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Baker Publishing Group - Terence Nichols

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150 pages

English

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Many people fear dying and are uncertain about life after death. In this engaging book, a Catholic theologian addresses perennial human questions about death and what lies beyond, making a Christian case for an afterlife with God. Nichols begins by examining views of death and the afterlife in Scripture and the Christian tradition. He takes up scientific and philosophical challenges to the afterlife and considers what we can learn about it from near death experiences. Nichols then addresses topics such as the soul, bodily resurrection, salvation, heaven, hell, and purgatory. Finally, he addresses the important issue of preparing for death and dying well.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Christian theology

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 mars 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441212597
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0576€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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© 2010 by Terence Nichols
Published by Brazos Press a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516–6287 www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2021
Ebook corrections 11.05.2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1259-7
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
For my family. May they abide in God’s love in this life and the next.
C ONTENTS
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
1. Underworld, Soul, and Resurrection in Ancient Judaism
2. Death and Afterlife in the New Testament
3. Death and Afterlife in the Christian Tradition
4. Scientific Challenges to Afterlife
5. Near Death Experiences
6. On the Soul
7. Resurrection
8. Justification and Judgment
9. Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell
10. Dying Well
Notes
Back Cover
I NTRODUCTION
The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 1 Corinthians 15:26
A Good Death?
Diane died about twenty years ago. A member of our charismatic prayer group at church, she was in her mid-forties and left behind a husband and two teenage boys. We prayed for months that her leukemia would be cured, but in the end our prayers were not answered in the way we had hoped. Diane died young, but she died gracefully. She was convinced that she was going to a better life with God and that her family would be taken care of. She planned her own funeral, chose the readings, and asked that it be a joyful occasion. Before dying, she said good-bye to all those she loved and asked them not to be bitter about her death. Her funeral was more like a celebration than a lament. Even her family felt this. After her death, her family and friends also felt an inexplicable sense of peace and joy about her passing. About six months later her husband took a job in another city and eventually remarried, as Diane had hoped he would.
Did Diane die a good death? Many would say no. What could be worse than dying in the prime of one’s life and leaving behind a young family? This kind of event often leaves bitterness and lasting scars. But none of this happened in Diane’s case. Contrary to usual expectations, her passing was joyful. She was sure that her family would be taken care of and that she was going home to God. If one is going to die in the prime of life and leave behind a beloved family, one could hardly manage it more gracefully than did Diane. What 1 Corinthians 15:26 made her death different was her and her family’s certainty that she would continue to live on with God. All the prayers helped too. The months before her death were a time of letting go, acceptance, and preparation for death. When Diane died, she was ready to move on, confident that her journey into God would continue. This changed the whole quality of her death for her and for those around her.
Three things made Diane’s death joyful: she was confident about an afterlife with God, she was prepared emotionally and spiritually for death, and she died close to her loved ones and to God in an atmosphere of prayer.
Questions about Afterlife
Not many people die like Diane. Many people die unsure about God or any future life with God, unprepared to meet death, depressed, uncertain, afraid, and often alone. For example, a recent article in America magazine discusses the state of Christian belief in Sweden. About 9 percent of the population there is Christian; 3 percent actually go to church. The rest are described as agnostic. “They’re convinced you cannot speak about God. Is there a God? Is there not a God? I don’t know, they will say.” 1 It is true that Christian belief is more widespread in the United States than in Sweden, but the same secularizing trends are at work here as well. For years I have been teaching a course titled “Death and Afterlife” at the University of St. Thomas. It is a popular course among students. Yet to my surprise, I often find in my students a deep uncertainty about afterlife and a fear of death. These are connected. People fear death because they have no positive vision of afterlife. Christian martyrs, who often died terribly painful deaths, did not fear death because they were convinced that they would be sustained by Christ and would be with him in heaven. But a cliché among students is: “No one has died and come back to tell us about it.” The typical opinion is that the best death is quick and painless, contrary to centuries of Christian teaching, which stresses the need to prepare for death. Even some practicing Christians are uncertain and troubled about death. Increasingly, pastors do not talk about afterlife. Often they simply offer brief slogans, such as “He is with God now.” I once asked a pastor in my athletic club what he told his flock about the soul after death. His response was, “Our theologians tell us not to talk about it.” This seems to be the case in mainline Protestant churches and is becoming true in some Catholic churches. It’s even more true in popular culture. I ask people if anyone ever brings up the topic of death and afterlife at a party. Of course not, they laugh; people don’t talk about it.
A consequence of the uncertainty about afterlife is that people don’t think about death and therefore don’t prepare for it. It’s easier to deny it—why dwell on what you can’t change? So people typically don’t think about death until it’s too late. They don’t prepare to meet death; rather, it runs into them like a truck.
So the question is, Why is there such uncertainty about life after death? After all, Christianity has taught for centuries that persons’ souls survive death and that in the end times their souls will be united with their resurrected bodies. In fact, throughout almost all of Christian history, people didn’t worry about whether they would survive death. Instead, they worried about their state after death, their ultimate salvation: would they make it into heaven or would they fall into hell? In medieval cathedrals like Chartres, the scene of the last judgment (Matt. 25:31–46) was sculpted over the entrance doors so that people would see in frightening detail the damned falling into the clutches of demons and the bodies of the saints rising from their tombs to be with Jesus and the angels in heaven. Augustine, Luther, and Calvin were greatly concerned about salvation and did not think that most people would be saved.
Furthermore, almost all world religions teach that one’s personal spirit or soul survives bodily death. One finds this belief in tribal and animistic religions around the world, such as those of American Indians and African peoples; in ancient Egyptian religion; in Hinduism; in most forms of Buddhism (e.g., Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism); in Chinese religions; in traditional Judaism; in all of Islam; and in traditional Christianity. So why are contemporary Americans and Europeans so unsure about afterlife?
Challenges to Afterlife
There are several reasons for the uncertainty about an afterlife. Foremost is the challenge of philosophical naturalism or materialism. This is the (philosophical) belief that nature, or matter, is all that really exists. As the late Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan expressed it in his television series Cosmos , “The universe is all that is, all there ever was, and all that will ever be.” 2 Sagan promoted this as the scientific worldview, and in fact naturalism is often associated with science but is not necessarily entailed by it. One can do good science while being a devout believer in God. Most of the great founders of modern science—Galileo, Newton, Robert Boyle, Christian Huygens, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Max Planck—believed in God. 3 Conversely, many people who are naturalists or materialists are not scientists and know little of science. Thus naturalism is a philosophical belief, which may or may not be associated with science. Nonetheless, naturalism as a worldview has subtly pervaded the media, books, universities, and school classrooms so that it is now the atmosphere in which we live. As John Hick says, “Naturalism has created the ‘consensus reality’ of our culture. It has become so ingrained that we no longer see it, but see everything else through it.” 4 Naturalism has gradually displaced the older Christian worldview, with its confidence in God and in a sacramental universe that exists in and expresses God. Instead, according to Sagan, we now live in a naturalistic, self-sufficient universe that is all that is and in which God is otiose—a vestigial memory. 5
Second, bodily resurrection, which is the central hope of Christianity (as well as of traditional Judaism and Islam) is hard to believe in today’s world. If the body is resurrected, where does it go? Into outer space? We all know that heaven is not “up there” and that hell is not “down there,” that is, in the center of the earth. Modern cosmology has taught us that the heavens are not the abode of God, gods, or angels, as people used to believe. It was easier to make a case for resurrection when everyone believed that heaven was up amid the stars and that hell was in the fi