Death and the Human Condition

Book excerpt: This is an interdisciplinary work on the somewhat culturally-tabooed topic of death—psychological, psychiatric, historical, developmental, biogenetic, biomedical, and theological—its nature, consequences, and implications as explored and conceptualized by current living Americans. Included also among its hypothesized and associated concepts is the doctrine of an afterlife, as well as various attitudes and reactions to death as the perceived chief limiting factor of the human condition (denial, avoidance, anger, etc.). Unlike its handling by other books on death, the close relationship of death as a terminating phenomenon of life is thoroughly explored in the context of such central concepts of Christian moral theology as salvation, justification, free will, justice, love, anger, sin, expiation, forgiveness, retribution, etc. This book is undoubtedly discriminably different from other serious works of non-fiction if only because it deals with the culturally-tabooed topic of death. Nevertheless, many individuals in all cultures are at least privately or secretly interested in this topic because of the mystery surrounding it, but usually more so, because it inevitably involves themselves in the loss of their own identities in their own culture, and also, very relevantly, stimulates much speculation about their own fate in the hereafter. All of the controversial issues in this book are examined both for and against the Christian theistic view by presenting material by a Christian non-believer as well as by a Christian believer.