Word Gems: Afterlife: the apostle Paul

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Word Gems

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

the apostle Paul

changes his mind on what
happens when we die

Visions of heaven were not unknown to Paul. However, he intimated that an accurate description of the next world could not be contained in earthly language. This is a common lament from many reporters on the other side who declare that the beauty of their world defies an ability of language to convey.

On the “Bible” page, we found Paul changing his mind on a number of issues which he’d once considered to be “gospel”; for example, since he was a boy with his Torah studies, he believed in a “seventh trump” for which one needed to wait in the grave.

However, after being thrown to lions in Ephesus, a very close brush with death, it seems that Paul found himself rethinking the details of what it means to die. Well-respected biblical scholar Dr. F.F. Bruce analyses what happened to Paul, as recorded in First and Second Corinthians.

The outcome, for Paul, was a new view of death that speaks well in line with our modern “scientific evidence for the afterlife.”

The information in this article is very important – and this, on a number of levels. For example, it suggests to us that the Bible is not infallible as we find Paul changing his mind as he learns new information; a most reasonable way of thinking and living, and yet how few do this.

But, most relevant of all, I think, is that the open-minded Paul – the one who began to say things like “I don’t have a ‘chapter and verse’ on this but I think I’m correct because I have the spirit of God" – this non-doctrinaire Paul is led to reject ancient teachings in favor of what we today call the “scientific evidence for the afterlife.”

I’ve already written about these things elsewhere on the WG site, but they deserve to be highlighted here on the “Afterlife” page.

To avoid redundancy, I will refrain from reprinting earlier work. Instead, I must assign you some homework, the reading of earlier articles which will provide you the necessary background information.

(1) Dr. F.F. Bruce's analysis of Second Corinthians

(2) my own comments on Paul's experience

(3) Paul's use of the Greek word "arrabon," the "earnest" of the spirit