After Lives A Guide to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory

by Casey, John

• ISBN13: 9780195092950
• ISBN10: 0195092953
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-11-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

One of the most profound, deeply affecting questions we face as human beings is the matter of our mortality--and its connection to immorality. Ancient animist ghost cultures, Egyptian mummification, late Jewish hopes of resurrection, Christian eternal salvation, Muslim belief in hell and paradise all spring from a remarkably consistent impulse to tether a triumph over death to our conduct in life. In After Lives, British scholar John Casey provides a rich historical and philosophical exploration of the world beyond, from the ancient Egyptians to St. Thomas Aquinas, from Martin Luther to modern Mormons. In a lively, wide-ranging discussion, he examines such topics as predestination, purgatory, Spiritualism, the Rapture, Armageddon and current Muslim apocalyptics, as well as the impact of such influences as the New Testament, St. Augustine, Dante, and the Second Vatican Council. Ideas of heaven and hell, Casey argues, illuminate how we understand the ultimate nature of sin, justice, punishment, and our moral sense itself. The concepts of eternal bliss and eternal punishment express--and test--our ideas of good and evil. For example, the ancient Egyptians saw the afterlife as flowing from ma'at, a sense of being in harmony with life, a concept that includes truth, order, justice, and the fundamental law of the universe. "It is an optimistic view of life," he writes. "It is an ethic that connects wisdom with moral goodness." Perhaps just as revealing, Casey finds, are modern secular interpretations of heaven and hell, as he probes the place of goodness, virtue, and happiness in the age of psychology and scientific investigation. With elegant writing, a magisterial grasp of a vast literary and religious history, and moments of humor and irony, After Lives sheds new light on the question of life, death, and morality in human culture.

Author Biography

John Casey is a Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge University. He is the author of such books as Pagan Virtue, Morality and Moral Reasoning and The Language of Criticism.

Table of Contents

Acknowlegments	p. ix
Prologue: Stephen Dedalus's Hell	p. 1
Dark Futures
After Lives	p. 13
Egypt	p. 23
Mesopotamia and Israel	p. 43
Greece and Rome	p. 65
The Christian Beginnings	p. 103
Dante: Inferno	p. 147
Predestination: Augustine to Calvin and Beyond	p. 167
The Decline of Hell	p. 193
Purgatory
Rome's Happiest Inspiration?	p. 225
Heaven
Heaven: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel	p. 245
Bodies Fleshly and Spiritual	p. 269
Dante: Paradiso	p. 281
Celestial Pleasures: Renaissance and Reformation Heavens	p. 293
Heavenly Speculations	p. 321
Heaven Seen and Heard: Swedenborg	p. 337
With Easy Intercourse Pass To and Fro	p. 357
Scoring in Heaven	p. 381
Epilogue	p. 401
Notes	p. 405
Bibliography	p. 441
Index	p. 452
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