Life after Death

Dualism and back to Plato
Plato believed that people were made up of a body and a soul. The soul, he believed, was imprisoned in the body and desired release. The soul was very much the guiding principle of the person. Obviously there was a link between the soul and the world of Forms.
At death the soul was released and returned to the world of Forms. It could then return and inhabit another body.
Essentially the soul was thought to be immortal.

Descartes 1596-1650
When studying Descartes we talk about substance dualism. According to substance dualism, our minds and our bodies are two distinct substances capable of existing apart.

Eastern Religion

Hinduism and Buddhism

These two religions are underscored by an understanding that the soul can be withdrawn from the body.
When a Hindu dies, the body is burnt on the funeral pyre and the soul is thought to rise up in the smoke. It is then judged by the gods and unless the person has achieved moksha (escape) the soul descends in the rain and is joined to a new body. This system, known as Samsara, is central to the concept of reincarnation and the now suppressed caste system of India.

Points to be made supporting dualism

1. It is central to the beliefs of at least two major eastern world religions.
2. It is a popular way of coping with death among many westerners – the belief that a loved one’s spirit has “gone to heaven” after death.
3. It is also incorporated into the religion of spiritualism.
4. There are some people who talk of having “out of body experiences.”

Against dualism

1. Some materialists suggest there is no life after death and therefore no need for the division between body and soul.
2. Peter Geech raises the question of recognition of a disembodied soul.
3. The Christian church teaches about resurrection, including bodily resurrection. In reality much of the language of Christianity in this area is veiled and obscure and the church does little to dispel what it regards as the myth of dualism.

Monism and Religion
This maintains the integrity of body and soul. Christianity would wish to place itself in this category, but at times not only is a concise understanding difficult to ascertain, but the language used to describe life after death is obscure.

Old Testament
In most of the Old Testament there is no belief in life after death. The only clear reference to it in the Protestant Bible is in the Book of Daniel 12:2-4. This is a late work of Apocalyptic literature.

New Testament
Jesus rose from the dead at the end of the gospels. (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20-21).

Gospel evidence

There are two views about the nature of Jesus’ resurrection. Some see this as a spiritual event whereby Jesus appears and disappears…Luke 24:13-35. At other times Jesus demands to be touched and eats with the disciples … a sort of bodily proof… Luke 24:36-43. This debate is one which is closely argued by New Testament theologians. While the details need not concern us here, it is as well to know that the debate exists about the nature of Jesus’ resurrection.

St Paul’s letters

1.  St Paul accepted that he was called to be an apostle by the risen Jesus who appeared to him from heaven on the road to Damascus. Acts 9. For Paul the resurrection of Jesus was an undisputed fact. He also said if Jesus had not risen from the dead the Christianity would be a waste of time. 1 Corinthians 15:12-19.
2. Paul also believed that because of Jesus’ resurrection, believers hope that they will rise from the dead to be with Christ 1 Corinthians 15:20-22.
3. He even speculated about the nature of the resurrection body that awaits believers. 1 Corinthians 15:35-46. On earth one has a physical body; yet there awaits in heaven a spiritual body for each person.

Paul is quite complex in this matter, but it is worth knowing his main points in detail. It helps to understand his position and goes some way to explaining the various strands of thinking in Christianity.

Heaven, Hell and Purgatory
Heaven was traditionally the place of God and the place to which Christians hope they will go after death.
Hell – this became in Christian thinking a place of punishment and torture, ruled over by the devil. A great deal of the imagery of Hell depends on Jewish thinking about Gehenna, (a valley near Jerusalem), legends about the underworld and Christian thinking about the fate of Satan.
Many 20^th century thinkers, in an attempt to make primitive imagery more acceptable to the modern world prefer to talk about Hell as a place of separation from God.

Purgatory – a belief among some Christians, who think that it is a place where people who die go after death, where their relationship with God is tested and purified so that they may eventually progress to heaven.

