Why I am a Universalist, Part 6: Thanatocentrism and the Fetish of the Thin Red Line

In the last chapter of my online book Freud's Ghost I made the argument that death transcendence in faith is only possible if its soteriology is non-thanatocentric.

A thanatocentric faith is one where the fulcrum of one's destiny occurs at the death-event. That moment in time becomes the focal point. It is the moral singularity of life. All that happens before and all that happens after is defined at that moment.

As you might guess, I have some issues with thanatocentric faith systems.

First, death is an arbitrary event. Some of us will live a long life, with many opportunities to take stock of our moral lives. Others of us will have very short lives, ended by accident or physical failure or disease. Given the arbitrary nature of our demise, why do theological systems focus so much on this instant of moral development?

For it seems unfair to judge the life of a person who has had longer to live alongside someone who has died prematurely. Someone perhaps who did not get the opportunity to dwell upon the natural consequences of a sinful life. Should one benefit while the other is judged?

But my biggest problem with thanatocentric systems is how death becomes the ever-present trump card in Kingdom living. Perhaps an example will help illustrate this.

In my faith tradition, the Churches of Christ, there has been a historical tension between social justice and evangelism. Specifically, since the Church of Christ is generally thanatocentric, "saving souls" via evangelistic outreach has chronically trumped efforts to help the poor in our communities. Whenever local momentum was built to act in the name of Jesus to "give a cup of cold water" to the "least of these" that momentum was often dampened by a refrain common in my heritage: "Clothing the naked or feeding the hungry is of little use if these people are going to hell."

This sentiment is what I mean when I say that death functions as a trump card in thanatocentric systems. So let me be clear, if a faith community is thanatocentric--truly believing in an eternal separation from God at death--that community will struggle mightily to act in the name of Jesus in the larger world. Ultimate, eschatological issues (determined at the time of death) will keep intruding into the ministry equation. Spiritual formation in these communities will be crippled as the community will first seek to claim and then vigilantly monitor the status of "Saved."

This is such a thin and impoverished view of the Christian life. But can you really blame these people? If you preach and teach a thanatocentric system this is the predictable outcome.

This often strikes me as ironic. Many ministers of my acquaintance have thanatocentric systems. And yet these same ministers lament the thin view of spiritual formation and salvation ascendent in their churches. The irony is that they think these two issues--their thanatocentrism and their spiritual formation efforts--are unrelated. As I psychologist I can tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. Thanatocentrism and spiritual formation are intimately related. How could they not be? If there is a hell, as traditionally understood, then there is a thin red line running through life, separating the Saved from the Damned. And how could this line not be the preeminent preoccupation of the spiritual journey? Ministers are unwittingly causing their faith communities to fetishize this line, to watch it, obsess over it, clarify it, monitor it, protect it, and defend it.

The only clear way to treat this fetishization is to decisively dismantle the thanatocentric system. Death must be displaced from the center of the believer's concerns and investments. Because if death is at the center of my life concerns, then I am at the center of my life concerns. Thanatocentrism makes us ego-centric and focused on self-perservation (as ultimately understood). Only when death is displaced will I allow the Other to be my focus of ministry.

Of the three main soteriological systems--Calvinism, Arminianism, and universalism--only universalism is non-thanatocentric. Universalism claims the biblical testimony that death has been defeated. That death has no sting. If you reflect on it, death retains its sting in both Calvinism and Arminianism. At the very least, death retains its power to distract and thus becomes the fetish of faith communities.

If you have been reflecting with me, you'll see I'm making a pragmatic argument, an argument from ministerial effectiveness. In short, even if universalism were not true, universalism is, from where I sit, the most effective way to get a faith community to focus on the Kingdom of God right here and right now. This does not, by default, make universalism true. It is only an argument that universalism, by removing the fetish of the thin red line, is the soteriological system best suited to mold a community of believers into the image of Jesus.