A New Heaven: Death, Human Destiny, and the Kingdom of God

by Harvey Cox

Harvey Cox is one of America’s great public theologians of the past fifty years. In many bestselling books he has written on matters of religion and faith for a popular audience, including on secularism and belief, world religions, Jewish-Christian dialogue, liberation theology, Pentecostalism, Jesus, and biblical interpretation. In his new book he explores the question that underlies all religion: what is the point of life that ends in death? What are the different ways we think about the afterlife? What are we actually talking about when we talk about heaven? Interestingly, this is not a subject of great preoccupation in the Gospels. Jesus was concerned primarily with the Kingdom of God―about conforming the present world to the values and principles of God’s love and justice. How this has gravitated toward concern with “life after death” is one of the topics covered here. Cox draws on personal stories, including his youthful work as an assistant his uncle, an undertaker, and approaches to death in other cultures and religions; and his own reflections on mortality.

Genres: Philosophy

292 pages, Paperback

Published May 10, 2022

About the author

Harvey Gallagher Cox Jr., Ph.D. (History and Philosophy of Religion, Harvard University, 1963; B.D., Yale Divinity School, 1955) was Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard, where he had been teaching since 1965, both at HDS and in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, until his retirement in 2009.

An American Baptist minister, he was the Protestant chaplain at Temple University and the director of religious activities at Oberlin College; an ecumenical fraternal worker in Berlin; and a professor at Andover Newton Theological School. His research and teaching interests focus on the interaction of religion, culture, and politics. Among the issues he explores are: urbanization, theological developments in world Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations, and current spiritual movements in the global setting. His most recent book is When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Decisions Today. His Secular City, published in 1965, became an international bestseller with more than 1 million copies sold. It was selected by the University of Marburg as one of the most influential books of Protestant theology in the twentieth century.