Coda

Abstract

Abstract The coda considers the significance of the doctrine of resurrection in contemporary Western society. Theologians associated with Radical Orthodoxy and Christian phenomenology have advocated faith in resurrection as a corrective to modernity’s fear of death and philosophical and commercial materialism. Meanwhile, secular people may find that resurrection is a useful imaginative resource for addressing new developments in the cultures of mortality and memorialization. As advances in neuroscience raise the possibility of uploading human consciousness into digital repositories, resurrection’s emphasis on the universality of death and judgment contrasts starkly with the conferral of artificial immortality on an elite few. In response to climate change, some scholars have argued that the world must be seen from the perspective of deep evolutionary, geological, and ecological time. But the notion that one might return to live on the planet again could prove to be a more tangible imaginative provocation toward ecological responsibility.