The Judgment of Love: An Investigation of Salvific Judgment in Christian Eschatology

This book seeks to explore the concept of divine judgment in Christian eschatology. It contends that this judgment is salvific rather than destructive. This notion can be described aphoristically as iudicandus est salvandus (""to be judged is to be saved""). The provocation to Christian eschatology is that human beings are not saved from judgment, but are saved within it. The exploration begins defining the context and moves into a review of the symbols and problems of judgment through a reappraisal of De novissimis (""concerning the last things""), the last section found in traditional works of Christian dogmatics. This is followed by a critical engagement with the soteriological optimism posited by four twentieth- and twenty-first century theologians: Sergei Bulgakov, Hans Urs von Balthasar, J. A. T. Robinson, and Marilyn McCord Adams. The event of the judgment is then defined as the event of absolute recognition: that it is within the eschatic recognition of God, the self, and the other that transformation and glorification of human persons occur in a way that avoids a dual outcome of salvation and damnation. The book concludes by proposing that we may approach divine judgment with faith, hope, and love–not only for ourselves, but for the human race as a whole. ""In The Judgment of Love, James Matarazzo has produced a meticulous analysis of Christian theologies of death, hell, damnation, and the nature of divine judgment. His choice of sources offers a striking example of the value of truly ecumenical exploration in theology, through which the absolute priority of unconditional love yields practical consequences for framing difficult contemporary pastoral dilemmas."" –George Newlands, author of Spirit of Liberality ""Through his brilliant notion that the divine judgment is a judgment of love, and therefore in itself salvific, James Matarazzo sheds new light on many contested topics in the Christian tradition. What is on offer here is a critical and constructive interpretation that does not shy away from using the specificity of Christian eschatology for addressing our contemporary concerns."" –Ola Sigurdson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden ""This fascinating and beautifully written book approaches the prospect of divine judgment not in terms of condemnation, but in terms of liberation . . . It brings about both an absolute recognition of all aspects of human love and a freeing of the human will to attend truthfully to divine and human otherness. Truth, ultimately, is revealed through God's judgment of love."" –Werner G. Jeanrond, University of Oslo ""In this wide-ranging, ambitious, and well-crafted study, Matarazzo addresses the thorny issue of the Christian doctrine of the last things. By carefully analyzing a whole range of thinkers and sources he offers a positive solution that challenges many of the efforts of the past, but which remains profoundly optimistic. God's judgment is a judgment of love which means that something that has often been instilled with terror is transformed into a state where everything is revealed in its fulness and where hope conquers all as we live in faith, hope, and love."" –Mark D. Chapman, University of Oxford James M. Matarazzo, Jr is a Minister at the First Congregational Church of Guilford, Connecticut. Previously, he was Lecturer in Theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, and a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford.