Featured Christian and Baha'i concepts of eternal life, the immortal soul and life after death

Given that Hinduism is more a confederation or commonwealth of beliefs rather than a single religion, beliefs in the afterlife can vary. But I think it's safe to say that the overwhelmingly majority of Hindus believe in rebirth through countless lifetimes. The type and number of rebirths depends on the individual soul's karma. Between births, some people believe there are heavens and hells a soul may make a stopover in. The belief in hell is not one of punishment or torment, but more of a purgatory. A stopover in heaven is a rest between births, the soul can take a breather. Again, not universal beliefs, but, well there it is.

In chapter 2 of the Bhagavad Gita Sri Krishna describes the attributes and characteristics of the soul. And while the Bhagavad Gita is not a de facto Hindu "bible", it may be safe to say most Hindus view it this way, which explains it better than I can:

Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.
Just as the embodied soul continuously passes from childhood to youth to old age, similarly, at the time of death, the soul passes into another body.
No one can cause the destruction of the imperishable soul.
Only the material body is perishable; the embodied soul within is indestructible, immeasurable, and eternal.
The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed.
As a person sheds worn-out garments and wears new ones, likewise, at the time of death, the soul casts off its worn-out body and enters a new one.
Weapons cannot shred the soul, nor can fire burn it. Water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it.
The soul is unbreakable and incombustible; it can neither be dampened nor dried. It is everlasting, in all places, unalterable, immutable, and primordial.

 

@adrian009 Good question!

Obviously there are a lot of Christian denominations and so, historically, a great number of diverse afterlife doctrines have been advocated by different Christian theologies, ranging from a spiritual disembodied "transition" phase in Hades/Sheol awaiting bodily resurrection to mortalism/soul sleep and the Gnostic pleroma or purely pneumatic ("spiritual") resurrection.

All of these readings were based upon exegesis of New Testament passages.

In 2 Corinthians 5:4, for example, Paul employs a metaphor describing the human body as a burdensome but temporary earthly tent. This directly echoes language from the Wisdom of Solomon (9:15):

• "…for a perishable body weighs down the soul, and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind."

As Klaus Berger notes, this text offers two verbal parallels to to 2 Corinthians 5:4 ("weigh down" and "tent") and "a third could just as well be present ("groan")". Furthermore, both texts are herein referring to the travails of bodily existence, that is of unglorified, embodied life.

As already mentioned, in his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul uses the nearly identical image of an earthly body weighing down a soul identified with the "we/I" inhabiting the body:

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden . . . .” (2 Corinthians 5:1, 4.)

The Greek phrase translated as “earthy tent” in both Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Corinthians is not the normative word for tent (skene) but rather the highly unusual skenos which is found only twice in the New Testament (here and in v. 4) in this single passage, and only once in the LXX corpus in Wisdom of Solomon 9:15, where it is used figuratively to refer to the ensouled human body, leading one authority on the Apocrypha to conclude that Paul “had at sometime read this passage and [was] impressed by the Wisdom of Solomon.” Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha at 158.

Wisdom 8:19-20 states: "As a child I was by nature well endowed, and a good soul fell to my lot; or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body." As with the exegesis provided of the Pauline paragraph in 2 Corinthians above by many scholars, where it can be inferred that Paul identifies the "we" that inhabits the body with the "inner person" or separable soul; Wisdom likewise differentiates between the "I", identified with the soul, and the body, which the "I/soul" enters and inhabits like a perishable "tent" (Wisdom 9:25).

This is important for properly making sense of the anthropology in both texts, which is holistic but also dualistic in the sense that (according to Paul) the soul can be temporarily separated from the body at death (described as "nakedness") before being re-joined to a glorified pneumatic body at the resurrection by God, which seems to be subtly implied too in Wisdom 3:7 "In the time of their visitation [resurrection?] they [the righteous souls] will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble."

Paul was not, therefore, a "mortalist" or advocate of unconscious soul sleep in my opinion but rather a proponent of Hellenistic Jewish "body-soul" duality; just like the intertestamental Wisdom of Solomon, which he was so greatly influenced by, and this dualism was holistic in nature: ultimately looking forward to being "re-housed" in a heavenly, pneumatic body at the resurrection, as opposed to a perpetual disembodied "nakedness" in the Greek sense (as the Corinthians appeared to have wrongly understood it, thereby occasioning Paul's explanation that this wasn't a complete picture without bodily resurrection at the Eschaton).

Another instance is the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus:

Luke 16:19-31

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.