Judgement – again a cornerstone of Christian teaching, but not one I would recommend you dig too deeply over on this topic – briefly for the following reasons.

1. Some Christian teachings imply that there is a judgemnent after death (see above)
2. The New Testament seems to imply that judgement comes at the end of the world…the final judgement.
3. Philosophically the concept of judgement depends rather on the nature of one’s decision about freewill. If, as a Determinist would claim, we have no freewill then judgement of God on human actions would be unjust and irrelevant for God would be judging actions which were not the responsibility of the person concerned!

Predestination and Divine Election
One can trace this back as far as Augustine’s Theodicy on the question of evil. You may remember Augustine’s ideas about the privation theory of evil and the belief that none of us is worth of heaven because all humans bear the sin of Adam and deserve to be condemned. However through the action of God’s grace and the human response to this some may be saved.

This basic idea was developed at the time of the Reformation by John Calvin 1509-1564 into the theory of Divine Election. Some people are destined for heaven because of their relationship with God and some are not. God chooses!

One of Calvin’s followers Theodore Beza 1519-1605 developed the full blown doctrine of predestination. All human acts are controlled by God – including one’s final destination – heaven or hell.

Monism and Materialism
Generally this is much more straightforward. Monism again refers to a person being a single entity. The body cannot be divorced from the soul at death. Materialists therefore claim that any form of life after death must be physical and for most this means that they reject the idea of an after-life.

Richard Dawkins 1941-  thinks that genes and memes are the only survivors of death. Genetic characteristics of a person may persist for one or two generations. Memes are what he calls cultural replicators. Memories are the only thing that remains in the next generation.

Antony Flew 1923-2010 did not accept life after death – essay Can a man witness his own funeral? Flew feels thought life is linked to a body and that beyond death there is no meaningful form of existence.

Bertrand Russell 1872-1970 thinks belief in life after death is wishful thinking and is brought about by a fear of death. It is based in shallow emotion and not reason. The world makes much more sense if another layer, containing God is not added (Remember the radio debate with Frederick Copleston.)

John Hick 1922-2012
You must learn and if possible read John Hick’s replica theory.
Hick is a monist – not a dualist. He believes human beings are a psycho-somatic unity. Resurrection is a divine action in which the person changes his earthly body for an exact replica stored in a “different space” observed by God. Hick’s explanation of this is amazingly entertaining. He reaches the theory by discussing a John Smith who disappears in London and reappears in New York. One is led through a series of possibilities and eventually he gets round to the idea that each person has a replica which is known to God.
Why Hick doesn’t just explain that he is merely updating and explaining the idea put forward by St Paul about an earthly body and a heavenly body, (see above) I have no idea. Those of you who have read Hick’s development of Irenaeus’ Theodicy will not be unaware that Hick does this sort of thing with great skill.

His critics tend to witter about the nature and state of the replica, question where it is store and point out that if there was one replica there could be others. Much of the criticism, I feel, could have been avoided if Hick had made a link with the idea of St Paul.

Further reading

Bertrand Russell  Why I am not a Christian is available on line at http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

Peterson Hasker Reichenbach and Basinger  Philosophy of Religion – Selected Readings Chapter 9 has five essays on life after death.

One is by Richard Swinburne and another is by John Hick in which he explains his Replica Theory. There is also an essay by Sri Aurobindo in which he defends the idea of rebirth in Hinduism and Buddhism.

What counts as a miracle?

The days are over when one could ask the question. Do you think miracles really happen or not? Discussions which centre on the claims and counter claims of philosophers are over…
Thomas Aquinas defined a miracle as “That which has a divine cause.”
and
David Hume who thought that if miracles happened at all, which he didn’t believe they did, they would be defined as “A violation of the laws of nature.”

What counts as a miracle 1 secular man
Now we must start by enquiring what a person classifies as a miracle, allowing for the fact that one person’s understanding may be different from, but no less valid that another’s.

