Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.1998, Page 171

Death, Jesus, Derrida
Hick offers three possible approaches to the question of how suffering may
make sense—one of which requires the idea of immortality. The first explana-
tion depends on the Old Testament which explains suffering as part of the
intention of the creator. The second solution which Hick labels “more human-
istic” is based on an understanding of evolution in which the sufferings of
generations are seen as moving towards an ideal of a future moment that
eventually will benefit the human species. Neither of these explanations
require the idea of immortality and Hick questions whether they can be con-
sidered “morally acceptable” in view of “the individual human person.”26 The
third explanation takes the destiny of every single individual into considera-
tion, something Hick attributes specifically to Christianity,27 and in order to
do just to this individual over against suffering immortality becomes a must.
Perfection of the individual is a spiritual growth that continues beyond
physical death of the body and culminates in the kingdom of god.28
If the humanist approach to Scriptures may be seen as a way to view
Christianity not as a cult of death or the dead, the insistence of its claim to
immortality of the individual brings this old accusation against Christians back
into focus. The centrality of the Christian mass celebrates the memory of the
death of Jesus on the model described by the apostle Paul in his First Letter
to the Corinthians (11:23-29). The communitas ecclesiae partakes in this
death symbolically or otherwise during the eucharistic service. Bowersock
notes that while the background of the Last Supper remains debated among
theologians, the connotations with cannibalism cannot be contested by a non-
26 Ibid., 156-166; citation, 158.
27 Says Hick, “Although it took Christianity a long time to clarify and is even taking longer
for it to implement its valuation of individual personality, perhaps its chief contribution
to the life of the world has been its insistence that each human being is equally a child of
God, made for eternal fellowship with his Maker and endowed with unlimited value by
the divine love which has created him, which sustains him in being, and which purposes
his eternal blessedness,” ibid., 158-159.
28 Says Hick, “any morally acceptable justification of the sufferings of humanity is bound
to postulate a life after death. Attempted justifications which refuse to take this step fail
under the criterion of universal love: only a fortunate few are regarded as ends in them-
selves, the less fortunate mass being treated as involuntary means to an end of which they
are not aware and in which they do not participate,” ibid., 160-161. On the concept of
death and immortality in various religious traditions, vide e.g., Hans-Joachim Klimkeit,
ed., Tod und Jenseits im Glauben der Völker (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1978); Paul and
Linda Badman eds., Death and Immortality in the Religions of the World, God: The
Contemporary Discussion Series (New York, NY: Paragon, 1987). Hick proposes that
behind the many religious expressions of humanity there emerges one and the same
ultimate reality. In the eschaton the individual egos join in a community of selfless love,
ibid., 450-464.
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