In expressing the belief that God the Son ‘will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead’ the Creed affirms a belief that, sooner or later, this world order will come to an end. The Afterlife of the Firmly GoodRead more at location 1371
It is of course good that we should do good acts on earth for their own sake;Read more at location 1374
it is also good to become a naturally good person, one who does good acts spontaneously.Read more at location 1376
But on this earth we are subject to temptations to seek other less important goals;Read more at location 1380
Having this happiness is what being in Heaven would amount to. The saints would enjoy joining in cooperative worship of God, and would never be bored in acquiring knowledge of ever new facets of God’s infinite knowledge, and in helping others on earth (and perhaps elsewhere) to choose to be the kind of persons who would be happy in this kingdom of Heaven.Read more at location 1387
In Christian tradition the saints are pictured as providing this help by interceding with God on our behalf. As well as praying directly to God himself, many Christians pray to a saint (for example, to Mary, the Mother of Jesus) and ask her to pray to God on our behalf. Maybe the saints would assist in this divine work also in many other ways.Read more at location 1390
Those who enjoy Heaven will do naturally not merely what they believe to be good, but what is in fact good. Yet many people on earth who have sought to do good actions, and so formed strong inclinations to do what they believe to be good, may in some respects still be ignorant of which actions are good.Read more at location 1392
So those who have allowed themselves to become totally bad people will be a collection of unfulfilled desires, and that will inevitably be an unhappy state, which would constitute living in Hell.Read more at location 1407
God could, of course, give them new good desires, but that would involve imposing on them a character which they had persistently and knowingly chosen not to have.Read more at location 1409
Otherwise in creating humans God would be like a puppet master who ensures that in the end every human does what he (God) wants,Read more at location 1412
many people die young, when they have only partly but not fully formed their character;Read more at location 1415
How would a good God deal with such people? He could perhaps put them into another worldRead more at location 1417
Or perhaps he would give them or many of them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they would prefer to be firmly good rather than incorrigibly bad people.Read more at location 1418
Alternatively he might give them a good afterlife but one suitable for those ignorant of the possibility of moral sanctity and so not the life of Heaven as I have described it. There are thus various possible futures which a good God might give to those of unformedRead more at location 1422
The hope of Heaven and the risk of Hell would also provide us with encouragement to do good. Parents often offer rewards to children for doing good acts (both ones which they ought to do anyway and those which are supererogatory) and threaten to punish those who do what they ought not to do.Read more at location 1427
God might be expected not to make it too obvious at first that there is a Heaven and a Hell. One reason for that is in order that we may have some motivation to do the good for its own sake. Another reason is the reason mentioned in the last chapter, that we may have the opportunity to try to find out such truths for ourselves and to help others to do so. The Christian Doctrine of the AfterlifeRead more at location 1432
In its claim that God the Son will ‘judge the living and the dead’, and in its expectation of ‘the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come’, the Creed assumes the universal Christian view that (among those who are still living when this risky experiment of creating us comes to an end, and those who are then already dead) the good will be rewarded and the bad punished.Read more at location 1437
It is no part of the Creed that detailed descriptions of the ‘fires’ of Hell are to be understood in any literal sense; having all your desires to hurt others frustrated is quite enough to make life hellish.Read more at location 1440
Many of the great Christian thinkers, including both Augustine and Aquinas, allowed that non-Christians can attain Heaven; and this was recognized as official Roman Catholic doctrine by the second Vatican Council (1963–6).Read more at location 1443
Most Christians hold that although this ‘last judgement’ will finally settle the fate of all humans, many of those now already dead already enjoy Heaven or Hell. Some of the dead, however, may still be ‘on the way’;Read more at location 1445
Christians have always believed that baptized babies go straight to Heaven (and that would be in line with my suggestion that God might impose a good character on those who had not had the opportunity to form one). But Christians have had no clear doctrine about the fate of unbaptized babies.Read more at location 1447
I made the assumption that the reader has some reason to believe that there is a God of the traditional kind:Read more at location 1459
This reason might be provided by arguments of ‘natural theology’,Read more at location 1460
there are a priori reasons (reasons following from the very being of that God) for supposing that he has the nature (being a Trinity) which Christianity claims, and that he would act in history to do the things which Christianity claims that he has done.Read more at location 1463
I also argued that it was quite probable that he would live a perfect life and make that life available to us as a means of atonement for our sins.Read more at location 1467
in any case mere a priori reasoning cannot show when and where he would become incarnate;Read more at location 1474
So we need historical evidence that one and only one human prophet did and said and suffered things of the kindRead more at location 1477
It follows from my arguments in Part I that, if there is a God, there will appear on earth a human prophet who satisfies certain requirements. He will live a life in which there is much suffering, claim to be God Incarnate, and found a Church to tell humans about this.Read more at location 1479
shall be arguing in Part II that there is good evidence that Jesus was a prophet who satisfied all the above requirements and that he was the only prophet in human history to do so.Read more at location 1488
We need evidence of God’s ‘signature’ on the prophet’s work. I understand by a signature an effect which can be brought about readily only by one person (or by someone else acting with his permission), and one which is recognized as a mark of endorsement by that person in the culture in which it occurred.Read more at location 1491
One kind of effect which can be brought about by God alone is a violation of laws of nature.Read more at location 1496
We do not know for certain what the fundamental laws of nature are: scientists may yet discover more fundamental laws underlying those which they currently believe to be fundamental. But we surely know enough about them to know that such events as levitation (someone rising into the air while praying, contrary to gravity or any other known force), water suddenly turning into wine, someone walking on water, or someone rising from the dead are violations of natural laws.Read more at location 1515
If we had good reason to suppose that there is no God, we would be right not to believe several witnesses who claim to have seen someone walking on water; we should say that either they were lying or they were themselves deceived by some trick of the light or were the victims of some delusion.Read more at location 1519
One such reason for God to bring about a violation of laws of nature would be (since God alone could bring this about or permit it to occur) to provide his signature on the work and teaching of a prophet.Read more at location 1524
if the Resurrection of Jesus occurred in anything like the way described in the New Testament, it was God’s signature on the life and teaching of Jesus, and so God’s guarantee that the teaching of Jesus (and the interpretations put upon it by his Church) are true—when we also take into account the other evidence that I have described or will describe.Read more at location 1529
The other evidence that I will describe is the historical evidence about the life of Jesus and his teaching and that of his Church, and their uniqueness (to be described in Part II).Read more at location 1535
I shall argue (provisionally in Chapter 9 and finally in Chapter 12) that the historical evidence does show that the Resurrection occurred in the way described in the New Testament and so is God’s signature on Jesus and his Church.Read more at location 1537
