Afterlife and The Old Testament

Such views are marginal, emergent because they are not fundamentalist. Most overt views here are conservative, historical-grammatical, i.e. as literal as possible, i.e. fundamentalist. Even liberal Evangelicals struggle with that ‘high view’ - which is no such thing - of ‘scripture’. It is a fearful, i.e. fear-ridden view. It is the majority view in Protestantism by a country mile. Roman Catholicism is far more nuanced now [although scratch it, and isn’t, at the folk level]. The Orthodox even more so in some regards; they are not as infected with damnationism from the word go, by not accepting Augustine. Protestants, the ‘Reformed’, embraced his toxic damnationism a thousand years later.

We’re stuck with this as all progress has ground to a halt on all fronts culturally. We have to find a modus vivendi as religious fundamentalism can never go away. It’s genetic [i.e. part of our Humean pre-wiring for experience].

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Amazing link, @Klax. Tells us a lot about our good Pope (I say “our” as a catholic small “c” Christian of sympathetic Protestant heritage). Thanks.

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First of all as i see how the other threads go they begin to fade away from the original subject and go into another debates such as Salvation. And i have done this many times in different threads and the ressult is debating about entirely different things the op asks. So first of all i would like to apologize for doing that and second this is a reply as a reminder to this thread not fade away from its original question. I would like the replys to be close to the original question and thread. Thanks in advance

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I am sorry for wandering. It is a good topic. I wish I knew more about it. I remember reading in Rand’s Rauser that one of the main impetus for belief in God is that there is justice…and often that only comes in the afterlife. So I am no expert, but it seems to me that it was likely shared by many cultures…not just Egyptians…and from more than one culture source. It would have evolved independently even without revelation. My interpretation only.

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Thanks randy . No i didnt mind your small reply and it wasnt intended for a specific person of course. But Klax mentioned somewhere in his previous post something about damnanionists and i just wanted this conversation to stay close to my original question and not wander off.
PS(It wasnt intended for Klax or or for anyone here ust a little reminder):slight_smile:

Scholars like Ehrman love to "step back’ and survey various cultures and beliefs, as if explaining why anybody believes what they do should, by itself, be a reason to discount the truth of such belief. Ehrman is probably tone-sensitive enough and culturally savvy enough that he would never be so condescending as to phrase it that way; but this is the modus operandi (method or approach) of so much of academia today toward anything that answers to the label of ‘religious belief’. Western scholars are all steeped in it now, and the implicit condescension is there to be reckoned with.

After self-reflection and willingness to own and live with this bias, I think even scholars can [do] re-enter the life of belief and acceptance itself - enough to reclaim their own experiential and developed convictions that truth itself is what matters. And it is because truth matters, that our beliefs about it matter too. And it matters whether our beliefs are accurate about that Truth - some more than others perhaps, but it does matter.

I can have certain beliefs about what I should prudently be doing (or need not do) with regard to our current pandemic and how I ought to behave. My beliefs are likely to have lasting consequences for myself and for others, but those consequences will be governed by the actual rules of reality and the accuracy of my belief about it - my wishful thinking (if inaccurate) will not make something so, and reality in the end will be no respecter of any beliefs I have that prove false. Reality gets the only vote.

All that said, cultural beliefs themselves are also part of reality, to be sure. If Ehrman doesn’t really believe something but does not wish to contest or diminish others’ hope in the same, perhaps that is appropriate. But it is a dangerous game they are playing when others learn that the words offered by such people are disingenuous. If a loved one is speaking with you, do you feel entitled to be told the actual truth of what they think? Some may feel it is so, and feel betrayed by you if they later learn you only told them what you thought they wanted to hear. People close to each other in any familial, marital, or friendship sense may do this rather routinely in the name of relational preservation (or conflict avoidance more likely). But such accumulation of (even tiny) falsehoods has a way of building to later relationship danger since the underlying (and denied) reality of what you really thought never went away.

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But he has “facts” . So he can edit the truth?

Thanks for your response but I’m afraid you’re losing me here, Martin. Is it the afterlife neutral view which you are describing as the ‘high view’? And, if it is no such thing, is that because it is really plain and simple or because it has flown off the rails? Finally, which is the fear ridden view?

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Nobody can “edit” truth. We can lie about it or twist it. We can know it or be mistaken about it, believe it or doubt it - but already existing truth is simply not changeable except in individual or cultural imagination.

So hes either true or false on that matter. But even if hes false he can “convince” others otherwise. But he has facts and no one has questioned him on these specific ones. So he kinda "edited " the truth about afterlife since we knew it differently

I only read through the interview transcript once. Can you remind me what any of these specific “facts” are that Ehrman seems to have? Whatever I heard of him generally (basically that he doesn’t believe there is any afterlife - or at least he finds it improbable, though he isn’t above hoping something like it could be true) is his speculation only. There are lots of people who believe there is no after life. And lots who do. Why do you worry about what Ehrman believes? You do realize he doesn’t believe in God either, right?

