The Mystery of Death

by Dorothee Sölle, Dorothee Sölle

In this meditative work, completed only days before her own death, Soelle faces the old and new anxieties we have about death in the midst of our own cultural danse macabre. In conversation with the writings of C. S. Lewis, Erich Fromm, the Apostle Paul, and others, she takes the theological measure of death and explores also how it has figured especially in the experience of women. Intense, personal, yet also whimsical and clever, The Mystery of Death finds Soelle asking impertinent and deadly serious questions to the end. Includes the author's meditation "Where Love Is, There Is God."

Genres: Theology

146 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 1984

About the author

Dorothee Steffensky-Sölle was a German liberation theologian and writer.

Sölle studied theology, philosophy and literature at the University of Cologne. She became active in politics, speaking out against the Vietnam War, the arms race of the Cold War and injustices in the developing world. Notably, from 1968 to 1972 she organized Cologne's Politisches Nachtgebet (political night-prayers). Between 1975 and 1987, she spent six months a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where she was a professor of systematic theology.

She wrote a large number of books, including Theology for Skeptics: Reflections on God, The Silent Cry: Mysticism and Resistance (2001) and her autobiography Against the Wind: Memoir of a Radical Christian (1999). In Beyond Mere Obedience: Reflections on a Christian Ethic for the Future she coined the term "Christofascist" to describe fundamentalists. Perhaps her best-known work in English was Suffering, which offers a critique of "Christian masochism" and "theological sadism." Sölle's critique is against the assumption that God is all-powerful and the cause of suffering; humans thus suffer for some greater purpose. Instead, God suffers and is powerless alongside us. Humans are to struggle together against oppression, sexism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of authoritarianism.

"I believe in God who created the world has not done such a thing that always must remain, not the ruled by eternal laws, which are immutable, not by natural systems of rich and poor, experts and uninformed, rulers and extradited. I believe in God, who wants the appeal of living and the change in all states through our work, our policy".

Reviews

[Lauren Larkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very thoughtful journey through a renowned scholar's attempt to comprehend death from within her encounter with God in the event of faith. Sölle's last text carries her thought to full circle; I can only imagine if she had a bit more time, it would have been the most remarkable piece of theology. As it is, it is still quite remarkable and very accessible (as is all of her work). The major tenants of her theological enterprise stay strong to the very end. Even now, 19 years after her death, and she still speaks to and exhorts human beings toward resistance of death, to keep up the fight for life in a world bent on death and when it is said and done, to release oneself into God standing firm on a life not only well-lived, but well-loved and -loving.