for the final judgement when our souls will be reunited with our bodies in the resurrection of the dead

  --> other Christians reject this & talk of a particular judgement

  -Catholic Church teaches at the moment of death, people are judged individually & go to heaven, purgatory or hell

  -at the end of time, all of creation will be perfected into a new heaven & a new earth
• judgement continued

  -Augustine spoke of the particular & final judgement, when he said 'souls are judged when they depart from the body, before they come to that judgement which must be passed on them when reunited to the body & are tormented or glorified in that same flesh which they here inhabited' (De anima et ejus origine, 11.8)

  -Calvin, in 16th-century Protestant tradition, argued the dead are conscious while they await day of judgement, either in bliss or agony, depending on their future fate

  --> view held by Anglicans & Methodists - souls wait to be reunited with the body at the end of time for judgement
• strengths of final judgements

  -Biblical evidence for God welcoming people immediately into heaven or hell, e.g. parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31)

  --> BUT majority of Biblical evidence seems to delay judgement until all people are judged. Apart from The Sheep and the Goats, we read in book of Revelation, e.g., of last trumpet that will sound before dead are all judged

  -doesn't make sense for judgement to be delayed

  -where else can a person's soul go while it waits for judgement?

  --> BUT our bodies needed for reward or punishment of heaven/hell & as bodies decay on earth, there must be a moment when they are resurrected all together

  -if heaven & hell aren't understood as literal places then there's no need to wait for final judgement for reward/punishment

  --> BUT as time means something different after death, it's entirely possible we'll sleep until moment of judgement
• final vs particular judgement

  Christians who would argue for final & particular judgement would point to existence of both in Bible & say God's justice shouldn't be evaluated in human terms.
• The Sheep and the Goats quote

  'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me' (Matthew 25:40)
• hell quote

  "For [hell], a wilful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end" ('Catechism of the Catholic Church', 1037)
• traditional views of hell

  -OT, which includes beliefs of early Judaism, doesn't contain any real idea of hell: ideas abt afterlife didn't really emerge in Judaism until just before time of Jesus

  -NT portrays hell as place of eternal fire (Mark 9:43) where body & soul can be destroyed (Matthew 10:28) & where there'll be 'weeping & gnashing of teeth' (Matthew 22:13)

  --> imagery of fire & torture continues in NT

  -most Christians believe in this idea of torture, although some see images of punishment in Christian tradition as interpretations of time & consider punishment to be more psychological (e.g. suffering from feeling of having a guilty conscience)

  -recent Christian thinkers, inc. C. S. Lewis in 20thC, consider hell as eternal separation from God: would be punishment enough as separation from all God has made - i.e., everything good - would be agonising

  -some Christians believe punishment will be proportional to person's sins
• traditional views of hell continued

  -many Christians struggle with the idea that a loving God will condemn people to infinite punishment for finite sin, especially if they have had no chance to live a good life

  -Augustine's view was that babies who die, e.g., would go to hell because of Original Sin; but many Christians say that God's judgement will make exceptions for those who could not have chosen the path to salvation

  -Roman Catholic Church talks of hell as a place that people choose to go to through freely choosing to refuse to follow God

  --> a place of eternal separation from God w/ punishment by eternal fire
• other understandings of hell

  -some Christians downplay idea of hell as a place for body & refer to it as a spiritual state for soul

  -language of Bible should be seen as symbolic & needing interpretation -by focusing too much on idea of hell as a physical place which can't be found (which God might've created, which is problematic if God is all-loving), Christians lose sight of significance of the teaching - it's something to be avoided by choices people make

  -understandings of hell as containing interior or psychological suffering or separation from God make it more understandable to see hell as a state, rather than a place

  -makes sense not to think of hell as a place if death separates body & soul in some way

  --> although some Christian teaching is clear that we require our bodies for the afterlife, if suffering of hell begins after particular judgement & is separate to the body, describing hell as a state would be more logical
• other understandings of hell continued

  -others focus on idea that hell should be understood as a symbol of a person's life on earth

  -if that life includes a guilty conscience that will be felt when faced by Jesus at judgement day, then the focus again stops being on the punishment but on the actions that led to someone not achieving salvation

  -approaching hell in this way emphasises the psychological power the idea of eternal punishment has on a person's moral decisions

  -however, considering hell in this way as the representation of the negative elements of one's life seems to equate it with the idea of the feelings we go through when we go through difficult times & seems not to accept the idea of an afterlife
• hell painting

