Life After Death

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Clearly, reflection on</div> <div> death and on life after death belongs to the oldest</div> <div> layers of religion. Yet because of the oral nature of</div> <div> these myths, their approach to the problem of</div> <div> death is relatively unsophisticated. A steady</div> <div> progress became possible only after the Greek invention</div> <div> of simplified writing. This process has continued</div> <div> through the twentieth century, and philosophy</div> <div> and theology, directly or indirectly, have</div> <div> exerted the most important influences on religious</div> <div> thinking about life after death.</div> <bR> <div> The terms <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>soul </I></FONT>and <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>otherworld </I></FONT>have not always</div> <div> carried the same meanings during the course</div> <div> of history. “Primitive” conceptions of the soul were</div> <div> usually of two types: the so-called <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>free-soul, </I></FONT>which</div> <div> represents the individual personality but which becomes</div> <div> inactive when the body is active, and thus</div> <div> represents the person after death; and the <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>bodysoul,</I></FONT></div> <div> which endows the body with life and consciousness,</div> <div> and which perishes with the body. This</div> <div> dualistic conception of the soul changes when</div> <div> small “primitive” peoples become more differentiated.</div> <div> In these cases, the free-soul starts to acquire</div> <div> the qualities of the body-soul. The process is well</div> <div> documented in ancient Greece, where, after</div> <div> Homer, the free-soul (<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>psyche</I></FONT>), started to incorporate</div> <div> the <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>thymos, </I></FONT>the most important of these bodysouls.</div> <div> As for the underworld, modern people are</div> <div> so used to thinking in terms of heaven and hell</div> <div> that they must be careful not to retroject them into</div> <div> earlier civilizations. Like ideas about the soul, conceptions</div> <div> of life after death have a history too.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Ancient Israel and ancient Greece</b></div> <div> Even a cursory look at the Old Testament reveals</div> <div> that it has little to say about either soul or afterlife.</div> <div> In fact, ancient Hebrew does not even have a term</div> <div> equivalent to the modern English word <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>soul. </I></FONT>The</div> <div> closest equivalent is <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>nephesh, </I></FONT>which can be translated</div> <div> “life” or “life-force,” but which can also signify</div> <div> the seat of emotions. Yet this term never refers</div> <div> to the “soul” of the dead, nor is it ever contrasted</div> <div> with the body. Israelite anthropology was strictly</div> <div> unitarian and remained so until influenced by the</div> <div> Greeks after Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.).</div> <div> The grave must have played an important role in</div> <div> ancient Hebrew culture, since “to go down into</div> <div> the grave” (Gen. 37:35) is equivalent to “to go</div> <div> down into Sheol” (King James, Ps. 16:10). Sheol</div> <div> was a place located beneath the Earth, filled with</div> <div> worms and impossible to escape from, where the</div> <div> shadow-like deceased were supposed to continue</div> <div> their earthly existence. However, the scarcity of</div> <div> references to Sheol suggests that ideas about life</div> <div> after death were vague and played little role in the</div> <div> imagination of the early Israelites.</div> <bR> <div> Ancient Greece presents a different situation.</div> <div> In Homer (c. 800 B.C.E.), who constitutes the earlist</div> <div> Greek source, the soul (<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>psyche</I></FONT>) does not yet have</div> <div> any connection with the emotions of living people.</div> <div> Yet in contrast with ancient Israel, the Greek notion</div> <div> of soul does represent people after their</div> <div> deaths. The soul goes straight to the underworld,</div> <div> Hades, an area located under the Earth, but also in</div> <div> the west; the soul can reach this “mirthless place”</div> <div> only by crossing the river Styx. The Greek picture</div> <div> of the underworld is bleak and sombre, causing</div> <div> the dead Achilles to remark: “do not try to make</div> <div> light of death to me; I would sooner be bound to</div> <div> the soil in the hire of another man, a man without</div> <div> lot and without much to live on, than be ruler over</div> <div> all the perished dead” (<FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>Iliad </I></FONT>11.489–491).