Saint Sophrony, from Essex, said that the greatest sin these days is that people have sunk into despair and no longer believe in the resurrection. In the pre-Christian era, and later in the world outside Christianity, there was widespread belief in the immortality of the soul. But even this belief has been abandoned in our own times. Typically, those academics who deal with the human soul don’t treat it as an ontological feature of the person, but rather as a biological function. People today live and die without any particular prospect beyond their biological existence and biographical activities. Within this context, it’s not difficult to understand their widespread pessimism, however much they try to cast it off or make light ...
