death and the afterlife essay questions

lauren's A level religious studies revision

all of my A level revision for the religious studies 2016 OCR spec x

death and the afterlife

new testament foundations

jesus’ resurrection and its implications

although the resurrection was important to the writers of the new testament, there is no system of explanation for the afterlife. they do broadly agree on three things:

jesus’ death and resurrection marked the start of jesus’ movement and the foundation of christianity
jesus’ resurrection was a moment of hope over despair
it was a moment in which god acted in a mysterious and spectacular way

over time these ideas gained greater theological and philosophical emphasis.

the ambiguities of jesus resurrection

jesus’ teaching on death and the afterlife was rooted in jewish eschatology of his days, especially that of the pharisees . it had come from greek philosophical ideas on the soul and immortality but jesus taught that the significance lies in the establishing of a new order. he taught:

his life was a sacrifice for sin
his death would prompt god to establish a new order/kingdom
he would be raised up with saints and martyrs and his followers would have a place in heaven

these teachings are still somewhat vague and different views have developed on how and when this kingdom will be established.

the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of god has come near. – mark 1:14

truly i tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of god has come with power. – mark 9:1

but if it is by the finger of god that i cast out demons, then the kingdom of god has come to you. -luke 11:20

some passages seem to suggest early christians thought they were living on the edge of the new era, expecting jesus’ swift return to establish it. the greek word for this arrival is parousia . the role of parousia is to judge the world and select those who lived a good life to live eternally in the new world, restored and renewed by god.

jesus’ parables describe the restored world in metaphors of weddings, feasts and harvest, but the main descriptions are in the book of revelation.

then i saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. and i saw the holy city, new jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from god.. – book of revelation 21:1-4

the kingdom of god

jesus’ teachings on the age to come served several purposes depending on our interpretation of what the kingdom of god is: an actual place , a spiritual place or a symbol of moral life .

the kingdom as a present moral and spiritual state

jesus’ teaching on the kingdom of god was a call for moral and spiritual reform . he presents it as if it is already begun, which scholars refer to as ‘inaugurated eschatology ‘. jesus’ miracles are the signs for the new age being present as the prophets said. his parables and moral examples emphasise the ‘ nowness ‘ of the kingdom as a time to overcome racial prejudice, discrimination against the marginalised and the failings of contemporary religious practices.

the kingdom as a future redeemed state

his teaching is also traditional and preaches that the righteous will live in perfect harmony with god in a redeemed world. saint paul argued that jesus’ death and resurrection was the first sign of the restored world in which humans can ‘see’ and ‘know’ god. he says before christ we could only see god dimly through a ‘dark glass’ but they can now see the future ‘ clearly ‘. other writers present it as a future state of perfection and completion of the relationship between god and humans.

punishment and justice

in response to the old testament question of why the wicked prosper and the good suffer, the new testament says the wicked will be punished and the good will be rewarded. as a matter of justice , the wicked will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. the gospel of matthew refers to hades and sometimes gehenna , both translated as hell , as places of torment and suffering for the wicked. the sheol is the underworld of departed spirits awaiting judgement. matthew combines these ideas to warn the wicked that hell is fire, torment and lament. similarly the book of revelation refers to those who are wicked as being ‘thrown into the lake of fire’.

one of the influential passages on this is the story of the rich man and lazarus as told by jesus. a rich man ignores lazarus, a poor and sick man at his gate, while he himself enjoyed rich feasts and fine clothes. both died on the same day, and lazarus found himself in heaven with the righteous while the rich man was in hades. the rich man’s punishment is torment and he can see lazarus, begging him to ‘dip the tip of his finger in water and cool’ his tongue. the attitude of the rich man shows why he has been punished. abraham replies ‘you recieved your good things, and lazarus…[all] manner of evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony’.

no account of lazarus’ moral character is given but it is assumed he lived a good live deserving of reward. the story challenged held beliefs and said that the wicked will receive their justice if not now, in the next life.

four problems

the delay of parousia

the early generations hoped for jesus’ return and the arrival of god’s kingdom. but a generation later, he had still not returned, so eschatology developed:

many recalled that jesus himself had warned against making exact calculations about when the judgement day would take place. ‘about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the son, but only the father.’
reviewing parables, they recognised the theme of delay and he would return like a ‘thief in the night’ . this meant being morally vigilant until this point.

another problem is where this kingdom will be located and if it would be the same as heaven. dante’s vision and the book of revelation hints that it will be a continuation of this world.

time and judgement

the exact moment of judgement at the end of days is uncertain , but NT writers suggest that the personal judgement immediately after death, like the parable of the rich man and lazarus depicts, is more important. jesus says to the robber crucified with him, ‘today you will be with me in paradise’. john’s gospel suggests that judgement is personal and ongoing .

there is also millenarianism , the belief that when christ returns, he will rule for a thousand years with the saints before final judgement occurs. this belief has become popular at politically difficult times as it signposts the end of the present age. some have even encouraged environmental destruction to hasten the process. since augustine’s time however it has become more accepted that this is the role of the church until christ’s return on the day of judgement.

although not mentioned in the bible, the idea of purgatory is widely accepted so that people who have not died in a state of grace may continue to seek forgiveness for sins and receive punishment until final judgement. it evolved for two reasons: as matter of fairness to allow someone who has not fully prepared for god to have the time to do so, and because of the ambiguity of judgement.

the parable of the sheep and goats

matthew 25 focuses on god’s judgement of the world before the arrival of the kingdom. the parable is set in terms of farming life: the practice was for sheep and goats to graze together in the day and separate at night. sheep are worth more, so they have more secure accommodation. the parable suggests that moral life is not an advantage but it is rewarded with eternal life on judgement day. the main teachings are:

a righteous/religious life alone is not enough to receive eternal life, but must be coupled with pursuit of justice for the marginalised, oppressed and poor without thinking of heavenly reward.
those who are rewarded are not christians but all those who have pursued justice . this is a modern consideration when asking whether non-christians will be saved, and the parable answers that god rewards all those who are people of good will .
the list of good works reflects jesus’ own ministry of caring for the sick, poor and even prisoners.
the phrase shows that one is obliged to help those who belong to any and all social and religious groups. it says christ’s presence is in the least attractive members of society.

developments in christian eschatological teaching

according to J.N.D Kelly , early christian eschatology focused on parousia , resurrection , judgement and the end of present order , but they were ‘held together in a naive, unreflective fashion with little or no attempt to work out their implications of solve the problems they raised.’

the problems have not gone away, and each generation must figure out how the ideas fit into their contemporary context. in considering whether heaven/hell/purgatory are physical or spiritual , they also ask:

are hell and heaven eternal?
is heaven just the transformation of creation?
is purgatory something that everyone goes through?
when does god’s judgement take place?

in recent times hell has become the least acceptable doctrine. this is partly because it has been viewed too literally but also because it contradicts the idea of a loving , forgiving god. Origen argued that hell was a personal ‘interior anguish’ from being apart from god’. it is not permanent and would pass away with the redeemed world. Gregory of Nyssa argues that judgement is a result of a guilty conscience when faced with christ.

traditionally, judgement is universal and punishment is eternal because it gives a reason for faith in god and need for repentance. it doesnt show god as unloving but shows his grace and justice : if the wicked go unpunished then god’s goodness comes into question.

dante’s version of hell

Dante’s vision is shown in ‘Divine Comedy’ . he writes that it is in every way a dysfunctional state created at the moment of jesus’ death – it is the opposite of heaven. reason is abandoned for irrationality , dwellers lack faith in god and live hopelessly . he writes that there are nine circles of hell as characterised by the virtues , with graphic descriptions of sin being matched with a similar punishment. in the ninth circle, the deepest and darkest part of hell, lucifer has his throne, and his wings fan freezing air so cold that men cannot weep or move. dante singles out two sinners: Judas who betrayed christ, and Brutus and Cassius who murdered caesar, representing the deliberate destabilisation of god-given moral order as well as political order.

hell as a symbol of alienation

for many theologians dante’s hell makes us think of consequences to our actions as well as the kind of people our actions make us. in his hell there is no escape because they have all alienated themselves from god. the problem now with our understanding that hell is not in the earth’s core, is whether hell-based language has a place or not. for Paul Tillich , ‘heaven and hell must be taken seriously as metaphors for the polar ultimates in the experience of the divine’ . hell is a psychological power as a life alienated from god. hell is not a place but a state of being. Jean Paul Sartre wrote a play call Huis Clos (No Exit) which shows three people in a room who believe they are waiting for fire and brimstone, but eventually realise the true hell is living with their sins, and torment each other until they realise that they have become their own torturers. the play ends by saying that ‘hell is other people’ as there is no freedom to be an individual.

hell as eternal separation

catholicism teaches that hell is eternal for those who commit mortal sins . hell is not something chosen by god but by people who choose sin over his love. hell is self-exclusion . the catechism writes that hell’s punishment is ‘eternal separation from god, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs’ . hell is used to urge people to use their freedom wisely and to do good . hell is reserved for those who consistently reject goodness until final judgement.

purgatory and intermediate states

there is no clear idea of this in the NT, but it is part of protestant and catholic teachings for the chance of repentance beyond mortal life.

foretaste of heaven and hell. Ambrose considered purgatory a place for souls to wait for judgement in a kind of taste of either heaven or hell.
probationary school. Origen argues that purgatory is like probationary school where the soul can experience many worlds to develop and perfect itself.
redemption for the whole of creation. Gregory of Nyssa argues that purgatory has a purifying purpose so that everyone may be cleansed of their sins and enter into heaven. in this ways god completes his purpose of redeeming and restoring creation.

dante’s vision of purgatory

according to dante purgatory is for those who believed in christ and repented before death. here they can purge themselves of sins and wrongdoings before entering heaven. he uses a description of the soul ascending up a mountain until it reaches the top and goes to heaven. the soul’s driving force is love.

catholic teaching on purgatory

All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still die imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven – the catechism

the catholic church teaches that there is no specific teaching on purgatory in the NT but says that ideas such as ‘cleansing by fire’ suggest that some sins can be forgiven in this age, some in the next. purgatory is them a post mortem interim state of a soul’s journey. it explains why the church also prays for the souls of the departed and that they should be freed from sin.

john hick on the intermediate state

the lack of biblical support means many protestants have rejected it in favour of focus on judgement, heaven, and hell. however, recent theologians have seen the value of purgatory supported by the arguments of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa , because morally it makes sense. John Hick argues that the ‘gap between the individual’s imperfection at the end of this life and the perfect heavenly state in which he is to participate has to be bridged’. he urges us to think of the afterlife as a continuation of the soul-making process started on earth until they are united with god.

heaven is the ultimate state in which humans see god ‘face to face’ . it is the state of pure knowledge and lack of sin so that he soul may experience the fullness of joy . it is the restoration of the whole of creation. but it begs the questions: is it a state of life after death or just this world perfected? can non humans enter heaven? are all humans capable of receiving the beatific vision?

dante’s vision of heaven

it is beyond description and dante says ‘to go beyond the human cannot be put into words’ . the heavenly souls yearn for ultimate good and harmony with god’s love. the end of the journey is a source of knowledge and illumination through god. there are ten levels of this as there are nine in hell, and each soul finds its intellectual resting place and degree of bliss.

catholic teaching on the beatific vision

heaven does not occupy actual space and time as dante’s account suggests. the catholic church teaches thus:

the perfect life with the most holy trinity – this communion of life and love with the trinity , with the virgin mary, the angels and all the blessed – is called heaven. – catechism

it is a ‘state of supreme, definitive happiness’ where god reveals himself so that we may know him in a new glorious way. this is the beatific vision , or blessed state of everlasting bliss . it teaches that it is a community of immortal souls who are obedient to god’s will and reign with christ for ever.

then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. – mark 13:27

the world elect is used in the NT meaning choice and refers to those who are chosen by god for eternal life but brings up many questions: who are the elect? on what grounds are the elected? when were/are they chosen?

limited and unlimited election

it is closely associated with the idea of predestination and are for some, interchangeable terms. they are both used to explain why some will have eternal life while others will not. election is also about the nature of god and his grace , with the two ideas clashing , leading to variations in belief.

limited election is salvation and the reward of heaven only for those whom god has graciously chosen and judged as righteous. this is also linked to ‘limited atonement’ : christ only died for the sins of the elect.
unlimited election is the god of love’s call for all people to salvation. it is linked to ‘unlimited atonement’ : jesus died for the sins of the whole world.

Alister McGrath notes that election and predestination are ‘often regarded as one of the most enigmatic and puzzling aspects of the Christian theology’.

election and predestination

the idea of predestination comes from Augustine and has developed as a doctrine. augustine’s analysis of human nature led to his conclusion that even faith is christ is not sufficient to merit eternal salvation. this is because the will is so weakened by the fall . god’s grace is key to augustine’s predestination. grace is not prompted by human actions but is freely given, unprompted and uncoerced . this means that although god calls all people to salvation, he knows that only the elect will receive it.

single and double predestination

the scholars who used augstine’s teaching developed two forms:

single predestination . god elects only those whom he ordains to enter heaven and eternal life
double predestination . god elects those whom he ordains to enter heaven and condemns the rest to hell.

(are these two not the same thing?)

within these versions there is a further division of when god issues his divine decree:

antelapsarian decree . god decreed who were elect at the moment of creation, before the fall
postlapsarian decree . god decreed who were elect after the fall.

john calvin and calvinism

although he developed his version of the eternal decree from augustine, his followers pushed his ideas further and developed a stronger version of limited election.

calvinism is associated with double predestination and set out in the westminster confession of faith as follows:

By the decree of god…some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death. – westminster confession of faith

calvin’s own position was weaker than calvinism itself. he argued

god’s will is hidden and we shouldn’t presume we know what he has in store
what god reveals to humans takes into account their limited knowledge
when st paul says that god chooses all people he is referring to all kinds of people. god wills his grace and mercy for all
christians have a duty to preach the gospel to all kinds of people and must treat this as unlimited election even if god has only chosen particular individuals
both elect and non-elect have a duty to act morally

thomas aquinas and catholicism

aquinas ‘ interpretation of augustine led the catholic church to teach single predestination. god elects the righteous for heaven and the wicked elect themselves for hell.

God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a wilful turning away from God is necessary and persistence in it until the end – catechism

the elect are chosen by god because he knows that they will accomplish the good end which they are called to. however, the problem of predestination is that it appears to diminish human moral responsibility and the validity of trying to live a moral life.

election and universalism

the notion of universalism , or apokatastasis (restoration), is that hell is not eternal and the eschatological goals of the cosmos is perfection of the world to its pre-fall state. but there are other considerations:

god’s goodness and love requires that all humans achieve salvation
if humans have free will, they must all be able to achieve salvation

what makes universalism attractive is that it includes those who have no faith or are of another faith, because for many christians it is unfair for those who are unable to know christ to be excluded from grace.

universalism is attractive to liberal christians because the god that jesus preached of does not line up with the god of judgement and exclusion which hell requires. the emphasis in the new testament is on reconciliation with god. what purpose does punishing someone eternally achieve? if earthly existence is a journey of moral and spiritual education, then hell makes more sense as part of that journey where a person learns to fix their ways and strive for perfection.

he is a calvinist theologian and not strictly universalist, but his theory of election contributes to an understanding of universalism. he argued against the simplistic idea that election is choosing a few for heaven and condemning the rest to hell. instead he argues it describes a revelatory action of god from general to particular. we know this because jesus is elected and elector.

as subject and elector. god in christ elects to redeem all fallen humanity by dying and overcoming death
as object and elector. god in the person of christ reveals his friendliness towards humans by entering into its fallen state and dying on the cross

just as calvin left the question of who is elected as an open one, barth argues it is not for humans to speculate on god’s will. this leads scholars to the conclusion that barth may have rejected universalism as a principle of salvation but allowed inclusivism for those who are ‘in christ’ . we can only know the outcome at the end times.

i don’t believe in universalism, but i do believe in christ, the reconciler for all. – karl barth

for revision

what is parousia?
what is eschatology?
what are Sheol and Gehenna?
what is millenarianism?
what is limited election?
what are the main teachings of the story of the sheep and the goats?
what is the significance of the story of the rich man and lazarus?
why do christians disagree about when judgement will take/takes place?
what is the beatific vision?

sample exam questions

‘without the reward of heaven christians would not behave well.’ discuss.

to what extent is the parable of the sheep and gaots in matthew 25 only about heaven and hell?

assess the view that there is no last judgement; each person is judged by god at the moment of their death.

