Persons and Life after Death

205 Pages·1978·19.82 MB·English

by  Hywel D. Lewis (auth.)

PERSONS AND LIFE AFTER DEATH
LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
General Editor: John Hick, H. G. Wood Professor of Theology
University of Birmingham
This new series of books will explore contemporary religious understandings
of man and the universe. The books will be contributions to various aspects
of the continuing dialogues between religion and philosophy, between
scepticism and faith, and between the different religions and ideologies. The
authors will represent a correspondingly wide range of viewpoints. Some of
the books in the series will be written for the general educated public and
others for a more specialised philosophical or theological readership.
Already published
William H. Austin THE RELEVANCE OF NATURAL
SCIENCE TO THEOLOGY
Paul Badham CHRISTIAN BELIEFS ABOUT LIFE
AFTER DEATH
Ramchandra Gandhi THE AVAILABILITY OF RELIGIOUS
IDEAS
Hugo A. Meynell AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
PHILOSOPHY OF BERNARD LONERGAN
Dennis Nineham THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE BIBLE
Bernard M.G. Reardon HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
John]. Shepherd EXPERIENCE, INFERENCE AND GOD
Robert Young FREEDOM, RESPONSIBILITY AND
GOD
Patrick Sherry RELIGION, TRUTH AND LANGUAGE-
GAMES
J. C. A. Gaskin HOME'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Further titles in preparation
PERSONS AND LIFE
AFTER DEATH
H ywel D. Lewis
Essays by Hywel D. Lewis
and some of his critics
Selection and his own material © Hywel D. Lewis 1978
For other copyright holders see pages l, 17, 35, 49, 75, 110, 148
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1978
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission of the copyright holders
First published 1978 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi
Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos
Melbourne New Tork Singapore Tokyo
8765432
02 01 00 99 98 97 96
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lewis, Hywel David
Persons and life after death - (Library of
philosophy and religion.)
1. Future life - Addresses, essays, lectures
I. Title II. Series
129'.08 BL535
ISBN 978-1-349-03676-9 ISBN 978-1-349-03674-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03674-5
Contents
Preface vii
Realism and Metaphysics
2 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 17
3 Religion and the Paranormal 35
4 Life After Death. A Discussion 49
Anthot!Y Quinton, Hywel D. Lewis, Bernard Williams
5 Survival 75
I Hywel D. Lewis
II Antol(v Flew
6 Immortality and Dualism 110
I s_ydney Shoemaker
II Hywel D. Lewis
7 The Belief in Life After Death 148
8 The Person of Christ 161
Index of Names 189
Index of Subjects 191
Preface
This book contains papers which I gave on various occasions on
themes related to my earlier book, also in a Macmillan series,
The Self and Immortality. It can be regarded as a sequel to that
book and The Elusive Mind. Some of the papers were prepared
for talks and symposia in which I was asked to participate, and
it would have been pointless to include them without the con-
tributions of the other speakers. I therefore sought and obtained
the consent of the authors concerned, and the appropriate
editors and publishers, to include their papers along with my
own. I am grateful for this kindness. The presentation of some
sharply contrasted views will, I hope, be appreciated by those
who read this book.
The first paper was prepared for the meeting of the Inter-
national Society for Metaphysics at Varna, Bulgaria, in 1973
and subsequently published in Idealistic Studies, Vol. 4, No.3, in
September 1974. The theme ofthic; is extended in my contribu-
tion to the Oxford International Symposium organised by the
late Professor Gilbert Ryle with the assistance of Dr P. W. Kent
and published in the volume of the proceedings edited by
Professor Ryle under the title Contemporary Aspects rif Philosophy,
Oriel Press. There follows my own contribution to the volume
Philosophy and Psychical Research, edited by Professor Shivesh
C. Thakur and published by Allen and Unwin in 1976. We then
have the discussion between Professor Bernard Williams and
myself, with Mr Anthony Quinton in the Chair, on B.B.C.
Radio 3 soon after the publication of The Self and Immortality.
Part of this was published in The Listener on 9 August 1975. We
have then two symposia, one on the subject of 'Survival', con-
Vlll Persons and Life After Death
ducted by Professor Antony Flew and myself at the Joint
Session of the Mind Association and the Aristotelian Society at
Canterbury in 1975 and published in the Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XLIX, the other a dis-
cussion of'Immortality and Dualism' between Professor Sydney
Shoemaker and myself at the Conference on Reason and
Religion arranged at Lancaster by the Royal Institute of
Philosophy and included in the volume of conference papers
edited by Mr Stuart Brown and published, under the title
Reason and Religion, by the Cornell University Press in 1977.
This leads to my Drew Memorial Lecture on Immortality, 'the
Belief in Life after Death', delivered in London in 1973 and
published in the volume of essays in honour of Professor Peter
Bertocci edited by Professors John Howie and Thomas 0.
