Concepts of Beliefs in 3 Faith Communities

Attempting to deal with all Christians as a single faith community is at the least difficult and in some ways not possible: after almost two millennia of social evolution, the beliefs and practices of the various Christian denominations have become quite diverse. However, if one limits discourse to conservative Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox communities, and ôHigh Churchö Protestants, one finds that these ôcatholicö Christians are in substantial agreement over most of the traditional doctrines about death, sin, judgment, and Heaven and Hell.

Much the same is true for Hinduism, which has evolved much longer than Christianity, has become much more diversified, and has never had a central authority that attempted to outlaw any sort of beliefs or practices as being ôheretical.ö Nevertheless, there appears to be a central philosophy about the concepts of karma and reincarnation that dates back to the earliest Hindu sacred scriptures, and which serves as a common ground among many of the most important Hindu sects (Fisher, 1994, pp. 69-70).

The situation is much more ambiguous for Na

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em, e.g., in the Myth of Er at the end of The Republic). Christian preaching had to be recast in terms of immortality of the soul as Christianity spread out into the Greco-Roman world during the second century A.D., since physical resurrection sounded like a punishment to the dualistic Greeks, many of whom considered the soul to be trapped in the body in this lifetime (that is, the classical Greeks had a concept rather similar to that of the Hindu samsara). As an explanation for the eternal life promised to the Christian faithful, either physical resurrection or immortality of the soul would be adequate--but both are not needed. Most Christians seem to believe that an individual soul is judged immediately after death and sent off to Heaven or Hell (or perhaps Purgatory). However, at the end of time, when the Last Judgment of all humans by the Messiah will take place, all people will be called back to undergo physical resurrection, and will then be sent to their final destinations in Heaven or Hell, or perhaps the Earth will become a colony of Heaven, a New Jerusalem. In fairness, one should emphasize that contemporary ôcatholicö Christians focus more on the concept that the faithful departed and the living faithful continue
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