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Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 516
| Posted 6/28/2001 2:04 AM (GMT -6) |   | choosing/accepting death/life
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Okay I am such a nerd. I’m already doing research for two papers for classes that I’m not in yet! I’ll be taking one in the fall and one next summer. Yep folks its fo’ sho’ now Wislawa’s a geek. Anyway I wanted to bounce some ideas of this board because I’m having difficulty solving this problem in my head.
When I first encountered the warfare worldview the thing that immediately struck me was how it a) empowered me to fight back, b) legitimized my feelings of rage, and c) directed my rage away from God and towards evil and Satan. The first time I read “God at War” I was in the two-thirds world and spending some time at a malnutrition center. One boy there who was 6 years old and 18lbs. and was dying of AIDS particularly touched me. The problem was how the warfare worldview operates in practice. I felt pretty impotent to fight against the suffering of this little boy. I prayed for a miracle but I knew one was unlikely. In addition to this a miracle wouldn’t have helped much anyway. His life would be much harder if he were cured, and besides that eventually he would die. C.S. Lewis makes this point in “A Grief Observed” where he comments that although St. Stephen was the first martyr didn’t Lazarus get the rawer deal? It seems like even in the warfare worldview our victory cannot come in this life-we are fighting a war we can’t win in anyway that will make an ultimate difference here and now. I want something to keep me in check from simply ignoring the now and living for the afterlife. If we are guaranteed victory after we die, and if we can not keep from dying, it would seem warfare is 99% of the time impotent.
The reason I’m asking is that I want to write a paper on Derrida’s deconstruction of Christian ethics in “The Gift of Death.” He is exploring the nature of the gift especially thru the economy of death and suicide. He focuses on the death of Socrates as a kind of suicide (in that it was chosen) and the death of Christ in the same way, as well as the sacrifice of Isaac. The main angle that I’m taking on it is that Derrida together with the whole of the Christian and Western tradition in general have privileged one aspect of love at the expense of others. Most people in these traditions have characterized love as a sort of selflessness, a ‘being-for-the-other.’ The purest form of this is sacrificing ones life for another and the purest form of this is the death of Christ. I want to say that this amounts to a reduction of love which renders it impotent. Heidegger showed how we cannot really die for someone else. Death, if it exists at all, exists for me. Only I can die my own death. Others can die in my place to keep me alive longer but no one can die in my place in that I will still die my own death someday. Jesus death saved no one from their own death. Even Lazarus got a raw deal.
What I want to say is that in addition to the gift of death as an expression of love there is another face which creates a new economy of love. This is the face of life. To my mind any theology of the cross is eccentric by three days. It is the resurrection, not death, that is the purest expression of love. A passive resurrection that is also powerful. “Love is as strong as death” (song 8:6). Love endures all things, love conquers all things.
BUT love in truth seems rather impotent. Where is the Promethean romanticism in this 6 year old kid’s death?
Any thoughts that avoid a strict appeal to the afterlife?
Wislawa
Posted Originally From: Open Theism Information Site
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unworthy
06/25/01 1:48 PM
RE: choosing/accepting death/life
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Wislawa,
Interesting topic. The angle I've usually approached death as a gift from is in regards to the curse.
The curse is indeed curse from the perspective that it is no longer paradise, brings pain and suffering. But it is important to remember, as you probably know, that it was in a sense blessing as well. In preventing men from eating from the tree of life after sinning God has established a means of redemption in two parts.
Part 1 - The gift of us dying:
God guaranteed that we did not have to live forever in a sinful state as fallen angels must. We can die physically. Without this gift of physical death, redemption of the fallen is (apparently) not possible since their sinfulness would be eternally retained. All would be eternally condemned. But now we can repent spiritually choosing God's way of redemptive in Christ Jesus. Of course, many in this life will refuse this redemption, choosing to stick with the same course and destiny the fallen angels (who have no chance of redemption) are on.
Part 2 - The gift of Christ dying for us:
God guaranteed by implementing the curse of death, that Christ would be able to die for our sins, an innocent sacrifice for the guilty.
So, the initial act of cursing fallen men with death is an act of justice and judgement in relation to our initial state. But it is both an act of blessing in our fallen states if we avail ourselves of the gift of God's grace through Jesus Christ. If we do not, death remains a curse that is a prelude to more severe judgement yet to come.
Anyway, that's how I usually think about it. Don't know if that helps at all. You seem to be taking a little different tack.
Sincerely,
Unworthy
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
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azophar
06/25/01 5:23 PM
RE: choosing/accepting death/life
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Wislawa,
Death—now there’s a morbid topic! Who am I to speak of morbidity, I share your intrest. I’ve already done a paper on Derrida and death. The Gift of Death is one of works I looked at. Don’t remember too much off hand about it. It’s been a while.
But as for an alternative to the Derridinian take, check out Loder. Loder speaks of death and life in terms of the negative and the positive, despair and faith. He implements Kierkegaard’s thesis on the composition of humanity, where an aspect of being essentially human means that the negative, despair, and death is embraced by life, the positive and faith. This incorperation of the negative does not weaken the positive but make sit al the more positive. Life is all the more vibrant and all the more real when sitting next to death.
Loder’s book is
James E. Loder and W. Jim Neidhardt, The Knight’s Move.
Don't know if I am directly address you or not.
Zophar
Posted Originally From: Christus Victor Ministries
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