Well - yeah - but that verse hardly settles where / when the after life occurs, right? I mean … yeah it says Lazarus died and “was carried away by angels”, meanwhile the rich man died … “and was buried.” That all seems like story setup to me, where Jesus hasn’t reached the main point yet. Are we to set this against the more explicit teachings of Jesus where he instructs Martha that there will be resurrection to judgment in the last days? So if one wants to speak of any after-life, it needs to be a “resurrected after life” if you want much support from the New Testament. One other possible exception to that would be Jesus’s promise to the penitent thief that “today you will be with me in paradise”. But what does “today” necessarily mean after your body has died? I think Jesus’ comment about fearing him who can kill both body and soul is the strongest N.T. case in any of this for speaking of disembodied souls. And bible scholars always seem bound and determined (to the point of ignoring or denying that Jesus said such a thing) to insist that the soul was only a later Hellenistic influence. Which it may have been … but one that Jesus apparently accepted so far as this teaching appears to indicate. But it has to be made compatible with resurrection life which gets yet more attention from him.
They aren’t very connected. Ehrman is right that you have to wait for the N.T. to get any appreciable development of what happens after we die. It isn’t so much that the old testament is ignored or contradicted on this subject as that it just doesn’t offer much for anything to connect to. Souls waiting around in Sheol … or Hades. To dust we return. That’s pretty much it.
It’s true that New Testament folks - including maybe even Jesus (who admits he doesn’t know the Father’s calendar on this) thought that the 2nd coming was within a generation. And … it never came. So they were wrong, and we’re still waiting. Hence the ongoing Christian hope - including even the further embarrassments of later predictions from those who for inexplicable reasons think they will succeed in searching out hidden plans that were denied even to Jesus, an effort made even more astounding given that Jesus explicitly warned us it would be no use trying to anticipate such dates.
Welcome to the world of carrying on with life in the meanwhile!
You don’t have to use the word “afterlife” in order to speak of an afterlife, which Jesus most certainly did. He speaks of eternal life which people have even though they die, in the gospels of Matthew, John, and Luke. So apparently what your friend is doing is a Marcion type number where he is cutting the Bible down to just the parts which he likes.
John 11:25 “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live”
Luke 16 “The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment…”
Matt 25:46 "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Luke 23:43 "And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
John 14 “In my father’s house there are many rooms, I go to prepare a place for you.”
What about the Old Testament? Well the first books are books of history and law and so it is hardly surprising that they do not speak of an afterlife. But to say that none of the OT speak of an afterlife is just plain wrong. It does speak of an afterlife. It does not say much and you can say the idea is not elaborated upon in great detail. But it is spoken of. One might say that the Old Testament does not speak of heaven, but then a Christian has some basis to think there was no heaven before Jesus. Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of God coming and having arrived both on earth and in heaven.
Apparently when someone makes a claim of outrageous proportions like Jesus never existed, they get a lot of milleage out of the stunned response where nobody knows what to say to something that absurd.
This is the first time i hear Jesus beign wrong on something. So what now? Do we wait another thousands even more years for the second coming while beign in our graves? Thats nonsense to me.
Why? Are you anticipating being bored in your grave? I suppose if you think of souls consciously spending time in a place like Hades … and if time passes the same way in such a realm as we perceive it here, then yeah. That’s a long time. On the other hand, if you’re dead until you are resurrected, then … one night … thousand years … million years, it would all be the same to you as it would seem no time had passed at all. We also do not know how your “time” would be spent in such a place. The New Testament leaves hints in at least a couple spots that people were preached to there - implying that further change or hope of it might be possible. There are just too many assumptions and too much that we don’t know.
It also makes me further reflect, @Randy, on the alleged soul / body division mention from Jesus. If that teaching was also a bit like a mini-parable, then perhaps it is inappropriate to treat it as a teaching about potentially disembodied souls. We already know the long legacy of the prophets and Jesus himself in drawing upon colloquially accepted wisdoms about things in order to make his points. Maybe, being quite aware of the Platonic teaching about our true essence being found in our soul rather than our physical bodies, he made free use of that to drive home the point: You know whom you should really fear? - the One who has power over all of yourself - every aspect of who you are. These soldiers can only do stuff to your present body. But the power over your very identity to its core, and who you will be … that’s in God’s hands, not theirs.
Nick; about Jesus being wrong, what can I say? He himself said he didn’t know. It’s right there in the Bible. Mark 13:32 or in Matthew 24. Jesus drives home the point that neither angels nor he himself know the time, but that we all need to be watchful for it because it will come suddenly at any moment. …“this generation will not pass away before all these things take place.” (Matt 24:34). Then he goes on to reassure us that while heaven and earth are not eternal, his word is. If it makes you feel any better, you can find all sorts of explanations for what Jesus was talking about here that get around him “being wrong” about something. I mean, a lot of really terrible and apocalyptic stuff really did happen to the Jews in pretty short order - nothing less than the temple and pretty much the center of Jewish identity being destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. Latch on to those possibilities if you must. But plain reading of scriptures does not at all appear to insist on Jesus being omniscient in his pre-resurrection life in Palestine with his disciples.