The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’

27 He said, ‘Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ 29 Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ 30 He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets,neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

Note that the rich man and Lazarus have both died but are conscious in Hades.

The rich man's brothers have not yet died, so we know that in the background provided in the parable, the resurrection of the dead has not yet happened. And yet the individuals are fully conscious and communicating with one another in an intermediate state.

Many interestamental texts that were popular among Jews in the first century, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, 2 Maccabees, Enoch and 4 Ezra, advocate belief in post-mortem but pre-judgement existence outside the body in some manner of intermediate state.

Some helpful distinctions were provided by the early second century church father St. Justin Martyr (100-165 A.D.), which help us to identify what seems to have been the most primitive theology of the afterlife in the early church:

Dialogue with Trypho 80.4:

"If you have ever encountered any nominal Christians who do not admit this doctrine [i.e. the doctrine of God], but dare to blaspheme the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob by asserting that there is no resurrection of the dead, but that their souls are taken up to heaven at the very moment of their death, do not consider them to be real Christians, just as one, after careful examination, would not acknowledge as Jews the Sadducees or similar sects" (Dialogue with Trypho 80.4)
​

St. Justin gives the reader, in this section of his broader argument, a very blunt and uncompromising refutation of the kind of appeals to a doctrine of soul immortality on the basis of immediate, post-mortem assumption into "an otherworldly heaven" which leaves no room for the resurrection of the dead.

However he also rejects soul sleep/mortalism, believing in conscious existence of the soul in an interim state in wait for the bodily resurrection.

Indeed, he was a firm believer in the idea of post-death but pre-bodily resurrection consciousness in a "better or worse place".

The following quotations from his First Apology make his position clear:

"1 Consider what happened to each of the kings that have been. They died just like everybody else. Which, if death led to unconsciousness,, would have been a godsend to all the unjust. 2 But, since consciousness endures for all those who have existed, and eternal punishment lies in store take care to be persuaded and to believe that these things are true. 3 For conjurings of the dead – both visions obtained through uncorrupted children, and the summoning of human souls – and those whom magicians call “dream-senders” or “attendants” – and the things done by those who know these things – let these persuade you that even after death souls remain in consciousness. " (1 Apology 18.1-3)

"And in our saying that the souls of the wicked are punished after death, remaining in consciousness, and that the souls of the virtuous remain free from punishment and live happily, we will seem to say the same things as the poets and philosophers." (1 Apology 20.4)

“I do not claim that any soul ever perishes, for this would certainly be a benefit to sinners. What happens to them? The souls of the devout dwell in a better place, whereas the souls of the unjust and the evil abide in a worse place, and there they await the judgment day. Those, therefore, who are deemed worthy to see God will never perish, but the others will be subjected to punishment as long as God allows them to exist and as long as he wants them to be punished.”(Dialogue with Trypho 4.7-5.3)​

 

Now, to speak about Catholic ideas about the afterlife in particular @adrian009

Catholic doctrine obviously presupposes the traditional, tripartite division of heaven, purgatory and hell, which everybody is familiar with, as well as the Abrahamic idea (shared with orthodox Islam and Judaism) of the resurrection of the dead.

In Catholic Christianity, heaven is called “supreme beatitude” the latter word being Latin for “a state of utmost bliss” and it consists of the eternal enjoyment of the “Beatific Vision”. This state of being is an eternal and unmediated perception of the Essence of God.

The New Testament itself tells us that the ideal goal is a "peace" beyond all understanding in which the individual is "filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:14-21) described later on by the early desert fathers through the use of the words apatheia (state of imperturbable calm) and theosis (deification/union with God).

God permits us by grace to share in His own Beatitude, His own happiness or felicity. This is what the state of heaven essentially consists of. Theosis, in this life, is a foretaste of that glorious existence of the Blessed in heaven, whereby we participate in the divine nature (as much as is possible by God's power in this life), through the gift of infused contemplative prayer.

Heaven, Purgatory and Hell are spiritual states of being (as opposed to physical locations) that occupy no location in space and are even apart from time as well, with the souls of the deceased thought (according to time-honoured, theological speculation) to exist in something mysterious called “aeviternity”.

It entails a mode of existence which is a form of “participated eternity". It lies between the timelessness of God and the temporal experience of material beings - to us, for all intents and purposes, it is akin to “no-time” - although this isn't strictly true.

