Mohammad Baqir Majlisi on “Life After Death”: Foundations and Implications of His Viewpoint

Among considered solutions of the problem of evils, the theodicy of soul-making is the most important one. John Hick, the contemporary philosopher of religion, has offered this idea in his book Evil and The God of Love.
Owing to the fact that Muhammad Baqir Majlisi’s approach in exploring the problem of “life after death” is religious, it is expectable that his principles in this respect be also consistent with his approach and be based upon religious scriptures that either he has addressed directly or it can be deduced from his descriptions of life after death. These principles include theological, cosmological, anthropological, and epistemological ones, which can be labeled in twelve principles.These principles are concerning revealed knowledge, the essence of knowledge, the authority of apparent meaning (dhahir), delusiveness of space and its dependency on the emplaced, reality of both spirit and body, creation ex nihilo and temporality of universe, consideration of philosophical rules to be founded on delusion, similarity of states of being, centrality of the prophet and Imams in resurrection events, spirits’ death, and acceptance of ambiguity instead of Interpreting Islamic verses concerning details of resurrection events. In majlisi’s view, fundamentality of God and congruence of this world and the other one can be deduced from the doctrine of resurrection.