Having come to Christianity from science first, I tend to look at everything from an approach of methodological naturalism, and by that I do not mean that I expect a physical explanation for everything, for I see no reason to presume, as the metaphysical naturalist does that what we see and determine by science defines reality itself. By methodological naturalism I mean that I expect there it be some sort of natural law or rational order even when it isn’t about nature or the physical universe, so in seeking to understand life after death I look for such order rather than just making it about a deity in control of it all doing whatever He pleases.
So for me it is about trying to understand the essence of what is spiritual as opposed to physical. For this I see no reason to set aside the Aristotelian idea of matter and form that all things are a form of some basic basic substance or setting aside the success of science at explaining differences from a commonality in all things. So I embrace a substance monism for spiritual and physical to say that both are different forms of the same basic substance which can be likened to energy but distinguished from it as the basic potentiality of being itself. Then it seems to me that essence of the physical is the fact that it is a part of the whole mathematical space-time geometrical structure that embodies all the laws of nature, and so the spiritual would be distinguished from this as things which are not a part of this structure.
But then what is the essence of the spiritual that can make sense of all the claims different religions have made about it. The following seem important to me…
- Personal. The physical world is rather impersonal caring nothing about our desires and dreams and this is essential for us to have a objective shared reality. But by contrast the spiritual seems to have a highly personal character to it and so I would suggest that the spiritual by contrast is highly responsive to our desires and dreams. Thus I think the spiritual has the form it does by its own choice rather than by external law.
- non-composite and non-representational. It seems that everything in the physical world is what it is because of the things of which they are composed and thus seems a lot like representational nature of computer simulations where things are what they are because of the bits and pixels of which they are composed. I think this is necessary for the self-organizational nature of the process of life. But by contrast the spiritual seems to be more about essence, where things are what they are in themselves rather than because there is something making them be that way. Thus I think spiritual things are what they are by their own nature alone rather than by how they fit into a system.
I think that such a nature of spiritual things would explain a great deal of the claims by religion.
- Imperishable. This is the idea of religion that there is an abiding existence free from decay and destruction coming from the external forces of nature. This of course directly follows from the character of the spiritual described above.
- Justice. This is an idea that there is some kind of balance between what we do and their consequences beyond what we see happening in the physical world which only seems to care about the mathematical laws of nature. But I think the character of the spiritual makes it abide by a law of consequence that follows from logic alone that in getting what we desire we find that it isn’t so valuable after all. Of course we don’t escape from this in the physical either, so you could simply say this sort of consequences remains even when the physical consequences (from the laws of nature) are removed. I suppose you could say there is a justice that comes from the simple fact that the one thing you can never escape from is yourself, and the character of the spiritual would make this kind of basic justice the whole of your reality.
Anyway this is the theoretical nub of my idea of the after-life, though I don’t know how much that helps, so perhaps more helpful is how this plays out in various descriptions I have made. Here is a sample…
- Hell is our heart’s desire and Heaven is God’s desire for us. The basic idea here is that if we truly get what we desire then we are likely to find that this is not what is needed to make an eternal existence worthwhile and only God knows what this really requires.
- Going from life into the after-life is like running out onto the ice, where all friction is gone so we keep going in the direction of our previous choices. The idea here is that without the laws of nature forcing things like relationships upon us, there is no longer anything to show us the error of our ways or to introduce us to other possibilities, so we can only head into the logical conclusion of the choices we have already made.
- We are under a law of sin much like gravity, so that no matter what our trajectory the final result remains the same that everyone eventually goes down because of the relentless nature of sin eating away at everything of value within us. The idea here is that the only destruction we face in the spiritual comes from within us.
- The difference between heaven and hell is not the scenery but the company, for the fact is that some people create hell around them wherever they go and others create heaven just by being who they are. The justice of our eternal destiny is not about external circumstances for these will be a product of our desires. So the justice comes from the logical consequences of those desires and our own character.
- We are created in the image of God, because we have infinite potentiality in the fact we are what we are by growth and learning. This is a mirror of God’s infinite actuality for an eternal relationship where we can receive all that God has to give, and this is the essence of eternal life. The idea here is that there are no limits to the afterlife except those already within us, and thus the value of a relationship with God is that He is a being with no limits and is thus the answer to every need we might have for making an eternal existence worthwhile is found in a relationship with Him.