The Role of Death in Life: A Multidisciplinary Examination of the Relationship between Life and Death

196 Pages·2015·2.304 MB·English

by  John Behr, Conor Cunningham

The Role of
Death in Life
A Multidisciplinary Examination of the
Relationship between Life and Death
Edited by
John Behr
Conor Cunningham
C
The Role of Death in Life
James Clarke & Co
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The Lutterworth Press
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The Role of Death in Life
ISBN: 9780227905302
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The Role of Death in Life
A Multidisciplinary Examination
of the Relationship between
Life and Death
Edited by
John Behr
and Conor Cunningham
C
James Clarke & Co
For Mary Ann Meyers,
in whom there is Life in abundance
James Clarke & Co
P.O. Box 60
Cambridge
CB1 2NT
United Kingdom
www.jamesclarke.co
[email protected]
ISBN: 978 0 227 17572 9
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A record is available from the British Library
First published by James Clarke & Co, 2016
Copyright © Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015
Published by arrangement
with Cascade Books
All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced, stored
electronically or in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without prior written permission from the
Publisher ([email protected]).
Table of Contents
List of Contributors vii
Preface ix
I: Perspectives from Astronomy, Chemistry, and Biology
1: Made of Star-stuff: The Origin of the Chemical Elements in Life 3
—Alexei V. Filippenko
2: A Biochemical Perspective on the Origin of Life and Death 14
—Luc Jaeger
II: Perspective from Anthropology
3: Immortality 31
—Douglas Davies
III: Perspectives from Philosophy
4: Suffering Death 45
—Emmanuel Falque
5: How Do We Become Fully Alive? The Role of Death in Henry’s Phenom-
enology of Life 56
—Christina Gschwandtner
IV: Perspectives from Theology
6: Life and Death in the Age of Martyrdom 79
—John Behr
v
vi table of contents
7: New Life as Life out of Death: Sharing in the “Exchange of Natures” in
the Person of Christ 96
—Henry Novello
8: Is There Life before Death? 120
—Conor Cunningham
V: Perspectives from Medicine and Bioethics
9: The Kenosis of the Dying: An Invitation to Healing 155
—Daniel Hinshaw
10: On Medical Corpses and Resurrected Bodies 164
—Jeffrey Bishop
Bibliography 179
List of Contributors
The Very Rev. Dr. John Behr is the Dean and Professor of Patristics at St.
Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, New York, USA.
Dr. Jeffrey Paul Bishop is the Tenet Endowed Chair in Health Care Ethics
and the Director of the Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics at St.
Louis University, USA.
Dr. Conor Cunningham is Associate Professor in Theology and Philosophy
at The University of Nottingham, UK.
Dr. Douglas James Davies is Professor in the Study of Religion at Durham
University, UK.
Dr. Emmanuel Falque is the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Institut
Catholique de Paris, France.
Dr. Alexei V. Filippenko is the Richard & Rhoda Goldman Distinguished
Professor in the Physical Sciences and Professor of Astronomy at the Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, USA.
Dr. Christina M. Gschwandtner is Professor of Philosophy, Fordham Uni-
versity, New York, USA.
Dr. Daniel B. Hinshaw is the Professor of Surgery at the University of Mich-
igan, Medical School Palliative Care Program, Ann Arbor, USA.
Dr. Luc Jaeger is Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University
of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
vii
viii list of contributors
Dr. Henry L. Novello is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of
Theology at Flinders University, South Australia
Preface
The essays gathered in this volume were originally delivered at a
symposium with the same title, generously and graciously convened
by the Humble Approach Initiative of the John Templeton Foundation, at
Castel Gandolfo, June 2013. The subject, the relation between life and death,
is one of perennial relevance for all human beings, and indeed, the whole
world and the entire universe, in as much as, according to the dictum of
ancient Greek philosophy, all things that come into being pass away. Yet
it is also a topic of increasing complexity and urgency: complexity, in that
life and death appear to be more intertwined than previously or commonly
thought; and urgency, in that people living in the industrialized and post-
industrialized Western world over the past century have, through the twin
phenomena of an unprecedented increase in longevity and the rendering of
death, dying, and the dead person all but invisible, lost touch with the reality
of death, with implications—medical, ethical, economic, philosophical, and,
not least, theological—that have barely begun to be addressed.
To begin this task, leading scholars from diverse disciplines were in-
vited to reflect together, each from their own discipline, on the relationship
between death and life. More specifically, the conveners of the symposium
presented the participants with a particular “hypothesis” or “supposition,”
one that was self-consciously theological. The hypothesis of Christian the-
ology, it was proposed, is that by his death, Christ has conquered death,
and so life and death are reversed; that by dying, as human, Christ shows
us what it is to be God, so offering us a way of participating in the life of
God, and, in fact, becoming human. Death alone is common to all men
and women throughout all time and space: thrown into this world without
choice, our existence culminates inevitably in death. Yet, by showing us
what it is to be God in the way in which he dies as a human being, Christ
offers an alternative “use” of death: we now can actively “use” death, as a
voluntary birth, completing God’s project of creating living human beings
by giving our own fiat, establishing our existence in the free self-sacrificial
life that is the life of God himself.
ix