Death and the Afterlife Pt 1 Flashcards
What are the implications of Jesus’ resurrection?
- Resurrection did not mark the end of the world but the beginning of the Jesus movement and Christianity
- Jesus’ resurrection was a moment of hope over despair
- A moment where God acted mysteriously and spectacularly
What did Jesus’ teaching contain?
Jewish eschatology based on teaching of the Pharisees, not just about immortality but about world order
- His life was a sacrifice for sin
- His death would prompt the establishment of world order
- He would be raised with saints, martyrs and his followers would have a place in the kingdom
Quote Mark on the kingdom of God arriving
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom has come near” - Mark 1:14
- Many Christians thought they were near Parousia
What would Parousia do?
Judge the world and those who lived righteously would live eternally in God’s restored and renewed world
How does the Book of Revelations depict the Kingdom of God?
- New age as a time of no suffering where heavenly Jerusalem descends to Earth as a symbol of renewed world
Quote the Book of Revelations on the new age?
“God himself will be with them… Death shall be no more” - Book of Revelation 21:1-4
What are the 3 interpretations of the Kingdom of God?
- An actual place
- A spiritual state
- A symbol of the moral life
What is the Kingdom of God as a present moral and spiritual state?
- In the Gospels there was a call for moral and spiritual reform
- An Inaugurated eschatology (presentation as if the Kingdom has already started)
- Jesus’ healing miracles, e.g sight to the blind, are signs the new age has come
Quote OT prophet Isaiah on the Kingdom of God?
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened”
- ‘Nowness’ of the kingdom
- time to overcome racial prejudice, discrimination and failure to practice religion
How is the Kingdom of God presented as a future redeemed state?
- Jesus’ eschatology is traditional
- Preaches that the future kingdom is a state where righteous live in perfect harmony with God in a redeemed world
How does St Paul represent the Kingdom of God as a future redeemed state?
- Says Jesus’ resurrection was a sign that the world is restored, we can ‘see’ and ‘know’ God
- Before Christ we were merely able to see heaven as a ‘dark glass’, now we can see ‘clearly’
How does John the Divine represent the Kingdom of God as a future redeemed state?
- The sacrificial death of Jesus washed away sin
- The righteous may now live in New Jerusalem and experience Gods joyous presence
- Other writers use NT as images of future state as perfect and completion of God-Human relationship
What question about punishment and justice does the OT raise? (Quote)
“Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” - Jeremiah
- Why do the wicked prosper and the good suffer?
How does the OT answer to the question of punishment and justice?
- Jesus says that the wicked have enjoyed their ‘reward’ and will be excluded from the kingdom of God
How does the Gospel of Mathew view hell?
- A state of Hades or Gehenna
- Hades in Greek thought was a shadowy half existence of human spirits awaiting judgement
- Gehenna in later Jewish thought was a place of torment and suffering
- OT Hades is Sheol
- Mathew combines ideas to warn unrighteous that hell is fire. torment. wailing and lament