The word miracle itself has both become secularised and has been taken on-board by secular man.
Eg 1. It will be a miracle if my old car gets me home tonight.
Eg 2. It will be a miracle if England qualify for the next round.

Eg 3. I know what the doctor’s say, but I think it is a miracle she is able to walk again.
Eg 4. Miracle baby leaves hospital.

In examples 1 and 2 we see the word miracle is used with the same meaning as the word “amazing.” There is clearly no miraculous element in either situation, but these two sentences show that the term has taken on a totally secular meaning and as such it is intelligible. People know what it means.

Examples 3 and 4 point to situations where a reasonable scientific explanation of a phenomenon is may be disregarded in favour of an emotive view hailing it as a miracle. The person adopts an anti-realist approach to the situation.

What counts as a miracle 2 The Bible
You need to read at this point my article “Approaching the topic of miracles”. The Bible contains many different types of stories, which may be classified as miracles and I think you need to be familiar with these in some detail.
However the point remains – miracles are found in the Bible and many Christians would endorse the point of view that miracles are in some way signs of God’s activity in the world.

What counts as miracle 3 nothing  –  David Hume, Peter Atkins and Richard Dawkins
David Hume did not really believe that there were such things as miracles.
A)   He felt that the whole idea of miracles was improbable, illogical and irrational. He also thought that there were fixed laws of nature and these counted against the idea of miracle.
B)   He also believed that the reporting of miracles was flawed. There was a lack of convincing evidence from unreliable, uneducated people.
Text books are usually quite good on this sort of thing. They point out that we no longer view laws of nature as fixed entities and they quibble about whether uneducated people can or cannot produce reliable information.
Hume’s point about the way in which different religions all have miracles which tie in with their beliefs is quite a telling argument and one which spills over into the question of religious experience. Christians claim healings from God at Christian shrines and Hindus claim miracles from Hindu Gods at Hindu shrines.
There is a sense in which Hume seems rather scornful in this matter. He is of course and empiricist and with evidence from believers could be on dangerous ground. He has to appeal to counter evidence from science and discredit all claims of the people who said they had seen Jesus’ miracles.

Peter Atkins – has some very dismissive observations about miracles
Richard Dawkins – attempts to ground in science, especially biology and psychology events which may be regarded as miraculous. Both of these scholars refer particularly to modern examples of miracles.
Richard Dawkins visited Lourdes with a television crew and in addition to the scientific solutions he put forward, he noted that relatively few “miracles” have been verified by the authorities at Lourdes, when compared with the millions of visitors they receive.

What counts as a miracle 3  – Defending miracles Richard Swinburne  John Polkinghorne
Swinburne adopts a more supportive view for those who report miraculous events.
He feels that if the evidence is good, the people reliable and if that the evidence is not self-contradictory then one could accept the accounts of those who claim to have seen the happening. He also points out that laws of nature are not fixed and that while a miracle might challenge what we would normally expect to see, to say that a single miracle, if it were true, would break a law of nature, is something of an over-reaction.
Swinburne is very tied in to defeating Hume’s arguments. Sadly in concentrating on this he rather leaves himself open to renewed criticism from contemporary science.
John Polkinghorne is both a fist class scientist and a thoughtful theologian. He believes that science and religion are not in conflict. They work side by side, often adopting the same methodology, exploring different aspects of the same problem. He argues for a more holistic approach to both theology and science.

What counts as a miracle 4 – The contingency view of miracles Paul Tillich, R F Holland and the recipient.
Paul Tillich concentrates much of his writing on the miracles of Jesus. Miracles, he believes are signs which point the believer to God. The events themselves display astonishing characteristics but they do not violate laws of nature. Their importance is that they reveal something about the nature of God and produce an astonishing experience for the recipient.
R F Holland produces a wonderful story about the child who is saved from death as he plays on the railway track. (And you need to read that story). The mother firmly believes that her son has been delivered by a miracle, despite the fact that there seems to be a perfectly rational explanation as to why the train managed to stop before hitting the youngster.
Holland’s story opens up a whole new area of miracle claims.

