Eternal God, Eternal Life: Theological Investigations into the Concept of Immortality

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.

Table of Contents:
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

About the Author :
Philip G. Ziegler is Professor of Theology at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Born and educated in Canada, he is a graduate of several of the constituent Colleges of the Toronto School of Theology. He has previously held posts at Princeton University, USA and the Atlantic School of Theology, Canada.

Review :
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.