‘purgatory is the most important christian teaching about the afterlife.’ discuss.

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Death and the afterlife summary notes

OCR Christianity

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Rich man and lazarus

Bible story
A rich man ignored the pleas for help of a beggar called Lazarus.
When the rich man died, he went to hell and was tormented, he wanted to dip his finger in water to cool down, to warn his family, but was not allowed.
Lazarus went to heaven and was separated from the rich man by a chasm.
Linking the rich man and lazarus story to the different questions:
heaven & hell are described physically (water, finger & chasm).
Heaven and hell are eternal because you can’t leave (chasm).
Heaven is not the transformation of creation into a perfect form at the end of time – because lazarus went to heaven while the rich man’s family was still alive – so heaven existed before the end of time.
They were judged into heaven/hell immediately after death – before the end of time (as the rich man’s family was still alive)
Neither went through purgatory – showing not everyone goes through purgatory.
It is suggested in the story that it is because the rich man failed to good that he goes to hell. This suggests unlimited election is true.
Martin Luther argues that the rich man and lazarus story is just a parable designed to teach us a moral lesson.
We should not take it literally – it’s not a story about literal actual events that happened – and so it can’t actually tell us anything about the afterlife.
Luther points to the fact that the rich man wanted to warn his family and dip his finger in water – implying he could talk and had a physical body. However, that couldn’t be possible unless he had been resurrected. But, the resurrection doesn’t happen until the end of time – but it wasn’t the end of time because his family were still alive.
So, the story cannot make sense as events which literally took place. It’s just a parable. In that case, it does not have any of the implications for the afterlife that it seemed to when we viewed it literally.
The story might still justify unlimited election – since even as just a moral message, it’s suggesting we go to hell if we do bad – but really it’s just giving a moral message to be good to others, we can’t interpret avoiding hell as the punishment for that without taking the parable literally.
Furthermore, Luther followed Augustinian predestination and would have said the rich man failed to do good because he didn’t have grace, and that’s why he went to hell.

evaluation:

St Jerome argues the story wasn’t just a parable however. In support of this view, the story includes a name – Lazarus. All the other parables just have generic descriptions, like the ‘good samaritan’, not names.
The rich man may have desired to warn his family even if he was just a soul who couldn’t speak, and the finger dipping in water may have been metaphorical even though the story overall is literal.
This suggests Luther is wrong and the story actually happened and is meant to be taken literally.

New earth theology

At the end of time, God will transform creation back into its perfect eden state.
The resurrected bodies of the righteous will then have eternal life there.
That’s what heaven is – it doesn’t exist now, it is a future state of the earth.
N. T. Wright argues for this view of heaven. He points to the lord’s prayer ‘thy kingdom come’ – this quote is showing that Christians are meant to pray for God’s kingdom to come to earth.
The prayer is not for us to go to God’s kingdom, but for us to come here to earth.
This suggests that at the end of time, God’s kingdom will expand to include earth and God will perfect earth again (after Adam and Eve ruined it).
Furthermore, in the book of revelation chapter 21, God shows John the future where there is a ‘new heaven and new earth’ in which there is no suffering.
This theory also suggests that heaven is a physical place.
It also suggests that judgement takes place at the end of time – since no one can enter heaven until it is created at the end of time.
There is lots of biblical evidence that heaven exists now, however.
For example, Jesus was crucified next to a thief who expressed regret about their sin.
Jesus said “Assuredly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise”.
So Jesus is saying that he and the thief will both go to heaven that day.
So, heaven exists now and is not a future state of the earth.
However, this counter fails because there were no commas in the original text of the Bible.
If we put the comma in a different place, we get a very different meaning:
“Assuredly I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise”.
This is just a promise that they will both be in heaven at some point in the future.
This leaves open the possibility of new earth and general judgement and new earth.
So, since there is biblical evidence for the new earth idea, and this evidence from Jesus actually fails to go against it, the new earth theory is correct.

Physical view vs spiritual view

Physical view:

Heaven, hell and purgatory are physical places.
The Bible describes them in physical terms (e.g. in the sheep and the goats, hell is described as ‘eternal fire’, people are described as on earth and ‘gathered before’ Jesus and separated to his right and left – all physical descriptions implying a physical resurrected state).
The Bible (especially St Paul) also suggests that the afterlife involves physical resurrection – the physical body rising from the dead but in a perfected immortal form.
So the afterlife isn’t just some state of the soul – it is a physical bodily state.
Jesus’ body was used up in his resurrection – his tomb was discovered empty. This suggests that resurrection involves our physical body and therefore is physical.

Counter: Spiritual view:

Heaven, hell and purgatory are not physical places.
They are spiritual places that our souls go to.
The Bible says we have souls.
The physical resurrection view doesn’t explain what happens to us immediately after we die – before the end of time.
It makes more sense to think that our soul goes to the afterlife immediately after we die.
St Paul (the Bible) says that when he dies he will have a ‘presence’ with Christ – suggesting that there is an afterlife involving our soul being with Christ.

Evaluation

Criticism of the spiritual view:
There is so much biblical evidence for resurrection, and for resurrection being physical.
St Paul calls Jesus’ resurrection the ‘first fruits’ – implying that it was a promise that we too will be resurrected at the end of time if we follow Jesus.
The sheep and the goats parable suggests that we are judged at the end of time and it implies we have a physical resurrected existence on earth, backing up the physical new-earth view of heaven. Jesus describes hell as ‘eternal fire’ and ‘eternal punishment’, also implying a physical state (fire is physical).

Optional further conclusion:

However, there is a coherent way to believe in both a physical and spiritual afterlife.
First the afterlife is spiritual, then at the end of time it is physical.
Immediately after death, our soul is judged and sent to heaven to be with Jesus in a spiritual state, or sent to a spiritual hell to suffer.
Then at the end of time, our soul is joined with our resurrected body and then either sent to the physical new heaven/earth or to a physical hell.
So we are judged immediately after death AND at the end of time. This makes the most sense, since there is biblical evidence for both spiritual and physical afterlife.
Mainly a Catholic view.
The idea is that when Christians die in a state of mortal sin –e.g. Murder or adultery – they go to hell.
There is a moral argument for purgatory, however.
If we die in a state of ‘venial’ sin – meaning a more minor sin – it wouldn’t be right for them to go to hell for that.
Yet, they also can’t enter heaven in a state of sin.
So, there must be a temporary place they go to be purged of those minor sins before going to heaven.
Purgatory means ‘purge’.
Protestants rejects Purgatory because it is not in the Bible.
Furthermore, the Bible actually goes against purgatory.
The sheep and the goats – at the end of time Jesus sorts the sinners (goats) from the righteous (sheep).
The sinners go to hell, the righteous go to heaven.
There is no middle-ground option between these two – nothing like purgatory is mentioned. There’s no mention of where people go for ‘venial’ or ‘lesser’ sins . People either go to heaven or hell.
So, the bible is against purgatory.
Furthermore, Luther argues the catholic church made up purgatory to scam money from people. The Church said if you give them money, they will pray for your recently dead relative and get them out of purgatory faster.
Luther said purgatory was “fabricated by goblins”.

Symbolic view

Liberal Christians do not view the bible as the perfect word of God.
They point out it contains mistakes and scientific/historical errors.
So, it is best to view the bible as a product of the human mind.
In that case, everything the Bible says about the afterlife has to be taken symbolically, not literally.
Heaven, hell and purgatory are just symbols – flowery language – for human psychological states while alive.
If you do good to others, you will have a better life while alive – that’s what the idea of ‘heaven’ is a symbol for.
If you are evil to others, you will have a worse life – that’s what the idea of ‘hell’ is a symbol for.
Purgatory is a symbol for our need to feel guilty and make amends for sinful actions.
(Carl Jung had a similar view).
If we take a liberal view of the Bible, it leads to a crisis of interpretation and authority.
Everyone will have their own interpretation of the Bible.
We can’t tell whose interpretation is right.
So, every Christian will just believe whatever they want.
Better to think the Bible is the perfect word of God.
Furthermore, if there is no afterlife, then there is no punishment for sin or reward for virtue. For example, Kant thought that an afterlife was a necessary postulate for morality to make sense.
There may be some temporary punishment/reward – where a bad person lives a ‘hellish’ life, but that doesn’t seem enough for people like Hitler, for example.
The bible presents the afterlife as reward and punishment – for truly evil people, a mere symbolic punishment while alive is not sufficient for justice. And of course, some evil people just completely get away with it while alive, while some good people suffer evil unjustly.
The afterlife must be more than symbolic, if we are being true to its presentation as related to people getting what they deserve.
The presentation of the afterlife in the Bible has to be taken as a real place if we are to make sense of the way the Bible links it to reward and punishment.

Augustine’s views on limited election

original sin, grace & predestination
Augustine supports limited election – that only some Christians go to heaven.
Original sin is a corruption in human nature, causing us to be born with an irresistible temptation to sin.
Original sin damns us to hell. It is only if God grants us his gift of grace that we could ever get to heaven.
By ourselves, because we are corrupted, we can never be or do good enough to deserve getting into heaven.
God either grants us grace, predestining us for heaven, or he doesn’t and our original sin damns us to hell.
It’s not fair or loving to condemn people to hell for the actions of their ancestors.
Pelagius: We had nothing to do with Adam and Eve’s disobedience – so how is it fair to punish us with hell for their actions?
Predestination is not something a loving God would enforce.
Augustine might have gone too far to say we are guilty for Adam and Eve’s actions. However he could still be right that we deserve punishment on earth and in the afterlife for being sinful beings.
However, this still fails because it’s not a person’s fault that they are born with original sin and cursed to be a sinful being.
A loving God could not think a child deserves to die of cancer and go to hell.
So, Augustine’s theology still suggests an indefensible view of moral responsibility, which is inconsistent with an all-loving God.

Unlimited election

The sheep and the goats & inclusivism
Unlimited election is the view that everyone who has been good will get into heaven.
Potentially an unlimited number of people could go to heaven then, but only those who have been good will.
Sheep and the goats story.
Jesus says that what makes people sheep who deserve to go to heaven is that they helped others.
The goats, those who go to hell, failed to help others.
This suggests that getting into heaven and avoiding hell is a matter of doing and being good.
This shows that unlimited election is true.
Pelagius supports unlimited election as being the most fair approach because it is about rewarding and punishing people for their good or evil lives.

Evaluation:

Hick criticises unlimited election because a loving God could never send anyone to hell.
For punishment to be fair, it must be proportionate. It’s not fair to lock someone up for their rest of their life for stealing a mars bar, for example.
In that case, it can’t ever be fair to send human beings to hell forever.
No matter how bad a crime a human did, they did not do an infinite crime – because we are finite beings, we can’t do infinite things.
So, we can never deserve an infinite punishment, therefore.
People like Hitler did terrible things – but did not kill an infinite number of people. They might deserve a lot of punishment, but can’t ever deserve an infinite punishment.

Universalism: Hick (universalism, soul-making and purgatory)

Hick thought a loving God could never send anyone to hell.
Hell is eternal infinite torture which can never be loving or justice.
So, Hick argued everyone ends up in heaven.
However, Hick accepted that there were issues with this – it doesn’t seem right for Hitler to go straight to heaven, for example.
So, Hick proposed his own view of purgatory.
Bad people have to essentially live another life in a purgatory other world where they have another opportunity to become a good person (soul-making).
People can get endless opportunities to become good.
It might take Hitler a long time to become good – but eventually he will go to heaven too, once he’s actually and genuinely accepted his moral failures and become good.
This might seem extreme, but this is the point of Christianity – that no one is beyond forgiveness, that no one is ever truly eternally lost.
Universalism goes against the Bible.
The Bible says people go to hell (sheep and goats etc).

Optional further evaluation

That evaluation assumes that the bible is the perfect word of God – but Hick and liberal Christians reject that due to its mistakes and errors.
Hick’s conclusion that Hitler eventually ends up in heaven seems uncomfortable, but his logic is unassailable. Justice in punishment does require proportionality. Hitler’s crimes were finite. So, he cannot deserve an infinite punishment. This conclusion is logically inescapable.
It might not seem valid to view the Biblical presentation of hell as merely symbolic – since that can’t explain its biblical connection to punishment. However, Hick is simply saying that the idea of hell as punishment goes against justice and omnibenevolence. So, we have to view the whole idea of hell – not just as a real place, but also as punishment – as all made up by humans.
So, universalism is true. Hell cannot be eternal. Also, hell must at most be symbolic, not literal.

I Think Therefore I Teach

Tips for A level students. Lesson ramblings for teachers (helpful ideas too!)

Death and the Afterlife: DCT

Preview of Lesson plans

What is the soul – discussion bubble (fill in worksheet A3)

PP: pictures and discussions (fill in A3). See what students know about Doubting Thomas and the Tomb and fill in gaps – focusing upon how Jesus’ death was physical

PP: slides up to Judgement

Discuss ideas and philosophical issues surrounding heaven and hell (A3)

PP: up to personal identity

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One of the points where there is a significant, long-lasting intersection of the interests of many philosophers with the interests of many people of all kinds and conditions concerns the nature and significance of death. How should we understand the mortality of all living things and, closer to home, how should we understand our own mortality? Is it possible for persons to survive biological death? This is a topic that has occupied both analytic and continental philosophy in the twentieth century (e.g., Fred Feldman, Martin Heidegger). When the topic of death is ignored or denied in popular culture, some philosophers, theologians, social and political critics rail against the inauthentic complacency of ignoring one of the most important facts about our lives (see, for example, Søren Kierkegaard’s essay “At a Graveside” or Ernest Becker’s famous 1974 book, The Denial of Death ). But what precisely are the facts of death? Is it true that a person is annihilated when she dies, or is there a possibility or even a likelihood that she may survive death? Are any of the religious conceptions of an afterlife promising from a philosophical point of view?

There are five sections in this entry. In the first, we propose that beliefs about death and the possibility of an afterlife are of enduring significance because of our care for persons here and now, and thus our concern for their future and our own. Just as it is reasonable to hope that those we love have a fulfilling future in this life, it is natural to consider whether this life is the only life there is and, if there is reason to believe that there is an afterlife (or a life beyond this life), it would be reasonable to hope that this might involve a new, valuable environment or at least one that is not Hellish in nature. We bring to the fore other reasons why the topic of an afterlife is philosophically interesting. In sections two and three we consider the concept and possibility that persons survive death in light of two substantial philosophies of mind: dualism (section two) and materialism (section three). Section four addresses the afterlife in terms of empirical evidence. In section five, reasons are advanced for thinking that the reasonability of beliefs about an afterlife depends on the reasonability of metaphysical convictions.

1. Survival and its Alternatives

2. the possibility of survival—dualism, 3. objections to the possibility of survival—materialism, 4. parapsychology and near-death experiences, 5. metaphysical considerations concerning survival, other internet resources, related entries.

In ancient Western philosophy, Plato affirmed both a pre-natal life of the soul and the soul’s continued life after the death of the body. In Plato’s Phaedo , Socrates presents reasons why a philosopher should even welcome death (albeit not permitting or encouraging suicide), because of its emancipation of the souls of those who are good in this life to a great afterlife. In the work of Epictetus, on the other hand, death is conceived of as a person’s ceasing to be. Epictetus does not argue that we should welcome death but he holds that we should not fear death because we will not exist after death. The philosophical assessment of the truth of such matters continues on to the present, as does debate on the implications of whether we may survive death. Why?

There are many reasons why there should be ongoing attention as to whether Plato or Epictetus—or any other philosopher who offers a different account about the reality or illusion of an afterlife—is right. One reason is that the values we have in the here and now have a bearing on what we may or should hope for in terms of the future. While some philosophers believe that what happens in the future has enormous consequences for life’s meaning now, other philosophers have so focused on the importance of the present that questions about the future of humanity in this life, and the possible good or ill of an afterlife for individuals, is of little importance. Consider two philosophers who take the latter position, Peter Singer and Erik Wielenberg.

