A Catholic Reading Guide to Conditional Immortality

The Third Alternative to Hell and Universalism

Wild

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498297288
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Like many other people, the long tradition about hell has been a source of serious confusion and distress for me. Over the past six years or so I was relieved to discover two other alternatives that are also part of the Christian tradition, though less prominent--universalism and the subject of the present book, conditional immortality. Universalism--that everyone would eventually be saved--did not, in the final analysis, seem to really come to grips with the overwhelming scriptural testimony that some kind of radical fateful decision is possible to people. Conditional immortality--that people who absolutely refuse God's plan for them will be taken out of existence--seems to me the best scriptural understanding of what the Lord meant by "losing one's soul"--not everlasting punishment but the withdrawal of existence. This book is an attempt to explain this theological theory. It is not presented as a definite dogma or teaching of the church, but as one of the possible results of a persistent and irrevocable decision against God.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Permissions
• Chapter 1: Introduction and Definitions
• Chapter 2: Scripture
• Chapter 3: Tradition, Ancient and Modern
• Chapter 4: Philosophy 1
• Chapter 5: Philosophy 2
• Chapter 6: Hell Recycled
• Chapter 7: Catholic Teaching
• Afterword
• Bibliography