  -'The Crucifixion and Last Judgement' by Jan van Eyck

  -painted 1440 to 1441

  -medieval views of hell were full of people in agony

  
• weakness of hell being eternal

  -Biblical & Church teachings talk consistently of the eternity of hell, however it is interpreted

  --> BUT some argue those who don't get to heaven are simply extinguished/annihilated after a period of punishment

  -makes sense people, who are given the chance of following Jesus' ways, should be held to account if they live bad lives because God's love is about justice

  --> BUT as you can't experience punishment outside of time, some might argue that hell cannot be eternal but within time in some way. Some have argued hell only exists until the final judgement & the restoration of the world

  -people cannot be given an infinite number of chances to get to heaven & so there must be a point at which they fail

  --> BUT many reject hell on basis that the God of love would not punish babies who die & would not punish people as disproportionately as the teachings on hell require
• traditional views of heaven

  -the OT has little to say about heaven

  -it speaks of a future transformation of the world in the Messianic Age, e.g. where lion & lamb will be at peace with each other and weapons of war will be turned into farming tools

  -some Christians equate this with the second coming of Jesus & new world order he will bring about at the end of time

  -in NT, various understandings seem to emerge

  --> it's where we will see God face-to-face (1 Corinthians 13:12); it is where God 'lives'

  --> it's a place of eternal reward alongside the good (Lazarus being at Abraham's side in Luke 16)

  --> every tear will be wiped away and there will be no more death or mourning (Revelation 21:1-4)
• traditional views of heaven continued

  -earliest Christians seemed to think Jesus would return & Kingdom of God would come into the world during their lifetimes

  -Paul grapples with the fact some Christians have died in the earliest text, 1 Thessalonians, & we see shift to teachings about a future Kingdom of God

  -sometimes mixed messages come through in Gospels where both early & later traditions are represented

  -by 2nd century, heaven seemed to be divided in different ways for different people, often with different layers or a hierarchy being taught: still the belief of the Eastern Orthodox Church today
• traditional views of heaven continued 2

  -Roman Catholics believe heaven is where we come face-to-face with God in the most ultimate way possible - the beatific vision, the most direct revelation of God we can imagine

  --> an eternal reward for those who have fully chosen Christ & his ways

  -Protestant Christians tend to agree with Roman Catholic approach

  --> might focus on community aspect of the 'New Jerusalem' referred to in the book of Revelation & so consider heaven to be a place not only where God is, on his throne, but also where humans go to live alongside others who have fully chosen Christ

  --> heaven is more of a place than for Catholics, where it is understood as a spiritual state - a state where we meet God
• Pope John Paul II quote


  "The "heaven" or "happiness" in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit" ('Audience', 21/7/1999)
• heaven as symbolic

  -understanding heaven as a state, rather than place, helps to counter common criticism that heaven would be boring

  --> being in state of communion w/ God removes idea of eternity in heaven as being within time

  -more symbolically we understand heaven, more removed from time we can get

  -images in Bible are able to be seen as helpful ways of focusing us on good moral conduct & a way of reversing effects of Fall & returning to paradise that was Eden

  -at far end of spectrum is idea that heaven should simply be seen as a symbol of a person's moral & spiritual life on earth

  --> in same way we use phrase 'in heaven' to describe happiness, we might understand those we see to be living holy lives to be giving us a glimpse of what we need to do to get to heaven as well as what heaven might be like. In the same way, good parts of our lives or feeling we get from doing good actions could be interpreted as being heaven
• Heaven is something other than the transformation and perfection of the whole of creation strength

  -book of Revelation vividly describes the end of time as 'a new heaven and a new earth' (Revelation 21:1), using the words of the prophet Isaiah (65:17) to echo the transformation that Jews looked forward to in the Messianic Age

  --> BUT Biblical texts point towards heaven as a future place (or spiritual state) & very clearly not as something that will occur on earth, e.g., Jesus tells thief on the cross, 'Today you will be with me in paradise' (Luke 23:43)
• Heaven is something other than the transformation and perfection of the whole of creation strengths continued

  -some Christians might point to the need to build God's kingdom on earth, starting with the Christian community

  -the Kingdom of God is not to be found physically but within people (Luke 17:21) and good actions will lead to the transformation of all of creation

  --> BUT some might argue heaven is not to be taken literally, whether it is to be 'found' in this world or the next. Heaven should be seen as a symbol of our life on earth

  -following the effects of the Fall, the Christian's duty is to re-find the paradise that has been lost by Adam and Eve and to use free will to rebuild it on earth

  --> BUT while heaven is a future place, it could be argued that it is possible to get glimpses of this future here on earth, perhaps through our observations of good actions in ourselves or others
• The Assumption of the Virgin 