Singer asks us to consider a case when some good act is done and its goodness does not depend upon the future. Imagine a village where there is great need and that need is met with aid. Singer claims that the goodness of such an act should not depend on the long term; one can place to one side speculation about what might happen a thousand years later.

Suppose that we become involved in a project to help a small community in a developing country to become free of debt and self-sufficient in food. The project is an outstanding success, and the villagers are healthier, happier, better educated, and economically secure and have fewer children. Now someone might say “what good have you done? In a thousand years people will all be dead, and their children and grandchildren as well, and nothing that you have done will make any difference”. (Singer 1993: 274)

Singer responds:

We should not, however, think of our efforts as wasted unless they endure forever, or even for a very long time. (1993: 274)

His solution is to think of the universe in four-dimensional terms; according to this philosophy of time, all times are equally real. On this view, it is always the case that in the year 2020, the lives of the villagers are made better; they are happy, healthy, and well educated in 2020.

Erik Wielenberg does not adopt Singer’s recourse to the philosophy of time but, like Singer, his counsel is that we should not think (or need not think) in terms of the big picture or the future in assessing the meaning and urgency of our current projects

Isn’t it better that the Nazi Holocaust ended when it did rather than in, say, 1970—regardless of what the world will be like a million years from now? I can remember occasions in junior high gym class when a basketball or volleyball game became particularly heated and adolescent tempers flared. Our gym teacher sometimes attempted to calm us down with such rhetorical questions as, “Ten years from now, will any of you care who won this game?” It always struck me that a reasonable response to such a query would be, “Does it really matter now whether any of us will care in ten years?” In much the same vein, Thomas Nagel suggests, “it does not matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter”. (2013: 345)

A possible response is that while there is some wisdom in Singer’s and Wielenberg’s positions, they should not dissuade us from appreciating that the natural trajectory of the love of people and wisdom (or philosophy) includes concern for “the big picture”. If Singer truly cares about the villagers, shouldn’t he hope that they survive to enjoy the fruits of the investments that have been made? Or, putting this in four-dimensional time terms; shouldn’t he wish that they are happy in 2030 and 2040…? Surely those providing aid are not (and should not be) indifferent about the future. Granted, if the investment was made and then a meteor struck the village, destroying all life (or if in 2030 the meteor is destroying the village), we might well think the investment was still wise, good and noble (especially if there were no predictions of a meteor strike). However, there would be something deeply disturbing if one of the aid-givers announced upon leaving the village:

No matter what happens, no matter whether you all are struck by a massive plague in an hour and all die a horrible death or whether a thousand years from now your society will be condemned as deserving of nothing but contempt, what we have done today is our only concern and the value of our act is not diminished regardless of what awaits you!

We suggest that this attitude would be bizarre. Returning to the question of the afterlife, if you think that some good afterlife is possible, one should hope for the long-term flourishing of the villagers in both this life and the next rather than focusing only on the value of their present position. And if you do have such a hope, why hope that the lives of everyone will come to an end at a specific time, say in a thousand years? Similarly, if you believe that it is likely or even possible that there is an afterlife where there is great ongoing harm, should we not hope that this not be the case for the villagers?

Wielenberg’s comments on the Holocaust are puzzling. Of course, no one except a murderous, psychopathic Nazi would hope the Holocaust lasted longer or that it involved the death of even one more individual. But what one hopes will take place a million years from now is not irrelevant ethically or in terms of values. Consider two futures: in one, the Jews survive a million years from now and are thriving. In another, imagine that a million years from now there is a revival of the Nazi party. The Jews have colonized Mars and Nazi genocidal units are dispatched to treat Jewish settlements the way the Nazis treated the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. This time, the Nazis succeed in annihilating every last Jew. Surely, it would be deeply perverse to hope for the second future. It would also be perverse to be indifferent now about whether the second will occur. We cannot imagine that a person of integrity would say they are utterly indifferent about whether all Jews will be annihilated by Nazis in the future, be it a million years, ten million, twenty, or….

Nagel’s comment (cited by Wielenberg) is worthy of note. His comment suggests that what we do now will (or may) not matter a million years from now, but there is an important distinction between whether some event matters (in the sense that it is valuable; it is good that the event occurred) and whether persons who live in the future are aware of the event and care about it. Arguably, it will always be the case that the Holocaust should not have happened, regardless of whether any human being remembers it a hundred (or a thousand or a million) years from now. Moreover, those of us who are horrified about this genocide should hope that remembering it and passing on a record of it has no statute of limitation. In keeping with our earlier thought experiment, imagine two futures: a million years from now, persons recall the Holocaust and continue to lament this mass genocide; in a different future imagine persons are all Nazis and they only recall the Holocaust as a failure to succeed in killing all Jews, something they were only able to achieve in the year 1,002,014.

So, one reason why the topic of an afterlife is of historical and contemporary interest is because our values about present persons, things, and events have a bearing on the future, including the possibility of a future for individuals after their death. If we know that it is impossible for individual persons to survive biological death, speculation on an afterlife we might expect or hope for would be pointless (unless it serves some purpose in terms of fiction), but it would not be pointless to reflect on whether the impossibility of an afterlife should dominate our values in this life. What are the implications for our lives now if we take seriously the idea that at death we will pass into oblivion? Some philosophers adopt a strategy like Singer’s and Wielenberg’s about our individual lives. In Religion Without God Ronald Dworkin is candid about “what we desperately dread”, namely “the total, obliterating, itself unimaginable, snuffing out of everything” (2013: 150). While he thinks some kind of individual afterlife may be possible (even given atheistic naturalism) he does propose a “kind of immortality” which is “the only kind we have any business wanting” (Dworkin 2013: 159).

When you do something smaller well—play a tune or a part or a hand, throw a curve or a compliment, make a chair or a sonnet or love—your satisfaction is complete in itself. Those are achievements within life. Why can’t a life also be an achievement complete in itself, with its own value in the art in living it displays? (Dworkin 2013: 158)

Who would deny that such acts can be great achievements? If individual survival of death is impossible, then Dworkin is right to cast aside (as he does) the comedian Woody Allen’s aspiration to live on forever, not in his work, but in his apartment. But do we know that an individual afterlife is impossible? Later in this entry, we suggest that ruling out an afterlife as impossible is philosophically tenuous. Moreover, we suggest that the goods within the life that Dworkin describes invite us to consider whether human lives may be richer still if they do not end in oblivion and instead death marks a transition to a form of afterlife that some of the world religions envision. For an interesting secular case that many of our values in the present moment are tied to expectations of the future, see Scheffler 2016 (N.B. Scheffler is concerned with future events in this life rather than an individual’s life after their death.) For more recent reflection on the relevance of an afterlife for the meaning of life now, see Mawson 2019 and 2020.

So, we suggest that the topic of an afterlife is warranted for at least three reasons: it is important if you love persons in this life and hope for their enduring flourishing (or hope they are not annihilated or meet a worse fate); it is important to think about the implications of there not being an afterlife (or there being one) in terms of how to understand what is important to you now; and it is important to consider for historical reasons: speculation and beliefs about life after death have existed through much of human history.

In most cultures, there is evidence of a belief in some sort of personal afterlife, in which the same individual that lived and died nevertheless persists and continues to have new experiences. There are alternatives, however. The ancient Greeks are noted for having placed a high premium on “survival” in the memory and honor of the community—a practice reflected in our reference to deceased celebrities as (for example) “the immortal Babe Ruth”. (Strictly speaking, this for the Greeks was not a replacement for a personal afterlife, but rather a supplement to what was conceived as a rather colorless and unrewarding existence in Hades.) Such a hope, it would seem, provides a major consolation only if one is optimistic concerning the persistence and continued memory of the community, as well as the accuracy and justice of their judgments. An interesting variant of this form of immorality is found in process theology, with its promise of “objective immortality” in the mind of God, who neither forgets nor misjudges the lives he remembers (Hartshorne 1962: 262). Hindu and Buddhist traditions include a belief in reincarnation. Hindu philosophical tradition gives more credence to the enduring of individuals through successive rebirths and deaths than does Buddhist philosophical tradition see Knine 2010). In Buddhist philosophy, the ongoing task is to produce a sufficient consciousness of the self for there to be reincarnation, while simultaneously securing the understanding that the individual self is not (in the end) a substantial, concrete thing, but a delusion that will dissolve or become liberated into Nirvana (see Nattier 2010).

Other entries in this encyclopedia address themes in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy (see, e.g., the entry on mind in Indian Buddhist philosophy ), so we will forego a comparative study here of competing religious portraits of an afterlife. For two immensely valuable resources for reflection on the afterlife from diverse religious and philosophical perspectives, see The Palgrave Handbook of the Afterlife (Nagasawa & Matheson eds. 2017) and The Oxford Handbook to the Eschaton (Walls ed. 2010). A fascinating synthesis of different religious portraits of an afterlife is developed in Hick 1976. We also note, but do not comment on, an important topic in Christian philosophical theology concerning universalism, the belief that, eventually, all persons will be saved (see Parry and Partridge 2003). Our focus for much of the rest of this entry is on the possibility and the reasonability of believing there is an afterlife for individual persons, though we will offer some observations along the way about the kinds of afterlife that are possible, given different metaphysical assumptions. As for the philosophers like Kierkegaard and Becker, cited earlier, who castigate those of us who ignore our mortality, we suggest that sometimes the contemplation of mortality can be disabling and distract us from seeking immediate goods (such as those Dworkin highlights) or relieving suffering. It would not be admirable for the aid workers in Singer’s example to pause in their work in order to hold death-and-dying seminars. However, while there might be nothing wrong in living without wrestling with mortality, there are sufficient good reasons why the topics of the nature of death and the existence (or non-existence) of an afterlife are philosophically interesting and deserving of attention.

As we turn to the question of whether it is possible for persons to survive death, it is natural to pursue an answer in light of the philosophy of human persons. The next section considers survival from the standpoint of mind-body dualism.

At first, it seems obvious that dualism is a “survival-friendly” perspective. If we are nothing more than our bodies, it seems that if death destroys our bodies, we are destroyed and there is nothing left of us as persons—though parts of our bodies and the particles that make it up will be scattered and perhaps (temporarily) come to be part of the bodies of other living organisms. If, however, we are nonphysical (or immaterial) minds or souls or persons who are embodied, then even the complete annihilation of our physical bodies does not entail our annihilation as persons. In fact, one of several arguments for dualism is based on the conceivability of our existing without our bodies. If dualism is true, however, it does not necessarily follow that persons will survive the death of their bodies. It may be that the functional dependence of ourselves on our bodies is so essential that we only come into existence as embodied persons when our bodies reach a certain formation and constitution and then we cease to be when that formation and constitution is destroyed. But dualism at least opens the door for claiming that our dependence on our bodies is contingent (not necessary) or is essential only given the present laws of nature (laws that may be violated by God). Dualist accounts of survival have been seriously questioned, however.

Some philosophers argue that dualist accounts of survival fail because we have no “criteria of identity” for disembodied persons. When we make judgments about the identity of persons we are not making judgments about the identity of souls. It has been argued that we cannot make judgments about the identity of souls, because souls are said to be imperceptible and non-spatial. And because of this, the identity of a person over time cannot consist of the identity of the person’s soul over time. What we are able to identify—and re-identify—is a person’s body. But once the person has died that body decomposes in a grave, and can’t be the basis for our identification of the person who is supposed to have survived disembodied (Perry 1978: 6–18).

Hasker claims that this objection is confused, conflating two quite distinct questions (Hasker 1989:208–09). One is a metaphysical question: What does it mean to say of a person at one time that she is numerically the same person at a later time? (Or, if you like, it is a metaphysical question to ask: Is x at t 1 the same φ as y at t 2 ?) The second is an epistemological question: How can we tell that a person at one time is numerically the same person at a later time? (Or how can we tell that x at t 1 is the same φ as y at t 2 ?) The failure to distinguish these questions (a failure which may be due in part to Wittgenstein) is the source of serious philosophical confusions. The short answer to the first question is that normally, when we know what a φ is, we know also what it is for a φ at t 1 to be the same individual φ as a φ at t 2 . The abnormal cases are those in which the φ at t 1 has undergone changes, and we are unsure whether those changes amount to the destruction of the φ, or its replacement by another object, so that the very same φ cannot possibly have persisted until t 2 . The classic example is the ship of Theseus, [ 1 ] but there are many others. In such cases, our first recourse is to seek to understand more accurately the concept of a φ—does our concept of a ship, for example, allow for the progressive replacement of all of the ship’s parts, or not? But sometimes there may be no determinate answer to this question. Our concepts, after all, have been developed to deal with the sorts of contingencies that normally arise, and it may sometimes be possible to invent scenarios (or even to discover them empirically) that are not provided for in our ordinary usage of a concept. In that case, we must either provide for ourselves criteria to cover the novel situation (thus modifying our previous concept of a φ), or else admit that the question we were asking has no answer.

When we pose this question with regard to the persistence of immaterial souls, what we find is that there is no problem that needs a solution. We know what it is to be a subject of experience—to be a being that thinks, and believes, and desires various things, for example—and prima facie at least this does not entail being embodied, let alone being embodied in the very same body over time. If we think of the immaterial soul in Cartesian terms, there simply isn’t anything that can happen to such a soul (barring its being no longer sustained in existence by God) that could bring it about that the soul ceases to be; Cartesian souls are “naturally immortal”. Some other dualist views may not opt for natural immortality of the soul, and if so they will need to say something about the sorts of changes that a soul can and cannot sustain if it is to remain in existence as the individual it was. But there is no problem here for the general hypothesis of survival as an immaterial soul (Hasker 1999: 206–11).

The metaphysical question having been disposed of, it becomes apparent that the epistemological question is less significant than it may appear to be at first. How do we re-identify immaterial souls over time? Under normal circumstances, we do this by re-identifying the embodiment of the soul, but this is not always possible: prior at least to the advent of DNA testing, cases of disputed identity could not always be settled by re-identifying bodies. Sometimes the subject’s memory of events is an important clue, though not of course an infallible one. But can any tests establish the identity of a completely non-embodied subject? Evidently, the question of the identity of a non-embodied subject makes sense to some: those who consult spiritualist mediums certainly understand the question, whether they’re conversing with dear departed Aunt Susie, or merely with a manipulative practitioner. But again, once it is seen that there is no metaphysical problem here, the epistemological question becomes purely a practical one, requiring to be answered if and when we have the need in practice to make such identifications.

It is also worth noting that an objection against individual continuity in dualism can be deployed against individual continuity in materialism. One objection (that can be traced back to Kant) against dualism is that the dualist is unable to account for the possibility that the soul or immaterial self is constantly being replaced by different individual selves, (with complete updated “memories” and psychological qualities) thus creating the illusion of personal continuity of the self-same subject. If the self is immaterial, how would we notice the successive changes? This may be called the problem of undetected (and perhaps undetectable) soul-switching. This objection faces many obstacles, one being that we would be unable to properly account for our experience of successive states (we hear Big Ben ring three times by first hearing it ring twice) if we are not the self-same individuals over time. But more to the point, in terms of continuity, it is logically possible that material bodies are switched every nanosecond. If the switch (or annihilation and creation) were done in an instant (as opposed to an interval) there would be no duration, no event that could be measured by us that would reveal the switch. If undetectable material object-switching is not a problem, then undetectable soul-switching should not be a problem.

There may still be an objection to a dualist account of an afterlife which holds that the idea of disembodied survival, even if not logically incoherent, is one we don’t have a sufficient grasp of to allow it to count as a real possibility. What would such survival amount to, anyway? Of course, if the souls of the departed are assumed to be fitted out immediately with resurrection bodies, this difficulty is greatly alleviated. But if the notion of an immaterial soul is to do any philosophical work, we need to be able to think what it might be like for such a soul to exist on its own, disembodied.

