What happens when Man dies? Not the individual man dying physically, but Man dying as Man. What happens when Man, as the pinnacle of creation, loses his place; when the essence of man is lost?

In case you missed it, we have already seen what happens. As a matter of fact, the results continue to be manifested all around us. To many, Man is already dead.

In his classic book, The God Who Is There, part of the important work, The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy, Francis Schaeffer describes what he calls the “Line of Despair,” representing a new era in which the death of absolutes has occurred. Introduced by the thought of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, this line of despair is what inevitably led to the “death of man.” It was Hegel who introduced the groundbreaking idea of a synthesis of truth whereby truth was no longer based on thesis and antithesis (this is The Law of Non-contradiction: a proposition “A” cannot be both “A” and “non-A” at the same time), but rather synthesis. In other words, truth became relative; subjective rather than objective. Now, “A” could be either “A” or “non-A” (it's opposite) depending on one's perspective. There is nothing intrinsically true in a proposition. Therefore, it can never be considered universally true for all people at all times. Man could no longer depend on absolutes. Black and white was completely replaced with various shades of gray and “truth” would now be defined by the autonomous individual who had the power to determine what was true...at least for himself.

Above the line of despair (prior to 1800 in Europe and 1935 in the U.S.), Schaeffer says “we find men living with their romantic notions of absolutes (though with no sufficient logical basis).” (8) Below the line of despair (after 1850 in Europe and 1935 in the U.S.), man has given up his notion of unified truth and a unity of thought regarding the human experience. This theme was later taken up in the mid-19^th Century by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who concluded that rationalism could only lead to pessimism and the liberal theology of the Lutheran Church of which he had been a part. Consequently, carried out to its logical conclusion, rationalism leads to nihilism. Therefore, one must abandon rationalism in order to validate one's existence and make a “leap of faith” to the living God. As James Sire points out in The Universe Next Door, Kierkegaard's philosophy was birthed as a response to the “dead orthodoxy of the Danish Lutheranism.” (96)

For Kierkegaard, this meant one could not find meaning through reason or rationality, but rather, in spite of any sensory evidence to the contrary, one must believe in God and put faith in him (a religious theme later developed and clarified by the neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth). Faith and reason were no longer unified, but put in different classifications. Schaeffer illustrated this as a two-story house, placing faith in the upper story and rationality in the lower. This represented a dichotomy within man where, if he is honest (based on rationalism—not to be confused with rationality—in which man begins with himself and tries to make sense of the universe), he will admit that there is no real meaning; no real purpose or hope in the world. There is no real truth that he can see or rely on. However, since he cannot live his life this way, he must have blind “faith” in something; he must believe that there is meaning and hope and love, etc., even when he knows it is all an illusion. In short, against all reason, he must make a “leap of faith” and trust in that which he cannot see. This more rightly explains that branch that came from Kierkegaard's philosophy known as secular or atheistic existentialism (as later developed by such philosophers as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre) which Kierkegaard himself would have disavowed. Kierkegaard's thoughts were more rightly applied theistically to an authentic belief in a real God in spite of the poor condition of the world around him. In other words, man could not get to God through reason and must therefore span the chasm by other means.

What begins to happen is man comes to realize that there is no real meaning to life; there is no real purpose and man is just one great big, cosmic accident. Man may pretend that there is a god in order to try and feel good about himself; he may choose to reside in that “upper story” of faith and religion, but deep down he knows that there is really nothing there—the rationalism of the “lower story” has told him so. In Escape From Reason, Schaeffer describes the despair in man as arising from “the abandonment of the hope of a unified answer for knowledge and life. Modern man continues to hang on to his rationalism and his autonomous revolt even though to do so he has to abandon any rational hope of a unified answer.” In other words, he despairs in the knowledge that man cannot live honestly without this ever-present dichotomy. If he is to escape absolute nihilism; to transcend nihilism as Albert Camus wrote in one of his essays, man must live a lie, and lies only go so far. Schaeffer goes on to explain the reality that in the lower story, on the basis of all reason, man as man is dead....Man has no meaning, no purpose, no significance. There is only pessimism concerning man as man. But up above, on the basis of a nonrational, nonreasonable leap, there is a nonreasonable faith which gives optimisim. This is modern man's total dichotomy.” (238)

Perhaps Schaeffer explains the current situation of man from a rationalistic perspective most succinctly when he says, “On the basis of all reason, man is meaningless. He has always been dead as far as rationality and logic are concerned....It does not mean he was alive and died. He was always dead, but did not know enough to know he was dead.” (238) Now he is fully aware.

So what happens when man dies? Anything. It really does not matter since there is no meaning. There is no right and wrong. Not really. What we call right and wrong are mere arbitrary rules laid out by the majority for the survival of the species which can be changed on a whim to then become the “right” answer. But what makes survival “right” or “good”? If there is no meaning, perhaps annihilation or death should be considered “good.” There is no love and there are no morals so anything goes, even high-tech sexual partners that you read about in my previous post. Why not? At best, men are animals following their instinctive, primal drive for self-satisfaction or perhaps you prefer to consider man as a machine, blindly “programmed” by an impersonal universe in which free choices are nothing more than illusions. Why shouldn't man have “sex” with a machine? There is no qualitative difference between the two. Under this prevailing philosophy, man can do anything man pleases and everything he does is right as long as he thinks so.

This is what happens when man dies.

What Happens When Man Dies - Part II.

Labels: David C. Price