The Metamorphosis of Finitude

Nobody can be in the world unless he or she is born into the world. Yet, as Nicodemus asked, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" The modern Christian needs to find some way of understanding resurrection, and the dogma of the resurrection of the body is vacuous unless we can relate it philosophically to our own world of experience. This book performs that act of relating by reading resurrection in the context of contemporary philosophy, notably Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze. It shows how a phenomenology of the body born "from below" can be seen as a paradigm for a theology of spiritual rebirth, and for rebirth of the body from "on high." The Resurrection changes everything in Christianity - but our own bodies must also be transformed in resurrection, as Christ is transfigured. And the way in which one hopes to be resurrected bodily in God, in the future, depends upon the way in which one lives bodily today.