</div> <div> This traditional picture became radically nuanced</div> <div> in southern Italy during the fifth century</div> <div> B.C.E by Pythagoras (c. 570–495 B.C.E.) and the Orphics.</div> <div> The former is seen by many as the inventor</div> <div> of Western notions of reincarnation and celestial</div> <div> immortality. Unfortunately, information about the</div> <div> origin of ideas about reincarnation is scarce. It may</div> <div> well be that Pythagoras developed the idea in order</div> <div> to give his aristocratic followers new status in a</div> <div> time when the aristocracy was under stress. In any</div> <div> case, his new vision presupposed the idea of the</div> <div> immortality of the soul, an idea popularized by</div> <div> Plato (428–347 B.C.E.). Belief in celestial immortality</div> <div> became more evident around 432 B.C.E., when an</div> <div> official war monument pronounced the souls of</div> <div> fallen Athenians to have been received by the</div> <div> <I>aith'r </I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-Light" >(upper air), but their bodies by the Earth.</FONT></div> <div> Shortly after Pythagoras, the Orphics, an intellectual</div> <div> movement named after the mythical poet Orpheus,</div> <div> introduced ideas about an attractive afterlife in the</div> <div> shape of a “symposium of the pure,” where sinners</div> <div> had to wallow in the mud in a kind of hell. </div> <bR> <div> The contours of the Christian distinction between</div> <div> heaven and hell, then, first became visible in the</div> <div> fifth century B.C.E. This did not mean that the older</div> <div> ideas disappeared. On the contrary, belief in a life</div> <div> after death remained limited to a small group of intellectuals;</div> <div> most ordinary Greeks did not seem to</div> <div> have expected much of an afterlife. “After death</div> <div> every man is earth and shadow: nothing goes to</div> <div> nothing,” states a character in Euripides’ play <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>Meleagros,</I></FONT></div> <div> and it is this attitude that predominantly</div> <div> survived into the Roman and Byzantine periods,</div> <div> even among Christians.</div> <bR> <div> A startling new conception of the afterlife developed</div> <div> after Alexander the Great spread Greek</div> <div> civilization into the Mediterranean world in the last</div> <div> decades of the fourth century B.C.E. Before this</div> <div> time, the Greeks had denied the possibility of resurrection,</div> <div> but the publication of the Aramaic fragments</div> <div> of Enoch in 1976 show that among an as yet</div> <div> unidentified group of Jews the belief in resurrection,</div> <div> which is absent in the Old Testament, had become</div> <div> apparent already in the early second century</div> <div> B.C.E., although it was not until the Maccabean revolt</div> <div> that it became widely popular. Moreover, the</div> <div> same book of Enoch mentions heaven and hell. It</div> <div> seems likely that intellectual Jews had made contact</div> <div> with Greeks, probably in Alexandria, and had</div> <div> received information about Orphic views of the</div> <div> afterlife.</div> <div> Although several groups of Jewish intellectuals,</div> <div> such as the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the</div> <div> community of Qumran (that has given us the Dead</div> <div> Sea Scrolls) continued to reject resurrection, others</div> <div> like the Pharisees enthusiastically took up the idea.</div> <div> However, the resurrection was not exported outside</div> <div> the Jewish world until the appearance of Jesus</div> <div> of Nazareth, although Jesus himself did not believe</div> <div> in the restoration of the former body, since the resurrected</div> <div> would be “like angels” (Matt. 22:23–33).</div> <div> The caution of Jesus was soon abandoned by his</div> <div> followers. In fact, Christian apologists and theologians</div> <div> spent an enormous amount of energy explaining</div> <div> and defending the resurrection, beginning</div> <div> with Paul’s words: “For if the dead rise not, then is</div> <div> Christ not raised. And if Christ be not raised, your</div> <div> faith is vain” (1 Cor. 15:16–17). Indeed, all four</div> <div> gospels reach their dramatic climax with reports of</div> <div> Jesus’ resurrection. Paul seems also to have been</div> <div> the first to present Jesus’ resurrection as the beginning</div> <div> of the collective eschatological resurrection,</div> <div> whereas in traditional Jewish thought individual</div> <div> resurrection, as in the case of Jesus, had been typical</div> <div> only of martyrs, such as the Maccabees. This</div> <div> intellectual Christian effort becomes more understandable</div> <div> against the backdrop of Greek skepticism</div> <div> regarding the afterlife, a skepticism that was</div> <div> shared by the Romans, who had virtually no idea</div> <div> of an afterlife and, correspondingly, lacked an idea</div> <div> of an immortal soul.