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 | Overview | ||
| Roman Catholic beliefs | ||
| Eastern Orthodox beliefs | ||
| Conservative Protestant beliefs
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| Progressive Christian beliefs | ||
| Skeptical, secularist religious beliefs |
Overview:
What happens after we die? This is one of the questions found so often in the field of religion in which different faiths teach a variety of incompatible, mutually exclusive beliefs, while most people are convinced that they know the answer precisely.
Many mental health professionals and religious historians believe that believe that religion was created millennia ago as an attempt to explain how the universe works and what happens to people after death. Religions were originally developed so that people could have a sense of power over their life and environment. Knowing that they may be wiped out at any time by starvation, animal attacks, drought, floods, foreign army attack, illnesses, accidents, etc., ancient people sought security in an insecure world. Religion filled that need.
There are few if any fears more serious than the fear of death. Religions answered these fears with a belief that somehow a person's personality, memories, talents, and consciousness survived death in a new form.
There is general agreement among persons of all religions that a person's eventual destiny after death will be one of the following:
| Heaven: Eternity is spent in Heaven or Paradise with God, in a state that is beautiful beyond our ability to conceive. |
| Hell: Eternity is spent in Hell with Satan and his demons. All are tormented and tortured, in isolation from God, without any hope of mercy or relief. |
| Annihilation: The body rots. One's soul, spirit, memory, personality, awareness, body, and mind disappear and are no more. |
| Transmigration of the soul: Our soul and spirit are reborn into a human fetus or newborn child. |
| Reincarnation: Our soul and spirit are reborn into another living entity - not necessarily human. |
Most people believe that up to three of the above destinations and states exist. For example, some faith groups teach that people who are saved go to Heaven; those who are unsaved go to Hell and are eventually annihilated. They regard the other options as religious fantasy which do not exist in reality. But, of course, there is no general agreement about which are the true states and which are the fantasies.
There is close agreement within most faith groups, but little agreement between religions, about what criteria is used to determine whether, for example, a person eventually resides in Heaven or Hell. There is little agreement about the processes, locations, and states that a person will go through between death and their final destiny.
Roman Catholic beliefs:
The church teaches that when a person dies, their body starts its process of decomposition. Meanwhile, the soul leaves the body and is immediately evaluated in a Particular Judgment. 1This belief is partly based on Hebrews 9:27: "And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." (KJV).
There are three possible destinations immediately after the judgment:
| Heaven: Those few people whose "love for God has been perfected in this life" have their bodies "glorified" and taken immediately to their eternal reward in Heaven. Perhaps the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, the saints and a some others will qualify for this path. |
| Hell: If they have committed a mortal sin which has not been forgiven, or have rejected God, then they are taken immediately to Hell where they will be tortured forever without any hope of relief or mercy. |
| Purgatory: If the person dies in a state of grace, but
loves God "imperfectly," then their souls immediately enter Purgatory. Here, they suffer for a time in order to cleanse
themselves of their accumulated imperfections, venial sins and faults. Any mortal sins
that they have committed, and for which they have been forgiven in the Sacrament of
Penance, may have some residual temporal punishment still remaining; this has to be
discharged as well. |
Although most Catholic believers have regarded Heaven, Hell and Purgatory as actual places, the church's teaching is that they are both a place and a state of existence.
Later, when Jesus returns to earth in the "second coming", he will conduct the General Judgment (a.k.a. Final Judgment):
| Those who have previously died have already faced the Particular Judgment; that decision will continue in force. Those in Heaven or Hell will continue to spend eternity there. However, those who are in Purgatory at the time of Jesus' second coming will be released and moved to heaven immediately. At the second coming, the bodies of the dead will be reconstituted; this produces a bodily resurrection. At that time, they will be permanently reunited with their souls. This second judgment is needed so that the entire human race can learn about every person's life and comprehend the "justice, wisdom, and mercy of God." |
| All people who are alive on earth at the time of the second coming will be assembled together (Matthew 25:31-32). "Those who have rejected the Lord in this life, who have sinned mortally, who have no remorse for sin and do not seek forgiveness, will have condemned themselves to hell for all eternity." The others will go either to Purgatory or Heaven, depending upon the perfection of their love for God. The same evaluation criteria will be used in the General Judgment as for the Particular Judgment. |
Every "deliberate thought, word, deed and omission" of every individual that has ever lived, would be reviewed at the Final Judgment. The only exception would be thoughts and acts of Jesus of Nazareth, who lived without sin. This would presumably be a very time consuming process. It would be necessary to include the life histories of each of the billions of humans that have lived on earth for the past many hundreds of thousands of years that the human race has been in existence.
Eastern Orthodox beliefs:
The beliefs of these churches very closely parallel those of the Roman Catholic church. However, they have no formal belief about the existence of Purgatory.
Conservative Protestant beliefs:
They hold to a variety of ideas about the fate of the deceased:
| Many conservative Christians believe that when a person dies, they enter
into complete oblivion - a state of non-existence. They remain unconscious; they have no
self-awareness. Their body decays. At the time of the second coming of Jesus, the dead are
called from their graves; they will be resurrected and judged. Those who had been
saved while on earth will be given special bodies and go to
Heaven; the unsaved will go to Hell for eternal punishment. Thus, all of the Patriarchs and ordinary Israelites in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Apostles, the Christians who have died over the past 2 millennia, and in fact every human who has ever lived, are currently held in a temporary state of non-existence. |
| Others believe that the soul separates from the body and is taken to a
type of holding place - referred to as Sheol in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and
Hades in the Christian Scriptures (New Testament). At the time of Jesus' second coming,
they will be reunited with their reconstituted bodies and judged. Many will have been
there for thousands of years before they are resurrected.
