“Ideas about heaven have often been dismissed as pipe dreams or wishful thinking. Undoubtedly, there is an element of truth in these denunciations,” Harvey Cox acknowledges. And yet: “Empirically ’true’ or not, these pictures of the hereafter have had untold influence on countless people.” After all, “They tell us something vital about how humans give shape to their deepest hopes and fears.” Yes, heaven “is the symbolic expression of an elemental human hope….”
Now 94 years old, Cox, one of America’s great public theologians, in his latest book, A New Heaven, surveys the “theological, cultural, and historical perspectives on heaven, the afterlife, and the ‘kingdom of God,’” HamiltonBook.com explains. “Like much of Cox’s writing, this book is broad in scope and almost addictively readable,” The Christian Century warrants. “This lively book proves that he’s right” when he declares, “Heaven is far from dead….” In it, he draws on personal stories, approaches to death in various cultures and religions, and his own reflections on mortality.
For 44 years a Harvard University professor of divinity, Cox, an ordained American Baptist minister—with Quaker roots—is still best known for his 1965 book, The Secular City, which sold over four million copies worldwide.
A New Heaven: Death, Human Destiny, and the Kingdom of God
By Harvey Cox
Orbis Books, 2022
