| Title | : | Life of the World to Come: Near-death Experience \u0026 Christian Hope (Albert Cardinal Meyer Lecture) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0195103351 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780195103359 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 112 |
| Publication | : | First published April 25, 1996 |
death. To speak of the afterlife is at best to engage in wishful thinking, at worst to descend to the level of pop religion, encounters with angels, and UFO abductions. In The Life of the World to Come , however, Carol Zaleski asks the question, "Are we rationally and morally entitled to believe in
life after death?" and answers with a spirited and emphatic "yes."
Drawing on a rich and varied array of sources ranging from Plato to St. Augustine to Heidegger, from the samurai warrior code to New Yorker cartoons to conversations with her young son, Zaleski not only brilliantly defends the right of Christians to believe in a life after death, but she
illuminates the real value of imagining what that life might be like. It is important to spiritual maturity, she says, for the believer to be able to imagine a state of complete fulfillment, of oneness with God. And a vision of the ideal society, the heavenly communion of saints, is essential to the
ordering of both our own lives and the society in which we live. Zaleski organizes her defense into three parts corresponding to the three great hours of the Divine Office, the cycle of prayers that is the heart of monastic Lauds at dawn's first light, Vespers at twilight, and, with the coming
of night, Compline. In this liturgy of darkness and light, sleeping and waking, Zaleski discovers a poignant awareness of the ever-presentness of death in life and life in death, an awareness that we sadly miss amidst the medical and technological wonders of modern life. The timeless prayers and
rituals of classical Christianity, she finds, are not a distraction from life, but a way of orienting oneself to life. Zaleski stresses the importance of the testimony of near-death experiences for Christian thinking about the afterlife. While these experiences do not by themselves provide objective
evidence of life after death, she says, neither should they be dismissed as wishful thinking merely because research shows them to be influenced by cultural expectations. Zaleski asks "If God, the unknowable, wishes to be known, what other recourse does God have but to avail himself of our images
and symbols, just as he has availed himself of our flesh?"
This book will inspire, challenge and console readers seeking to confront their own hopes and fears of death and the afterlife with dignity, rather than despair or denial. Candid, surprising, and profoundly wise, it will fascinate anyone intrigued by the strange and wonderful phenomena of
near-death experience and the beauty and mystery of the unknown.
Life of the World to Come: Near-death Experience \u0026 Christian Hope (Albert Cardinal Meyer Lecture) Reviews
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This short book is about Christian notion of the afterlife and why it’s okay to
believe in it. Zaleski’s arguments boil down to two points: what might be called the argument from mystery and the argument from utility. The argument from mystery is simply that in the end, we can’t know the afterdeath experience until we arrive there—it remains a mystery. Before that, our notions of the afterlife, including much-publicized near-death experiences, are not the real reality, but rather our imaginings of that reality. But that’s okay, says the argument from utility, because such imaginings give us hope and in some cases even transfigure us, defeating despair and rendering our lives fuller and more joyous. Zaleski encourages enriching the imagery of the afterlife with a wide variety of imaginings—symbols of immortality—drawn from history and from different
cultures.
Some quotes from the book:
“I maintain that a full admission of the imaginative character of otherworld visions provides the most secure defense of the right to believe in such experiences.”
“We cannot know what awaits us after death, but we can legitimately believe all that our tradition teaches and our experience suggests.”
“If Christian hope involves wishful thinking, it also entails the considerable risk of astonishment in the event that the wish comes true.”
“When a question of existential urgency presents itself, we cannot wait for all the evidence to come in: we must decide.”
“It is reasonable to reach beyond what our immediate knowledge can demonstrate, to postulate eternal life (to use the Kantian term) and also to imagine it, in order to orient ourselves in the present life.”
Zaleski has studied the near-death experience in history (she wrote an earlier book about it), and concludes that it is nothing new: narratives from the ancient and medieval worlds are full of descriptions very similar to those we read in Parade magazine. However, while many of the core elements of NDEs seem universal, some of the specifics are shaped by the culture in which they occur. For example, medieval narratives always had a severe downside—stern judgment and visions of hell—whereas most modern NDEs are much more benign, with little or no downside; in these NDEs the only thing approximating judgment is the so-called Life Review, in which the subject witnesses her whole life in a flash, and decides to become a better person.
I find Christian apologeticists interesting but unconvincing. Like most specialists, they get lost in their arguments, usually while trying to finesse other specialists. And they try hard, so hard. They strain like spiritual weightlifters. And in the background I can always hear the medieval Schoolmen wrangling over how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.
The argument from mystery I’ve always found persuasive—to humans, the Universe and life/death are ultimately mysterious, and those who deny it seem to me some combination of terribly ignorant, brainwashed, frightened, or arrogant. The argument from utility, however, I’ve always found unpersuasive because basically it says, “Whatever works is okay.” And this extends to, “Whatever makes me feel good is true,” or “If you want something to be true, it’s true.” At best this reduces truth to irrelevance, and at worst it can be exploited to make Hitler’s truth true, or Stalin’s truth true, or Mao’s… You get the idea. A very convenient cover for both the true believer and the lazy thinker.
As for Christianity itself (and Judaism, and Islam), I’ve always had a problem with its exclusiveness. From a commonsense standpoint, it seems absurd that a Divine Being would select a particular group of people in a particular part of the world in a particular era to be saved, while blowing off the rest of humanity. What about the poor aborigines in Papua, New Guinea? Those so isolated they were never seen by a Caucasian until the 1920s? Or all those millions who lived and died before the birth of Christ? All those generations of souls, who never had a chance to be saved… Why? What kind of God—
—but we won’t go into that.
After all, it’s a mystery.
This is a well-written book with many keen insights—recommended for those especially interested in the subject or those who would like to be introduced to Christian apologetics.
