The Atonement of Christ perhaps led to at least four possible fates for eternal souls after death:
1. Heaven (of several kinds and degrees), where we retain our personhood but have been resurrected and enhanced towards god-status.
2. Bliss (as with some Eastern Religions) where we choose to lose personhood and our sense of 'self', and are absorbed into the impersonal spirit of God. I presume that these souls in some sense refuse resurrection.
3. Sheol/ Hades/ the pagan underworld, which is the default state - where our spirits severed from the body at death and thereby maimed, live in an eternal present, 'demented', without memory or sense of self. Many souls were rescued from this state by Christ's atonement - and it is seldom spoken of in later Christianity - but perhaps it continues...
4. Hell - where resurrected spirits have actively and knowingly rejected the salvation offered by Christ; but retain self-hood and memory and their earthly character - so live in the endless cumulative duration of eternity.
"Fate after death"
2 Comments -
Number 4 truly does sound hellish.
21 March 2014 at 14:55
Sheol looks a lot like Alzheimer
21 March 2014 at 19:09