“There is a radical difference between the Christian expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul.. . . Although Christianity later established a link between these two beliefs, and today the average Christian confuses them completely, I see no reason to hide what I and the majority of scholars consider to be the truth.. . . The life and thought of the New Testament are entirely dominated by faith in the resurrection.. . . The whole man, who is really dead, is brought back to life by a new creative act of God.”

In the book Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?

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Oscar Cullmann7

French theologian 1902–1999

Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999) French theologian

Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?, p. 59

“The anxiety about death is met in two ways. The reality of death is excluded from daily life to the highest possible degree. The dead are not allowed to show that they are dead; they are transformed into a mask of the living. The other and more important way of dealing with death is the belief in a continuation of life after death, called the immortality of the soul. This is not a Christian and hardly a Platonic doctrine. Christianity speaks of resurrection and eternal life, Platonism of a participation of the soul in the transtemporal sphere of essences. But the modern idea of immortality means a continuous participation in the productive process.”

Paul Tillich book The Courage to Be

Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 110

“As commonly practised, philosophy is the attempt to find good reasons for conventional beliefs. In Kant's time the creed of conventional people was Christian, now it is humanist. Nor are these two faiths so different from one another.Over the past 200 years, philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error — the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: At the Masked Ball (p. 37)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

“If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable.”

John Shelby Spong (1931) American bishop

Source: Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994), p. 238

“Our savior will resurrect us,” said Peggy, “but I haven’t noticed that Christians end up any less dead at the end of life than heathens.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Alvin Journeyman (1995), Chapter 14.

“The problem with Christian belief--I mean real Christian belief, the belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell--is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

“In the New Testament sense, to be a Christian is, in an upward sense, as different from being a man as, in a downward sense, to be a man is different from being a beast. A Christian in the sense of the New Testament, although he stands suffering in the midst of life’s reality, has yet become completely a stranger to this life; in the words of the Scripture and also of the Collects (which still are read-O bloody satire!-by the sort of priests we now have, and in the ears of the sort of Christians that now live) he is a stranger and a pilgrim-just think, for example of the late Bishop Mynster intoning, “We are strangers and pilgrims in this world”! A Christian in the New Testament sense is literally a stranger and a pilgrim, he feels himself a stranger, and everyone involuntarily feels that this man is a stranger to him.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Attack Upon Christianity, The Instant, No. 7, Søren Kierkegaard, 1854-1855, Walter Lowrie 1944, 1968
1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855)

“Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 28, Part 5 (Footnote 2)

“The defendant in this case has attacked certain beliefs, thought by the Christian world to be sacred. Yet, after all, nothing is sacred but the truth, and by truth I mean what a man sincerely and honestly believes.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

“This belief had survived in early Christianity, although with other symbols.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

LSD : My Problem Child (1980)
Context: The cultural-historical meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries, their influence on European intellectual history, can scarcely be overestimated. Here suffering humankind found a cure for its rational, objective, cleft intellect, in a mystical totality experience, that let it believe in immortality, in an everlasting existence.
This belief had survived in early Christianity, although with other symbols. It is found as a promise, even in particular passages of the Gospels, most clearly in the Gospel according to John, as in Chapter 14:16-20. Jesus speaks to his disciples, as he takes leave of them:

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