1. The non-religious person may find here a term, miracle, which explains nothing more than an extraordinary phenomenon.
2. A person who has experienced a wonderful event – such as an unexpected healing at a healing centre. Many who visit Lourdes may speak in such terms. Here the sense of miracle is very personal but in many cases unverifiable.
3. Those who in using the term are making a faith claim. Miracles are not just observable events, transgressions of the laws of nature, but are different in as much as they are aspects of the life of faith. The idea of miracle is accepted not so much as a proof of God, but as an aspect of God’s work in the world.

What counts as a miracle 5  Are miracles moral?     Maurice Wiles
Wiles comes down firmly against the common idea of miracles inasmuch as he believes that miracles for individuals might be seen as God acting in an immoral manner. He argues that if God tinkered with the world through miracle in response to people’s prayers, God could be accused of acting in an arbitrary fashion or as having favourites.

Two people have the same medical condition; prayers are said for both, but one recovers and the other doesn’t, what does this say about the justice of God? Does God pick and choose, when he will respond and when he will not?
Wiles also returns to that old argument about the nature of evil. If God has the power and will to act through miracle, why does he not prevent large scale evil happenings such as the Holocaust and genocide?
These are serious criticisms and quite a factor in the discussion about miracles.
You must decide for yourself how well the critics answer Wiles’ points
But to say that

1. Christianity depicts God as acting in the world in a direct way.
2. The Christian church sees intercession as a valid and useful form of prayer
3. Many scientists believe that God does act in a direct manner
4. Human rationality cannot be applied to God

rather misses the point that Wiles is making. Certainly points 1-4 above are valid observations but do they address the issue Wiles attempts to tackle.

Books – or at least chapters of books you could read
John Polkinghorne Belief in God in an age of Science  Yale University Press
Maurice Wiles Reason to Believe SCM Chapter 4 and Interlude IV
Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach & Basinger  Philosophy of Religion – Selected readings Oxford Press Part 8.

Approaching the topic of miracles

 

Believe me it really helps if you are familiar with one or two examples of miracles from the Old Testament and one or two examples of miracles from the New Testament.
The text book tends to lump them all together and in my opinion makes poor choices of biblical stories.
Let’s take it slowly and introduce one or two guidelines which should enable you to distinguish one sort of miracle from another.

OLD TESTAMENT

Generally it would be wise to avoid stories in Genesis, the first book in the Old Testament.
Events like the Flood and stories in Genesis 1-11 are riddled with Near Eastern myth elements. Even an event like the destruction of Sodom Genesis 19 is tied up with something scholars call aetiological legend – a story constructed to explain a natural phenomenon.
Many miracle stories in the Old Testament reinforce heilsgeschichte – history written for the Jews which showed that they were the chose people of God.

1. So God drowns the pursuing Egyptians at the Red Sea while the Israelites cross in safety Exodus 14
2. The river Jordan parts to allow the Israelites cross after 40 years in the wilderness. Joshua 3
3. The walls of Jericho tumble down when the circulating Israelite forces shout Joshua 6
4. The sun stands still so that the Israelites can defeat their enemies Josh10. This is a particular favourite of your examiner. (I can’t think why) Make sure you sort out the intricate details. Find a good modern translation of the story.

Other miracle stories in the Old Testament centre around charismatic characters like the prophets Elijah and Elisha.
Elijah and the widow of Zarephath 1Kings 17:8-16
Elisha and the curing of Naaman the leper 2 Kings 5

There are sort of miracle stories in the late part of the Old Testament – what is called apocalyptic literature. Namely Daniel in the lions’ den and Daniel surviving the fiery furnace. Not surprisingly these appear in the book of Daniel. Frankly I would give them a miss.

