since you asked...
In the Nicene Creed, we pray, "We look for...the life of world to come." How much does the Church say we can know about that life?
Belief in "the life of the world to come" goes to the heart of what defines a Christian. The earliest creeds were summaries of the content of faith that a new Christian would accept before being baptized. These creeds, in turn, depended on belief in everlasting life and in those writings that finally became what we now call the New Testament. The letters of Paul, the four canonical gospels, the catholic epistles of James, Peter, John and Jude and finally that poetic writing called alternately, Revelation or Apocalypse, all pass on the oral traditions of the early followers of Jesus.
Future life was preached by John the Baptist and others who expected an end to the world as they knew it, and a transformation into something else. Many others at that time preached what is technically called eschatological thinking or, more simply put, the idea that God would dramatically intervene in the created world, deposing secular rulers who were unjust and oppressive. God would make right all that was wrong with the world as we know it and initiate a new order based on justice. God would reward the poor and all who suffered because of sinful humans who had turned from him.
This new order of things would happen because of Jesus and was called the Parousia in Greek. Although the main point of the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth focused on hypocrisy, specifically the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day, Jesus, too, taught that the world would become different if humans lived a life of love of God and neighbor.
The picture of eschatological life was first drawn with the brush of experienced human earthly life. By this I mean that Hebrew and then early Christian notions all shared the same understanding that life on this earth would change, would be transformed by God into a life of happiness based on worshiping the true God in truth by living this human life in peace and justice.
People were attracted to Jesus because of what he taught and how he lived. Then Jesus died. I suppose that none of us can fully grasp what the death of Jesus meant to those who left everything to follow Him. They saw Him arrested, tortured and executed by authority of godless human beings. Not only was he executed but crucified by means of a death reserved for the dregs of society, criminals who were seen as threats to civilized society.
What happened to the idea that Jesus would be the one to make the kingdom of God a reality in this world now that He no longer was alive?
The unexpected happened on Easter morning. The dead Jesus was experienced as alive. Yes, the resurrection of the dead was real.
At first His followers thought that Jesus would appear again on this earth and make this new earth conform to God's plan for happiness for us humans. But Jesus did not appear and His followers began to understand that Jesus came, in the words of John, to give life in abundance. The life He gave was different from the life that was expected. The kingdom of God was seen as within believers, in the words of Luke.
Early on, Paul advised Christians not to dwell on what kind of bodies nor on what kind of world would exist for believers. Slowly the idea of an imminent end of the world faded and Christians came to accept that life in the world to come was unknowable yet proven by the belief that Jesus rose from the dead. This resurrection was to be shared by all who confessed him as Lord.
From these early understandings of the nature of the life of the world to come bloomed a development of doctrine that tried to bridge the gap between disappointment in not seeing Jesus as a type of Savior who would immediately change life in this world and in the belief in His conquering death. The new world to come began to be understood as a more spiritual world rather than this material world. But still Jesus would appear again in this world.
Over the ensuing centuries two notions appeared to answer questions about what happens after we die: The idea that when a believer died he would face his Maker immediately and be judged and that sometime in the future this material world would, in fact, end and a general judgment of all humans who ever lived would occur.
Of all God's creatures it appears that only humans are curious about the future. While this curiosity is normal, we might be best served by heeding John's advice. "Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." (1Jn 3:2)
Fr. Jonathan A. Woodhall, Ph.D., is a retired priest of the diocese, involved in RCIA education and Spanish Ministry at Sacred Heart Cathedral, Raleigh.