St. Thomas Aquinas explained it all thus in his Summa Theologica:


newadvent.org/summa/1010.htm#article3

In this way time has “before” and “after”; aeviternity in itself has no “before” and “after,” which can, however, be annexed to it; while eternity has neither “before” nor “after,” nor is it compatible with such at all.​

There isn't really any succession of moments in aeveternity, as we would understand it. Here is how a Church approved mystic, Blessed Henry Suso, described this state of being from alleged direct, mystical experience (a foretaste of eternity):

"…Eternity is life that is beyond time but includes within itself all time but without a before or after. And whoever is taken into the Eternal Nothing possesses all in all and has no ‘before or after’.

Indeed a person taken within today would not have been there for a shorter period from the point of view of eternity than someone who had been taken within a thousand years ago…

Now these people who are taken within, because of their boundless immanent oneness with God, see themselves as always and eternally existing

Indeed a person taken within today would not have been there for a shorter period from the point of view of eternity than someone who had been taken within a thousand years ago…

Now these people who are taken within, because of their boundless immanent oneness with God, see themselves as always and eternally existing…"

- Blessed Henry Suso (c. 1296-1366), German Catholic mystic & Dominican priest (The Little Book of Truth). p320​

We don't claim to know if any individual person is or ever will be in hell. It is simply a possibility, whereby one is "separated from God forever by their own free choice" in a "state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed" (CCC 1033).

One can expect that most human beings will first undergo purgatory after death, since it seems apparent to the majority of theologians that a sizeable chunk of humanity is neither wilfully evil nor particularly saintly.

Terrestrial “time” is not part of the doctrine of Purgatory either. Here is what Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1988 (before he became Pope Benedict XVI):

“…The transforming ‘moment’ of this encounter [Purgatory] cannot be quantified by the measurements of earthly time. It is, indeed, not eternal but a transition, and yet trying to qualify it as of ‘short’ or ‘long’ duration on the basis of temporal measurements derived from physics would be naive and unproductive. The ‘temporal measure’ of this encounter lies in the unsoundable depths of existence, in a passing-over where we are burned ere we are transformed. To measure such Existenzzeit, such an ‘existential time,’ in terms of the time of this world would be to ignore the specificity of the human spirit in its simultaneous relationship with, and differentation from, the world…”

(Ratzinger, Eschatology, p. 230)​

His Holiness reiterated the same point in his 2007 encyclical Spe Salvi:


Spe salvi (November 30, 2007) | BENEDICT XVI

The fire of Purgatory which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away…

It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace…

46. With death, our life-choice becomes definitive—our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours—people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are.

46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil—much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul.​

There is a popular misunderstanding of these states of being, that they are "physical locations". But it is near-impossible theologically, because heaven/hell/purgatory are not bodily phenomenons, as St. Thomas Aquinas explained during the Middle Ages:

"...Incorporeal things [ie spirits] are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us..."

- Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274), Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Q69, a1, reply 1, Doctor of the Catholic Church​

Or an EWTN article explains:


Heaven, Hell and Purgatory

Pope John Paul II pointed out that the essential characteristic of heaven, hell or purgatory is that they are states of being of a spirit or human soul, rather than places, as commonly perceived and represented in human language. This language of place is, according to the Pope, inadequate to describe the realities involved, since it is tied to the temporal order in which this world and we exist. In this he is applying the philosophical categories used by the Church in her theology and saying what St. Thomas Aquinas said long before him...

At the General Audience of Wednesday, 28 July 1999, the Holy Father reflected on hell as the definitive rejection of God. In his catechesis, the Pope said that care should be taken to interpret correctly the images of hell in Sacred Scripture:

"The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject (n. 1033)."​

There is no ontological sense in conceptualising heaven, hell or purgatory as places in the same way as corporeal objects in spacetime. You could sort of fudge it by saying "oh but its a special spiritual place for bodiless conscious beings," but since we cannot fathom or relate to this in a physical way, that's akin to denying a location.

You need to wait till the resurrection of the dead for anything approaching the material, and even in this case we arise as "spiritual bodies" which is to say, not the physical world as we know it but rather glorified matter in which the spiritual soul is paramount (i.e. the resurrected Jesus could appear in different forms, walk through walls and was mistaken for a ghost or disembodied spirit by his disciples before allowing himself to be touched, to get the point across that he had a body).

This is what St. Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 2:9 -

What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived -- the things God has prepared for those who love him​

This is the same manner in which the Beatific Vision of the Divine Essence will be enjoyed by the blessed in heaven.

So, I think it is really wrong-headed to think of the Catholic afterlife in terms of space or location.