Michael Mawson, Charles Sturt University, Australia, draws upon the Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Austrian born philosopher Jean Améry to reflect upon the phenomenon of human ageing. In particular, he explores how Bonhoeffer and Améry might help us to better understand and attend to the ambiguities and complexities of our experiences of ageing. In the first part, Mawson engages Bonhoeffer’s theological account of the human being as situated between life and death. In his 1933 Creation and Fall, Bonhoeffer presents human beings as existing between the two conflicting promises of the opening chapters of Genesis: God’s promise to Adam in the garden (‘if you eat from this tree you will surely die’) and the Serpent’s promise to Eve (‘you will not die at all’). These two promises together encapsulate and disclose the situation of the humanity: ‘After the fall, all human beings are suspended between these two conflicting statements—living towards death, living as those already dead.’
The Winter 2021 event series was sponsored by the Issachar Fund in collaboration with Regent College.