Death

Christian life is one of dying and rising with Christ. What is the relationship between this dying and rising and our death? What does this relationship mean for facing death and for our care for the dying? This article considers these questions with respect to death's ‘natural’ dimension as the separation of body and soul; death's ‘personal’ dimension as the end of our earthly life; and death's ‘moral’ dimension as a wager of love. Drawing on Paul Ramsey and Karl Rahner, it sketches a theological moral anthropology — the person is a unity of body and soul who lives by the love of God. This anthropology appears in Christian construals of death as the bodily manifestation of, and punishment for, our wilful alienation from God in a misplaced or self-withholding love for life.

Afterlife · Alienation · Dimension (graph theory) · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Soul · Theology · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Theological Perspectives and Practices · Theology and Philosophy of Evil