Buford with the title Contemporary Studies in Philosophical Idealism,
Claud Stark and Co. 1975. I am deeply grateful to all con-
cerned for their help and the permission to include these papers
in the present volume.
The concluding essay is an amplification of an address given
in Welsh at the General Assembly Meeting of the Presbyterian
Church of Wales in 1972 and originally printed in Welsh in
r Traethodydd, September 1976. It was intended for a more
general audience than the other papers and the mode of pre-
sentation is inevitably a little different. But I was anxious to
include the address in this volume for various reasons. At the
close of the Drew Lecture I indicate that the main positive
reasons for our expectation of a future life must be religious
ones, and the distinctively Christian hope of life after death is
bound up essentially with the central theme of the Christian
faith about the role of Jesus as the medium of the ultimate
sanctified relationship we may all expect to have with God. If
there is substance in this claim, which seems to me central to the
New Testament and the main course of Christian experience,
it would be odd, to say the least, to suppose that the fellowship
established by this peculiar outpouring of a 'love so amazing, so
divine' could be thought to be anything other than abiding. The
view has been advanced by some leading theologians and
Clmrchmen today that eternal life consists wholly of some
quality of our present existence or of some place we may have
in God's memory of us. The attractiveness of the latter view, to
Preface IX
balanced and reflective leaders of religion, seems to me to be
one of the most extraordinary indications of the poverty of
religious sensitivity and understanding today. An Unmoved
Mover may find satisfaction in contemplation of his own per-
fection. Will this, or the enrichment of his own memories, meet
the case of the God whom we meet in Jesus 'in the form of a
servant' 'obedient unto death'? We may not all understand 'the
price that was paid' in the same way, but it is hard to think of it,
in any proper Christian context, as anything other than a price
that was paid 'for me', and we need not sentimentalise that to
make it significant.
The reluctance of many of our contemporaries to recognise
this comes about, I suspect, from an excessive eagerness to con,-
cede the claims of fashionable views today about the essentially
corporeal nature of persons. Yet, oddly, the theologians who
take this course continue, so it seems at least, to think of God as
an essentially spiritual being.
A further consideration that weighed with me was the necessity
for those who do have some form of religious commitment not to
keep it in some isolated compartment of their thought. Precious
it may be, but, if it is worth adhering to, it must be capable of
appropriate presentation in the context of our other thoughts;
and as the traditional Christian claims about 'the Person of
Jesus' present accentuated difficulty for those, like myself, who
stress the finality of the distinctiveness of persons, it seemed
proper to present, at least in outline, the way I myself approach
these questions and view the distinctively Christian claims
which seem indispensable for any peculiarly Christian hope of
eternal life.
The proofs of this book were read for me by my friend
Dr Julius Lipner of the University of Cambridge, and the index
was made by my gifted former student at King's College,
London, Mr Timothy Bond. I am deeply grateful to them both.
June 1977 HYWEL D. LEWIS
1 Realism and Metaphysics
Not so long ago I attended a conference of philosophers and
politicians. I was introduced to one rather opinionated politician
as one of the philosophers. He promptly asked me, 'What sort of
philosopher?' I turned the edge of this by replying rather tartly
in turn, 'Quite a good one, it is generally thought'. This may
seem a little naughty, but there are some uses for prevarication,
and few of us care to attach a too explicit label to ourselves. When
we do so we often find ourselves keeping the wrong company.
There are still some isms around, but we have weeded out most
of them from our syllabuses. There is more important and re-
warding work to do than fighting pitched philosophical battles
between closely regimented troops.
It is for this reason that I am not too happy about the title of
this paper. There is as much to be said for describing me as an
idealist as there is for placing me among the friends of realism. I
did indeed agree to be one of the editorial advisers for an excellent
new journal called Idealistic Studies, and I did not need a great
deal of persuasion. It is most regrettable, in my opinion, that the
great idealist movement of the late nineteenth century suffered
so complete an eclipse in the middle of this century. It had in-
sights we can ill afford to neglect, and many of them have slowly
forced their way back in much less satisfactory forms in a
peculiarly embarrassing meeting of extremes. The considerable
renewal of interest in Hegel, after a period of almost con-
temptuous disregard, is a sign of a welcome new appreciation of
idealist philosophy, and Bradley was never battered out of his
place by hasty iconoclasm. It was never a disgrace to admit to
learning something from him. His logic, as well as his more
© Idealistic Studies 1974