Rescue for the Dead
Subtitle: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology)
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: August 31, 2001
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
ISBN-13: 9780195140996
First sentence: Christianity is a religion of salvation in which believers have always anticipated some type of postmortem bliss.
Description: "Christianity is a religion of salvation in which believers have always anticipated some type of post-mortem bliss. This has usually meant non-salvation for others, in the form of eternal torment, alienation from God, or annihilation at some point after death. A self-understanding as a set-apart community of the saved (or potentially saved) has been a hallmark of Christian communities since their earliest days, and the Christian imagination in the West has usually drawn a sharp boundary at death. If someone did not join the saved community during this life, joining it after death would be impossible." "In this book, Jeffrey Trumbower examines how and why death came to be perceived as such a firm boundary of salvation. Analyzing exceptions to this principle from ancient Christianity, he finds that the principle itself was slow to develop and not universally accepted in the Christian movement's first four hundred years. In fact, only in the West was this principle definitively articulated, due in large part to the work and influence of Augustine. Many early Christians were able to retain their sense of having been "chosen" and their sense of God's justice while allowing for the possibility of posthumous salvation for non-Christians (a doctrine that survives among modern Latter-day Saints, who practice posthumous baptism for this purpose). Many others argued vehemently against posthumous salvation, however, and Trumbower documents the development of that conflict and its resolution in the East and in the West."--Jacket.