Dying and the Virtues
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
In this rich book Matthew Levering explores nine key virtues that we need to die (and live) well: love, hope, faith, penitence, gratitude, solidarity, humility, surrender, and courage.
Retrieving and engaging a variety of biblical, theological, historical, and medical resources, Levering journeys through the various stages and challenges of the dying process, beginning with the fear of annihilation and continuing through repentance and gratitude, suffering and hope, before arriving finally at the courage needed to say goodbye to one’s familiar world.
Grounded in careful readings of Scripture, the theological tradition, and contemporary culture, Dying and the Virtues comprehensively and beautifully shows how these nine virtues effectively unite us with God, the One who alone can conquer death.
Key Features
- Examines nine virtues of dying
- Addresses common questions about suffering and death
- Interacts with varioous views on death and dying
Contents
- Love: Job’s Challenge to His Creator
- Hope: Meditatio Mortis
- Faith: Jesus and What Dying Persons Want
- Penitence: The Stoning of Stephen
- Gratitude: The Dying of Macrina
- Solidarity: Divine Mercy and Redemptive Suffering
- Humility: Jesus’s Dying and Ours
- Surrender: Anointing the Sick
- Courage: Goodbye to This World
Top Highlights
“we must see that dying, like living, belongs to discipleship to Christ.” (Page 11)
“Pieper first specifies that death is not merely the separation of body and soul as if they were two distinct entities from the outset. Instead, death ruptures a real unity: the person, and not just his or her body, dies.” (Page 35)
“I argue that what primarily needs to be healed is the remnants of the rebellion that we all suffer from when we want our own way rather than God’s.” (Page 8)
“‘God, not nothingness, is the beginning, ground, and ‘end point’ of all persons.… We come from God and are bound to return to God.” (Page 11)
“His point is that our hope can only be in God and his mercy, not in any virtues that we imagine ourselves to possess ‘on our own.” (Page 166)
Praise for the Print Edition
I love this book! In Dying and the Virtues Matthew Levering explores the path of discipleship in life’s final chapter with an acute mind and an attentive heart. Many today prefer to push the reality of dying and death to the sidelines until it becomes unavoidable, missing its profound significance for us as individuals, as families, and as the church. Levering gives a compelling theological portrait of how the triune God is at work even amidst fear, suffering, and loss on our mortal journey, bringing life through the crucified and risen Lord.
—J. Todd Billings, Western Theological Seminary
St. Paul assures us that whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. In this book Matthew Levering illuminates how death, which may seem like a loss and even an embarrassment, is in Christ actually an invitation to unite oneself to the Eternal One in a way and at a time that the world of the supposed ‘living’ can never really understand.
—David Vincent Meconi, SJ, Saint Louis University
This is a rich and sophisticated ars moriendi for our time, drawn from the storehouse of the Christian tradition that Levering has been so profoundly exploring over the past years.... His focus upon the divine graces of Christian virtue now shaping the fullness of living and dying in Christ provides extraordinary fruit.
—Ephraim Radner, Wycliffe College, University of Toronto
Product Details
- Title: Dying and the Virtues
- Author: Matthew Levering
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Publication Date: 2018
- Pages: 360
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Christian Living
Dr. Matthew Levering is James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary, and Co-Director of the Chicago Theological Initiative. He holds a B.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.T.S. from Duke University; and a Ph.D. from Boston College. He is the author or co-author of over thirty-five books including such works as Scripture and Metaphysics, Participatory Biblical Exegesis, Biblical Natural Law, Proofs of God, Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?, The Abuse of Conscience, and Reconfiguring Thomistic Christology. He is currently at work on a multi-volume dogmatics, whose first five volumes have appeared (most recently Engaging the Doctrine of Israel). He is the editor or co-editor of over twenty books including such works as The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, and The Reception of Vatican II. He is the translator of Gilles Emery, O.P.’’s The Trinity. He co-edits two quarterly journals, Nova et Vetera and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. He is the past president (2021-22) of the Academy of Catholic Theology, and served as its founding Chair of the Board from 2007-2016. He has been a member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together since 2004. With Thomas Joseph White, O.P., he co-edits the Thomistic Ressourcement series for Catholic University of America Press. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the St. Paul Center, and he edits the Renewal within Tradition series for Emmaus Academic Press.
