Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity

Name: Rescue for the Dead: The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity
Price: 55.26 GBP
Availability: InStock
Author: Jeffrey A. Trumbower
ISBN: 9780195140996

The Posthumous Salvation of Non-Christians in Early Christianity

by Jeffrey A. Trumbower

Hardback
224 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press
15.3 x 22.9 x 1.7 cm

£55.26Save 18% | Free UK Delivery

Free UK Delivery | Save 18% | Available - Usually dispatched within 3 days

Available - Usually dispatched within 3 days

Buying for a school or church? Upgrade to a FREE Eden Advance Account

Christianity is a religion of salvation in which believers have always anticipated some type of post-mortem bliss. This belief in salvation for the faithful has usually meant non-salvation for others. The Christian imagination in the West has usually drawn a sharp boundary at death, on the principle that, if someone did not join up with 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.