Death and the Afterlife AO1 Flashcards
What concepts of life after death do Christians reject?
Christians reject reincarnation and platonic ideas of a disembodied existence
What do the Pharisees believe based on the Book of Daniel?
Pharisees believed in resurrection in OT (Book of Daniel)
‘Multitudes who sleep in the dust will wake’
Sadducees: no life after death
Judaism concludes people will be resurrected when the messiah returns at a time of God’s choosing
Christian belief of resurrection based on Jesus
Jesus’ tomb found empty despite heavy stone over the entrance
Jesus seen and heard by followers as a man in a physical body
Resurrection of Jesus demonstrates that Christians will be resurrected after death
Doubting Thomas in the Gospel of John – physically present
1 Corinthians 15
Physical earthly body reaches full potential like a seed sown into a plant
Not clear how this transformation happens
2 Corinthians 5
Body from tent (impermanent) to house (certainty, substantial) - platonic
Clothed in heaven rather than naked – Genesis, no longer in a state of sin
Bernard Williams
Would an eternity in heaven be desirable? Surely it would become boring after a while. Could (eventually) do everything unlimitedly and the idea of anticipation would die out. Part of the pleasure of living is making choices about what we will do with our limited lifespans which we may be able to achieve
Karl Rahner
(Catholic theologian) agrees with Bernard Williams as our limited lifespans give us meaning – reason to support the view of a timeless afterlife
Book of revelations - hell
Writer has a vision that the bad people are thrown into a lake of fiery Sulphur
David Hume
Can finite sins deserve eternal punishments? Calls God’s justice into question
John Hick
Hell is incompatible with God = rejection of traditional view
Belief developed as a form of social control, encouraging fear of disobeying the teachings of religious authority
Not conceivable a God of infinite love and mercy would give eternal punishments
Hell is theologically unsound
Augustine
Election is for the very few who recieve God’s grace
Disagreed with Pelagianism (born a blank state = deserve place in heaven) on the grounds of original sin. Nobody deserves salvation or can earn salvation as God almighty chooses. No one can reach God’s standards through their own efforts
Foreknowledge (early life) & God’s choice (later life) = Ephesians and Romans
Evidence of God’s great love and mercy that he allows anyone at all to be saved
John Calvin
16th century
Unshakeable sovereignty of God – controls absolutely everything
Nothing happens beyond his control or knowledge
No choices are free
Destiny chosen before it began
‘All are not created on equal terms’
Influential for protestant tradition
Karl Barth
Doctrine of unlimited election developed in the 20th century
Church dogmatics = Jesus brought salvation for the whole world
Election is the choice that God made to send Jesus, the elected man, into the world
Jesus is both ‘the electing God and the elected man in one’ - everybody can now have the possibility
God of love would not choose a select few for salvation
Election available for anyone who has faith in Jesus
John Hick - Universalism
God will save all people whatever their belief
Evangelical Christian – multicultural Birmingham – God of love cannot reject these people
God and the Universe of Faiths, the Death of Eternal Life – all reach God after death
People will develop faith in afterlife
Different religions are different expressions of the same universal human desire for God – not right and wrong religions but simply traditions of doctrine and practice that stem from different cultures
Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI about Hick
Christ’s death on the cross becomes pointless
Sacrificial death of Jesus becomes one of many possible ways for heaven rather than a once and for all cosmic event
