Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, And The Mission Of The Church

Plato’s (427-347 BCE) theories about death, the soul, and the afterlife have had a profound influence on Western thought and form an important philosophical background to Wright’s book. Plato’s views are expounded in his dialog Phaedo, in which his teacher Socrates is presented as arguing that death is “nothing other than the separation of the soul from the body” (Phaedo, 64c). For Plato, the soul is the spiritual part of a human being, and it is superior to the body, with which it exists in an uncomfortable relationship. The philosopher seeks wisdom as embodied in the ideal spiritual world of the Forms (a transcendent world to our own), but the body makes this search difficult with its desire for physical pleasures and its tendency toward sickness and other inconveniences. The body is, therefore, an obstacle to the soul. It follows that death should be welcomed as a fortunate event. It means that the soul (or at least the soul of the philosopher) can now fly away to a purely spiritual existence of contemplation and beatitude.

The quality of each soul’s afterlife will depend on the kind of life it leads. Thus, Plato’s view of the afterlife, as in various world religions, includes an element of reward and punishment.