By the way; you have been asking about how the NT has any connection or continuity with the OT with regard to afterlife. In reading Revelation 1 this morning, I came across this verse (18) in which Jesus tells John he was dead, but now is alive and he has the keys to death and Hades". That is a connection right there, with the implication that there were lots of prisoners of Hades waiting to be released. It is a very old testament (Greek) concept that Hades is where everybody who had died was (or for the Hebrew: Sheol).
Well taking into consideration that souls were preached there are you saying that when we die we go there meaning Hades and wait for the second coming? If thats what you are implying then it kinda reminds me of the doctrine of purgatory . If not then what happens after we die? Where does our soul go? What Jesus meant by heaven will pass away if heaven is the place where God dwells? Im sorry for my many questions but it seems that with every answer more questions are coming forth through my mind.
No - that’s quite fine! It seems to come with any inquiry into such sparsely explained things that each explanation (speculation really) will open up multiple new questions. Sober reflection on such things is good, I think, so long as it helps relieve us of any paralyzing fear. But if instead we fall into morbid fear about it all, then it’s probably best to engage with the greater bulk of scriptures that speak of life.
Where does our “soul” go? It isn’t just Catholics that believe in something like Purgatory. So that is one widely accepted possibility, though some former Catholic practices (like indulgences and highly speculative prayer strategies and schemes on behalf of loved ones) probably rightly gave purgatory a bad name among many of the later reformers. But abuses notwithstanding, it doesn’t mean the concept of it was entirely vacant. I like George Macdonald’s approach to the whole subject in which the refiner’s fire will do its necessary work on us for as long as it takes (call it hell or purgatory if you want - but it’s God’s relentlessly standing purposes with it that are all-important).
In the end, don’t you agree that this is all about learning to trust God with all this presently unknowable stuff? There is a great Mark Twain quote: “It isn’t all the stuff I don’t understand in the Bible that bothers me so much as the stuff that I understand perfectly well.” Not that Twain was any icon to emulate when it comes to faith, but believers too can find comfort in the simple knowledge that whatever all God’s plans include, God is powerful [not just powerful … ‘sovereign’] and good, and now revealed to us in the person of Christ; and we have been left with instructions about how to live faithfully here and now. Our plates are already quite full just with that, no?
Well yes and no at the same time. We cannot understand all but we cant be left with no ideas of whats gonna happen whatsoever. We have no idea when the second coming will come and if those events listed in the apocalypse were fulfilled then or they didnt and we wait for them to be fulfilled now(in the present) And now i learn that we dont even have a clue about what will happen to our soul after death. So God even though cares for us that he went down here to save us he left us with nothing on those mattters. And my last question is why? Were they simply not important? I dont think so.
We aren’t left without reassurance, Nick! Starting from John 14:1:
Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.
True but still doesnt answer all of the above. Thats a reassurance not answers to what will happen. Its a reassurance that he will save us and i agree on it .
Now that is certainly up for debate. A future kingdom on the Earth is still an afterlife. Sounds far too boring for me to call life for eternity – it can account for John 11:25. BUT… it doesn’t really sound like what Jesus is talking about in Luke 16, 23, John 14, and where does the eternal punishment from Matt 25:46 fit into this? Perhaps fitting this together would be the basis for a science fiction novel, having Jesus travel back and forth from the future where his father has a house and some kind of prison for dealing with the bad guys.
Though I never did like this idea of resurrecting people to torture them… especially suicides. Why can’t a loving God just leave such people well enough alone?
Nor for me either, unless you include the way people torture themselves. Taking these passages seriously enough to acknowledge that Jesus taught of an afterlife doesn’t mean we have to take them literally. I see hell as something which people do to themselves. And I see plenty of examples of people doing this when they are alive.
From this idea that the only afterlife is some future on Earth when everyone is resurrected. I don’t believe in that. I believe in the spirit, and as famous rabbi has said, a belief in an afterlife goes hand in hand with a belief in God, because God is spirit (and not some alien on another planet, as if the physical universe was the limits of reality).
Well Jesus speaks of a ressurection . What body exactly we will have its not of importance j think. But i have listed questions nobody here answered. Like what did Jesus meant with “heaven will pass away”. Plus what are your verses that imply an afterlife in the OT?
I think we all do . But where does that spirit go then if theres no concept of an afterlife like in the OT? Plus dont disregard matter . The agnostics thought that every physical thing is sinful =bad. I just cant wrap my head around why did Jesus preached of an afterlife if theres no such thing i guess?