Seyyed Hossein Nasr - What is God's Judgment?

hussain in islamic philosophy how do we look at both judgment and eternal life let's start with judgment what happens first of all we have to have a posthumous existence in order to be judged so the two go together uh let me stop the judgment first of all in this world by virtue of we being free beings that is therefore responsible morally for our actions because we're not determined no matter what behavior is or ancient materialist or anybody else says we are really free beings free agents and we have an immediate intuition of this freedom therefore we are responsible for how we act and judgment by god in islamic thought involves first of all a life in this world god judges what we do and this islam shares with judaism and christianity and especially the jewish tradition he's very strong in bringing out the majesty of the divine reality and what it means really to be judged by god in a remarkably majestic way however according to islam again like other all religions of the world which have spoken about eschatology some religions like confucianism has not said very much about it but all those religions that have including the abrahamic religions man has a posthumous reality that is man's soul does not die with physical death and what the soul means its layers and levels and its relation to the higher soul and the spirit i will not get into that now but what defines us as us survives our physical existence in this world and what we take with us into the other world is the fruit of our actions because our actions affect how we exist the mode of our existence and is that which we take with us and eschatologically we're judged by god on what we call a day of judgment which again is very similar but in all the three monotheistic religions judaism developed this doctrine later in the talmud is done in the torah but it's natalmud and christianity and islam goes back to their sacred scripture we are judged by god according to how we made use of that free will and on the basis of both the teachings he had given us through our religion and our capabilities but the question of judgment by god is always combined with the aspect of mercy the possibility of forgiveness by god we cannot predetermine god's judgment there are self-righteous people in our religions who try to do that but that is really an insult to god i cannot say now you will go to hell us god forbid you'll go to heaven that is really an insult to god and the quran is very very strong on that although like the old testament it oftentimes uh emphasizes the as i said the tremendous in the original latin cell tremendous reality that we face after death under on what the pains of what we call hell and the infernal states it also always speaks about the divine mercy what is the nature of hell in the islamic tradition our imaginations do not have the capability of directly imagining other worlds intellectually we can gain access let's say to mathematical intelligibility but our imagination is not strong enough so all religions when they speak about the other world speak in a symbolic language and uh symbolically hell in islam is not that different from what you find in judaism and christianity first of all the torment of fire hell is always identified with fire the very word hell in english in greek means light it's the negative aspect of light hell uh like in german also and uh the word hellenic and hellenistic means that coming from the land of light in arabic also is very interesting the word for light is nor the word for fire is nar and ar and you are again showing their uh rel interrelatedness so the idea of the pain of fire fire turns into senders at the same time it transforms strength it transmutes us and alchemy plays such an important role uh which is also another symbolic we have speaking about transformation of the soul and other forms of torment but the highest pain which islam emphasizes like dante did in the divine comedy is separation from god hell is separation from god because in this world we do not see the beauty of god so we don't care whether we're separate or not but how horrible it is to see what we already separated from is there a possibility in islamic philosophy in post-mortem to make progress or is death a final judgment or can there be improvement at whatever state you happen to be in at that time i have to make a little comment on this to make this question clearer for those in who understand the various noise forms of islamic thought for kalam or islamic theology uh these states of transformation which would really correspond to purgatory do not play a role in some school they're not mentioned at all and some there are but in later islamic philosophy they play a very important role that is we have a journey after death as we had in this life it's not that black and white uh in fact there's the possibility of transformation after death yes so those are two very different ways to approach it because one doesn't feel very good about however some sins people may do if it's a finite number of years of sinning 50 or 60 or 70 years but to be punished forever for that doesn't strike us normally as as uh too happy in islamic thought the great philosophers and mystics who even came out and said daringly that the fires of hell are not eternal for which a lot of ordinary people castigate at them and of course they say what we're talking about they understood that this stark opposition contrast which you see in the abrahamic world between heaven and hell are very powerful way of guiding us morally in this life they're not meant to be metaphysical and philosophical explanations of the posthumous states so in christianity there are illusions here and there illusions here and there in islam there's a full development of flowering which is very similar to the tibetan book of the dead or hindu doctrines of the afterlife you know the asian religions have developed very very extensively these ideas their athletic islamic philosophy which are very similar to them but the gist of it is that our development you might say in the deepest sense of the term does not stop with death something stops by the soul continues to development to become

Channel: Closer To Truth

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Keywords: closer to truth, robert lawrence kuhn, Seyyed Nasr, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, day of judgment islam, day of judgment, God's Judgment, hossein nasr, life after death, islam after life, islamic philosophy, islam hell, philosophy of religion islam, seyyed hossein nasr philosophy, islam afterlife

Id: nO1w2WAeL9w

Length: 7min 43sec (463 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021