Death and Eternal Life

by John Harwood Hick

In this cross-cultural, interdisciplinary study, John Hick draws upon major world religions, as well as biology, psychology, parapsychology, anthropology, and philosophy, to explore the mystery of death. He argues that scientific and philosophical objections to the idea of survival after death can be challenged, and he claims that human inadequacy in facing suffering supports the basic religious argument for immortality.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Death, Theology

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hick is an honest, meticulous analyst of human thought on death and its aftermath. He’s a Christian who open-mindedly considers the observations of Hindus, ancient Greeks, humanists, body-mind scientists, parapsychologists, etc. Here are a few provocative quotes:

“… alone among the animals he knows that he is going to die … but—in an important sense—does not believe it!”

“We cannot assume … that it would violate the divine love to allow us at death to cease to exist; or to put the life of which we have been formed back into a lump, like the potter with his clay; or to have us survive only as insubstantial shades in sheol, as was believed by the ancient Hebrews …”

[Concerning studies of spirit mediums] “The spirits do not seem to speak out of the context of a continuing life; they seem to lack a credible environment of their own, a community of which they are a part, real next-world tasks, interests and purposes. They seem instead to be still very much what they were in this world.”

“It is not what man [sic] has come from but what he is going to that is important.”

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different forms of afterlife from major religions and how they all seem to point to the same general form of an afterlife and if you piece them together in a certain way they don't necessarily contradict each other.