This challenge has been met in an interesting article by H.H. Price (1953). Price spells out, in considerable detail, a notion of disembodied souls existing in a “world” of something like dream-images—images, however, that would be shared between a number of more or less like-minded, and telepathically interacting, souls. Included among these images would be images of one’s own body and of other people’s bodies, so that one might, at first, find it difficult to distinguish the image-world from the ordinary physical world we presently inhabit. The conception is similar to Berkeley’s, except that Price does not invoke God directly as the sustainer of regularities in the image-world. He does say, however, that

if we are theists, we shall hold that the laws of nature, in other worlds as in this one, are in the end dependent on the will of a Divine Creator. (1953: 390)

Someone who seriously considers Price’s development of this idea will be forced to admit that a sufficiently clear account of what disembodied existence might be like has been proposed. (And for a more recent work that argues that our actual world is idealist in the tradition of Berkeley, see Foster 2007.) We need not follow Price (or Foster) in (what appears to be) his supposition that this is a plausible account of the actual state of persons who have died. It is enough if he has provided an account that makes plain the intelligibility of the notion of disembodied survival; the believer in an afterlife can then say, “If not in just this way, then in some other”.

If there is reason to think that mind-body dualism is true, then there is reason to think that a person’s survival of death is logically possible. But dualism has come upon hard times lately, and is widely regarded as being discredited. Whether or not this is warranted, dualism is undoubtedly subject to a number of objections, though these are not necessarily more severe than the difficulties that attend materialism (see the entry on dualism , also Koons and Bealer (eds.) 2010). For a positive case for dualism, see Loose, Menuge, & Moreland 2018 ( The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism ). In view of this let us consider also the possibility of survival given some form of materialism. [ 2 ]

What are the prospects for survival on a materialistic view of persons? One possible reason for thinking that materialism is not hostile to the prospects of an afterlife is that, historically, the standard view of the afterlife in the major theistic traditions is that it involves the resurrection of bodies. While there is a longstanding theological tradition that links belief in bodily resurrection with dualism, many theologians and some philosophers argue that dualism is a Platonic import into theistic traditions (Cullman 1955), and that it is more in keeping with the Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic stress on bodily life to understand the afterlife in materialist rather than dualist terms.

The central logical problem for materialist versions of the resurrection is personal identity. On dualist assumptions, personal identity is preserved by the persistence of the soul between death and resurrection. But for materialism, nothing bridges the spatio-temporal gap between the body that perishes and that body resurrected. Without such a bridge, how can the “resurrected” person be identical with the person who died? Considerable ingenuity has been expended in the search for an answer to this question.

Without doubt, the most popular materialist option here is the “re-creation” theory, according to which, at some time after a person’s death, God re-creates the person by creating a body with the identical characteristics of the body that perished (Hick 1983: 125–26). While this may seem rather ghastly in cases of violent death, there is no reason why God could not correct any injury and renew the body’s youthfulness, and so on. But can this re-creation preserve the necessity of the identity relation (the fact that your persistence over time as you is strict and not contingent)? If you are re-created, the “you” that comes into existence in the re-creation cannot just contingently happen to be you (as if someone else could do the job of being you). One reason to suspect that the identity relationship is not preserved (and this is not merely an epistemological matter) is that if God could create one body that is exactly similar to the body that died, why not two or more? It is not a satisfactory answer to this to say that God, being good, would not (and perhaps could not) do such a thing. On the view in question, what is necessary for resurrection is merely that material particles be arranged in the correct fashion, and it is hardly a necessary truth that only God could do this. (Perhaps a really smart rogue angel could pull it off!) Nor is it feasible to guarantee uniqueness by requiring that the identical particles present in the dead body make up the resurrected body. On the one hand, the body has no doubt shed, during its life, enough particles to make several bodies, and it is hardly credible that the replacement of one of the atoms present at the time of death with an atom shed by the body a few seconds before death would mean we have a different body (assuming other requirements to be satisfied). If, on the other hand, only particles from the body at the time of death may be used, there are the long-recognized problems about the availability of some of these particles, which within a few years may have made their ways into a large number of other human bodies. In any case there is a hard-to-quell intuition that reassembly, no matter how expertly completed, would at best produce a replica rather than the identical body that perished. Peter van Inwagen offers a compelling example:

Suppose a certain monastery claims to have in its possession a manuscript written in St. Augustine’s own hand. And suppose the monks of this monastery further claim that this manuscript was burned by Arians in the year 457. It would immediately occur to us to ask how this manuscript, the one we can touch, could be the very manuscript that was burned in 457. Suppose their answer to this question is that God miraculously recreated Augustine’s manuscript in 458. We should respond to this answer as follows: the deed it describes seems quite impossible, even as an accomplishment of omnipotence. God certainly might have created a perfect duplicate of the original manuscript, but it would not be that one; its earliest moment of existence would have been after Augustine’s death; it would never have known the impress of his hand; it would not have been a part of the furniture of the world when he was alive; and so on. Now suppose our monks were to reply by simply asserting that the manuscript now in their possession did know the impress of Augustine’s hand; that it was a part of the furniture of the world when the Saint was alive; that when God recreated or restored it, God (as an indispensable component of accomplishing this task) saw to it that the object God produced had all these properties. [para. break in 1978] We confess we should not know what to make of this. We should have to tell the monks that we did not see how what they believed could possibly be true. (van Inwagen 1992: 242–43)

Given these difficulties with the re-creation view, attempts have been made to find other ways of accounting for resurrection in materialist terms. One of the more interesting of these is Lynne Rudder Baker’s invocation of a constitution view of persons (Baker 2000, 2001, 2005). On this view persons are not identical with, but are constituted by, their bodies. (She discusses the constitution relation at considerable length; the details of this are not relevant here.) What is distinctive of persons is a “first-person perspective”, roughly, the capacity to think of oneself as oneself . This ability, which humans possess but other animals seem to lack, is an essential component of moral responsibility as well as of our ability to plan for the future and to perform many other distinctively personal activities and functions. According to Baker, the constitution view opens the way for a doctrine of resurrection that avoids the difficulties of the re-creation theory. Since persons are not identical with their bodies, it need not be maintained that the resurrected body is the same identical body as the body that died. What is required, however, is that the first-person perspective of the resurrected body be the same: “if a person’s first-person perspective were extinguished, the person would go out of existence” (2005: 385). So the first-person perspective must somehow be transferred from the original body to the resurrection body:

person P 1 at t 1 is the same person as person P 2 at t 2 if and only if P 1 and P 2 have the same first-person perspective. (2000: 132)

Baker holds that there is indeed a fact of the matter as to whether a given future person has the same first-person perspective as I now have, though there is no “informative” way of specifying criteria of identity between the two.

Although Baker’s account is intriguing, it seems problematic when one takes a closer look at the idea of a first-person perspective. Arguably, to have a first-person perspective, one has to be a person. To have a first-person perspective is to have the capacity to experience things; to act, think, speak, and so on with intention. Such acts can in principle be qualitatively identical in different thinkers and speakers; what individuates them is the person who’s doing the thinking or speaking. In other words, intentional acts derive their identity from the person performing them. But if this is true of the acts themselves it is also true of the first-person perspectives, which are nothing but the capacities of various persons to perform such acts. So to say that P 1 and P 2 have the same first-person perspective is just to say that P 1 and P 2 are the same person, and the criterion reduces to a tautology. Regrettably, we have not yet been given any help in understanding how a person, with her first-person perspective, can occupy first one body and then another.

Another proposal is offered by Kevin Corcoran (2005). Corcoran, like Baker, is a constitution theorist, but, unlike Baker, he does not believe persons can be transferred from one body to another. Corcoran proposes that the body of a resurrected person does need to be identical with the body of the person when he died. Corcoran advances several proposals about how this might be possible. The one to be noted here is what might be termed a “brute force” solution:

If God causes that body to exist once, why could God not cause it to exist a second time? … But what makes the first stage of the post-gap body a different stage of the same body that perished is just that God makes it so. (2005: 172)

This comes extremely close to making identity over time a matter of convention—divine convention, to be sure, but convention all the same. (It is reminiscent of Jonathan Edwards’ view that we are justly punished for Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden because God has decreed that the segment of Adam’s life including the sin is a segment of our own lives also.) It is difficult to measure when an appeal to divine fiat is philosophically licit or illicit. The challenge facing Corcoran’s position may be similar to the one Hick faces: how would God distinguish between re-creating the same body that was destroyed earlier and creating an exact duplicate? For a recent treatment of survival from a materialist perspective, see Merrick 2022.

We have left until last van Inwagen’s own proposal for a materialist resurrection. For in spite of his criticisms of the common view, van Inwagen is himself a Christian and a believer in the resurrection. Here is his proposal:

Perhaps at the moment of each man’s death, God removes his corpse and replaces it with a simulacrum which is what is burned or rots. Or perhaps God is not quite so wholesale as this: perhaps He removes for “safekeeping” only the “core person”—the brain and central nervous system—or even some special part of it. These are details. (van Inwagen 1992: 245–46)

Continuity is maintained, then, through the preservation of the body (or crucial body-part, such as the brain), and when the time comes for resurrection to occur, God restores life to the body in question and one’s resurrected life can begin. In fairness, it should be pointed out that van Inwagen originally advanced this proposal only in order to demonstrate the logical possibility of a materialist resurrection. In this he may well have succeeded. But as a proposal that is supposed to represent the actual way in which God enables humans to live again, the account has very little to recommend it. In this view, God assumes the role of contemporary practitioners of cryonics, preserving the dead body until such time as it is revived and restored to health. But this is bad news for the actual practitioners, since the “bodies” they are preserving are mere simulacra and presumably incapable of being revived, even if all the technology functions flawlessly. Furthermore, the feature of the account that makes it unacceptable—that God “spirits away” the crucial part of the person’s body, leaving behind a simulacrum—is essential to the view’s success in depicting a possible way of resurrection. In the Author’s Note appended in 1992, van Inwagen writes:

If I were writing a paper on this topic today, I should not make the definite statement “I think this is the only way such a being could accomplish it”. I am now inclined to think that there may well be other ways, ways that I am unable even to form an idea of because I lack the conceptual resources to do so. (1992: 246)

A more recent, and extremely ingenious, account of an afterlife from a materialist point of view has been proposed by Dean Zimmerman. The proposal goes roughly like this: at the instant of death, each elementary particle in a person’s body undergoes “budding” in which it produces another particle of the same kind. The newly produced particle takes its place in a resurrection body, existing in a resurrection “space”; at the same time the original particle remains in place as part of the corpse. Since it is the resurrection body, and not the corpse, which continues the life of the subject, the resurrection body rather than the corpse is the “closest continuer” of the pre-death body. It is, then, the resurrection body and not the corpse that is the same body as the one that previously lived, and personal identity is preserved. This proposal abandons strict (Leibnizian) identity in favor of a “closest continuer” theory. It also shares an interesting feature with van Inwagen’s account: the remaining corpse is not the same body as the one that previously lived. (Zimmerman 1999 and 2010; Hasker 2011). For a critical analysis of Zimmerman and van Inwagen thought experiments, see Taliaferro & Knuths 2017 and Knuths 2018.

It has not been shown conclusively that an identity-preserving materialist resurrection is impossible, but the difficulties, as outlined above, are formidable (Hasker 1999: 211–31). Proponents of an afterlife, it seems, would be better served if they were able to espouse some variety of mind-body dualism. This entry cannot undertake an assessment of the comparative merits of dualism and materialism. It is worth noting, however, that recent philosophy has seen an increased recognition in some quarters of the difficulties resulting from materialist views, and a corresponding interest in different (not necessarily Cartesian) varieties of dualism. (See Koons & Bealer (eds.) 2010; Batthyany & Elitzur (eds.) 2009; Loose, Menuge, & Moreland 2018; and Lofton 2017.) Given even the apparent coherence of dualism in which the person and her body are contingently related (metaphysically, it becomes more difficult to argue that it is known that the annihilation of the body entails the annihilation of the person).

During the heyday of logical positivism in the twentieth century, it is interesting that while Moritz Schlick proposed that its demands for empirical verification would render propositions about God as meaningless, it would not rule out as meaningless propositions about life after death so long as they involved subjects having experiences. Interestingly, some of the most rigid materialists in the last century, such as Willard Van Orman Quine and Paul Churchland, allowed for the possibility of there being compelling empirical evidence of parapsychological powers and even ghosts. In this section, let us consider whether there is empirical support for belief in an afterlife.

Parapsychology investigates phenomena that are alleged to lie outside the boundaries of ordinary naturalistic explanation. These phenomena include telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, mediumistic messages, possession-type cases, reincarnation-type cases, apparitions, and others. Not all of these phenomena are directly relevant to survival and the afterlife, but some of them, if accepted as veridical, do provide such evidence: for instance, messages received through a medium, allegedly from a deceased person, that contain information to which the medium has no other access.

The evaluation of this body of evidence is highly contentious. Clearly there exists both motive and opportunity for fraud and fabrication in many cases. It is questionable, though, whether a responsible inquirer can afford to dismiss out of hand all cases that seem to defy ordinary naturalistic explanation. It counts against a sweeping dismissive approach that the phenomena have been attested as probably veridical by some highly reputable investigators, including such philosophers as William James, Henry Sidgwick, C.D. Broad, H.H. Price and John Beloff. These men had little to gain personally by their investigations; indeed in undertaking them they endangered already well-established reputations. Investigating the subject with finely-honed critical instincts, they have applied stringent tests in selecting instances they consider to be credible, and have rejected many cases they held to be fraudulent or inadequately attested.

If we are willing to give an initial hearing to this evidence, what conclusions can reasonably be reached? A conclusion that many (but not all) of these investigators would accept is that the evidence provides some, but not conclusive, evidence for personal survival after death (Steinkamp 2002). However, the reason why the evidence is deemed inconclusive will give little comfort to many afterlife skeptics. The reason it is not conclusive is that the experiences are susceptible of a different explanation if we accept the existence of some rather spectacular forms of extra-sensory perception , also known as “super psi” (see Braude 2002). An example is a case in which a medium received information that apparently was known in its entirety to no living person. In order to avoid the conclusion that the information was communicated from the deceased person, the medium must be credited with clairvoyance as well as the ability to integrate information received telepathically from several different persons. C.D. Broad (1953: 114) summarized the situation well: the possibility of extra-sensory perception weakens the direct force of the evidence for survival by making possible alternative explanations of that evidence. But ESP strengthens the overall case by raising the antecedent probability of survival, insofar as it renders problematic the naturalistic view of the human person, which for most contemporaries constitutes the greatest obstacle to belief in survival.

More recently, it has been claimed that a superior source of evidence lies in so-called “near-death experiences” (Bailey and Yates (eds.) 1996). These are experiences of persons who were, or perceived themselves to be, close to death; indeed many such persons met the criteria for clinical death. While in this state, they undergo remarkable experiences, often taken to be experiences of the world that awaits them after death. Returning to life, they testify to their experiences, claiming in many cases to have had their subsequent lives transformed as a result of the near-death experience. This testimony may seem especially compelling in that (a) large numbers of persons report having had such experiences; (b) the experiences come spontaneously to those near death, they are not sought out or deliberately induced; and (c) normally no one stands to benefit financially from either the experiences or the reports.

These experiences, furthermore, are not random in their contents. There are recurring elements that show up in many of these accounts, forming a general (but far from invariable) pattern. Typical elements include a sense of being dead, peacefulness and absence of pain; “out-of-body experiences” in which the subject views his or her own body “from outside” and witnesses various events, sometimes at a considerable distance from the location of the person’s body; passing through a dark tunnel towards intense light; meeting “beings of light” (sometimes including friends and relatives who have died previously); and a “life review” in which the events of one’s life pass before one and are subjected to evaluation. The subject may be initially disappointed or reluctant to return to the body, and (as already noted) many testify that the experience has been life-changing, leading to a lessened—or even a complete absence of—fear of death and other beneficial results.

These experiences are surprisingly common. A Gallup poll taken in 1982 found that eight million Americans (about five percent of the adult population at that time) had survived a near-death experience (NDE). The experiences occur regardless of age, social class, race, or marital status. Probably the improvements in medical technology, which enable many to return from a state of “clinical death”, have increased the numbers in recent times. But NDEs have been reported throughout recorded history and from all corners of the earth. Since the publication in 1975 of Raymond Moody’s book, Life After Life (1975), there have been numerous studies of the phenomenon, some of them carried out with careful attention to scientific objectivity (e.g., Ring 1980; Sabom 1982; van Lommel et al. 2001).

