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The Place of Death and Judgement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
In this series of articles I have been considering different aspects of the Church, in particular seeing how it is constituted by the sacraments. In this final article I shall look at the theology of death, judgement, and the life to come, in order to set out the end for which the Church exists. Christians and humanists are in agreement about so much—at any rate one kind of Christian and one kind of humanist are in agreement about so much, that it is worth while pointing to an issue which absolutely divides them. It seems to me that the opposition between the two views of man is most sharply brought out in their attitudes towards death. You may feel this is an unfair choice of battlefield because in tact humanists hardly have an attitude to death. They haven't thought much about it, whereas Christians have thought rather a lot about it. But this very fact is the first point of difference between us: Christians think that nothing in life matters more than death, whereas humanists don't attach any special significance to it.