Heaven: A History

Heaven: A History

Colleen McDannell and Bernhard Lang

1. The dawn of Heaven -- Semitic background: communicating with the dead -- Yahweh alone: no promise for the dead -- Apocalypticism: the promise of resurrection -- Hellenistic Judaism; the promise of Heaven -- Jewish views of the afterlife in the First Century -- 2. Jesus and the Christian promise -- Jesus: no marriage in Heaven -- Paul -- Revelation to John -- 3. Irenaeus and Augustine on our Heavenly bodies -- 4. Medieval Pleasures -- 5. The pleasures of Renaissance paradise -- 6. God at the center: protestant and Catholic Reformers -- Luther and Calvin -- Catholic Reformers -- Pious and Ascetic Middle class -- Theocentric Heaven -- 7. Swedenborg and the emergence of a modern Heaven -- 8. Love in the heavenly realm -- Pre-romantic precursors: Milton and Swedenborg -- Love and Marriage -- 9. Eternal motion: progress in the other world -- Kinetic revolution in Heaven -- Persisting theocentric traditions -- Spiritualism: a thick description of Heaven -- Anthropocentric Heaven -- 10. Heaven in contemporary Christianity.

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