Why Resurrection [Hardcover]

Few questions exert such a great fascination on human conscience as those related to the meaning of life, history, and death. The belief in the resurrection of the dead constitutes an answer to a real challenge: What is the meaning of life and history in the midst of a world in which evil, injustice, and ultimately death exist? Resurrection is an instrument serving a broader, more encompassing reality: the Kingdom of God. Such a utopian Kingdom gathers the final response to the problem of theodicy and to the enigma of history. This book seeks to understand the idea of resurrection not only as a theological but also as a philosophical category (as expression of the collective aspirations of humanity), combining historical, theological, and philosophical analyses in dialogue with some of the principal streams of contemporary Western thought. --Carlos Blanco's synthetic gifts as a teacher-scholar are in full display in this monograph: an elegant distillation of a lecture course that straddles Biblical scholarship and philosophy of religion to expound on the foundational tenet of early Christian theology with ease, intelligence, and aplomb.-- --Luis Giron-Negron, Harvard University --Carlos Blanco asks difficult questions about life, death, and evil, questions he pursues with great facility and care across centuries and disciplinary boundaries. It is a great pleasure, reading this book, to think alongside him and ask indeed, Why Resurrection?-- --Charles M. Stang, Assistant Professor of Early Christian Thought Harvard Divinity School Carlos Blanco is a visiting fellow at the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University. He is the author of Mentes maravillosas que cambiaron la historia (2007).