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Jerry L Walls, After We Die: Theology, Philosophy, and the Question of Life after Death. By Stephen T. Davis, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 68, Issue 2, October 2017, Pages 868–870, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flx166
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Extract
The title of this book evokes one of the most fascinating of all ultimate questions, which author Stephen T. Davis characterizes as those questions ‘that human beings keep asking and deeply want to answer’ and ‘that cannot be answered by the scientific method’. While the scientific method is not equipped to tell us whether anything will happen to us ‘after we die’, let alone what it might be, religion and philosophy have answered these questions with claims that have given hope and meaning to countless millions of persons for millennia. Indeed, Christianity is marked by a particularly rich theology of the life to come, and this has been a vital part of Christian faith from its earliest days.
Of course, Christianity is not the only religion or philosophy that contends for life after death, and one of the strengths of this book is that it discusses some of these other options. The second chapter provides a comparison between karma and grace, and Davis points out that both views share some important ground that should be recognized as well a number of obvious differences. Both agree that there is objective right and wrong, that morality is at the heart of reality, and that our deepest problems are spiritual in nature. The solution to our spiritual problem provided by karma is profoundly different, however, from that which is provided by grace. Davis notes the objections faced by each view, and argues that there are satisfactory answers to the difficulties raised against grace, but that there are no similarly satisfactory answers to the problems faced by karma. While he does not think he has shown karma to be impossible or incoherent, he does think it is clear the theory is beset by serious difficulties.
