HKB
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Often appears with: justice as a virtue · will, choice, and freedom · the fear of death · resurrection from death · predestination · moral responsibility · merit and grace · immortality of the soul · gratitude and ingratitude · funeral rites and burial · augustine quotations · afterlife judgment
Usually: argument (1) · narrative (1) · confronting death (1) · detachment (1) · reverence (1)
“Him they told to look and listen, as he was to be their messenger to men from the world below.” Plato, The Republic · observation
Er, the soldier Armenius’s son, is resurrected after ten days to describe judgment: the just ascend by a heavenly way, the unjust descend, and punishments and rewards proceed in proportion to deeds.
and the evils which you attributed to the unfortunate just, do really fall in the end on the unjust, although, as you implied, their sufferings are better veiled in silence. But all the blessings of this present life are as nothing when compared with those which await good men after death. ‘I should like to hear about them.’ Come, then, and I will tell you the story of Er, the son of Armenius, a valiant man. He was …
He responds that punishments remain just and rewards remain gracious even if human choices are not “free”; he uses Augustine and Paul to argue God crowns his gifts, not human merits.
transition from what is voluntary to what is free; but we have before evinced, that a thing may be done voluntarily, which yet is not the subject of free choice. II. They add, that unless both virtues and vices proceed from the free choice of the will, it is not reasonable either that punishments should be inflicted, or that rewards should be conferred on man. This argument, though first advanced by Aristotle, yet I…