Death and Life

by Arthur C. McGill

Book Overview

Of course, death will happen to all of us someday, but until then, it's not something to think about or grapple with. But we do think about it. Arthur C. McGill maintains that our preoccupation with health, good looks, and material success is in fact a retreat from death--which we secretly fear is the final lord of our lives. Charting the Christian pilgrimage toward a life freed from the dominating power of death, McGill uses three scriptural images...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1592443192
• ISBN13: 9781592443192
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
• Length: 110 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Worth Any Christian's Time

Arthur McGill is a relative unknown in American theology. His works have mostly been consigned to the "out-of-print" stacks. A quick Google search for "Arthur McGill" turns up only 1700 results, while Google Scholar weighs in at a whopping 47 and Google blogsearch turns up 7 results, 5 of which don't have to do with the author. Imprecise measurements of a person's relative popularity, to be sure, but indicative nonetheless. McGill is firmly lodged in the back of the theology closets, piled behind tomes better known thinkers. But popularity is no indicator of value, and in Death and Life: An American Theology, Arthur McGill has composed a gem that is worth serious reflection by theologians and laypersons alike. This relatively short work--95 pages--is broken into two parts. In the first, McGill analyzes America's attitudes toward death, where death means not the biological end of man, but rather the "losing of life, that wearing away which goes on all the time." In the second, he articulates what he takes to be the Biblical understanding of death in this broader sense. Throughout, he is poetic and provocative as he works to tease out how American Christianity has been co-opted by a secular view of death and the resurrection. His first section, while interesting, is simultaneously stimulating and problematic. He argues that the American view of "life" means "having." It is "always optimistic, always affirmative." Death is, in this sense, a disruption, a mangling of the normal. Poverty, sickness, disease and unanswered needs are abnormal and accidental. Wealth is a fundamental state of mind, not simply a fact. As a result, we work hard to become what McGill calls "the bronze people," people who maintain the appearance of life without having the substance of it. In doing so, we avoid the fundamental reality of sin and pain, a reality that is "intolerable." "The world is awful," writes McGill, "but Americans do not usually say so." McGill is almost right on this point. Reality is not awful--goodness is. It is goodness that we hate and avoid, a tactic which drives us to believe that the perversion is the deepest reality when it is still a perversion. The world is not awful--it is good, but the sort of good that is demands the redemption and defeat of sin. Sin is the lesser reality--goodness the higher. While equally provocative, McGill's second section is somewhat more successful. Despite continuing his error of making sin "a matter...of our basic identity," McGill demonstrates how Jesus' identity comes from outside of himself and how as Christians, we must "die" and discover that our identity comes from outside of ourselves, from God. We must let go of the "tecnique of having," of possessing ourselves and cultivate a posture of gratitude and acknowledgment that our being is in God, not in us. What compels us to possess ourselves, our possessions and our relationships? The fear of death, in which we refuse to acknowledge that all that we have i

A tantalizing peak at a new ontology of compassion and reception

If there is anything negative to say about this book it is its length, which is just long enough to tantalize without fully going into a system of analysis. As the other reviewers have already noted, McGill critiques traditional metaphysics that understand life and being as essentially "persistance," or form (eidos). In fact, though not explicitly mentioned, McGill thinks that systems of metaphysics or ontology that are set up a priori and then used to analyze the cross always come up empty. And rightly so, because if the Christian system is correct, then the magnitude of the ontology of the Cross shows that if "existence" or "man" or "God," are to mean anything, they will only mean what they mean in relation to this event. So that, while we may take a traditional stance and attempt to ontologize the cross with it, if the cross and the crucifixion are true, then they will modify the traditional conception. This is indeed the result that McGill sees. He doesnt consider "being," or "life," as persistance, or inherently opposed to death, but rather all forms of existence include death within them. That is to say, my existence in relation to God is continual only becuase I continue to recieve myself from God at every moment (what McGill and others like Pannenberg term ek-stasis or ecstatic relationality, essentially recieving onesself from outside the self from others) In fact, the ultimate irony is if I attempt to procure security for my continued existence I break the cycle of continual recieving, and so ironically in an attempt of self-preservation, I have eliminated the very possibility. McGill takes this conclusion from Christ's life, seeing in Christ's self-consciousness not conciousness of himself per se, but immediately of the Father, so that in knowing Himself He knows immediately God. Christ then comes to die (McGill adopts the Johannine Christic quotation that a seed must die to bare fruit) peacefully giving himself, so the essential power and life of God is in self giving/self-recieving to communicate and engender life. Hence the very basis of self-identity is self-dispossession and constant recieving, rather than hypostatically contained being. McGill contrasts this to what he calls "The Bronze People," namely those in society who attempt frantically for perpetual youth through beauty products. In this instance McGill rightly notes that the irony of this position is that it is inherently negative rather than positive. What he means by that is "perpetual youth," is not so much a positive attribute (i.e. being actually perpetually young) as much as it is a deliberate self-deception and avoidance. In fact, this frames what McGill sees as the technique of "having," and the method of "avoidance," that is, when problems arise we attempt to secure our identity against change by taking into our posession goods and things and skills that we have "power," over and so may cope with disaster. Hence part of our consumer ethos is und

A Very Good Little Book

This book is absolutely amazing, as the other reviewers have already pointed out. I would like to add that the book is a pretty easy read and does not require a great deal of prerequisite theological knowledge, so it is accessible even to new explorers of the Christian faith. That doesn't mean it sacrifices content; the book offers fresh insights for even the well-educated Christian. My one problem with the book is that the argument for his diagnosis of what he calls the "bronze people" is somewhat weak and not entirely convincing. The second part of the book, however, where he begins to discuss the idea of a decentralized and dispossed identity, is very good and makes up for all the deficiencies in the first part. This book offers fresh ways to think about the nature of sin, worship, atonement, and other concepts central to the Christian faith. I only wish that someone would expand on the ideas presented here.

There is nothing else out there like this book!

This thin book is packed with unique insights about how American society "worships death" by giving death and growing old the ultimate power over almost everything we do. McGill argues that we must live from an "ecstatic identity," receiving all as gift and grace, even suffering and death. He writes this book like a novel, with multiple references to pop culture and literature to make his point. One of the best, most challenging theology books I have ever read for a general population. Enjoy!