Death Eternal Life

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The course investigates three clusters of issues: (1) What happens to a person when she or he dies? What is death and dying physically, medically, personally, culturally, philosophically, and theologically? (2) Is there something that can be called “Eternal Life”? What do people believe about divine judgment, reincarnation, purgatory, hell, heaven, the resurrection of the dead, and the end of the world? (3) How should we live in order to die a holy death? How should our beliefs about death and the afterlife shape our living? The perspectives from which these three sets of questions are examined are those of world religions, with special attention to Christianity, more specifically, to the beliefs of the Catholic Church.