Eternal God, Eternal Life: Theological Investigations into the Concept of Immortality
Ebook
How ought Christian faith and theology understand the concept of human immortality today? And what, if anything, might be distinctively Christian about such a concept? The contributors to this volume explore how our thinking about the prospect of human immortality is decisively determined by what we receive of the limitless life of the triune God of the gospel, and how our understanding of immortality is made concrete by the Christian hope in 'the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting'.
Debates about how best to understand the eternal life of God are directly significant to how we can imagine the promise of eternal life. While immortality is generally conceived to be a future qualification of human reality, theological approaches to the question of personal immortality must investigate the difference that the hope and promise of such eternal life makes in the living of present-day spiritual life as well as in our common moral and political existence. To understand immortality as an eschatological gift of God requires that we take account of it as a formative factor at the foundations of the Christian life.
Advances Christian theological reflection on the matter of immortality and eternal life in critical conversation with both historic debates and contemporary developments in eschatological doctrine.
Explores fundamental quests surrounding the question of immortality in Christian faith and doctrine
Brings together contributions by leading theologians to advance our understanding of the relation of immortality to our thinking about God and the nature of Christian existence
Contributes to ongoing debates in Christian eschatology and contemporary doctrine more generally
Editor's Introduction
Philip G. Ziegler, University of Aberdeen, UK
Ch. 1: The Order and Movement of Eternity: Karl Barth on the Eternity of God and Creaturely Time Tom Greggs, University of Aberdeen, UK
Ch.2: 'You Are Good and Do Good': Some Remarks on Eternal Life and the Goodness of God Christopher J. Holmes, University of Otago, New Zealand
Ch.3: The Resonating Body in Triune Eternity
Markus Mühling, University of Lüneberg, Germany
Ch.4: Angels and Immortality
Don Wood, University of Aberdeen, UK
Ch.5: How New is New Creation? Resurrection and Creation Ex Nihilo
Susannah Ticciati, King's College London, UK
Ch.6: Toward A Doctrine of Resurrection
Katherine Sonderegger, Virginia Theological Seminary, USA
Ch.7: The Enmity of Death and Judgement Unto Life
Philip G. Ziegler, University of Aberdeen, UK
Ch.8: Eucharist and Immortality: Reformed Reflections on the Eschatological Dimension of the Sacrament
Paul Nimmo, University of Aberdeen, UK
Ch.9: 'The Incompleteness of the Completed': Eternal God, Eternal Life, and the Eternal Life
Russel Re Manning, Bath Spa University, UK
Ch.10: Technological Immortalization and Original Mortality: Karl Barth On the Celebration of Finitude
Robert Song, University of Durham, UK
Index
The contributions in this book ... offer robust reflections on a theme that has received little attention in recent years ... They represent a valuable and much-needed resource.
Theologians in recent times have avoided giving an account of immortality so thank goodness we now have this book. In these fine essays we learn to see why immortality must be Christologically disciplined if we are to avoid needless speculations. Hopefully this book will be widely read and studied.
Immortality is, properly speaking, a perfection of God alone. Yet immortality is also 'brought to life' for creatures through the gospel of God's saving action. What should theology say about the nature of God's own eternal life, and about eternal life as God's gift to creatures? What might it mean for human existence to be defined - here and now - by the Christian hope of fellowship with God beyond our present mortal bounds, and by the prospect of God's ultimate transformation of all things temporal and physical? These essays offer stimulating contributions to such questions. The work of highly perceptive thinkers, they provide an orderly set of studies on some of the essential ways in which eschatology must be shaped by the doctrine of God; the authors also demonstrate how the relationship between these areas of theology ought to be profoundly determinative of Christian ethics and mission.
- Title: Eternal God, Eternal Life: Theological Investigations into the Concept of Immortality
- Author: Philip G. Ziegler
- Publisher: T&T Clark
- Print Publication Date: 2016
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9780567666857, 9780567684516, 0567684512, 0567666859
- Resource ID: LLS:9780567666857
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-05-12T03:46:14Z