As one might expect, there is a wide variety of interpretations of NDEs, from those that interpret the experiences as literally revealing a state that lies beyond death to interpretations that attempt to debunk the experiences by classifying them as mere reflections of abnormal brain states. Clearly, there is no one medical or physiological cause; the experiences occur for persons in a great variety of medical conditions. An interesting counterexample to explanations in terms of the “dying brain” is found in the NDEs experienced by mountain climbers in the midst of what they expected to be fatal falls (Heim 1892); it is hardly credible that these experiences can be reduced to either drugs or oxygen deprivation.

On the other hand, interpretations of NDEs as literally revelatory of the life to come, though common in the popular literature, are extremely questionable. Carol Zaleski has shown, through her comparative studies of medieval and modern NDEs, that many features of these experiences vary in ways that correspond to cultural expectations (Zaleski 1987). A striking instance of this is the minimal role played by judgment and damnation in modern NDEs; unlike the medieval cases, the modern life-review tends to be therapeutic rather than judgmental in emphasis. In view of this, Zaleski ascribes the experiences to the religious imagination, insisting that to do so enhances rather than diminishes their significance. Claims of cross-cultural invariance in modern NDEs are also questionable. The majority of the research has been done in cultures where Christianity is the predominant religious influence, but research done in other cultures reveals significantly different patterns. One amusing difference occurs in the episodes in which it is decided that the experiencer will return to embodied life rather than remaining in the afterworld. In Western NDEs there is often a “spirit guide” who counsels the experiencer that it is better that he or she should return to life. In India, on the other hand, the person is often turned back with the information that there has been a clerical error in the paperwork, so that it was by mistake that he or she came to this point! (K. Augustine 2008, Other Internet Resources , see the section on “Cultural Differences”).

The causation of these experiences is problematic. Some aspects of the experience have been deliberately induced by the administration of drugs (see Jansen 1997); this demonstrates that such phenomena can be produced by chemical alterations to the brain, but in most NDE cases no such chemical causes can be identified. Several researchers have concluded that the triggering cause of the NDE is simply the perceived nearness of death. (NDEs have also been experienced by persons who believed they were close to death but were not in fact in any life-threatening situation (K. Augustine 2008, Other Internet Resources , see the section on Pam Reynolds).) The specific content of NDEs can be divided into mundane content, in which what is experienced is or resembles typical features of the ordinary world, and transcendental content, portraying “another realm” quite unlike the world of ordinary experience. The source of the transcendental content is problematic, though the cultural variations suggest that a significant role must be assigned to cultural expectations concerning the afterlife.

Finally, there is what Gary Habermas has termed the evidential aspect of NDEs. These are phenomena that, provided they can be verified, would indicate strongly that something is occurring that is not susceptible of an ordinary naturalistic explanation. This might seem to be the most helpful direction to look if the aim is to arrive at an objectively compelling assessment of NDEs. If it should turn out to be possible to verify objectively certain paranormal aspects of NDEs, fully naturalistic explanations could be ruled out and the way would be open for further exploration concerning the meaning of the experiences. On the other hand, if all such evidential aspects could be fully explained in terms of ordinary natural processes, the claim of NDEs to be revelatory of anything metaphysically significant would be greatly weakened.

Evidential aspects of NDEs fall into several categories. First, there are out-of-body sensory experiences, in which patients, often while comatose, observe accurately features to which they have no access through normal sensory channels. In one case, an eight-year-old girl who nearly drowned required 45 minutes of CPR to restore her heartbeat:

In the meantime, she said that she floated out of her body and visited heaven. Additionally … she was able to totally and correctly recount the details from the time the paramedics arrived in her yard through the work performed later in the hospital emergency room. (Moreland and Habermas 1998: 159)

Second, there are accounts of sensory experiences which accurately report events that occurred during periods in which the subject’s heart had stopped, and even during “flat EEG” periods in which there was no detectable brain activity. Finally, there are “surprise encounters” during the NDE with friends and relatives who had in fact recently died, but where the subject had no knowledge of this prior to the time of the experience. Here the crucial question would be, Where did the subject obtain knowledge of the other person’s death? If ordinary channels of communication can be ruled out, the most natural conclusion would seem to be that this knowledge was obtained from the deceased person, who is somehow still alive.

All of these claims concerning the evidential value of NDEs have been called into question. One of the most thorough discussions is by Keith Augustine ( Other Internet Resources , 2008), who draws on work by a large number of other researchers. As noted already, there is overwhelming evidence that NDEs do not provide a literal experience of conditions in the afterlife; this is attested, among other things, by the considerable variations in these experiences in different times and different cultures. Also relevant here is the fact that similar experiences sometimes happen to persons who mistakenly believe themselves to be in life-threatening circumstances. Apparently it is the perceived nearness to death, rather than the actual proximity of the afterworld, that triggers the experiences. The encounters with persons recently deceased, but whose deaths were previously unknown to the experiencer, become somewhat less impressive once it is recognized that still-living persons may also be encountered in NDEs (“Living Persons”). These still-living persons were otherwise occupied at the time of the NDEs; they cannot have been literally present in the other-worldly realm in which they were encountered. And given that still-living persons can appear in NDEs, it becomes statistically probable that on occasion there will also be encounters with persons who have recently died but whose death was unknown to the experiencer.

Claims that NDEs occurred during periods with no brain activity are countered by the rejoinder that an EEG may not reveal all activity within the brain. Functional magnetic resonance imaging, for example, can reveal activity that is missed by an EEG. In cases where brain activity has indeed ceased for a given patient, the NDE may have occurred either before the cessation or after normal brain activity has resumed; it is not necessary to assume that the NDE and the brain’s non-activity were simultaneous (“Living Persons”). With respect to the claim of information that was learned during the NDE that was not otherwise available, various answers are possible. It is noted, first of all, that inaccurate “information” is often reported (“Out-of-Body Discrepancies”). In some cases where the information is confirmed, we may be dealing with subsequent enhancement as a result of the repeated recital of the story. (This need not involve deliberate deception; it is a common experience that stories often repeated tend to gain new features of interest in the telling.) In other cases, it is argued that the information was in fact available through ordinary sensory channels, often through the experiencer’s hearing of things said during a medical procedure when they were apparently unconscious and unresponsive. (There is considerable evidence that “unconscious” persons do hear and register things said when they are apparently oblivious to their surroundings.) (“Veridical Paranormal Perception During OBEs?”) However, it is worth noting that Augustine makes little effort to establish that the factors cited in his naturalistic explanations were actually operative in the various NDE cases. It would appear to be his view that the burden of proof lies almost entirely on the shoulders of those who make claims on behalf of the evidential value of NDEs.

With regard to this entire body of evidence, both from parapsychology and from NDEs, we may be close to an impasse. Those who support the evidential value of the experiences will argue that the naturalistic explanations that have been offered are not adequate, that they display excessive skepticism towards well-confirmed accounts, and are in many instances highly speculative. Those who reject the evidential value of these phenomena (including some believers in the afterlife) will argue that the evidence is insufficient to warrant the extraordinary claims that are made, that the naturalistic explanations work well overall, and that a full explanation of the most puzzling cases would require a detailed knowledge of the events and surrounding circumstances that in many cases is not available to us. Further careful research on individual cases may offer some hope of progress, but it seems unlikely that the fundamental disagreements can be resolved, especially when the different viewpoints are supported by diverse worldviews. For a thoughtful treatment of NDEs and the paranormal as evidence for an afterlife, see Lund 2009 (Part II).

Leaving aside such empirical evidence, what general metaphysical considerations are relevant to belief in survival? While some philosophers have sought to marginalize metaphysics (see, for example, Hadot 1995), such deflationary accounts have been found wanting by many philosophers (see, for example, Wynn 2020). We have already seen that a materialist account of persons creates some serious obstacles. As van Inwagen and others have argued, God could bring about an afterlife for persons in a way consistent with a materialist philosophy of mind. But in the absence of God, a materialist, naturalist worldview seems not at all promising for survival. As noted earlier, mind-body dualism would offer some support for the possibility of survival but dualism by no means guarantees survival; the old arguments from the simplicity and alleged indestructibility of souls are out of favor. As Kant observed, a “simple” soul, which cannot be dissolved into its constituent parts, might still fade away gradually until it has completely disappeared. What often is not sufficiently appreciated, however, is the close tie between theism and belief in an afterlife. The point is not merely that theistic religions incorporate belief in an afterlife which many persons accept because of this religious context. The tie is closer than that, and it has considerable force in both directions.

Suppose, on the one hand, that the God of theism does in fact exist. According to theism, God is both all-powerful and perfectly good, and this goodness is supposed to be of a sort that is relevant to the welfare of human beings (and other rational creatures, if there are any). Indeed, this is not merely a speculative assumption; there are Biblical texts proclaiming that God is a God of love. If there is reason to believe that God loves created persons, then it is highly plausible to believe that God desires to provide creatures with the opportunity for a greater, and longer-lasting, fulfillment than is possible within the brief scope of earthly existence. This is especially true, one would think, for those who, through no fault of their own, find their lives blighted by disease, or accident, or war, or any of the other natural or anthropogenic disasters to which we are vulnerable. And yet even those of us who enjoy relatively good and satisfying lives are conscious of far, far more that could be accomplished and enjoyed, given more time and the vigor and energy to use it well.

This argument can also be reversed to telling effect. If there is no afterlife, no realm in which the sorrows of this life can be assuaged and its injustices remedied, then it may be argued that the problem of evil becomes impossible to solve in any rationally intelligible way. Arguably, a perfectly good and all-powerful God would not make a cosmos in which all or most created persons have lives that are full of misery and then are annihilated; nor would an all-loving good God create a cosmos in which there is no opportunity for transformation beyond this life. That is not to say, of course, that allowing for an afterlife makes the problem of evil easy for theists—that is far from being the case. But it does provide a way in which this life’s injustices can be seen as not having had the last word—victims in this life do not have to be eternally victims and those who’ve done evil won’t get away with it. For these reasons, one would be hard pressed to find very many theists (as opposed to deists) who do not also affirm belief in an afterlife.

The close connection between theism and an afterlife is affirmed in Kant’s arguments for the “postulates of practical reason”. To be sure, Kant gives different reasons for postulating God and for postulating an afterlife, and the ends to be served by these postulations are ostensibly different. In actuality, however, it is highly plausible that the two postulates are inseparable. We ought to postulate God, because only in this way is it possible that in the end happiness should be enjoyed by persons in proportion to their moral worthiness. Given the actual conditions of the present life, it is evident that this end can be secured, if at all, only in a future existence. We are told to postulate immortality, because only an endless life makes possible continued progress towards the goal of a coincidence of one’s will with the requirements of the moral law. But for such continued progress to be at all likely to occur would seem to require some kind of morally benign conditions in the afterlife, and Kant implicitly assumes that such conditions will obtain.

What about an argument in the opposite direction: if it is reasonable to believe in an afterlife, is it more reasonable to believe in theism? Given the reasonability of believing in an afterlife, it would be more reasonable to believe that theism is true rather than materialistic naturalism, but the reasonability of theism would have to be weighed in the context of non-theistic philosophies and religions that include belief in an afterlife. Nontheistic Hinduism and Buddhism include beliefs about an afterlife; in these religious traditions, belief in an afterlife is part of their understanding of cosmic justice, a system in which one’s reincarnation (and, ultimately, one’s enlightenment and liberation) depends on one’s Karma. These, and other traditions such as Jainism, involve matters that are addressed in other entries in the SEP, but we offer here a modest observation on how the evidence for a good afterlife (an afterlife that is in accord with some morally sound order) might lend more support for one religion or philosophy than another.

Imagine that we have good reason to believe (or we possess Kantian justification for faith) that the cosmos is ultimately ordered in a just and moral manner (felicity and virtue will be in concord, and the wicked will not flourish indefinitely and so on). Imagine further that we can limit the most plausible accounts of such a moral order on the basis of either traditional theistic accounts of the afterlife or a system of reincarnation in which Karma is at work determining successive re-births until enlightenment—liberation. Robin Collins has argued that the second alternative faces what he calls the “karma management problem”. He writes,

Traditionally Buddhists have believed that by and large the circumstances of one’s rebirth are determined by one’s karma—that is, one’s deeds, whether good or bad in this and previous lives. This, however, seems to require that there exist something like a “program” that arranges your genes, the family conditions you are born into, and the like to correspond to the moral worth of your past deeds (Collins 1999: 206).

For theists, such as many (but not all) Hindus, this minute arrangement of one’s life circumstances to match one’s karma can be viewed as the work of God. So long as we recognize the intelligibility of divine agency, the “management” of reincarnation should in principle be no more difficult to accept than any other theistic explanations. But in the absence of theistic, intentional explanations, how would a “karma program” work, and how was it initiated? We know today, by means that were not available to the ancient Hindus and Buddhists, that “nature”—the nature that is known and studied in the natural sciences—simply doesn’t work this way. The laws of nature are subtle and marvelously complex (though also, in their own way, “simple”), but it is abundantly clear that they do not work in such a way as to determine physical situations in accordance with the moral worth of persons, or in accordance with any moral considerations whatsoever. The laws of nature, we might say, are no respecters of persons—or of morality. Rather, they are impersonal in character, and in many cases are expressible in mathematical formulae that are far removed from the teleology that permeates human existence. So if there is a “karmic moral order” of the sort postulated by the Indian traditions, it must be something radically different from the order of nature that (so far as science can discern) governs the physical processes of the world. And yet the two orders must be intimately related, for it is precisely these physical processes which, in the end, are said to be disposed in accordance with one’s karma. It is wholly implausible that two diverse systems of cosmic order such as this should arise from unrelated sources and come together accidentally; they must, then, have a common source. If the common source of the natural order and the karmic order is impersonal, we are still in need of some account of how and why it would be such as to produce these two quite different sorts of order in the cosmos. These questions, it would seem, are much more readily answered if we postulate a personal source of both the natural and the moral order—that is to say, a God who desired that there be created persons, and who wished to provide a stable natural order within which they could live and exercise their varied powers.

This is of course a mere sketch of an argument that would require much more space for its full development. We offer the above line of reasoning as an example of how one might compare the merits of alternative accounts of an afterlife. It is also offered to make the point that the case for or against an afterlife is best understood in light of one’s overall metaphysics. To see further how philosophical reflection on an afterlife might be guided by metaphysical considerations, consider briefly what has been called the argument from desire. Without question, many persons strongly desire that there should be an afterlife and believe in one largely if not entirely for that reason. It is also beyond question that most philosophers would regard this as a classic case of wishful thinking. But this conclusion is too hasty; indeed, it commits the fallacy of begging the question. To be sure, if the universe is naturalistic, then the desire that many persons have for an afterlife does not constitute any kind of evidence that an afterlife exists. One might inquire about the causes of such a desire and, given its widespread occurrence, might wonder about its possible Darwinian survival value. But no evidential weight would attach to the desire on the assumption of naturalism.

Suppose, on the other hand, that theism (or some view close to theism) is true. On this supposition, human life is not the accidental product of mindless forces that have operated with no thought to it or to anything else. On the contrary, human life (and the life of other rational creatures, if there are any) is the product of an evolutionary process, which was itself designed to produce such beings, by a God who loves them and cares for them. If this is so, then there is a strong case to be made that desires which are universal, or near-universal, among human beings are desires for which satisfaction is possible. The inference does not amount to a certainty; it is possible that humans have distorted God’s purpose for them, and certainly human conceptions of the way in which certain desires could be satisfied may be wide of the mark. But the presumption must be that desires that are widespread or universal are aimed at some genuine and attainable good, however inadequate the conceptions of that good held by many individuals may be. And if this is so, persons who take the desire for an afterlife as a reason to believe in one are on the side of right reason in doing so. Only if one assumes from the outset that the universe is not human-friendly can the charge of wishful thinking be sustained. In a recent contribution, Johan Eddebo (2017) argues that because we do not know that we are not in a human-friendly universe we cannot rationally rule out the possibility of an afterlife for human persons.

