A Time To Keep Theology, Mortality, And The Shape Of A Human Life [Paperback]

The miracle of birth and the mystery of death mark?human life. Mortality, like a dark specter, looms over all that lies in between. Human character, behavior, aims, and community are all inescapably shaped by this certainty of human ends. Mortality, like an unwanted guest, intrudes, becoming a burden and a constant struggle. Mortality, like a thief who steals, even threatens the ability to live life rightly. Life is short. Death is certain. Mortality, at all costs, should be resisted or transcended.
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In A Time to Keep Ephraim Radner revalues mortality, reclaiming it as Gods own. Mortality should not?be resisted but?received. Radner reveals mortalitys true nature as a gift, Gods gift, and thus reveals that the many limitations that mortality imposes should be celebrated. Radner demonstrates how faithfulnessand not resignation, escape, denial, redefinition, or excessis the proper response to the gift of humanitys temporal limitation. To live rightly is to recognize and then willingly accept lifes limitations.
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In chapters on sex and sexuality, singleness and family, education and vocation, and?a?panoply of end of life issues, A Time to Keep plumbs the depths of the secular?imagination, uncovering the constant?struggle?with human finitude?in its myriad?forms. Radner shows that?by wrongly positioning?creaturely mortality, these parts of human experience have?received?an inadequate reckoning.?A Time to Keep retrieves the most basic confession of the Christian faith, that life is Gods, which Radner offers as grace, as?the basis for a Christian understanding of human existence bound by its origin and telos. The?possibility?and purpose?of what comes between birth and death?is?ordered?by the pattern of Scripture,?but is?performed faithfully only?in obedience to the?limits that bind it.