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The early Christian era and the Middle Ages</b></div> <div> Early Christian ideas regarding life after death received</div> <div> great stimulus through the Roman persecutions.</div> <div> Whereas the New Testament had been reticent</div> <div> about the actual nature of the afterlife, it now</div> <div> became necessary to develop a picture that would</div> <div> help martyrs persist in their faith. Reports of executions</div> <div> of Christians during this time show the</div> <div> gradual appearance of new views of the afterlife,</div> <div> not surprisingly beginning in North Africa where</div> <div> funerary attention was more prominent than elsewhere</div> <div> in the Roman empire. Inspired by the Jewish</div> <div> idea of paradise as the place for the deceased,</div> <div> as well as by the great parks of contemporary local</div> <div> grandees, there arises an idea of heaven as an attractive</div> <div> landscape with a mild climate and plenty</div> <div> of light, where the deceased walk around in the</div> <div> body. Their main activity consists in praising God.</div> <div> This theocentric view of heaven would dominate</div> <div> until the Enlightenment. Hell, on the other hand, is</div> <div> little mentioned in the Christian literature of the</div> <div> first centuries C.E. Early Christian theologians were</div> <div> primarily interested in salvation, not damnation.</div> <div> At the same time, the Jewish heritage of Christianity</div> <div> meant that a marked body-soul opposition</div> <div> was introduced relatively late in the second century</div> <div> by Christian intellectuals, such as Justin (c.</div> <div> 100–165) and Tatian (late second century), who</div> <div> were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy.</div> <div> They tapped Greek concepts of the immortal soul</div> <div> in order to bolster their arguments for the resurrection,</div> <div> albeit with a number of modifications,</div> <div> such as different fates for sinners and saved. Speculation</div> <div> about the soul, fed by Stoic and Aristotelian</div> <div> views, occasionally appears in the writings of later</div> <div> Church fathers like Origen (c. 185–254) or Augustine</div> <div> of Hippo (354–430), but they did not much influence</div> <div> ideas about life after death.</div> <div> It is only in the early Middle Ages that a major</div> <div> change in attitude towards the afterlife appears.</div> <div> Christianity’s growth from a minority into a majority,</div> <div> coupled with Augustine’s stress on sin, led to</div> <div> an emphasis on hell rather than heaven in medieval</div> <div> views of life after death. Whereas Origen</div> <div> had argued for the temporary nature of hell, theologians</div> <div> like Augustine and Gregory the Great (c.</div> <div> 540–604) started to paint the penalties of hell in the</div> <div> most shrill of colors. The latter was more concrete</div> <div> than the former and thought that the penalties of</div> <div> hell started immediately after death, unlike Augustine</div> <div> and the early Church Fathers, who most often</div> <div> let them begin after the Last Judgment.</div> <div> In the twelfth century, ideas about life after</div> <div> death became more differentiated. The Church introduced</div> <div> Purgatory as a third place for the dead,</div> <div> where they could be purified from their sins before</div> <div> they go to heaven. Strangely enough, the intellectual</div> <div> milieu where Purgatory was invented is still</div> <div> uncertain, but there are indications of a Cistercian</div> <div> origin, fueled by the need to counter the eschatology</div> <div> of the Cathars who had made salvation much</div> <div> easier than normative Christianity. Although the tripartite</div> <div> division of life after death was never accepted</div> <div> by Greek-Orthodox Christianity, it was promoted</div> <div> by scholastic theologians like Thomas</div> <div> Aquinas (c. 1225–1274). They did not agreed on all</div> <div> details, and disagreed in particular on the moment</div> <div> when the elect would attain full beatitude and the</div> <div> precise relationship between body and soul. Nonetheless,</div> <div> this general picture of the afterlife did not</div> <div> change significantly until the Reformation.