A great many persons who believe in life after death do so because of reasons that are internal to their own religious traditions. Hindus and Buddhists have their accounts of persons who remember in detail events of their previous lives. Jews will rely on the visions of Ezekiel and the traditions of the rabbis; Muslims on the prophecies of the Koran. Christians will think of the resurrection of Jesus. Whether any of these appeals has serious evidentiary force is a question that cannot be pursued within the scope of this article; they must all the same be included in any overall assessment of the rationality of belief in an afterlife.

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

Augustine, Keith, 2008, Hallucinatory Near-Death Experiences , extensive critical survey of the evidence concerning NDEs.
Near-Death Experience , a brief presentation of a skeptical view of NDEs.

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The authors thank Meredith Varie and Samuel Benson for their assisting us in editing this entry.

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Death and the Afterlife

Samuel Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife , Niko Kolodny (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2013, 210pp., $29.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780199982509.

Reviewed by John Cottingham, Heythrop College University of London/University of Reading

Despite its title, this book is not about "the afterlife" as normally understood -- the continuation of some form of personal existence after death, in the "next world". Samuel Scheffler, in line with many Western philosophers and intellectuals, firmly rejects any such idea. The subject of these fluently argued and thought provoking reflections (based on Scheffler's s two 2012 Tanner lectures at Berkeley with the addition of a third paper delivered at Chicago the previous year) is the assumption tacitly made by each of us that human life -- the ordinary, this‑worldly life of other members of our species -- will continue long after our own individual deaths. This is the "afterlife" that Scheffler has in mind, and part of his aim is to show what an enormously important role in our outlook is played by our assumption that there will be such an "afterlife" after we are gone.

Of course we know that humanity will not last forever, but we nevertheless expect the human race to endure for a good long while yet. But now imagine a "doomsday" scenario in which a giant asteroid is on course to collide with the earth and destroy the planet thirty years after the life of our generation has come to an end: would we not be devastated by the knowledge that all human life will end so (comparatively) soon after we are gone?

That the prospect of earth's imminent destruction would affect us so profoundly shows that it matters to us what happens after we are no longer here; and the "mattering", Scheffler argues, is not just a function of our own present distress as we contemplate this dire outcome, nor is it merely a function of any consequentialist type assessment that the net total amount of future happiness will be thereby reduced (for of course the end of human life would mean an end to future cruelty, injustice and suffering as well as an end to good things). The notion of things mattering to us seems closely bound up with our wanting them to be sustained and preserved, and indeed Scheffler draws the striking moral that "we need humanity to have a future for the very idea that things matter to retain a secure place in our conceptual repertoire" (60).

One of the most interesting aspects of Scheffler's development of these themes is the contrast he draws between individual survival and the survival of humanity in general. Many people today have given up any hope of personal immortality as traditionally promised in some religions, but for the most part this does not appear to prevent them continuing to value their various activities, projects and relationships, and investing them with great significance (p. 71). Yet in the doomsday asteroid scenario, and in other science-fiction stories like P. D. James's The Children of Men , where humanity faces extinction due to mass infertility, the assumption is that the imminent end of our species would produce widespread "apathy, anomie, and despair . . . and . . . a pervasive loss of conviction about the value or point of many activities" (p. 40). If this assumption is accurate, then a striking result follows: our confidence that others will survive after we die is a much more important condition of things mattering to us than any belief we may have that we will individually enjoy life after death. While not denying the general importance of self-interested motivation, Scheffler concludes that in this one remarkable respect we are far less selfish than is often supposed: "there is a very specific sense in which our own survival is less important to us than the survival of the human race" (73).

What Scheffler has given us here is a fascinating example of philosophical reflection leading to a more altruistic construal of the human condition -- one that is reminiscent in some ways of that found many years ago in Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons. But whereas Parfit aimed to dissolve the "glass tunnel" separating the individual from others by deconstructing the idea of personal identity across time, Scheffler regards any view that denies the existence of a personal egocentric subject as "incredible" (103). Unlike Parfit, moreover, Scheffler considers the fear of death and dying to be reasonable (or at least not unreasonable), and this notwithstanding the fact that he agrees with Bernard Williams's celebrated contention (in "The Makropulos Case") that personal immortality would not be something to be desired (107). In his rich and nuanced final lecture, devoted to the question of death, Scheffler argues that "it is essential to our idea of a life that it is temporally bounded, with a beginning, a middle, and an end" (100). And this connects crucially with what makes life worthwhile, for "the aspects of life that we cherish most dearly -- love and labor, intimacy and achievement, creativity and humor and solidarity and all the rest -- all have the status of values for us because of their role in our finite and bounded lives" (100). The upshot is that in a certain sense it is death that gives meaning to life.

But this in turn leads to a conclusion that the author himself confesses to finding "strange and unsettling". Although we (rightly) fear death, immortality is no solution, and indeed death is needed to sustain our confidence in the importance of what we value. Yet at the same time that confidence depends on our belief that other humans will be alive after we die (109). Scheffler thus takes on board the lesson of Makropulos , but adds to it the lesson that emerges at the end of the final act of another Janáček opera, The Cunning Little Vixen , where the grief of the mourning forester is checked as a tiny frog unexpectedly jumps onto his lap -- the grandson of the one who did so in act one. Life continues.

The volume includes not just Scheffler's three comparatively short but concentrated and powerful lectures, but also a set of four concise reactions by Susan Wolf, Harry Frankfurt, Seana Valentine Shiffrin, and Niko Kolodny, together with Scheffler's responses. Among the points raised by Frankfurt is a question as to whether our desire for the human race to continue after we are gone is actually as altruistic as Scheffler implies; and he goes on to beat the well-worn reductionistic Darwinian drum, holding that the significance of our desires for the continued life of the species may come down to not much more than the brute fact that "natural selection has ensured that we have those desires" (138).

In the most interesting of the critiques, Wolf questions a key premise of Scheffler's argument, namely that the impending doomsday event would undercut our faith in the value and significance of our projects. Taking a more robustly optimistic line than Scheffler, she argues that humanity's impending extinction would of course be disorienting and unsettling at first, but that there is no good reason why we should not in due course "snap out of it" (128). Taking the case of Alvy Singer (the nerdy grade school pupil in Woody Allen's film Annie Hall , who says there's no point in doing his homework because the universe is expanding and doomed to fizzle out), Wolf draws the opposite conclusion from Scheffler. For Scheffler, if Alvy had known that the world would end not in billions of years but in eighty years or so, then his reluctance to do his homework would have had a point. For Wolf, just as there is ample time and reason for Alvy to do some useful homework, so contemplating the future extinction of humanity, even were it to become an imminent prospect, still would, or certainly should , allow us to find time and motivation to continue to strive to "create beauty, gain wisdom and help each other" (127).

In focusing on the normative question of how we ought to react to the doomsday scenario, rather than the philosophically less interesting empirical question of how we would in fact react to it, Wolf has I think given an important impetus to what is sure to be an extended debate over this book and its arguments. Given the nature of the topics addressed in the book, however, focusing as they do on human finitude and the significance of our lives and projects, I must confess to having some residual disquiet about the way Scheffler, along with all his critics, resolutely leaves out of court any religious insights or reflections, as if these could not possibly be even candidates for making a contribution to the issues raised. Let me not be misunderstood here: it is completely reasonable for Scheffler to exclude the religious idea of personal immortality at the outset, so as to clear the ground for examining the afterlife in his different and special sense. But there is a great deal more to religious tradition and thought than the doctrine of personal immortality -- indeed that doctrine is by no means as central to the religious outlook as is often supposed. By contrast, the idea of our finitude plays a central role in many religious scriptures, notably in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The whole cosmos, says the Psalms, will "wear out like a garment", and a great deal of biblical teaching is premised on the idea that the end of human life is potentially imminent, or that the time of its end is unknown and unknowable. It is against precisely that backdrop of vulnerability and finitude that religious injunctions about the significance of how we live are articulated, and the categorical requirements to show compassion, to help those in distress, and so on, are insisted upon. So there is a certain cultural impoverishment, I think, in Scheffler's considering his momentous problems of meaning, mortality and the future of humanity only via examples drawn from recent science fiction novels and movies, when the reality is that the relevant problems have been wrestled over for many centuries, with a rich inherited store of religious reflection waiting to be drawn on with profit even by philosophers who cannot accept the accompanying theistic metaphysics.

This qualm aside, Scheffler has produced a superb essay -- indeed it seems to me about as good as analytic philosophy gets. It is entirely free from obfuscating jargon and other tiresome tricks of the trade, yet it is meticulously argued and demanding in exactly the right way -- forcing us to think about hitherto unexamined implications of our existing beliefs. Though written with agreeable lightness and fluency, it is rich in psychological and ethical insight, and restores philosophy to its proper role of tackling the big structural concerns that are inseparable from the human condition. And if the big structural concerns are, in a sense, ones that have been with us for centuries, there is no denying the sharpness and originality of the new slant that Scheffler employs to tackle them. Finally, with the appended comments of the critics and the author's detailed replies, it provides plenty of pointers for students who want to get their teeth into the important issues raised, making the ensemble a volume that is highly to be recommended.

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Death, burial, and the afterlife in ancient greece.

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Attributed to the Achilles Painter

Painted limestone funerary stele with a woman in childbirth

Painted limestone funerary stele with a seated man and two standing figures

Terracotta krater

Attributed to the Hirschfeld Workshop

Marble statue of a kouros (youth)

Terracotta pyxis (box)

Attributed to the Penthesilea Painter

Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl

Marble grave stele of a little girl

Marble funerary statues of a maiden and a little girl

Painted limestone funerary slab with a man controlling a rearing horse

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at ease

Marble grave stele with a family group

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier taking a kantharos from his attendant

Attributed to the Tithonos Painter

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier and two girls

Terracotta bell-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water)

Attributed to the Persephone Painter

Marble akroterion of the grave monument of Timotheos and Nikon

Attributed to the Sabouroff Painter

Terracotta funerary plaque

Attributed to the Phiale Painter

Terracotta oinochoe: chous (jug)

Attributed to the Meidias Painter

Department of Greek and Roman Art , The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2003

The ancient Greek conception of the afterlife and the ceremonies associated with burial were already well established by the sixth century B.C. In the Odyssey , Homer describes the Underworld, deep beneath the earth, where Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon , and his wife, Persephone, reigned over countless drifting crowds of shadowy figures—the “shades” of all those who had died. It was not a happy place. Indeed, the ghost of the great hero Achilles told Odysseus that he would rather be a poor serf on earth than lord of all the dead in the Underworld ( Odyssey 11: 489–91).

The Greeks believed that at the moment of death, the psyche, or spirit of the dead, left the body as a little breath or puff of wind. The deceased was then prepared for burial according to the time-honored rituals. Ancient literary sources emphasize the necessity of a proper burial and refer to the omission of burial rites as an insult to human dignity ( Iliad 23: 71). Relatives of the deceased, primarily women, conducted the elaborate burial rituals that were customarily of three parts: the prothesis (laying out of the body ( 54.11.5 ), the ekphora (funeral procession), and the interment of the body or cremated remains of the deceased. After being washed and anointed with oil, the body was dressed ( 75.2.11 ) and placed on a high bed within the house. During the prothesis, relatives and friends came to mourn and pay their respects. Lamentation of the dead is featured in Greek art at least as early as the Geometric period , when vases were decorated with scenes portraying the deceased surrounded by mourners. Following the prothesis, the deceased was brought to the cemetery in a procession, the ekphora, which usually took place just before dawn. Very few objects were actually placed in the grave, but monumental earth mounds, rectangular built tombs, and elaborate marble stelai and statues were often erected to mark the grave and to ensure that the deceased would not be forgotten. Immortality lay in the continued remembrance of the dead by the living. From depictions on white-ground lekythoi, we know that the women of Classical Athens made regular visits to the grave with offerings that included small cakes and libations.

The most lavish funerary monuments were erected in the sixth century B.C. by aristocratic families of Attica in private burial grounds along the roadside on the family estate or near Athens. Relief sculpture, statues ( 32.11.1 ), tall stelai crowned by capitals ( 11.185a-c,f,g ), and finials marked many of these graves. Each funerary monument had an inscribed base with an epitaph, often in verse that memorialized the dead. A relief depicting a generalized image of the deceased sometimes evoked aspects of the person’s life, with the addition of a servant, possessions, dog, etc. On early reliefs, it is easy to identify the dead person; however, during the fourth century B.C., more and more family members were added to the scenes, and often many names were inscribed ( 11.100.2 ), making it difficult to distinguish the deceased from the mourners. Like all ancient marble sculpture, funerary statues and grave stelai were brightly painted , and extensive remains of red, black, blue, and green pigment can still be seen ( 04.17.1 ).

Many of the finest Attic grave monuments stood in a cemetery located in the outer Kerameikos, an area on the northwest edge of Athens just outside the gates of the ancient city wall. The cemetery was in use for centuries—monumental Geometric kraters marked grave mounds of the eighth century B.C. ( 14.130.14 ), and excavations have uncovered a clear layout of tombs from the Classical period, as well. At the end of the fifth century B.C., Athenian families began to bury their dead in simple stone sarcophagi placed in the ground within grave precincts arranged in man-made terraces buttressed by a high retaining wall that faced the cemetery road. Marble monuments belonging to various members of a family were placed along the edge of the terrace rather than over the graves themselves.

Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dbag/hd_dbag.htm (October 2003)

Additional Essays by Department of Greek and Roman Art

Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Classical Cyprus (ca. 480–ca. 310 B.C.) .” (July 2007)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Antonine Dynasty (138–193) .” (October 2000)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Ancient Greek Dress .” (October 2003)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Geometric Art in Ancient Greece .” (October 2004)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Flavian Dynasty (69–96 A.D.) .” (October 2000)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Julio-Claudian Dynasty (27 B.C.–68 A.D.) .” (October 2000)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Augustan Rule (27 B.C.–14 A.D.) .” (October 2000)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ The Severan Dynasty (193–235 A.D.) .” (October 2000)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Roman Egypt .” (October 2000)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Roman Copies of Greek Statues .” (October 2002)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Athenian Vase Painting: Black- and Red-Figure Techniques .” (October 2002)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Boscoreale: Frescoes from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor .” (October 2004)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Early Cycladic Art and Culture .” (October 2004)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Geometric and Archaic Cyprus .” (October 2004)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Hellenistic and Roman Cyprus .” (October 2004)
Department of Greek and Roman Art. “ Scenes of Everyday Life in Ancient Greece .” (October 2002)
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Death and the Afterlife

Other essays.

The topic of this essay is the theological significance of human mortality and the question of an ongoing, post-mortem existence beyond the grave.

This essay explores the significance of human death as a consequence of sin and the idea of a temporary, disembodied existence beyond the grave. The relevant teaching of both testaments is examined in order to ascertain what biblical support there is for some kind of temporary “intermediate state” for the dead that will be experienced between their death and resurrection.

Arguably it’s the last taboo — a topic normally avoided in polite conversation, with the possible exception of a funeral or memorial service. Even then, however, it seems preferable to celebrate the life of the deceased rather than to focus on their death or current whereabouts. And whenever such is alluded to, death is generally viewed as a kind of portal that transfers people into a celestial extension of the here and now. However, such uniformly positive conceptions of death and the afterlife are far removed from the biblical portrayal, where neither death nor personal eschatology is necessarily a consoling matter.

Bildad quite rightly describes death as “the king of terrors” (Job 18:14), a troubling prospect that fills the human heart with dread (Heb 2:15). This is not surprising given the biblical connection between death and human sin (Gen 2:17; Rom 6:23). While our natural apprehension may be partly due to irretrievable personal loss or a fear of the unknown, it is the judicial aspect of death that makes it such a foreboding reality in Scripture: the correlation between sin, death and divine judgment (cf. Heb 9:27–28).