NEW TESTAMENT

Here I seek to put these into categories rather than pass judgement on them.
Miracles in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke
There are two birth stories of Jesus – both containing miracle elements at the beginning of the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

During Jesus’ ministry there are quite a lot of miracles to choose from
Stories where Jesus heals people
Healing of a leper Mark 1:40-45
Jesus heals a paralysed man Mark 2:1-12

Stories where Jesus casts out demons
Healing of the man in synagogue Mark 1:21-28
Healing of the man in the tombs Mark 5:1-20

Stories of raising from the dead
Raising of Jairus’ daughter Mark 5:21-24 & 35-43
Raising of the Widow of Nain’s son Luke 7:11-17

Two points to note here. The first is about motive. Jesus seems to perform miracles when he is faced with people who come and ask for his help. He does not initiate the events. The second point that you need to consider is, what is the nucleus of the “miracle”? after all people do get better from leprosy. People do overcome mental illness. The miracle seems to be the speed with which they make their recovery not the fact that they do recover.

Then there are a number of nature miracles
Jesus calms the storm. Mark 4:35-41
Jesus feeds 5000 people Mark 6:30-44 This is the only miracle story found in all four gospels.
Jesus walks on water Mark 6:45-52

In addition all four gospels record the event of Jesus’ resurrection Mark 16 Matthew 28, Luke 24 and John 20-21.

Miracles in St John’s Gospel
The pundits will tell you there are 7 – the 7 signs in St John’s Gospel. In fact there are 8 (excluding the resurrection) – but don’t let that worry you.  You would do well not to worry too much about St John’s Gospel. For a start he doesn’t call these miracles, they are described as “signs”. The events which they describe often lead to a more advanced teaching about the nature of God revealed in Jesus.

Summing up – a few final points to consider about biblical miracles.

1. To what extent are many of the Old Testament miracles contrived in order to reassure readers of God’s power or purpose? They are heavily laden with myth, legend and enhancement. They are complex stories disguising layers of meaning.
2.  In the first three gospels, with the exception of the nature of miracles, the stories are far less complex. Jesus responds to human needs, using his power. Interestingly these stories, which often seem farfetched or incredible to us in the 21^st century, are very mild by 1^st century standards. If the gospel writers were seeking to prove a point with these narratives, they were wasting their time. Non-Christian miracle stories from this period, and a little later, are far more lurid, spectacular and shocking. Jesus and/or the gospel writers were rank amateurs in providing convincing narratives about the nature of divinity.
3. By the time the later apocryphal gospels got going and early Christian Church miracles one can see how the miracles took on a more challenging nature. They challenge not only science, but also credibility and reason. Read for example accounts of the early Christian saints – even those in the UK. Patrick who banished the snakes from Ireland, Columba who terrified opponent kings and Cuthbert who changed tides by prayer and himself became protected from decay after death!

So from where you select your examples of miracles, needs to be quite precise. It may affect the relevance of points made by those who oppose the idea of miracles.

Virtue Ethics

This curious ethical subject is one of the most enduring solutions to the question “how might a person live a moral life?”
It has its origins in Ancient Greek philosophy. Yet it experienced a revival in the second half of the 20th century
Essentially it claims not to focus on actions or consequences or moral acts but rather on the individual person who is seeking to answer the question “How can I be a good person?”

PLATO
Does consider how a person might achieve the highest good.
He introduces 4 cardinal virtues – temperance, prudence, justice and courage.
He also spoke about eudaimonia – supreme happiness or sense of fulfilment.

ARISTOTLE
Much more needs to be said about him in an essay on Virtue Ethics.
The seeds of his ideas may be found in his book Nichomachean Ethics.
For Aristotle Virtue Ethics was about human flourishing (eudaimonia)
In the case of Aristotle Natural Law and the Virtues were two sides of the same coin.
The complete, correctly functioning person, living in accordance with Natural Law will achieve a virtuous life.
Make sure you know the difference between – Moral Virtues – developed by habit
And – Intellectual Virtues developed by training and education.
Achievement of eudaimonia relied upon the correct use of reason
Golden Mean One distinctive teaching of Aristotle was the belief that virtue could be discovered in the Golden Mean.
Virtue did not lie in either the excess or deficiency of a quality – example the virtue of bravery. The brave person was not on the one hand “rashness” (excess of bravery) or “cowardice” (deficiency of bravery). The Golden Mean “bravery” lay between these two extremes.

