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The Afterlife: A Theological Survey

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The Eclipse of Eternity
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Abstract

What happens when we die? Six basic answers are available in our modern Western culture informed as it is by materialism, by Christianity and by a minority but growing interest in Eastern religions (Davies et al., 1991: 255):

Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live; but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.

(Socrates)

There is no greater indication of the discontinuity between the religious life of the post-modern West and that of medieval and early modern Europe than in their visions of the after-life, and particularly of hell.

(Philip Almond, ‘The Contours of Hell’, 1992, p. 297)

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© 1996 Tony Walter

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Walter, T. (1996). The Afterlife: A Theological Survey. In: The Eclipse of Eternity. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379770_2

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