Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures - Hardcover

Griffiths, Paul J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1481302299 ISBN 13: 9781481302296

Publisher: Baylor University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Death is not the end―either for humans or for all creatures. But while Christianity has obsessed over the future of humanity, it has neglected the ends for nonhuman animals, inanimate creatures, and angels. In Decreation, Paul J. Griffiths explores how orthodox Christian theology might be developed to include the last things of all creatures.

Griffiths employs traditional and historical Christian theology of the last things to create both a grammar and a lexicon for a new eschatology. Griffiths imagines heaven as an endless, repetitively static, communal, and enfleshed adoration of the triune God in which angels, nonhuman animals, and inanimate objects each find a place. Hell becomes a final and irreversible separation from God―annihilation―sin's true aim and the last success of the sinner. This grammar, Griffiths suggests, gives Christians new ways to think about the redemption of all things, to imagine relationships with nonhuman creatures, and to live in a world devastated by a double fall.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul J. Griffiths is Warren Chair of Catholic Theology at Duke Divinity School.

Review:

This is the finest work of speculative theology to appear on any topic in a long while. Beautifully straitened by Catholic doctrine, relentlessly rigorous in argument, Decreation brings an abundance of light to both familiar topics in eschatology and some hardly touched in Christianity’s long history of reflection on the last things. At a time when such work has practically vanished, Paul Griffiths confronts us anew with the ancient challenge of speculative theology: to see the truths upon which Christians must finally stake their lives.

(Bruce D. Marshall, Lehman Professor of Christian Doctrine, Southern Methodist University)

At once deeply traditional and strikingly novel, Griffiths' exploration of ‘last things’ is rigorous in its argumentation and unafraid to overturn some of the favored positions of modern theologians in its quest for an eschatology that is adequate to scripture and tradition and yet takes account of contemporary theological and philosophical questions and insights.

(Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Professor of Theology, Loyola University Maryland)

Decreation sets forth a theology of creation, redemption, and the refusal of redemption that is without equal in terms of erudition, elegance, and brilliant engagement with historically significant Christian teaching and doctrine.

(Charles Taliaferro, Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, St. Olaf College)

About this edition

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1481302299
• ISBN 13: 9781481302296
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 431