There are problems with this idea. One of the areas you might discuss is whether or not all virtues have a deficiency and an excess. – for example “humility”

DAVID HUME
He is sometimes overlooked in studies of Virtue Ethics
What Hume says is
We cannot use reason to determine what we want.
Reason is the tool we use to achieve our aims
What we want is determined by our passions (likes or dislikes)
Our sense of morality therefore is based our own personal preferences and choices.
Morality expresses qualities that we find in people we approve of.
For Hume morality is based in people’s behaviour. Virtuous people are those who are recognised and approved of by society.
Sympathy with others is a strong factor in detecting virtuous behaviour.
Today we would say this is a much more psychological reflective approach to virtue.

MODERN VIRTUE THICS
This is very much a post second world war movement – a reaction in some ways to find meaning behind right behaviour in a world where
a) Religion had begun to lose its influence on people.
b) Where individuals became more autonomous and self-aware.

A) Agent Focused Theories – eudaimonism – coming out of Aristotelian ideas.

GEM Anscombe (Modern Moral Philosophy 1958)
She asks how can there be a moral law if there is no God?
She noted that Kant and some forms of Utilitarianism focus on actions rather than people.
She attempted to resurrect the concept of eudaimonia – human flourishing
Bernard Williams 1985 – reinforced these ideas.

Philippa Foot
She also relied heavily on Aristotelian principles and recognised the importance of individual reasoning which would lead to a virtuous life.

Alasdair MacIntyre 1985
He produced an interesting twist on the subject
1. People are unimpressed by moral theories – especially deontological based ideas.
2. He thought moral standards of the day were based on emotivism (things people liked)
3. He wanted to take up the Aristotelian idea that morality should be seen in terms of human purpose.
4. Virtues therefore would be reflected in community life.
5. It is in the community (towns and villages) that virtuous behaviour is cultivated.
6. In this respect he opposed individualism.

Rosalind Hursthouse
She also supports Aristotelian principles – although not his prejudices against women and slaves.
The virtues shape a person practical reasoning

WHAT HAVE WE SEEN SO FAR?
A number of modern scholars – listed above find value in the idea of Virtue Ethics as proposed by Aristotle. They try to avoid some of the limitations and damaging conclusions of Aristotle, including his preoccupation that there is an overall purpose for the world.
IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE to this Agent Focus approach?

B) Agent based theories – based on observations of behaviour as cultivated by the virtues.

Michael Slote

Michael Slote
To a certain extent he picks up on Hume’s idea.
For Slote virtue is an inner trait or disposition that we possess.
The whole idea of virtue ethics is based in a sense of caring for people around you and people in general.

You need to be aware of these two approaches
Agent Focused (Eudaimonism) what is done in order to be a moral person
Agent Based what one feels in terms of people’s action and how we evaluate these.

CONCLUSION
The standard text book is quite good on this topic for basic knowledge, although I think it is a shame it leaves out David Hume.

Researching the topic
1. Students should be encouraged to know the difference between Plato and Aristotle on this topic.
It is well documented in “Moral Philosophy” by Jones, Cardinal and Hayward pp 89-100.
2. Hume – again see “Moral Philosophy” by Jones, Cardinal and Hayward pp105-110.
There is also a book – not worth buying but should be read if you can borrow a copy
“Ethics – the fundamentals” Julia Driver pp147-149. I think it is an undergraduate introduction.
3. Twentieth Century Thinkers
“Ethics Matters” by Peter and Charlotte Vardy pp73-78