The Counsels of Finitude

Abstract

I N THIS paper, I will contend that death is a natural event in the course of human life. If I am correct, there is something strange if not perverse in the very notion that an argument such as mine need be given. There is hardly any event as universal as death. How could such an ingredient element of human history be regarded as anything but natural? What would be the need of arguing that death is natural? What would be at issue in such a dispute? What sort of problem is in need of solution? The issue is a somewhat vague one-a set of loosely bound presuppositions of modern western culture which lead to an implicit cultural judgment: that death is unnatural. Western thinkers have developed a way of seeing the condition of individual men such that their death is not only regretted, but seen as adventitious. It is as if men were naturally immortal and death an accidental entry into human history. Such an appreciation of death makes it an event to be denied and opposed at all costs, rather than anticipated and articulated in one's anticipation of the future, as ingredient to human life, providing in part for the shape and character of life. First, I want to make clear that I do not intend to propose an argument against individual immortality, except to suggest that an argument for immortality cannot succeed. Yet, even if one cannot demonstrate immortality, its possibility is not excluded. I do, though, hope to suggest that immortality would be gratuitous, by the grace of God, not of human nature. However, this paper will not offer arguments, at least not in any strict sense. My attempt, rather, will be to sketch the lineaments of a view of man in terms of which death can be seen as natural. I will suggest that such a view can allow us to deal better with our finitude, to live better with death and our own dying, hoping to show, thereby, the plausibility of taking counsel from our finitude.