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He states that the OT has no concept of heaven. And then Jesus tells us there is a heaven. He then points out that Jesus never actually spoke of an afterlife but by the "Kingdom Of God " he refered to his second coming that will rule on earth. But Because the kingdom Jesus spoke about never came the afterlife concept was invetned Thats all that i care,. Now isnt it troubling for us christians? Doesnt it concern us to find the truth behind this? It concerns me

Sorry Mark. The more conservative, fundamentalist, literal underpinning, filter of the historical-grammatical hermeneutic, the darker, the more fearful the belief system.

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Okay - yeah, that jogs my memory a bit. Let’s take these one at a time.

I think he’s right. There is no well developed concept of heaven unless one really stretches various phrases like “the heavens” and tries to export New Testament meaning back into them. Or you might have some oblique reference to the counsel of God at court (think of the beginning of Job), where again - the point of the story at hand has nothing to do with anything about “Heaven”. So … yeah - I think Ehrman is correct.

Ehrman scores again! That actually is correct - and I’ve heard Bible believing Christian pastors / scholars say much the same. The end times trajectory is one of the City of God coming down to earth - not us floating away to somewhere “up there”. You have to get out of the gospels to get to famous “rapture” passages - Thessalonians I think, has people flying up to “meet him in the air”, but that is more a “let’s go greet the descending King” than it is a departure to go be with him somewhere else. There are some cryptic passages in the gospel (or in Acts) which put the rapture idea into people’s heads: think of Jesus’ ascent up into the clouds. In one of the gospels there is the reference to two in a field, one is taken, and one is left. But then as one reads on, it is discovered that the “taken ones” were not the fortunate ones in that case (where the corpses are, there the vultures will gather) - certainly not a rapture scenario. So Ehrman is in good Bible-reading company on that one too.

Resurrected life is what the Bible concerns itself with (and here Christians part company with Ehrman - who doesn’t buy into that either). But Jesus was all about resurrection and new life, and the Kingdom of God being here among us then and now already. We can dicker all day about details of what “resurrected bodies” must be like; fish-eating spirits? transformed flesh that can just teleport in and out at will? A few scripture passages give hints in all these directions and people love to plant their flags and milk the subject to death. But in the end, don’t you think it just comes down to a matter of us trusting that God has it all in hand? Do we feel a need to micromanage the master Architect, always looking over the Creator’s shoulder to see if we can understand and approve of the details? We’re called to be faithful here and now in doing the good works that have been prepared for us. The vast majority of what we read in the New Testament majors on telling us what God has already done for us and how we are to respond. A paltry few verses or passages give veiled hints (as through a glass darkly) about what is to come. It would seem that we aren’t to trouble ourselves over the stuff that God’s in charge of and which is beyond our control anyway. But we are called to cultivate our faith and increasingly trust God. So don’t let “left behind” series or any other biblically illiterate pop Christian imagination trouble you about all the stuff they pretend to know so well. The fact that you and I don’t or can’t know the details doesn’t mean they are automatically correct in trying to fill in all those blanks. In fact, if they were right, it would mean much of the Bible would no longer be trustworthy.

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Ok but what about the “kingdom that never came thing”. Jesus promised a second coming and hes not here yet. Of course we dont know hwen this will happen but it will give pass to a critic like Erhman to say that it will never come. Plus if Jesus spoke about an afterlife why does the OT is silent? Thanks for your response mervin. I always appreciate your time to answer my naive questions

I’m not sure–what about Abraham’s bosom, the rich man and Lazarus, and references to the one who could put both soul and body in hell? Hyperbole was there, but it sure sounds like the afterlife.

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Thanks for the response Randy. I appreciate it a lot. Yeah i believe too that the concept was there but i just want to be sure if it is really implied so to speak. Take care !!!

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Hey - thanks for reminding me about the fear of Him who can kill both body and soul - I had meant to bring that up too and forgot. That is one reference that I never ever hear people like Ehrman deal with. Or I suppose their way of ‘dealing’ with it is to just write it off as something Jesus didn’t actually say.

Regarding rich man and Lazarus - It would make a strange picture of the afterlife if one was to try to go that direction with it - where those in the bliss of Abraham’s bosom could all witness their friends and neighbors being tortured just across the way - within yelling distance. To me it’s yet another reminder of the danger of trying to leverage such stories for peripheral information aside from the point at hand. And that particular parable, as I recall was pointed at Pharisees who thought they needed more evidence from Jesus than just Moses’ words if they were going to accept him as Messiah. Hence the final judgment: “If you don’t believe Moses, neither will you believe if somebody comes back from the dead.”

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So how is the heaven of the NT connected with the views of the Old and where people die where do they go? Theu await the second coming? And what bout what Erhman said that the second coming never came? Sure we dont know when it will happen but thousands of years have passed

Sure, but he seems to acknowledge the afterlife…or maybe I am missing the question?