Thus, every human who has ever lived, are in a type of holding place, awaiting resurrection. |
| Others believe, in practice, in some form of instantaneous transfer of the soul to heaven or hell immediately after death. Christians often talk about their loved ones who have recently died as if they are already with God. |
Some important passages from the Bible that appear to refer to the deceased waiting for their call to resurrection are:
| Job 14:14-15: "If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands." (KJV) |
| Daniel 12:2: "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." |
| John 3:12-13: "If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven..." |
| John 5:28-29: "...for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." |
| Acts 2:29-34: "Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried...For David is not ascended into the heavens..." |
Christadelphian beliefs:
The Christadelphian movement is a conservative Protestant denomination founded by physician John Thomas (1805-1871). After his death, a schism developed over beliefs about life after death.
| Some followers in the U.S., referred to as the Unamended group, believe that only the deceased who are "in Christ" will be raised from the dead and have eternal life; the vast bulk of humanity will simply remain dead, without conscious existence. |
| Other American followers, and believers elsewhere in the world, called the Amended group, believe that all who who have been exposed to the Gospel will be raised from the dead at the time of the Final Judgment. The righteous among the responsible ones will be judged according to their works, rewarded appropriately, and live forever. Those who have been exposed to the Gospel and judged wicked will be annihilated, and cease to exist. Those who have not been exposed to the Gospel will remain dead, without conscious existence. |
Progressive Christian beliefs:
Progressive Christians generally do not believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. In their religious studies they realize that the beliefs of the ancient Israelites about Sheol were derived from surrounding Middle Eastern Pagan cultures. Later Jewish religious beliefs concerning heaven and hell incorporated ideas from Zoroastrianism and Greek Pagan culture. Liberals do not interpret the Bible literally. Many feel that it contains little detailed, specific information about life after death.
Religious liberals generally anticipate some form of life after death. Most reject the concept of Hell as a permanent place of punishment and torture for anyone. Some might accept the belief that some form of correction and purification is needed before a person arrives in heaven. But generally, they do not hold exact beliefs concerning the timing, processes involved, or the nature of heaven. They "find more grace in the search for meaning than in absolute certainty; in the questions than in the answers." 3 They tend to be more concerned about the present life than the future. They believe that if they lead an ethical, caring life, that matters will sort themselves out after death.
Skeptical religious belief:
Many religious skeptics, including some progressive Christians, Atheists, Agnostics, etc. note that almost every religion teaches specific beliefs about life after death. But religions seem in almost total conflict with each other. The Sadducees, one of about 24 Jewish religious groups, during the 1st century CE taught that there was no resurrection. Some contemporary faith groups talk about a heaven, but they have very different views on its nature. Others talk about a Hell, but differ greatly on the details. Still others talk about the soul being transported after death into a newborn human or other animal.
Most skeptics conclude that nobody really knows what happens to us after death. However, almost every faith group pretends to know. They look to medical research to help them understand the process of death. They note:
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Some people actually die for many seconds, or very few minutes, but return to life quickly. They sometimes report an out-of-body experience in which they are traveling through a tube towards a light and have a profound feeling of peace and acceptance. There have been suggestions that these may be hallucinations that are naturally created by a brain starved of oxygen. One of the members of the OCRT, the agency that sponsors this website, died briefly during an operation to save her life. An entopic pregnancy had ruptured, and caused a hemorrhage. She felt that she rose through the air and looked down on her body on the operating table. |
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Some people die for a few minutes; their brain is starved of oxygen; they return to life, but suffer minor irreparable brain damage. |
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Others die for a longer time. Portions of their brain die. They may return to "life" but are largely incapable of intelligent thought. They remain in a vegetated state, perhaps in a coma. |
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Others that die and are not resuscitated remain dead. |
From these observations on real people who have died for various periods of time, a picture can be assembled about the process of dying. It is probable that when a person finally dies, they may first go through a very comforting hallucination. A little while later, their brain functions start to seriously degrade. Their ability to think and sense their surroundings degrades until they sink into unconsciousness. The electrical processes in the brain discharge; the chemical processes rot. Since there are no other processes active in the brain, the person's memory, personality, talents, preferences, consciousness, etc. no longer exist. There is no Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Reincarnation, or Transmigration of the Soul. There is only a state of non-existence, as the human body rots.
This is obviously not a belief that most people can accept.
Some related topics on this website:
| What religious groups believe about heaven, hell, purgatory, etc. |
| What does the Bible say about heaven, hell, purgatory, etc? |
| Salvation: beliefs of Christians both now and in the 1st & 2nd centuries about who will go to Heaven and who to Hell. |
References:
- W.G. Most, "Particular Judgment," at: http://www.ewtn.com/
- "What happens when we die?," at: http://www.angelfire.com/
- "The annotated eight points by which we define Progressive Christianity," at: http://www.tcpc.org/
Copyright © 2001 to 2007 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Latest update: 2007-JUL-04
Author: B.A. Robinson
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