Ancient afterlife beliefs

Mar   Isaac of Nineveh and Buddha Sakyamuni on the 'cessation of the world' " When thou hearest of being far from the world, of leaving the world, of being pure from the world, thou art first in need of learning and knowing not after the.fashion of a novice, but with the impulses of gnosis - what the term world means, how many different meanings the word conveys. Then thou wilt be able thyself to know, in how far thou art distant from or connected with the world. If a man know not first what the world is, he cannot understand with how many limbs he is bound to or far from it. There are many who think themselves wholly devoid of the world in their behaviour because on two or three points they refrain from it. [This is] because they have not understood nor perceived with discernment that they are dead to the world in one or two limbs, while others are living in the body of the world. Therefore they even cannot perceive their affections and because they do not perceive them t...

Did Christian Gnostics teach universal salvation? Were the Early Christian Gnostics universalists, i.e. believers that all human beings will be saved? Although, it does seem that some sects might have believed in it (see the second section of this post), it doesn't appear that it was a shared belief among Gnostics and, indeed, some texts seem to talk about the possibility of final perdition of some.   Gnostic anti-universalists From the ‘Tripartate Tractate’ (possibly Valentinian) This text, included in the 'Nag Hammadi Library', attributed to the Gnostic school of Valentinus (fl. 2nd century) seems to depict a division of humanity in three classes. The spiritual predestined to salvation, the (wholly) material predestined to destruction/damnation and the psychics who can have either destiny based on their choices: “14.  The Tripartition of Mankind Mankind came to be in three essential types, the spiritual, the psychic, and the material, conforming to the triple di...

  Anti-universalist interpretations of 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 The scholar Mark Chenoweth has an interesting section about how some Church Fathers interpreted 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 (verse 3:15 in particular) [1] in a seemingly universalist way [2]   to show that David Bentley Hart’s universalist interpretation of the passage has precedents. Chenoweth quotes Fr. Lawrence Farley as saying: “it is clear that in this passage that Paul is not talking about the fate of all men, but solely about the fate of those Christian teachers in Corinth”. Considering that Hart, Chenoweth and Farley are, if I recall correctly, Eastern Orthodox one might find surprising that some thinkers venerated in the Eastern Orthodox traditions actually saw that passage as indicating a fate of ultimate perdition , as I shall below. At the same time, though, among the Latin Fathers 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 as been a main inspiration for the teaching of Purgatory as a temporary state of punishments of the imperf...

  The ambiguous eschatology of Ambrosiaster Ilaria Ramelli, in her book ' A Larger Hope, vol. 1 ', writes this short passage on Ambrosiaster, a Christian writer of the 4th century whose works were often attributed to St. Ambrose of Milan:  "Commenting on Philippians 2:10, Ambrosiaster, an anonymous imitator of Ambrose, interprets Paul’s words in the sense that “the Father has granted to the Son that, after the crucifixion, all beings should be saved in the Son’s name.” And commenting on Ephesians 1:9–10, he foretells that “every being, in heaven and on earth, will attain the knowledge of Christ and be restored to the state in which it was created.”" (I. Ramelli, A Larger Hope, vol. 1; p. 152) Here are the quotes that Ilaria Ramelli refers to: "(Verses 10, 11, 12) For this reason also God exalted him and gave him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and ...

Excerpts from Leonard Priestly's "Pudgalavada: the reality of the indeterminate self"  "How can the analogy of fire help us to make sense of this? Let us return to two of the canonical passages which we have already noted. The first is from the Aggivacchagottasutta : 'Now what do you think, Vaccha? If a fire were burning before you, would you know that that fire was burning before you ? If a fire were burning before me, Gotama, I should know that that fire was burning before me. But if someone were to ask you, Vaccha, “ For what reason does this fire burn that is burning before you?” how would you reply, Vaccha, when questioned thus? If someone were to ask me, Gotama, “ For what reason does this fire burn that is burning before you?” I would reply, Gotama, when questioned thus, “This fire that is burning before me bums because of its fuel of grass and sticks.” If the fire that was before you, Vaccha, were to be extinguished, would you know that that fire that was...

  Ilaria Ramelli on the question of pre-existence In her book 'A Larger Hope, vol. 1', Ilaria Ramelli writes the following: "Justinian’s Letter to Mennas attacks a number of doctrines that he attributed to Origen himself, but were certainly not Origen’s, such as the coeternity of creatures with God, the preexistence of disembodied souls, the sphericity of the risen body (but also the denial of the risen body and the eschatological destruction of the body, ascribing two inconsistent theses to Origen!), besides the transmigration of souls mentioned above. In particular, Justinian linked the preexistence of disembodied souls to metensomatosis in Origen, while Origen himself rejected both doctrines." (A Larger Hope, vol.1, p. 171) However, Rufinus of Aquileia, who translated into Latin various works of Origen of Alexandria, including 'On First Principles', writes this in his 'Apology agains Jerome': "But now let us look at the other points which he bl...