Death as a consequence of sin

Whatever issues this may raise for a scientific worldview, the Bible suggests that for Adam and his offspring death was the result of human sin. While the precise nature of such death has evoked considerable debate, Genesis certainly implies that physical death is involved (cf. Gen 2:17; 3:19). This is further suggested by the recurring refrain in Genesis 5 (“and he died”), and confirmed by Paul’s teaching in the New Testament (Rom 5:12, 14, 17; 1Cor 15:22). Accordingly, death has well been described as the one certainty in life: one out of one dies. However, Scripture does not portray death as the end of our existence; beyond death, the Bible attests to the reality of some kind of afterlife, whether in a disembodied or re-embodied state.

Human existence beyond the grave

Traditionally the biblical concept of an afterlife has been understood in terms of two major phases: a disembodied “intermediate state” between physical death and bodily resurrection, and a re-embodied or “eternal state” associated with an eschatological resurrection and final judgment. More recently, the concept of an intermediate state has been challenged by those who reject any idea of a human soul (mainly on the grounds that the traditional distinction between body and soul owes more to Greek Platonism than to canonical Christian Scripture). Thus any idea of a non-corporeal post-mortem existence intrinsically related to the concept of an “intermediate state” is often dismissed on the grounds that biblical anthropology is monistic rather than dualistic. Accordingly, the biblical concept of an afterlife is understood as a strictly post-resurrection experience—the latter being sometimes perceived as instantaneous “resurrection” at death, which ushers people outside time itself. Biblical portrayals of the afterlife are thus interpreted exclusively in terms of the final or eternal state. It is debatable, however, whether all the relevant biblical data can be so understood.

Post-mortem experience in the Old Testament

Admittedly, the Old Testament does not say a great deal about the afterlife, but what it does say seems rather significant. Idioms used in association with death, such as being “gathered to one’s people” or “sleeping/resting with one’s ancestors” are particularly so. Contrary to what some suggest, neither of these expressions is simply synonymous with burial in a family or ancestral tomb (e.g., Gen 25:8–10; 49:33 [cf. 50:13]; Num 20:24–29; 27:13; 31:2; Deut 32:50; cf. also 1Kgs 2:10; 2Kgs 16:20; 21:18). It seems much more likely that these two phrases allude to the realm of the dead (cf. Psa 49:19). The most frequent Old Testament term for such is Sheol, often understood as the common destiny for all people (whether wicked or righteous). It is interesting, however, that Sheol is predominantly associated with the ungodly and those who consider themselves to be under divine judgment. While the denizens of Sheol are generally much less active than their ancient Near Eastern counterparts, they are clearly understood to have an ongoing existence of some kind. Such is self-evident from Old Testament prohibitions on necromancy (e.g., Deut 18:11; Isa 8:19): such injunctions are quite unnecessary unless the dead are thought to have some manner of post-mortem existence. Moreover, while plainly illicit, Saul’s foolhardy “séance” with Samuel (1Sam 28) appears to confirm that this is indeed the case: that the spirits of the dead continue to exist, albeit in some somnolent form, after their earthly demise. While allusions to such post-mortem existence may also be discernible in several other OT texts (e.g., Job 26:5; Psa 73:24), there is significantly more explicit discussion in the intertestamental period, where diverse perspectives are immediately apparent.

Post-mortem experience in the New Testament

By the first century two conflicting schools of thought had thus emerged, represented by the Saducees and the Pharisees respectively. Whereas the Saduccees dismissed any idea of disembodied spirits/angels or the resurrection of the dead, the Pharisees — as well as the Jewish populace at large (cf. Matt 14:26; Luke 24:37–39; John 11:24; Acts 12:15) — embraced both these concepts (Acts 23:8–9). Accordingly, Jesus is addressing both aspects of Sadduccean skepticism in Luke 20 when he defends not only the idea of a future resurrection, but also the idea of an intermediate state (the deceased patriarchs somehow remaining “alive to God”). That the human soul can in some sense exist without (or outside) the body is likewise attested in several other New Testament texts (e.g., Matt 10:28; Luke 23:43; cf. 2Cor 12:2–3). However, perhaps the strongest textual support for the idea of an intermediate state is sought in Luke 16 and two Pauline passages in particular (Phil 1:20–24 and 2Cor 5:6–9).

In Luke 16 Jesus offers the most graphic New Testament depiction of ongoing existence beyond death. While the lesson of the parable is not primarily anthropological or eschatological, it is difficult to conclude that Jesus’ audience was not expected to draw relevant inferences from it, especially given the correlation between the scenario depicted and some common first century eschatological beliefs (cf. 1 Enoch 22; 2 Esdras 7). Thus, whilst one should be cautious about pressing all the details in this parable (e.g., the rich man and Lazarus are both depicted in a corporeal manner, having a finger and tongue respectively, and can communicate with one another), Jesus appears to giving at least tacit endorsement to the idea of a post-mortem, but pre-resurrection, state of being. After all, the rich man’s brothers are evidently still alive, thus the scenario is apparently prior to the general resurrection and final judgment of the last day. Furthermore, while not a conclusive argument, Jesus expressly speaks here of the rich man being in Hades (the Greek equivalent of Sheol) as opposed to being in Gehenna or the lake of fire (cf. Rev 20:14). Thus the scenario portrayed in this parable seems to correlate in some measure with the idea of an intermediate state for both the righteous and the unrighteous. However, this is the only biblical text that lends any support to such an interim conscious punishment for the unbeliever ( contra some English translations and commentators, 2Pet 2:4, 9 almost certainly speaks of rebellious angels or people being held for judgment rather than currently being under such judgment and thus experiencing conscious torment). As such, it is arguably mistaken to build such a doctrine on the basis of such a debatable passage.

However, while there may be little or no definitive biblical support for the conscious intermediate state of the wicked, there is much clearer evidence with respect to the righteous. Speaking in relation to remaining alive or dying (Phil 1:20–24 and 2Cor 5:6–9), Paul sharply distinguishes between being “in the body” or “in the flesh” and being “away from the body” or “with Christ.” The latter experience seems to be envisaged as non-corporeal (“unclothed”), rather than being in the eschatological “heavenly dwelling” or “spiritual body” Paul anticipates elsewhere (cf 1Cor 15:44). In keeping with this, Paul elsewhere uses the metaphor of “sleeping” to depict the righteous dead (1Cor 11:30; 15:6, 18, 20, 51; 1Thess 4:13–15; 5:10; cf. John 11:11; Acts 7:60; 13:36). This is not simply a euphemism for death but an ontological claim about the ongoing existence of the dead. This is supported by a number of more oblique references to the intermediate state elsewhere, such as “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Heb 12:23) who are nevertheless awaiting resurrection “to a better life” (Heb 11:35), and the heavenly location of “the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne” (Rev 6:9–11; 20:4–5) prior to the final resurrection and judgment (Rev 20:11–15). While the depiction in Revelation is clearly figurative, it is undoubtedly portraying an interim as opposed to the final, post-resurrection, eternal state (cf. Rev 20:4–6, 7–15).

From this brief survey of the relevant biblical evidence it would thus appear that death as God’s judgment on human sin should be understood as an unnatural spiritual state that inevitably ends in the dissolution of the psychosomatic unity intrinsic to living human beings. This, however, is not a permanent dissolution, for the separation of body and soul through physical death is merely temporary. Body and soul will be reunited at the resurrection, issuing in eternal life and immortality for some, or the second death and everlasting shame for others. Thus understood, for some at least, the Bible holds out the prospect of what one author has famously dubbed, “ life after ‘life after death’” (N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God . Christian Origins and the Question of God, Vol. 3 [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003], 215).

Death & Afterlife Essay Plans-Philosophy & Ethics A Level

Subject: Religious education

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

9 September 2022

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3 ESSAY PLANS INCLUDED IN THIS BUNDLE These essay plans helped me get an A* overall in OCR Philosophy & Ethics (Full Marks on ethics paper). Essay plans discussing the complexities surrounding Death & Afterlife. The essay plans have a particular focus on AO1, so that students are able to learn this topics content whilst acknowledging how they are going to categorise this information in an essay. This produces essays that contain the most relevant and well-organised information. These essay plans specifically target the knowledge that ‘learners should know’ as said on the specification. These essay plans are VERY detailed. This is because I designed my essay plans so that they can be used without the aid of revision notes, in isolation. All the extra detail you need on the topics have been included in the essay plans.

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Developments in Christian Thought FULL PAPER Essay Plans OCR

42 ESSAY PLANS IN THIS BUNDLE- Less than 50p for each essay plan. These essay plans helped me get an A* overall in OCR Philosophy & Ethics (Full Marks on ethics paper). Essay plans discussing the complexities surrounding every topic on the developments in christian thought paper. The essay plans have a particular focus on AO1, so that students are able to learn this topics content whilst acknowledging how they are going to categorise this information in an essay. This produces essays that contain the most relevant and well-organised information. These essay plans specifically target the knowledge that ‘learners should know’ as said on the specification. These essay plans are VERY detailed. This is because I designed my essay plans so that they can be used without the aid of revision notes, in isolation. All the extra detail you need on the topics have been included in the essay plans.

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Reason and Meaning

Philosophical reflections on life, death, and the meaning of life, summary of samuel scheffler’s, death and the afterlife.

In the first, the doomsday scenario , we are asked to imagine that we will live out our normal lifespan, but that thirty days after our deaths an asteroid will destroy the earth and all life on it. Needless to say, most of us would find this a depressing prospect, independent of the fact that we would not die prematurely. Scheffler argues that this shows that the lives of others who live on after we die, what he calls the “collective afterlife,” matter more to us than we ordinarily think and that our individual survival matters less to us than we normally suppose.

In the second, the infertility scenario , we again live out our normal lives but must do so with the knowledge that the species is infertile. With the last human death, humanity dies out. Scheffler argues that this knowledge would demoralize us, undermining our attempt to live happy lives. Again we see that the collective afterlife is more important to us than we usually realize.

Scheffler then contrasts the relative calm we feel about the fact that all those now living will one day be dead, with the horror we experience thinking about either of the above scenarios. This suggests that the fact that we and those we love won’t exist in the future bothers us less, than that some unknown people won’t exist in the future. As Scheffler says:

the coming into existence of people we do not know and love matters more to us than our own survival and the survival of the people we do know and love. . . . This is a remarkable fact which should get more attention than it does in thinking about the nature and limits of our personal egoism.

MARK JOHNSTON REPLIES

But is it true that we really care more about the existence of potential people than the survival of our loved ones? This idea was challenged in a piece in the Boston Review by Mark Johnston entitled, “ Is Life a Ponzi Scheme ? Johnston asks us to imagine that the population of our tribe is half of humanity, and our tribe is also infertile. Would we really prefer the death of our tribe if we knew that the remaining half of humanity will repopulate the planet to its previous levels in a few generations, and then all of them will die a few generations later? Johnston thinks most of us would answer no to this question, and that his thought experiment belies Scheffler’s claim that we care more about unknown future persons than our present loved ones.

Johnston also argues that it is not just any future for humanity that matters to us, but valuable ones. Thus a future in which gangs fight for cosmic space or we are food for aliens is not better than one in which we perished altogether. Johnston prefers we perish rather than suffer such fates. This leads him to consider whether our lives have meaning: a) if humanity has a future or; b) only if humanity has a valuable future. The problem with either of these is that if value depends on the future, then value will eventually be undermined—since the universe will ultimately end.

To avoid such a depressing conclusion Johnston advises us to value our lives now rather than holding them hostage to some future. And we should not be demoralized by the thought of our own or humanity’s death: “The kind of value that properly calls forth joy is not something that waits to be validated by the collective life to come. As a consequence, we already live in a rich ecology of value that surrounds us here and now, no matter what happens in the future.”

MESSERLY REPLIES

This argument for immortality provided by future technologies is buttressed by Scheffler’s insight that we care about future people. We care about the future because without it life is (nearly) pointless . Johnston is right that without a future there is little meaning to life. But if there is a valuable and meaningful future—made possible by science and technology—then acting to bring about the future gives life meaning. As for the eventual death of the universe, this is uncertain given considerations of the multiverse and the possibility of powerful, advanced intelligence determining the fate of the universe.

Without the prospect of a good and lasting future for our descendants, there is little or no meaning to our present lives. And that is what Scheffler’s thought experiments so beautifully and artfully illuminate.

Death and the Afterlife: A Spiritual World After Death Essay

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Human beings are not eternal, and no matter how long their life is and how healthy they are, everybody knows that death awaits them at the end. Some people die accidentally due to the sad coincidence of events; others leave life according to their own will. Death occurs to all people without exception at the end of their lives. No matter how it happens, it is a subject of intense discussions and even experiments because all people are afraid, fascinated, and intrigued by what awaits them after their physical body stops functioning. The main question that is left without an answer, but represents utmost importance for the whole of humankind is whether there is a spiritual world that awaits people after death, and if it really exists, what it represents.

The spiritual world for people means the immortality of their souls, which is in general highly important from the point of view of religion and philosophy. Christianity and Islam pose much attention to the modest, humble, and correct life of believers who want to be gratified for their goodness in the afterlife. There are a number of sins that are punished by eternal sufferings for the soul that are called to engage people in virtuous lives in the hope for a happy afterlife. However, no matter whether hell or heaven expects their souls, it is clear that the immortal soul exists and proceeds from one world of earthly human beings to the eternal spiritual world. Other religions such as Buddhism deny the fact of the soul’s existence and state that human life exists only due to the flow of super-powers and super-energies in the world.

My personal opinion on the issue is heavily influenced by the religion I have because all followers of Christianity are taught from a young age to believe in the immortality of human souls to make people responsible for the outcomes of their lives. People should live carefully, without sinning and committing atrocities towards other people or nature in order to be rewarded for this later. I believe that there is something beyond the world in which humankind lives because of many stories about mysterious forces that guide people, give them extraordinary possibilities, and bring sacred knowledge to the human world. I am sure that the soul of each person is transformed after his or her death and passed on to another creature, not sure the human being but an animal or a plant. It is impossible to get the whole cultural, spiritual and intellectual knowledge passed on from century to century by our ancestors; it would take much longer for people to grasp all basics of life in case they did not have the subconscious memory of their souls.

Besides, I believe in the existence of an immortal human soul because I am sure that only education and upbringing cannot produce great people or criminals; there is something beyond their social and genetic background that makes them commit the greatest good and the greatest evil in their life. One life would be not enough to raise such people as Hitler or Gandhi. For this reason, I am sure that our soul is much wiser than we are, showing us the way through life by symbols, hidden signs, and hints that we rarely understand but the presence of which we certainly feel. The immortal soul is something for the sake of which people live and do good – if there were no belief in immortality, people would grow immoral and would not think about the consequences of their deeds.

Ancient philosophers dedicated much of their writing to issues of life and death. Analyzing the work of Epicurus and his opinion on death voiced in the work “Letter to Menoeceus”, it becomes clear that the philosopher was highly confident in the existence of the immortal soul and its transition from one form of living into another one. However, he attributes more attention not to the death itself, but to the nature of fear of death. Epicurus relies on pure logic and practice approaches the subjectivity of this fear, trying to explain why it is senseless and foolish. He manages this point of view, characterizing the act of death – finish of the human existence. Thus, he wonders why people should be afraid of death since it never concerns them directly. As long as people are alive, death is not the problem for them since it is absent; as soon as they die, that is, death approaches them, they no longer exist, thus being unable to be concerned with it (Epicurus 100).

Logically, Epicurus arrives at the generalization that only one of the two may exist simultaneously – either a person or death. Judging from this angle, Epicurus assumes that people should not be afraid of death because as soon as it comes they will no longer exist, and while they exist there will be no death. He also comments on human dissatisfaction with life – people are initially born to be happy, so in case they are not happy and do not see a way to live their life happily, they have a set of tools available for leaving the life. Hence, Epicurus makes a conclusion that life cannot be sad or gloomy for people, and those who do not need it can leave it on their own will, thus getting free from the painful anticipation (Epicurus 101).

