Jesus and the Demise of Death

What happens after death to Jesus and to those who follow him? This book offers a constructive theology that seeks to answer that very question, carefully considering both Jesus’ descent into hell and eventual resurrection as integral parts of a robust vision of the Christian bodily resurrection. Taking on the claims of N T Wright and Richard B Hays, Matthew Levering draws strongly upon the work of Thomas Aquinas to propose a radical reconstruction of Christian eschatological theology — one that takes seriously the profound ways in which Christianity and its beatific vision have been enriched by Platonic thought and emphasises the role of the Church community in the passage from life to death. In so doing, Levering underscores the hope in eternal life for Jesus’ followers and gives readers firm and fruitful soil upon which to base conversations about the Christians future. “In an investigation that hides its great learning, Levering argues for a realist understanding of the biblical account of the resurrection of Jesus. Levering has all along being constituting himself a Catholic biblical theologian of rare talent; here, one can’t help thinking of Benedict XVI as a model.
It is impossible not to be struck by a similarity of style: ironic yet confident, definite but luminously and persuasively modest”.

Author Biography

Matthew Levering is Perry Family Foundation Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary. Jewish-Christian Dialogue and the Life of Wisdom; Christ and the Catholic Priesthood; Participatory Biblical Exegesis; and Biblical Natural Law . He lives Mundelein, Illinois.