About the Author

Anthony J. Kelly, CSSR,(1938-2024), was professor of theology at Australian Catholic University and deputy director of the university's Institute for Catholic Identity and Mission. He was recently made an inaugural Fellow of the Australian Catholic Theological Association and was a member of the Pontifical International Theological Commission. He had lectured and taught in Singapore, the Philippines, India, Canada, England, Ireland, and the United States. The author of many articles and books, his most recent are Experiencing God in the Gospel of John (2003, with Francis J. Moloney), Eschatology and Hope (2006), and The Resurrection Effect: Transforming Christian Life and Thought (2008).

Reviews

With Anthony Kelly's Upward: Faith, Church and the Ascension of Christ, you have an elegantly writeen and well-argued book that both fills a need and breaks new ground. The ascension has been widely neglected, resulting in the loss of some of the oxygen of faith that would enable us to breathe more deeply when experiencing "the boundless riches of Christ" (Eph 3:8). Kelly's book supplies this oxygen. It also breaks new ground by repeatedly illustrating how believe in Christ's ascension widely affects or should affect the experience of faith, the life of the Church, and its theology. . . . [A] rich book.
Australian eJournal of Theology

Kelly's rich and pathbreaking new book . . . focuses on Christ's ascension as the telos of the incarnation—not its termination, but its goal and extension. . . . The risen and ascended Christ's transformed humanity is the prime theological analogue for a fuller understanding and appreciation of corporeality, embracing also Christ's Eucharistic body and his ecclesial body. . . . With this fine book [Kelly] has provided the theological community a gift to be savored, pondered, and prayed.
Robert Imbelli, Boston College, Theological Studies