(DOWNLOAD) "Interfaith Dialogue and Salvation: Is There One Heaven in Our Future?(Report)" by Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Interfaith Dialogue and Salvation: Is There One Heaven in Our Future?(Report)
- Author : Forum on Public Policy: A Journal of the Oxford Round Table
- Release Date : January 22, 2008
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 278 KB
Description
Much of Interfaith Dialogue between Jews, Christians and Muslims rightly concerns those things they have in common. They do all claim to profess belief in the same one God. They all believe that this one God created all things, including human beings in His own likeness, and that there will be a Last Judgment for which all peoples will be held accountable for their beliefs and actions. The scope of this paper is to study how all three great Abrahamic religions understand salvation or life after death, the concept of heaven or paradise with the alternative concept of hell. While it seems commendable, even civilized, for modern educated people to think that a belief in the same God should result in the belief that all peoples who believe in that God would find themselves in the same heaven, this has not been our history, nor is it the teaching of many believers in the God of Abraham today. While this should not be a cause for despair, it must be remembered that for Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the concept of who can be saved and thus in heaven is a limiting and nuanced question. Not all Jews even believe that there is life after death and, for those who do, whether non-Jews are in paradise is often not part of the question. Christianity has struggled with the classic question, "Is there salvation outside the Church?", the famous dictum of Boniface VIII, taken from Cyprian of Carthage, "Extra ecclesiam nulla salus". (1) How non-Christians can be saved is a topic of great contemporary interest, for which there are various theological understandings. While Islam speaks with some respect for the "Peoples of the Book", how believers have been and are described in their writings would seem to leave Jews and Christians out of paradise. Our study will be to peruse both the history and the texts of these three religions in search of a clearer understanding of the question of salvation.