  -painted by Francesco Botticini around 1475 to 1476

  -raises the question of whether heaven is actually a place of community

  -image based upon a poem by the Florentine apothecary, writer and politician Matteo Palmieri, who is shown kneeling to the left of the tomb, opposite his wife Niccolosa

  --> poem described pre-existence of the soul before birth. As this was considered heretical by some, the couples' faces (now restored) were scratched out in protest

  
• argument that Hell is a real place

  -something cannot come from nothing (principle of cosmological argument), and you cannot make something into nothing

  -similarly to how energy cannot be created or destroyed, neither can we, so life after death must exist

  -argument associated with dualists like Plato and Aquinas

  -a similar concept to the Buddhism conservation of consciousness argument

  -BUT could critique using materialist criticisms
• Kant's moral argument

  -being morally good likely won't reward us in this life, so why do we bother to be good?

  -if we saw 2 wheels on a different planet, we would assume there should be a bike or people to accompany it, to make sense of the object (objects belong to something bigger)

  -this is like how the desire to be good only makes sense if it is part of something bigger i.e. justice

  --> the only thing that can deliver this justice is God, so there must be Heaven, Hell etc.
• argument that Jesus was resurrected, so there is an afterlife

  -Augustine said that a miracle has happened on Earth, either in the form of Jesus' resurrection, or the fact that several billion people have been duped into believing in Christianity

  -how come so many intelligent people believe Jesus was resurrected?

  --> most people would not believe it if they heard their grandparent had come back from the dead, so why Jesus?

  -N. T. Wright says Jesus really did come back, and if he did, that shows there will be a future resurrection
• how coherent is Christian teaching?

  -infinite punishment for finite sin undermines coherence of Hell, but there must be a statute of limitations

  -if not, it makes a mockery of Heaven (what's the point of this universe if everyone will go to Heaven?)

  -an eternal hell may be therefore fundamental

  --> does not necessarily contradict God's benevolence, as a teacher who is strict is better than the teacher who does not enforce rules

  -BUT you could disagree with this, and say we act morally for different reasons. Socrates says justice is a form of psychological harmony between the three parts of the soul. The appetitive part must be prevented from becoming too strong. Thrasymachus disagrees, and says individuals should act unjustly because acting unjustly confers greater benefits to an individual than acting justly. Nietzsche suggests being too good can be dangerous ('slave morality' means we lack ambition)
• Roman Catholic Church

  -purgatory is predominantly a Roman Catholic belief

  -it helps with any criticism of beliefs in the afterlife that suggest that a loving God would not over-punish those who have been 'quite bad'-that is, it deals with the grey area between heaven and hell

  -however, many Christians reject the idea of purgatory as an unnecessary idea that was invented because God's justice is beyond our understanding and does not need to be considered in human terms

  -purgatory is an intermediate state (not place) after death which purges us from our sins

  -it is a time of purification & cleansing where people are sent at judgement if they have been said to be fit for heaven

  -a person's life, given by God, is prepared to be returned to God in heaven
• Roman Catholic purgatory teachings

  -in popular imagery, purgatory is seen as a place where those who have committed sins are cleansed by fire (the cleansing fire is an image found in the NT)

  -however, the Roman Catholic teaching once more focuses on the teaching, rather than the detail:

  --> all who die in friendship with God but not fully purified from sins by going to Confession are assured of eternal salvation but go through purification to achieve the holiness (perfection) needed for heaven

  --> as a state, not a place, the idea of purifying fire is symbolic, not literal - perhaps referring to an inner fire in the soul or mind

  --> it is possible, therefore, to pray for those who have died that they may be delivered from their sin. This practice is seen in 2 Maccabees 12:41-45, a section of the OT rejected by Protestants but part of the Catholic Bible
• Roman Catholic Church continued

  -Matthew 12:31: "every type of sin & slander can be forgiven but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven"

  --> surely we must be given the chance to make up for sins in some way before going to meet God

  -Catholics believe hell reserved for those who choose it by committing mortal sin & persisting in it until the end, so purgatory a way of expressing understanding that God wants to save everyone possible

  -current Catholic view on purgatory probably dates to 13thC

  -idea of more complex divide than 'heaven' & 'hell' goes back to 2ndC

  -intermediate state & idea of cleansing by fire found in writings of Origen (3rdC) & 4thC Gregory of Nyssa, responsible for major clarifications of early Christian thought, who talked about place of purification where God's work of redemption was completed

  -3rdC 'Martyrdom of Perpetua & Felicity' talks about prayer for dead