religious beliefs
Jewish
Jewish sacred texts and literature have little to say about what happens after death. Judaism is much more focused on actions than beliefs. Many of today’s Jews if asked what happens after death, will respond that the Jewish tradition doesn’t say or doesn’t care, that Jews believe life is for the living and that Judaism focuses on what people can and should do in this world.
Their purpose is to fulfill their duties to God and fellow man. Succeeding at this brings reward, failing at it brings punishment. It’s not as important whether rewards and punishments continue after death or whether anything at all happens after death. However, Jewish historical writings do emphasize three ideas: the immortality of the soul, the World to Come, and the resurrection of the dead. However, exactly what these things are and how they relate to each other has always been vague.
Christian
Roughly three-quarters of Americans identify themselves as Christian. There is not one consistent understanding of the afterlife taught by all Christian denominations. The popular view is that we have a mortal physical body and an immortal soul. When our physical body dies our soul is judged and, if found good, goes to heaven and, if bad, goes to hell. In recent years there has been increasing emphasis on the more Biblical based notion of resurrection
Early Christian Teachings and Catholicism
From the outset basic Christian teachings held that when a person dies and his body begins to decompose, his soul leaves the body and is immediately evaluated in what’s called a particular judgment. The very few whose love for God has been perfected in this life will have their bodies glorified and will immediately be taken to their eternal reward in heaven. Those who have committed a mortal sin that hasn’t been forgiven, or have rejected God, will immediately be sent to hell where they will be tortured forever with no hope of relief or mercy.
Early church fathers also identified a third possibility, an intermediate state after death, known as purgatory. Those people who die in a state of grace, but whose love of God is imperfect, will upon the particular judgment immediately go there. In purgatory they will suffer systematic torture by fire for a time while they cleanse themselves of accumulated imperfections, venial sins, and other faults. Mortal sins that have been forgiven may still require some temporal punishment that must be discharged. Once the dead have become sufficiently purified they can then enter heaven.
In addition to the particular judgment occurring upon a person’s death the church also taught that there will be a general or final judgment which Christ will conduct when he returns to earth in the second coming. Those who had been sent to heaven in the particular judgment, or have earned their way out of purgatory since, will continue to spend eternity there. Those who were sent to hell will also remain there forever. Those in purgatory at the second coming will immediately be released and sent to heaven. Their bodies will be reconstituted in a bodily resurrection involving a reunification with their souls.
Everyone alive at the second coming will be judged with the same criteria as followed at the particular judgment. Those who have rejected God and who have committed mortal sins that haven’t been forgiven will be condemned to hell forever. Others will go to heaven or purgatory depending on the perfection of their love for God. [Purgatory, Religious Tolerance.com, Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, http://www.religioustolerance.org/purgatory.htm]
The Bible speaks in a number of places about the possibility of being saved and going to heaven rather than facing the fate of the vast majority of people who, upon their death, will go either to hell or purgatory. However, just how this salvation occurs is not entirely clear. The synoptic gospels emphasize the importance for salvation of good works, whereas the Gospel of John emphasizes the acceptance that Jesus is the son of God. Paul preached that to be saved one must believe in Jesus’ resurrection. Some Biblical passages suggest the necessity of baptism and the importance of following certain rituals.
What to make of the notion of resurrected bodies poses a problem for many contemporary people. According to Paul the resurrected body of believers will be like the resurrected body of Jesus. The body that Jesus was raised to was not simply his resuscitated corpse brought back to life, but an astounding immortal spiritual body intimately tied to the body that died and was buried, but a transformed body that could not experience pain, misery, or death.
We are likely to have difficulty understanding how there can be such a thing as a spiritual body that is still an actual body. We think of spirit and body as being two opposite things, with the spirit being invisible and nonmaterial and the body being visible and material. Most ancient people didn’t see spirit and body in this way. They believed that the spirit that we have within us is also made of material stuff that it is too highly refined to be seen with the eyes. Paul thought that the spiritual body is not made up of the heavy material stuff that now makes up our bodies, but a highly refined spiritual stuff that is superior in every way and will not die.
The authors of the gospels Luke and John, written years after than Paul’s letters, placed a greater emphasis on the bodily nature of the resurrected Jesus. Luke tells of an incident when He appeared before His disciples who thought He was a spirit and were afraid. Jesus asked them to feel of His body, and when they still had trouble believing it was really him, asked for a piece of fish and ate it before their eyes. John tells of another incident involving the disciple Thomas who wasn’t with the other disciples when Jesus appeared before them. He said he wouldn’t believe it unless Jesus appeared before him, and he could feel the wounds in His hands and side. Jesus complied, and told him to do that. Thomas did and instantly believed. Luke and John were apparently attempting to counter the argument by some that Jesus was raised in spirit only. Over the years, it was their belief that came to dominate Christian thinking. Jesus was a real person with a real physical body that suffered on the cross and died, and He maintained the same body with real characteristics when He returned to appear before the disciples. We too, if we believe in Jesus and the salvation He offers, will receive such a resurrected body when He returns at the Second Coming.
The Bible doesn’t say much about what happens between the moment we die and the moment we receive resurrected bodies at the Second Coming, if we are righteous enough to do so. However, there are statements suggesting that when we die we enter an intermediate state that is conscious, but, compared to being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep. Protestantism holds that at Jesus’s second coming on the last day all the dead will be resurrected, that is, their souls will then be reunited with the same bodies they had before dying. Christ will then publicly judge all people by the testimony of their faith, evidenced by the good works of the righteous, and their unbelief, evidenced by the evil works of the wicked. His final judgment will be a gracious gift of life everlasting to the righteous or a just damnation to everlasting punishment for the wicked. [Christian Beliefs about the Afterlife http://www.religionfacts.com/christianity/beliefs/afterlife.htm]
Mormon
According to Mormon belief immediately after death the righteous faithful are assigned to one of three kingdoms of heaven where spiritual growth continues. Unbelievers and sinners go to a spirit prison where they will be miserable, but do have an opportunity to repent, accept the gospel, and move to the lowest level of heaven. All people who have died, no matter when, have an opportunity to accept the gospel through proxy baptism. This is an ordinance performed at a Mormon temple wherein a church member, at least 12 years old, receives the name of a person to be baptized and undergoes the ritual of baptism on that person’s behalf. The deceased then has the opportunity to accept or reject the baptism.