Bynum examines several periods between the 3rd and 14th centuries in which discussions of the body were central to Western eschatology, and suggests that Western attitudes toward the body that arose from these discussions still undergird our modern notions of the individual. He explores the "plethora of ideas about resurrection in patristic and medieval literature—the metaphors, tropes, and arguments in which the ideas were garbed, their context and their consequences," in order to understand human life after death.