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The Reformation and the Enlightenment</b></div> <div> With the arrival of Martin Luther (1483–1546) and</div> <div> John Calvin (1509–1564) on the theological scene</div> <div> in the sixteenth century, God returned to center</div> <div> stage. The Reformation rejected Purgatory and,</div> <div> like post-Tridentine Catholic theologians, concentrated</div> <div> on the encounter with God in the hereafter.</div> <div> Until the eighteenth century, Western Christianity</div> <div> was united in seeing heaven as the place for the</div> <div> elect, where life was perfected by existing with</div> <div> God, without decay, but also without everything</div> <div> that characterizes human life, such as sex, illness,</div> <div> and family. The idea of hell, on the other hand,</div> <div> was increasingly questioned, especially after the</div> <div> reprinting of Origen’s works during the Renaissance</div> <div> and after a rise in sensitivity towards the suffering</div> <div> of others.</div> <div> During the Enlightenment, both Christians and</div> <div> adherents of natural religion could still agree on</div> <div> the idea of the immortal soul, but for the first time</div> <div> in Western history materialists and atheists could</div> <div> publicly, if guardedly, pronounce their views.</div> <div> They went too far for the majority, but in varying</div> <div> ways philosophers like Thomas Hobbes</div> <div> (1588–1679), John Locke (1637–1704), Denis</div> <div> Diderot (1713–1787), and Voltaire (1694–1778)</div> <div> now openly brought belief in eternal punishment</div> <div> into discredit. David Hume (1711–1776) could</div> <div> even claim, not without exaggeration, that the</div> <div> damnation of one man was an infinitely greater</div> <div> evil than the subversion of millions of kingdoms.</div> <div> It seems safe to say that ever since this time the</div> <div> traditional picture of hell has remained unacceptable</div> <div> to enlightened classes.</div> <div> The picture of a static, theocentric heaven</div> <div> could also no longer satisfy an age more interested</div> <div> in man than God. Starting with Gottfried Wilhelm</div> <div> Leibnitz (1646–1716), but especially in the work of</div> <div> Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), ideas about life</div> <div> in heaven became adapted to the anthropocentric</div> <div> needs of the time. Swedenborg promoted a view</div> <div> of heaven that was not so different from life on</div> <div> Earth. According to Swedenborg, the souls of the</div> <div> deceased entered a spirit world where human frailties</div> <div> were clearly visible. Only after perfecting</div> <div> their spiritual outlook could souls move on to</div> <div> heaven, where they became angels. Here, life on</div> <div> Earth was continued but in a more attractive setting</div> <div> of parks and palaces. Eating, drinking, and sexuality</div> <div> remained vital needs, friends and family could</div> <div> be met, and progress meant that men and women</div> <div> became more and more like “noble savages.” Condemnations</div> <div> to eternal torment or a Last Judgement</div> <div> had no place in this vision. Such a stress on heaven</div> <div> in the era of the Enlightenment may be surprising,</div> <div> but in fact in Germany in the 1750s alone more</div> <div> than fifty treatises appeared discussing the problem</div> <div> of immortality. Evidently, growing scepticism</div> <div> led to deepened interest in defending immortality.</div> <bR> <div> <B>The nineteenth and twentieth centuries</b></div> <div> Swedenborg’s view coincided, and was probably</div> <div> part of, the Romantic interest in love between man</div> <div> and wife, and this interest was shared by Protestants</div> <div> and Catholics alike. Although Swedenborg</div> <div> was viciously attacked, even by Immanual Kant</div> <div> (1724–1804), he was triumphant, especially in</div> <div> America. The Transcendentalists became much enamored</div> <div> of Swedenborg’s thought, and their influence</div> <div> was felt in America and Europe. The Unitarians</div> <div> in England, in particular, embraced the new</div> <div> insights against the more traditional views of the established</div> <div> churches. They began stressing that</div> <div> heaven consisted in “enjoying God through accordance</div> <div> with his attributes, multiplying its bounds</div> <div> and sympathies with excellent beings, putting forth</div> <div> noble powers and ministering, in union with the</div> <div> enlightened and holy, to the happiness and virtue</div> <div> of the universe” (Channing, pp. 225–226). Moreover,</div> <div> after Charles Darwin (1809–1882), this enjoyment</div> <div> was seen as the end of a long evolution. Immortality</div> <div> became a possibility rather than a reality.