Significant aspects of death and the afterlife continue to be debated among evangelical Christians. In this NSBT volume Paul Williamson surveys the perspectives of our contemporary culture and the biblical world, and then highlights the traditional understanding of the biblical teaching and the issues over which evangelicals have become increasingly polarized. Subsequent chapters explore the controversial areas: what happens immediately after we die; bodily resurrection; a final, universal judgment; the ultimate fate of those who do not receive God's approval on the last day; and the biblical concept of an eschatological "heaven." Taking care to understand the ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman backgrounds, Williamson works through the most important Old and New Testament passages. He demonstrates that there is considerable exegetical support for the traditional evangelical understanding of death and the afterlife, and raises questions about the basis for the growing popularity of alternative understandings. Addressing key issues in biblical theology, the works comprising New Studies in Biblical Theology are creative attempts to help Christians better understand their Bibles. The NSBT series is edited by D. A. Carson, aiming to simultaneously instruct and to edify, to interact with current scholarship and to point the way ahead.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. What role does religion play at the end of life in Japan? Spiritual Ends draws on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with hospice patients, chaplains, and medical workers to provide an intimate portrayal of how spiritual care is provided to the dying in Japan. Timothy O. Benedict uses both local and cross-cultural perspectives to show how hospice caregivers in Japan are appropriating and reinterpreting global ideas about spirituality and the practice of spiritual care. Benedict relates these findings to a longer story of how Japanese religious groups have pursued vocational roles in medical institutions as a means to demonstrate a so-called "healthy" role in society. By paying attention to how care for the kokoro (heart or mind) is key to the practice of spiritual care, this book enriches conventional understandings of religious identity in Japan while offering a valuable East Asian perspective to global conversations on the ways religion, spirituality, and medicine intersect at death.

English sheds new light on death and dying in twentieth- and twenty-first century Irish literature as she examines the ways that Irish wake and funeral rituals shape novelistic discourse. She argues that the treatment of death in Irish novels offers a way of making sense of mortality and provides insight into Ireland's cultural and historical experience of death. Combining key concepts from narrative theory ""such as readers competing desires for a story and for closure"" with Irish cultural analyses and literary criticism, English performs astute close readings of death in select novels by Joyce, Beckett, Kate O'Brien, John McGahern, and Anne Enright. With each chapter, she demonstrates how novelistic narrative serves as a way of mediating between the physical facts of death and its lasting impact on the living. English suggests that while Catholic conceptions of death have always been challenged by alternative secular value systems, these systems have also struggled to find meaningful alternatives to the consolation offered by religious conceptions of the afterlife.

Without an appropriate spiritual care model, it can be difficult to discuss existential questions about death and dying with people who are confronted with life-threatening or incurable diseases. This book offers a simple framework for interpreting existential questions with patients and helping them to cope in end-of-life situations, with illustrative examples from practice. Building on the medieval Ars moriendi tradition, the author introduces a contemporary art of dying model. It shows how to discuss existential questions in a post-Christian context, without moralising death or telling people how they should feel. Written in a straightforward manner, this is a helpful resource for chaplains and clergy, and those with no formal spiritual training, including counsellors, doctors, nurses, allied healthcare workers and other professionals who come into contact with patients in hospitals and hospices.

English sheds new light on death and dying in twentieth- and twenty-first century Irish literature as she examines the ways that Irish wake and funeral rituals shape novelistic discourse. She argues that the treatment of death in Irish novels offers a way of making sense of mortality and provides insight into Ireland's cultural and historical experience of death. Combining key concepts from narrative theory ""such as readers competing desires for a story and for closure"" with Irish cultural analyses and literary criticism, English performs astute close readings of death in select novels by Joyce, Beckett, Kate O'Brien, John McGahern, and Anne Enright. With each chapter, she demonstrates how novelistic narrative serves as a way of mediating between the physical facts of death and its lasting impact on the living. English suggests that while Catholic conceptions of death have always been challenged by alternative secular value systems, these systems have also struggled to find meaningful alternatives to the consolation offered by religious conceptions of the afterlife.

The evidence of death and dying has been removed from the everyday lives of most Westerners. Yet we constantly live with the awareness of our vulnerability as mortals. Drawing on a range of genres, bands and artists, Mortality and Music examines the ways in which popular music has responded to our awareness of the inevitability of death and the anxiety it can evoke. Exploring bereavement, depression, suicide, violence, gore, and fans' responses to the deaths of musicians, it argues for the social and cultural significance of popular music's treatment of mortality and the apparent absurdity of existence.