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The Death of a Christian—I: The Objective Fact

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

E. H. Schillebeeckx O.P.
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Extract

Throughout the course of the growing development of the kingdom of God, the death of a Christian has taken a well-defined and importan place. The ending of the earthly life of a Christian man is an essential phase in the coming of the kingdom of God. What I propose to do in these articles is to analyse the meaning of this phase placed in the whole of Christian eschatology or expectation of the future. I shall first examine death as an objective occurrence in Christian saving history, and then in a subsequent article show how we Christians should personally experience the event of death in an eschatological attitude of mind: in other words what the answer of our life to death will be.

In the Dominican rite of interment, we sing ‘let us be glad and rejoice on this wonderful day God has made, on which he has called one of our loved ones to himself'.

Type
Research Article
Information
Life of the Spirit , Volume 16 , Issue 186 , January 1962 , pp. 270 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © 1962 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Although translations are not normally included in LIFE OF THE SPIRIT, our readers may be interested to read this work of one of the foremost continental theologians. It originally appeared in Kultuurleven vol. 22 (1955) pp. 421-430 and pp. 508-519.

2 In order not to complicate the question more than can be helped, weo omit here the nevertheless important biblical revelation according to which death is a partner in covenant with the devil: death is an expression of the devil's sphere of power over earthly diings (cf. Gen. 3; Wis. 2.24; Jn. 8.44; Heb. 2.14).

3 In the following article I shall show that to die as such is not an act, but something that happens to us, by which we are overcome; but further how this happening can nevertheless be taken up into an act of love.

4 The resurrection must be considered in intimate unity with the Christian meaning of death, so that even death as a sacrifice of love is seen not to be the ultimate answer to the problem. The ultimate answer comes from God alone: it is resurrection.

5 This will appear in the February number.