Moral Behavior and Eternal Destiny

The Practical Dimension of Hope

Abstract

The article looks at the relationship between moral behavior and eternal destiny, highlighting how hope in the definitive obtaining of eternal life might generate a transformative ethic of earthy existence. This above all shows the referral of moral behavior in the here-and-now of the present to the there-and-then of eternal destiny, applying the category of the fundamental option. The subsequent development analyzes man’s eternal destiny through re-visitation, in a theological-moral key, of the so-called “novissimi” (death, judgment, heaven, purgatory and hell). From the perspective of eternal destiny, a transformative eschatological conception of the present existence is envisaged which, in view of death as the entrance into eternal destiny, reaches out in the hope of eternal life, awaits it in faith and forms its anticipation in charity.