This work seeks to examine traditional Christian doctrines regarding life after death, from a pastoral perspective. The study explores new ways of interpreting the meaning in human identity, dis-innocence and forgiven-ness specifically as relating to the continuing evolution of Humankind, and offers a description of humankind as Homo sanctus. The thesis is built around three individual selected case examples of death and dying together with a constructed narrative of ‘problem dying’, and a group of five persons in a Fellowship of the Dying; it describes the development and praxis of new approaches to ministry in these areas. A number of new terms are introduced to better convey the substance of meanings. The study itself may be considered as offering significant new insight in two respects: 1. It engages with the idea that bio-death has teleological meaning within the evolution of Personhood in resurrection. 2. It offers the experiences of Christian pastoral ministry pro-actively engaging with dying as a pilgrimage into and through bio-death, in which every member of the immediate community of faith is pro-active in pilgrimage with the dying Person. The study draws on extensive cross-cultural and multi-faith experience in Britain and Africa.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:560857 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Race, Christopher |
| Publisher | University of Birmingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/3762/ |
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