Progress, Apocalypse, and Completion of History and Life after Death of the Human Person in the World Religions

The soul is so closely connected to life that one cannot think that it could ever be separated from life and, consequently, be mortal. Therefore, it can only be immortal. This argument from Plato's Phaedo for the immortality of the soul exhibits both a great strength and a great weakness. Its strength is that it is dif­ ficult for anyone to think that the soul could ever exist without life. Its weakness is, first, that not all religions accept a soul that remains the same as the center of the person - thus one speaks, for instance, in Buddhism of a "soulless theory of the human being" - and, second, that what is true does not depend on what we can think, but on what we recognize in experience and thought. The religions believe in the existence of a power that can work contrary to our experience that the soul in death is not separated from life. How the reli­ gions believe they can establish this continued life after death and how faith in this life is related in the religions to the interpretation of history, its progress, its apocalyptic end, and its eschatological completion and transfiguration is the theme of this book. In the culture of the West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, faith in the secular progress of the technological control of nature and the economic or­ ganization of society was the enemy of faith in the immortality of the soul. The question of the progress, the apocalyptic end, and the completion of history and the question of the life after death and the resurrection of the human person differ and are interconnected in the religions at the same time. The individual's completion and the completion of the world, the historical communities and humankind are conditional on each other. The world religions offer more than an interpretation of present history and the present world and existence of the human race. They also convey to humankind a theory of world history and of history before and above world history. This interpretation of universal history in the religions can be apocalypticism as the theory of the end of the world or apocalypticism and eschatology as the theory of the end, completion, and transfiguration of world and history. The completion of the world is inseparable from the completion of the individual human life in immortality and vice versa. Immortality is described in the Abrahamic religions as personal resurrection; in Hinduism as entering the divine self, the Atman; and in Buddhism as being united with the Buddha. How do the religions interpret universal history and what statements do they make about life after death? Leading scholars of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have created with this volume a first-hand source of information, which enables the reader to gain a better understanding of these five world religions and their teachings about the end of history and the life after death of the human person Front Matter....Pages i-viii Progress, Apocalypticism and the Completion of History, and Life after Death in the World Religions: Introduction ....Pages 1-7 Reincarnation and Personal Immortality....Pages 8-21 The Immortality of the Soul and the Problem of Life and Death in the Zen-Buddhist Thought of Dogen....Pages 22-39 On Apocalypticism in Judaism....Pages 40-74 Discussion of the Progress of History, Apocalypticism, Rebirth, and the Immortality of the Soul in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism....Pages 75-79 The Progress and end of History, Life after Death, and the Resurrection of the Human Person in Christianity....Pages 80-88 The Islamic Doctrine of the Eschatological Completion of History and Eternal Life....Pages 89-100 Discussion of the Progress and Completion of History, Life after Death, and the Resurrection of Human Persons in Christianity and Islam....Pages 101-103 The Progress and End Of History, Life after Death, and the Resurrection of the Human Person in the World Religions....Pages 104-120 Concluding Discussion of the Progress and Completion of History, Life After Death, and Resurrection in the World Religions....Pages 121-125 Conversation between the Representatives of the World Religions after the Conclusion of the Public Discourse....Pages 126-130 Back Matter....Pages 131-142