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A Biblical Theology of Resurrection Hope from Genesis to Revelation Death is a powerful and sobering reality. While everyone must face death, it is not the end for those united with Christ. Followers of Jesus Christ have resurrection hope—the proclamation that Christ has defeated death and the promise that believers shall share in his victory. The resurrection is essential to the Christian faith and is rooted in the faithfulness of God. With scholarly insight, Mitchell L. Chase traces the theme of resurrection hope throughout Scripture, walking through each section of Scripture from the Law to Revelation. Having a proper understanding of death and resurrection will not only stir up our soberness for the reality of sin and death, but it will also motivate our praise to God. Founded on Scripture: Highlights the interconnectedness of the Bible For Learners: Ideal for students or anyone looking to grow in their knowledge of God and the Scriptures Part of the Short Studies in Biblical Theology Series: Other volumes include The New Creation and the Storyline of Scripture, The Lord's Supper as the Sign and Meal of the New Covenant, and The Kingdom of God and the Glory of the Cross

This book presents a significant repudiation of the traditional eschatological doctrines, both Catholic and Protestant, based on the key idea that human death, as a dying into the death of Christ, is to be construed positively as a salvific event that confers the plenitude of life to the human. Offering helpful critiques of selected contemporary theologians, Novello explores how the proposed theology of death has liturgical and pastoral implications for Christian faith and praxis.

How do we make sense of death--in theology, in philosophy, in experience? How do religions other than Christianity deal with death and with dying? In the now predominantly secular societies of the West, what are we to make of the theologies of death developed by writers such as Becker, Hick, Thielicke, and Macquarrie? Ray Anderson tackles his subject with clarity and without sentimentality. He discusses first the treatment--and indeed, the denial--of death by contemporary Western society, and its place in other religious traditions. Going on to discuss the origins of a Christian theology of death, he examines the legacy of Judaism and seeks to lay the foundations for a Christian anthropology in the unity of the body and soul. Death, he argues, is alien to God's determination of our personhood. Outlining a classic Christian understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he explores the implications of the Passion for our own mortality. Even if the sting of death has been removed, the experience of dying and bereavement remains. Ray Anderson considers pastoral approaches to dying in the light of his observations and arguments and makes his case for a reintegration of the experience of dying into our communities.

Joint author, William Hamilton, is an alumnus of Evanston Township High School, class of 1940.

At the age of thirty-nine, Christian theologian Todd Billings was diagnosed with a rare form of incurable cancer. In the wake of that diagnosis, he began grappling with the hard theological questions we face in the midst of crisis: Why me? Why now? Where is God in all of this? This eloquently written book shares Billings's journey, struggle, and reflections on providence, lament, and life in Christ in light of his illness, moving beyond pat answers toward hope in God's promises. Theologically robust yet eminently practical, it engages the open questions, areas of mystery, and times of disorientation in the Christian life. Billings offers concrete examples through autobiography, cultural commentary, and stories from others, showing how our human stories of joy and grief can be incorporated into the larger biblical story of God's saving work in Christ.

According to Hebrews, the Son of God appeared to "break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil--and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death." What does it mean to be enslaved, all our lives, to the fear of death? And why is this fear described as "the power of the devil"? And most importantly, how are we--as individuals and as faith communities--to be set free from this slavery to death?In another creative interdisciplinary fusion, Richard Beck blends Eastern Orthodox perspectives, biblical text, existential psychology, and contemporary theology to describe our slavery to the fear of death, a slavery rooted in the basic anxieties of self-preservation and the neurotic anxieties at the root of our self-esteem. Driven by anxiety--enslaved to the fear of death--we are revealed to be morally and spiritually vulnerable as "the sting of death is sin." Beck argues that in the face of this predicament, resurrection is experienced as liberation from the slavery of death in the martyrological, eccentric, cruciform, and communal capacity to overcome fear in living fully and sacrificially for others.