Plato approaches the subject of the afterlife in a different way, trying to prove whether the soul is an immortal substance or not. Utilizing the main assumptions of logic in the dialogue of Socrates with Cebes, Plato starts with the argument that all people should be afraid of death unless the immortality of the human soul is proven. He asserts that the human soul surely lives longer than the human body, being able to exist in several people; however, he doubts that it is immortal. No matter how long it exists, in case there is the end of its existence all people should fear death if they suppose they are the final element of its existence. In the process of the discussion and application of several logical inferences Socrates concludes in the dialogue: “Then, it seems, when death attacks a man, his mortal part dies, but his immortal part retreats before death, and goes away safe and indestructible” (Plato 97). Finally, this conclusion arouses one more inference from the whole set of arguments used in the process of discussion – “soul is immortal and imperishable, and our souls will indeed exist in the other world” (Plato 97). As one can see, ancient philosophy provides a strong basis for assuming that the human soul exists and proceeds to another world after death to be reborn in another creature afterward.

Notwithstanding the fact that the immortality of the human soul is widely recognized by philosophy and religion, it is still evident that the question does not find a unanimous decision on the subject – Buddhism is a good example of the counterargument to the existence of an immortal soul. Buddhism, in general, denies fear of death as the most wicked human weakness and egocentrism, the sense of possessing a soul that is actually unable to belong to anybody being a universal Soul, the unity of energies and forces that govern the whole world and not only one personality (Rahula 113). For this reason, Buddhism calls not to be afraid of death because every creature and every object in the world suffers death and rebirth every single moment of life, making fear of death senseless (Rahula 112).

Buddhism is governed by the idea of no-soul or no-self (the so-called doctrine of Anatta) (Rahula 113). The human being is considered to have two deeply-rooted psychological ideas – the one of self-protection and the one of self-preservation. To ensure the fulfillment of the former people create God, and the latter is ensured by the idea of an immortal Soul (Rahula 113). Thus, Buddhists state that all considerations about God (with any name in any religion) and immortality of human souls are false, subjective projections deriving from the human fears and weakness, while in fact there is no super-power and no soul but only a set of super-forces, energies that govern the universe (Rahula 113).

Summing everything that has been said up, it is possible to see how the issues of the afterlife and the immortality of the human soul find proponents and opponents in religion and philosophy. The greatest thinkers of ancient times, as well as modern philosophers, have been obsessed with determining the immortality of the soul, while Buddhism rejects its existence in general. Christianity is governed by ethics and morality much, trying to direct people at good deeds and making them ashamed of sins (immoral and unethical actions that impede on other’s rights or do harm to others) in the fear to get to hell after death. Those who live a good life, on the contrary, are promised to get to heaven where their happy life will continue and where their soul will not be submitted to tortures but will get the reward for all virtues the person committed during lifetime.

All theories and beliefs that have been discussed in the present work certainly possess some drawbacks and advantages for those who are interested in the issues of death and the afterlife, giving much food for thought regarding the immortality of the human soul. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the belief in the human soul immortality creates additional reasons for being ethically correct and responsible for one’s actions on a long-term, in-depth basis. Nobody will ever know whether there is something that awaits people after death, so the main source of information is human faith that dictates appropriate behavior. For this reason, it is necessary to rely on the existing opinions and to choose the ones that suit one’s religion, personal philosophy, or values – consideration of all these theories should be conducted only under the acceptance of an initial fact about overall ignorance of what really expects human beings after death.

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IvyPanda. (2021, December 17). Death and the Afterlife: A Spiritual World After Death. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-and-the-afterlife/

"Death and the Afterlife: A Spiritual World After Death." IvyPanda , 17 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/death-and-the-afterlife/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'Death and the Afterlife: A Spiritual World After Death'. 17 December.

IvyPanda . 2021. "Death and the Afterlife: A Spiritual World After Death." December 17, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-and-the-afterlife/.

1. IvyPanda . "Death and the Afterlife: A Spiritual World After Death." December 17, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/death-and-the-afterlife/.

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Death and the Afterlife: Biblical Perspectives on Ultimate Questions (Volume 44) (New Studies in Biblical Theology) Paperback – March 6, 2018

Significant aspects of death and the afterlife continue to be debated among evangelical Christians. In this NSBT volume Paul Williamson surveys the perspectives of our contemporary culture and the biblical world, and then highlights the traditional understanding of the biblical teaching and the issues over which evangelicals have become increasingly polarized.Subsequent chapters explore the controversial areas: what happens immediately after we die; bodily resurrection; a final, universal judgment; the ultimate fate of those who do not receive God's approval on the last day; and the biblical concept of an eschatological "heaven."Taking care to understand the ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman backgrounds, Williamson works through the most important Old and New Testament passages. He demonstrates that there is considerable exegetical support for the traditional evangelical understanding of death and the afterlife, and raises questions about the basis for the growing popularity of alternative understandings.Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.

Part of series New Studies in Biblical Theology
Print length 256 pages
Language English
Publisher IVP Academic
Publication date March 6, 2018
Dimensions 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10 0830826459
ISBN-13 978-0830826452
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Editorial reviews, about the author.

Paul R. Williamson is Lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew at Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia. He is the author of Abraham, Israel and the Nations and a contributor to The Land of Promise , the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology and the Dictionary of the Old Testament .

D. A. Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

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Publisher ‏ : ‎ IVP Academic (March 6, 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0830826459
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0830826452
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
#388 in Sociology of Death (Books)
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Developments in Christian Thought

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Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago

Samantha Putterman, PolitiFact Samantha Putterman, PolitiFact

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Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-warnings-from-democrats-about-project-2025-and-donald-trump

Fact-checking warnings from Democrats about Project 2025 and Donald Trump

This fact check originally appeared on PolitiFact .

Project 2025 has a starring role in this week’s Democratic National Convention.

And it was front and center on Night 1.

WATCH: Hauling large copy of Project 2025, Michigan state Sen. McMorrow speaks at 2024 DNC

“This is Project 2025,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, said as she laid a hardbound copy of the 900-page document on the lectern. “Over the next four nights, you are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900-page document. Why? Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has warned Americans about “Trump’s Project 2025” agenda — even though former President Donald Trump doesn’t claim the conservative presidential transition document.

“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said July 23 in Milwaukee. “He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously, and can you believe they put that thing in writing?”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, has joined in on the talking point.

“Don’t believe (Trump) when he’s playing dumb about this Project 2025. He knows exactly what it’ll do,” Walz said Aug. 9 in Glendale, Arizona.

Trump’s campaign has worked to build distance from the project, which the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, led with contributions from dozens of conservative groups.

Much of the plan calls for extensive executive-branch overhauls and draws on both long-standing conservative principles, such as tax cuts, and more recent culture war issues. It lays out recommendations for disbanding the Commerce and Education departments, eliminating certain climate protections and consolidating more power to the president.

Project 2025 offers a sweeping vision for a Republican-led executive branch, and some of its policies mirror Trump’s 2024 agenda, But Harris and her presidential campaign have at times gone too far in describing what the project calls for and how closely the plans overlap with Trump’s campaign.

PolitiFact researched Harris’ warnings about how the plan would affect reproductive rights, federal entitlement programs and education, just as we did for President Joe Biden’s Project 2025 rhetoric. Here’s what the project does and doesn’t call for, and how it squares with Trump’s positions.

Are Trump and Project 2025 connected?

To distance himself from Project 2025 amid the Democratic attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he “knows nothing” about it and has “no idea” who is in charge of it. (CNN identified at least 140 former advisers from the Trump administration who have been involved.)

The Heritage Foundation sought contributions from more than 100 conservative organizations for its policy vision for the next Republican presidency, which was published in 2023.

Project 2025 is now winding down some of its policy operations, and director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, is stepping down, The Washington Post reported July 30. Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita denounced the document.

WATCH: A look at the Project 2025 plan to reshape government and Trump’s links to its authors

However, Project 2025 contributors include a number of high-ranking officials from Trump’s first administration, including former White House adviser Peter Navarro and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

A recently released recording of Russell Vought, a Project 2025 author and the former director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, showed Vought saying Trump’s “very supportive of what we do.” He said Trump was only distancing himself because Democrats were making a bogeyman out of the document.

Project 2025 wouldn’t ban abortion outright, but would curtail access

The Harris campaign shared a graphic on X that claimed “Trump’s Project 2025 plan for workers” would “go after birth control and ban abortion nationwide.”

The plan doesn’t call to ban abortion nationwide, though its recommendations could curtail some contraceptives and limit abortion access.

What’s known about Trump’s abortion agenda neither lines up with Harris’ description nor Project 2025’s wish list.

Project 2025 says the Department of Health and Human Services Department should “return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care.”

It recommends that the Food and Drug Administration reverse its 2000 approval of mifepristone, the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for a medication abortion. Medication is the most common form of abortion in the U.S. — accounting for around 63 percent in 2023.

If mifepristone were to remain approved, Project 2025 recommends new rules, such as cutting its use from 10 weeks into pregnancy to seven. It would have to be provided to patients in person — part of the group’s efforts to limit access to the drug by mail. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval over procedural grounds.

WATCH: Trump’s plans for health care and reproductive rights if he returns to White House The manual also calls for the Justice Department to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act on mifepristone, which bans the mailing of “obscene” materials. Abortion access supporters fear that a strict interpretation of the law could go further to ban mailing the materials used in procedural abortions, such as surgical instruments and equipment.

The plan proposes withholding federal money from states that don’t report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention how many abortions take place within their borders. The plan also would prohibit abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid funds. It also calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that the training of medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, omits abortion training.

The document says some forms of emergency contraception — particularly Ella, a pill that can be taken within five days of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy — should be excluded from no-cost coverage. The Affordable Care Act requires most private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services, which involves a range of birth control methods, including emergency contraception.

Trump has recently said states should decide abortion regulations and that he wouldn’t block access to contraceptives. Trump said during his June 27 debate with Biden that he wouldn’t ban mifepristone after the Supreme Court “approved” it. But the court rejected the lawsuit based on standing, not the case’s merits. He has not weighed in on the Comstock Act or said whether he supports it being used to block abortion medication, or other kinds of abortions.

Project 2025 doesn’t call for cutting Social Security, but proposes some changes to Medicare

“When you read (Project 2025),” Harris told a crowd July 23 in Wisconsin, “you will see, Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

The Project 2025 document does not call for Social Security cuts. None of its 10 references to Social Security addresses plans for cutting the program.

Harris also misleads about Trump’s Social Security views.

In his earlier campaigns and before he was a politician, Trump said about a half-dozen times that he’s open to major overhauls of Social Security, including cuts and privatization. More recently, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump said of entitlement programs such as Social Security, “There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” However, he quickly walked that statement back, and his CNBC comment stands at odds with essentially everything else Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump’s campaign website says that not “a single penny” should be cut from Social Security. We rated Harris’ claim that Trump intends to cut Social Security Mostly False.

Project 2025 does propose changes to Medicare, including making Medicare Advantage, the private insurance offering in Medicare, the “default” enrollment option. Unlike Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans have provider networks and can also require prior authorization, meaning that the plan can approve or deny certain services. Original Medicare plans don’t have prior authorization requirements.

The manual also calls for repealing health policies enacted under Biden, such as the Inflation Reduction Act. The law enabled Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers for the first time in history, and recently resulted in an agreement with drug companies to lower the prices of 10 expensive prescriptions for Medicare enrollees.

Trump, however, has said repeatedly during the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut Medicare.

Project 2025 would eliminate the Education Department, which Trump supports

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 would “eliminate the U.S. Department of Education” — and that’s accurate. Project 2025 says federal education policy “should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The plan scales back the federal government’s role in education policy and devolves the functions that remain to other agencies.

Aside from eliminating the department, the project also proposes scrapping the Biden administration’s Title IX revision, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also would let states opt out of federal education programs and calls for passing a federal parents’ bill of rights similar to ones passed in some Republican-led state legislatures.

Republicans, including Trump, have pledged to close the department, which gained its status in 1979 within Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s presidential Cabinet.

In one of his Agenda 47 policy videos, Trump promised to close the department and “to send all education work and needs back to the states.” Eliminating the department would have to go through Congress.

What Project 2025, Trump would do on overtime pay

In the graphic, the Harris campaign says Project 2025 allows “employers to stop paying workers for overtime work.”

The plan doesn’t call for banning overtime wages. It recommends changes to some Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, regulations and to overtime rules. Some changes, if enacted, could result in some people losing overtime protections, experts told us.

The document proposes that the Labor Department maintain an overtime threshold “that does not punish businesses in lower-cost regions (e.g., the southeast United States).” This threshold is the amount of money executive, administrative or professional employees need to make for an employer to exempt them from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In 2019, the Trump’s administration finalized a rule that expanded overtime pay eligibility to most salaried workers earning less than about $35,568, which it said made about 1.3 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. The Trump-era threshold is high enough to cover most line workers in lower-cost regions, Project 2025 said.

The Biden administration raised that threshold to $43,888 beginning July 1, and that will rise to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. That would grant overtime eligibility to about 4 million workers, the Labor Department said.

It’s unclear how many workers Project 2025’s proposal to return to the Trump-era overtime threshold in some parts of the country would affect, but experts said some would presumably lose the right to overtime wages.

Other overtime proposals in Project 2025’s plan include allowing some workers to choose to accumulate paid time off instead of overtime pay, or to work more hours in one week and fewer in the next, rather than receive overtime.

Trump’s past with overtime pay is complicated. In 2016, the Obama administration said it would raise the overtime to salaried workers earning less than $47,476 a year, about double the exemption level set in 2004 of $23,660 a year.

But when a judge blocked the Obama rule, the Trump administration didn’t challenge the court ruling. Instead it set its own overtime threshold, which raised the amount, but by less than Obama.

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Is India a Safe Place for Women? Another Brutal Killing Raises the Question.

The rape and murder of a trainee doctor at her own hospital has brought up, once again, uncomfortable truths about a country that wants to be a global leader.

Young women protesting with raised fists and holding a banner saying “we want justice”

By Anupreeta Das and Sameer Yasir

In December 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student boarded a bus in New Delhi a little after 9 p.m., expecting it would take her home. Instead, she was gang-raped and assaulted so viciously with an iron rod that her intestines were damaged. She died days later as India erupted in rage.

Nearly 12 years later, the nation is convulsing with anger once again — this time, over the ghastly rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in a Kolkata hospital, as she rested in a seminar room after a late-night shift. Since the Aug. 9 killing, thousands of doctors have gone on strike to demand a safer work environment and thousands more people have taken to the streets to demand justice.

For a country desperate to be seen as a global leader, repeated high-profile cases of brutal sexual assaults highlight an uncomfortable truth: India, by many measures , remains one of the world’s most unsafe places for women. Rape and domestic violence are relatively common, and conviction rates are low.

This week, the Supreme Court of India took up the Kolkata case as one of fundamental rights and safety, questioning how hospital administrators and police officers had handled it and saying new protective measures were needed. “The nation cannot wait for another rape and murder for real changes on the ground,” Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said.

Gender-related violence is hardly unique to India. But even as millions of Indian women have joined the urban work force in the past decade, securing their financial independence and helping to fuel the country’s rapid growth, they are still often left to bear the burden of their own safety.

Longstanding customs that both repress women and in many cases confine them to the home have made their safety in public spaces an afterthought. It can be dangerous for a woman to use public transportation, especially at night, and sexual harassment occurs frequently on the streets and in offices. Mothers tell their daughters to be watchful. Brothers and husbands drop their sisters and wives off at work.

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Death and the afterlife summary notes

Rich man and lazarus

New earth theology

Physical view vs spiritual view

Symbolic view

Augustine’s views on limited election

Unlimited election

Universalism: Hick (universalism, soul-making and purgatory)

I Think Therefore I Teach

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Death and the Afterlife

Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion?

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)

Painted limestone funerary stele with a woman in childbirth

Painted limestone funerary stele with a seated man and two standing figures

Terracotta krater

Marble statue of a kouros (youth)

Terracotta pyxis (box)

Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl

Marble grave stele of a little girl

Marble funerary statues of a maiden and a little girl

Painted limestone funerary slab with a man controlling a rearing horse

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at ease

Marble grave stele with a family group

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier taking a kantharos from his attendant

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier and two girls

Terracotta bell-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water)

Marble akroterion of the grave monument of Timotheos and Nikon

Terracotta funerary plaque

Terracotta oinochoe: chous (jug)

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Death and the Afterlife: Biblical Perspectives on Ultimate Questions (Volume 44) (New Studies in Biblical Theology) Paperback – March 6, 2018

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