A note on the afterlife
Fr Greg Moses, Nowra, NSW has submitted the following and prefaces his article with “I have had these thoughts since my time of studying in Leuven in the late ‘70’s. The present rendition was stimulated initially by the Israel Falou saga*, edited a bit since then. It is not concerned with whether or not there is an afterlife but what the afterlife might be like.
These thoughts on the afterlife are heavily influenced by the work of a ninth century Irish philosopher whom I first came to know about in Leuven, by the name of John the Scot or Johannes Scotus Eriugena, literally John Scot Born in Ireland, working at the time on the Continent, in the court of Charles the Bald. The word Scotia at this time included Ireland. Our lecturer at the time was Professor Carlos Steele.
According to John the Scot, in his major work, Periphyseon, at the end of time hell as a separate place will be no more. How do we know this? Because the Bible tells me so: in 1 Corinthians 15 where it says at the end of time God will be all in all. When God is all in all, there will be no room left for hell. It also fits with his overall view of everything coming out of God and going back into God, God as the Beginning, Middle and End of everything.
But what about all this talk about heaven and hell? John the Scot’s solution to this is that while everyone will be in heaven, the Kingdom of Heaven come in its fullness, some people will enjoy being there more than others, and some people may not enjoy it at all.
For instance (my language), people who get their kicks through pushing themselves up by pushing other people down. Or by turning other people into objects sexual or otherwise for their own fulfilment and enjoyment, or whose holy Trinity in fact is I, Me and Myself. Or who just can’t stand living in the same place as Jews or Moslems or Christians or the poor the sick the blind and the lame or people of other races or tribes or colour or language, or miscellaneous ‘deployables’ for that matter, who also happen to be in heaven, etc.
Some people thus may find themselves totally kick-less so to speak, eternally frustrated in so far as their usual ways of operating don’t work anymore. This is after all God’s world. Also, the company may not be at all to their liking. They are in heaven, but because of the way they have shaped themselves by their own free decisions it is not a place where they are at all comfortable or in any way at home. They are in heaven, at the end of time the only place there is, the only one left, but for some people being in that place could be like being in hell.
This after all is a kingdom of truth and joy, of justice love and peace, a gathering of people from every tribe and tongue and race and nation, in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, no hurt nor harm on all God’s holy mountain. It is a place in which the people mentioned in the beatitudes for example will find themselves particularly happy.
So, the goal of life is not so much to get to heaven as to allow God’s all-inclusive and intense love and mercy and forgiveness, a love that will die for us, though the working of the Holy Spirit, to gradually transform us into the kinds of people who might possibly enjoy it when we get there! What kind of people?
Well, for instance the kind described in the Sermon on the Mount or in all the parables, with guidance also from St Paul’s attempted application of the gospel to his communities in the second half of his letters or that of John or James.
There is thus a kind of objectivity to it, our lives do matter and what kind of people in God’s grace and mercy we are becoming. Heaven is God’s world, not some individualistic consumerist paradise adapted to people’s personal wishes and desires. Nor is it something determined by public opinion or shifting community attitudes. Though what it actually is might still be up for debate.
This general view then gets filtered through the Catholic and Orthodox idea of purgatory but conceived by preference in what seems to be the Orthodox or Eastern Catholic manner as more like a hospital than a prison. It is, so to speak, a place where we get patched up after all the dramas of life some of them our own doing and prepared some more to enjoy heaven by our very immersion in the divine love. Or, in terms imaginatively adapted from one of the parables (Wedding Feast), it is a place where we get all washed up, all healed up, all dolled up on our way into the Feast!
We need to allow ourselves to be gotten to the point where we are not beyond hope, where love can still transform us, where love can still save us, where we can accept to be all washed up, all healed up, and to put on the freely available wedding garment. But love does not force.
The English philosopher of religion John Hick, in his book, Evil and the God of Love (originally published 1966), goes a step beyond this with a speculation that, given long enough, Love will have its way even with the most difficult of customers. God after all has all the time in the world and then some.
My own position on this is that, while this might well be an object of reasonable hope, I don’t think it is something that we can claim to know or take for granted. Love does not force, and there is no accounting for human stubbornness and pride even when totally irrational, or for the ingrained nature of some kinds of evil. Also, while definitely helpful, I don’t think it is necessary for the sake of Theodicy. I think the John the Scot inspired idea might in fact be enough for this: see below.
Getting back to the John the Scot from Ireland inspired idea: this then influences how we operate in the context of giving pastoral or spiritual guidance. The focus will be in discerning together with the individual or couple or group what is the best way to facilitate the journey of transformation of this individual or this couple or the members of this group in these circumstances into the kinds of people who might enjoy heaven when they get there, the realistic next step along their road. Or, in process relational terms, it is a matter of discerning the divine lure, which is always specific to individual circumstances.
Also, as stated above, even by itself this does effectively remove the doctrine of an eternal hell from the problem of theodicy, justifying God in the face of evil. At the end of time everyone is in heaven. It is not God’s fault that some people are not enjoying being there, and there is no reason to think that a Love that will die for us will ever give up in trying to transform them into people who will so enjoy it.
Even if this Love in a particular case is not being successful, God is doing all that a loving God can be expected to do or even could do consistent with the uncontrolling nature of Love. We hope very much that Love will eventually succeed, but that is what it is, a plausibly well-grounded hope. Coming at it from another angle, we are after all allowed to hope that at the end of time hell will be empty.
Finally, this view also gives an extra point to living and working and praying and longing for the Kingdom of God in this world. Our enjoyment of heaven when we get there emerges not so much as a reward for our work in the here and now but as more like a natural consequence of the way we are being formed by that very way of living. This is in addition to whatever fragile successes we may have.
We get ourselves ready for enjoying heaven precisely by being people who live and work and pray for the coming of the kingdom in the here and now. Or better, we are gotten to be ready for heaven precisely by allowing ourselves to be turned into such people in the here and now. If we are such people, when we get there we will be only too delighted. Heaven is not some opium of the people: it is the absolute stir to our social and ecological action, in spite of all its limitations, in this world.
Gregory James Moses, Nowra NSW (April 2025)
*The “Israel Folau saga” refers to the controversy surrounding the termination of Israel Folau’s contract with Rugby Australia due to his social media posts expressing his religious beliefs. Folau, a devout Christian, posted a message on social media stating that «hell awaits» certain groups, including homosexuals, unless they repent. This led to Rugby Australia terminating his contract, citing a breach of the Professional Players Code of Conduct.
