Ancient afterlife beliefs

  Ilaria Ramelli on the alleged presence universalism in the early St. Augustine (text and a few comments) In her book ‘A Larger Hope, vol. 1’, Ilaria Ramelli controversially suggests that the early St. Augustine (354-430) in a work apparently written in 388 AD, endorsed an ‘universalist’ view: “But Augustine had not always been a defender of eternal torment. Many years earlier, when the target of Augustine’s polemic was not yet Pelagianism, but rather Manichaeism, Augustine used against the latter the same metaphysical arguments that Origen used against “gnostics.” This, especially in his double treatise On the Customs of the Catholic Church and on the Customs of the Manichaeans. It is not accidental that in this same work Augustine also embraced the doctrine of universal restoration, whether he knew that it was Origen’s or not. For in De mor. 2:7:9 he declared: “God’s goodness [Dei bonitas] . . . orders all creatures [omnia] that have fallen . . . until th...

The early St. Augustine on question of the pre-existence of souls In what follows, I report a long quotation from a treatise of the early St. Augustine (354-430), ‘ De libero arbitrio voluntatis ’ (one can learn a brief introduction on this book here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_libero_arbitrio_voluntatis ). Curiously enough, in the third book of this treatise (written apparently in the early 390s), Augustine says what follows about the question of the origin of souls (for the English translation of the Latin text I used ChatGPT as I can’t translate Latin on my own, so there’s that – the discussion about the origin of souls starts at paragraph 56 but I think paragraphs 54-55 might be useful for context): “ 54. Ignorance and difficulty as consequences of sin 54.  For whatever a person does wrongly through ignorance, and whatever he wishes to do rightly but is unable to do, is called sin because it derives its origin from that sin of the free will. For the preceding sin m...

Hans von Balthasar on the problem of the reaction of the blessed at the sight of the damned (assuming that damnation is without end)  " Joy over damnation That the Parable of the Rich Glutton and the Poor Lazarus is not meant as anything more than an earnest warning to the living to have mercy on the beggar at their door is clear. Even if it is described in such drastic terms how the one tormented in the flames of Hades pleads for a drop of water from the fingertips of Lazarus, who is in the “bosom of Abraham”, the allegory should not evoke questions about the mental state experienced by Abraham and Lazarus at the sight of the tormented man: Do they feel compassion, indifference, or. . .? In the context of the allegory, such a question is absurd. For its “intention is directed toward man’s salvation, not toward giving purely concrete information as such”; it “aims at saying something kerygmatic for his present life, something relevant here and now”. All New Testament and theologic...

  Chuang tzu (Zhaungzi) on death The quotes are taken from 'Taoism: The Fundamental Books: Tao Te Ching, Lieh Tzu, Chuang tzu'. There doesn't seem to be a consistent view about the 'afterlife' as in chapter 18, Chuang tzu says that his wife is 'asleep' and that birth and death are like a natural succession of seasons, in chapter 32 he doesn't even speak about a post-mortem condition. In chapter 1, however, there is a mention of a 'divine man' who went beyond mortality (and this might be foundational for the Taoist belief in the 'immortals').  Chapter 1 ""He declared," replied Chien Wu, "that on the Miao-ku-shê mountain there lives a divine man whose flesh is like ice or snow, whose demeanour is that of a virgin, who eats no fruit of the earth, but lives on air and dew, and who, riding on clouds with flying dragons for his team, roams beyond the limits of mortality. This being is absolutely inert. Yet he wards off corru...

 A possible problem for some Christian views according to which free choice is necessary for salvation In what follows, I'll assume (with the Catechism of the Catholic Church does) that there is no pre-existence, i.e. the existence of human beings starts the moment in which starts this earthly life. Clearly, under this assumption, children under a certain age can't have already made a 'free choice' of any sorts. They have no personal sin but they have also yet to make virtuous acts. Regarding the fate of children that died without Baptism, the Catechism states this:  " As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them," allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for ...

The Karma Management Problem and other clues of Providence in non-theistic Dharmic religions Jainism and Buddhism are two of non-theistic religions which do not accept theism , defined as a belief system in which there is a benevolent creator God that interacts with His creatures. However, in this post I'll argue that the at least two beliefs that Jainism and Buddhism share seem to require the existence of a benevolent Creator.  As it happens, Jainism and Buddhism both accept the reality of rebirth and karma: (non-liberated) sentient beings continually die and get reborn in mortal lifetimes and such lifetimes are determined (at least, in a great part) by their past actions. Furthermore, it seems that in Buddhist and Jainist traditions, there is the idea that the way to liberation is continually re-discovered and taught after times in which the 'Dharma' (the salvific teachings) is forgotten and, as it happens, the likelihood to 'hear the Dharma' and have an ooportuni...

  T he hope for universal redemption and Catholic theology In a somewhat surprising move, Hans urs Von Balthasar, in order to show that his 'hopeful' position (i.e. that we can hope that all shall be saved without presuming to know that this is the case) wasn't new among Roman Catholics, quotes this long text from St. Edith Stein that is worth to read in full:  “We attempted to understand what part freedom plays in the work of redemption. For this it is not adequate if one focuses on freedom alone. One must investigate as well what grace can do and whether even for it there is an absolute limit. This we have already seen: grace must come to man. By its own power, it can, at best, come up to his door but never force its way inside. And further: it can come to him without his seeking it, without his desiring it. The question is whether it can complete its work without his cooperation. It seemed to us that this question had to be answered negatively. That is a weighty thing ...