</div> <div> Similar conceptions of the afterlife were widely promoted</div> <div> in Germany as well. Naturally, even heaven</div> <div> could not escape the lure of Victorian “Muscular</div> <div> Christianity”: “Want and pain, toil and trial, cannot</div> <div> be wholely banished out of <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>my </I></FONT>Heaven,” wrote the</div> <div> brother of Cardinal Newman (Newman, p 34).</div> <bR> <div> The heyday of Unitarian theology coexisted</div> <div> with the birth of spiritualism (1848). This movement</div> <div> would be the last attempt at proving scientifically</div> <div> the existence of the hereafter by means of</div> <div> controlled experiments. Yet the success of spiritualism</div> <div> would be short–lived; it was soon discredited</div> <div> by the frauds of its adherents and the trivialities of</div> <div> its results. Still, during its heyday, especially in</div> <div> America and England, its picture of heaven conformed</div> <div> closely to that developed by Swedenborg.</div> <div> Moreover, its rejection of hell, sin, and guilt was</div> <div> widely shared by liberal theologians everywhere.</div> <div> By the end of the nineteenth century, the general</div> <div> picture of life after death had assumed the</div> <div> contours of what would be the rule for most of the</div> <div> twentieth century. Hell was no longer the subject</div> <div> of serious theological discussion and eventually</div> <div> disappeared even from folk belief, except perhaps</div> <div> for that of the most conservative Christians. In the</div> <div> wake of its demise and with the rise of a more materialistic</div> <div> view of the person, the idea of an immortal</div> <div> soul lost wide acceptance. Many people still</div> <div> believe in heaven, but it is no longer the subject of</div> <div> serious intellectual debate. Leading theologians,</div> <div> such as Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) and Paul</div> <div> Tillich (1886–1965), even pronounced their hesitations</div> <div> about eternal life. Admittedly, systematic theologians</div> <div> have not given up presenting new eschatological</div> <div> designs, but none has found success in</div> <div> the last decades of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly,</div> <div> mainline churches have stopped worrying</div> <div> about the afterlife, since their members are too</div> <div> much concerned with this life. It seems that the</div> <div> world of theology, of rational reflection on life</div> <div> after death, is no longer influential among common</div> <div> believers.</div> <bR> <div> Relection on life after death has not broken</div> <div> down completely, however. Among adherents of</div> <div> the so-called New Age there is a new interest in</div> <div> the soul, which is considered to be a part of the</div> <div> Higher Self, the New Age notion of an interface between</div> <div> the Universal Mind, or God, and the individual</div> <div> personality. It is the soul that continuously</div> <div> creates new lives and chooses its present incarnation.</div> <div> In other words, there no longer is a definite</div> <div> “Beyond” as the final resting point, but the soul is</div> <div> perpetually en route towards its spiritual perfection</div> <div> via reincarnation.</div> <div> Finally, life after death has come once again to</div> <div> the fore in discussions of so-called near-death experiences,</div> <div> as first collected in the 1970s by Raymond</div> <div> Moody, an American philosopher turned</div> <div> psychiatrist. In these experiences, which relate a</div> <div> visit to the hereafter, the idea of a life after death</div> <div> seems to reflect widely ruling modern ideas: the</div> <div> dead go to heaven, but God is no longer there; the</div> <div> soul is not mentioned, and neither is hell or judgement.</div> <div> Scholarly discussions concentrate on the nature</div> <div> of these experiences, the age of those who</div> <div> have these visions, and the medical circumstances</div> <div> allowing such visions. Yet serious scholars no</div> <div> longer discuss these visions as testimonies of a</div> <div> postmortem existence. It seems that after a 2,500-</div> <div> year discussion, the problem of life after death has</div> <div> largely been abandoned.</div> </td> </tr></table></body>