6. Life after Death: Kvanvig, Phillips and Sutherland
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 18-06-17 14:14
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- 6. Life after Death: Kvanvig, Phillips and Sutherland
- Kvanvig
- American philosopher rejects the 'punishment model of hell' saying that what motivated existence of heaven must also motivate Hell
- Heaven flows from God's love
- The desire to preserve our existence as an unmerited gift open to anyone
- In this case, Hell must also flow from God's love - and not from his desire for Justice
- · “The most straightforward way to give unified account of heaven and hell is to portray each as flowing from one and the same divine motivational structure. Whereas the punishment model of hell has difficulty doing so, the choice model can do so easily. If hell is constructed to honour the choices that a free individual might make, it is not hard to see how a fundamentally loving God could so construct it. For in truly loving another, we often must risk losing the other, and a part of loving completely requires leaving open the possibility that such love remains unrequited forever.’
- God’s
goodness means that He is committed to preserving our freewill. However, since
we are ultimately dependent on God we have two choices:
- Believe in God
- Reject God
- Do
you think that Kvanvig’s alternative suggestion works better than the other
alternatives?
- Removes idea of ‘blemish on God’s creation’ as there is no punishment
- Preserves concept of omnibenevolence
- Removes element of justice core to other beliefs such as BV and purgatory
- Phillips and Sutherland
- D. Z. Phillips
- Eternal life is not ‘more life’ but refers to quality of existence
- When the Rich Young Man asks Jesus how he can achieve eternal life, Jesus’ reply is about how you live your life on a practical level
- The wicked don’t ‘get away with it’ without some eternal punishment since they wasted their life on trivial things.
- Stewart Sutherland
- Points out that concepts of ‘eternal life’ don’t make sense – to speak of ‘life’ implies possibility of ‘death’ or not existing
- Eternal life is not corpses resurrecting but living in such a way that nothing can trivialise what we do meaningless if we live by the virtues of goodness, justice and the truth
- Think about Franz Jaggerstratter and the others
- Positives
- More believable than concepts of heaven
- Encourages to live a fulfilling life
- Sense of reward in being remembered for quality of existence
- Negatives
- People still suffer terrible hardships such as Franz Jaggerstatter
- A lack of a tangible reward
- Could lead to some having wrong motives for doing good, e.g. donating to charity in order to look good (Natural Law?)
- D. Z. Phillips
- Kvanvig
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