Jeff Levin

The ultimate aim for many of the world’s major faith traditions is to love and be loved by God—to live in connection with the Divine, in union with the Beloved, in reconciliation with the Ultimate. Religious scholars Jeff Levin and Stephen G. Post have termed this connection “divine love.” In their new collection of the same name, they have invited eight of the world’s preeminent religious scholars to share their perspectives on the what, how, and why of divine love.

Healing to All Their Flesh asks us to step back and carefully rethink the relationship between religion and health. It does so by examining overlooked issues of theology and meaning that lie at the foundation of religion’s supposed beneficial function. Is a religion-health relationship consistent with understandings of faith within respective traditions? What does this actually imply? What does it not imply? How have these ideas been distorted? Why does this matter—for medicine and healthcare and also for the practice of faith? Is the ultimate relation between spirit and flesh, as mediated by the context of human belief and experience, a topic that can even be approached through empirical observation, scientific reasoning, and the logic of intellectual discourse?

In recent years, researchers across the social sciences have made important contributions to the study of religion. Thanks to their inquiry, we have greatly improved our understanding of how religion influences the vital dimensions of our lives, communities, and institutions.
 
To give this research the attention it deserves, editor Jeff Levin assembled a panel of preeminent social scientists and gave them a single directive: write the ultimate statement on religion from within their respective social science discipline or field. The result is this single volume, “state-of-the-science” compendium—a first of its kind for the study of religion.