Death By Leander E. Keck Summary

Leander E. Keck presents how the New Testament portrays death and afterlife. Before discussing the scripture in detail, he clarifies the meaning of each word, such as death, immortality, resurrection, and sheol. He also points out that the distinct difference between the Greek tradition of radical dualism and Christianity mainly comes from the different understanding of the self (85). And, he illuminates the New Testament in light of four perspectives. Firstly, Jesus shows the influence of apocalyptic thought in that he firmly declared that the righteous would be resurrected at the end of history (86). Secondly, Paul strongly argues two things with respect to his belief in resurrection (88). One is that sin brings about death in all humankind. Yet, the other is that a human being can overcome death by God’s act in Jesus Christ. Based on this, Paul assumes that human beings are buried in one kind of body but raised in another kind, a “spiritual body” (89). For him, resurrection means to transform the entire self into an immortal being (89). Thirdly, the Revelation of John was …show more content…
He asserts that heaven is open to all the faithful since the death was conquered by Christ (115). So, for human beings, heaven is the realm of perfection where occurs genuine fellowships with God and with others (115). In contrast, hell is the underworld where unrepentant sinners are assigned to (116). So, in a metaphorical sense, heaven is the state of being “in grace” but hell is the state of being excluded from God’s grace (116). Yet, in this regard, Christians have felt concern about the logical gap between God’s steadfast love and His cruelty of the unending punishment. As a solution of that problem, Catholic Church has proposed the idea of purgatory since the middle ages. However, Catholic Church’s quantitative thinking of sin and grace has been criticized by Protestant