Customer Reviews

Beyond Death: Theological and Philosophical Reflections on Life after Death

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Beyond Death is a mostly interesting collection of essays that cover various issues surrounding our final departure (and that's not from JFK). The contributors come from a fairly wide selection of viewpoints - Christian, Jewish, Muslin and even atheist. Most of the writers explain their beliefs in an afterlife, or explain how those beliefs are held by specific groups, Hindus for example. One author who investigates the possibility that near death experiences are evidence of the afterlife gives a convoluted explanation of the criteria. He tries to take on Hume's arguments against an afterlife but manages to confuse rather than clarify the issue. The author Vardy is surprisingly ignorant of Catholic dogma. For example, Catholics do not see purgatory as a "second chance"; rather purgatory is a state where does who have not condemned themselves to hell go for their purgation, or cleansing, of lesser faults. I was pleasantly surprised by the Muslim contributor. His account of Islamic beliefs in the afterlife give a sense of a much more merciful God than one is often led to think that Muslims believe in. I was surprised to learn that Jews used to have a very clear belief in and very graphic accounts of hell. Today most people are under the impression that Jewish belief in the afterlife is murky and that the Christian version of hell is certainly at odds with Judaism. This was not so until more recent Jewish history, according to the Jewish contributor. Finally, the essay from the atheist author was itself valuable as it is absent of the type of anger and venom spewed by recent atheistic celebrities, like Dawkins, for example. This is a good book to read if one wants to get to the varying religious and non-religious perspectives on the afterlife.

As a former student of Dan C-S all I say the man is a relgious genius. There is nothing else to say.