CHAPTER 10 THE HUMAN PROBLEM AND ITS SOLUTION: ERNEST BECKER AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

We have now sufficiently established the perspective of Ernest Becker and the major traditional and contemporary positions of Christian theology regarding the fundamental human problem and its solution to enable comparison between them, and this will be our focus in this final chapter. We will approach this comparison by first noting Beckers explicit references to Christianitys analysis of the human problem and its solution in his writings, and then drawing out the implications of these statements in light of his full anthropological view. As some of Beckers explicit references to Christianity, both positive and negative, have already been noted above in Parts I and II, our task here will first be to integrate these references along with others not previously noted into a coherent structure. Beckers relationship to certain aspects of Christian thought, while well recognized by him, was never the formal subject nor even implicitly a topic of sustained reflection in any of his works. Therefore, in seeking to define this relationship, we are forced, as with Beckers anthropological position as a whole, to assemble from a variety of briefer treatments a gestalt which will elucidate what that relationship between Beckers anthropology and Christian thought in fact is. It is instructive to note here the Christian thinkers whom Becker cites approvingly in one way or another in his writings. These thinkers and the frequency with which he cites them give us a strong indication of where Becker himself saw his theories and those of Christian theology converging. Christian thinkers referenced positively by Becker include Augustine, Martin Luther, Blaise Pascal, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Gabriel Marcel, G. K.

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Chesterton, Peter Berger, Paul Ricoeur, and, above all, Soren Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich. As we have already noted, the primary thread connecting many of these thinkers is their Christian existentialist perspective, though the Jewish existentialist Martin Buber is also notable as a thinker whom Becker finds significant. This existentialist relationship will be explored in greater detail below.

Ernest Becker and Christianity on the Fundamental Human Problem

Becker offers several substantive and essentially positive evaluations of Christian theological reflection on the fundamental human problem, especially in his later writings. In particular, he agrees with Christianitys identification of sindefined as centering ones life and finding its essential meaning in oneself and the world rather than in Godas the essential human problem. This is evidenced particularly in two brief discussions, one in The Denial of Death and the other in Escape from Evil, in which Becker reflects upon the Christian concept of sin and offers his own perspective on it. As he understands it, sin means literally separation from the powers and protection of the gods, a setting up of oneself as a causa sui, which results in the complete isolation of the individual, his disharmony with the rest of nature, his hyperindividualism, his attempt to create his own world from within himself (1973, 196; 1975, 88). In this, Becker contends, sin and neurosis are much the sameand it is here, in this analysis of the human problem, that he especially sees his Science of Man realizing the merger of the psychoanalytic theory of Rank and the philosophicaltheological analysis of Kierkegaard.
Both sin and neurosis represent the individual blowing himself up to larger than his true size, his refusal to recognize his cosmic dependence. Neurosis, like sin, is an attempt to force nature, to pretend that the causa-sui project really suffices. In sin and neurosis man fetishizes himself on something narrow at hand and pretends that the whole meaning and miraculousness of creation is limited to that, that he can get his beatification from that (1973, 196).

Both sin and neurosis are thus for Becker the persons striving to create in a falsely narrow wayi.e., from his own resources and on the basis of the world alonehis own individual religion of salvation in order to gain a selfachieved immortality (1973, 197). But, in his view, this is a strategy which cannot in fact succeed for the individual.
Sin and neurosis have another side: not only their unreal self-inflation in the refusal to admit creatureliness but also a penalty for intensified selfconsciousness: the failure to be consoled by shared illusions. The result is that the sinner (neurotic) is hyperconscious of the very thing he tries to deny: his

The Human Problem and Its Solution: Ernest Becker and Christian Theology creatureliness, his miserableness and unworthiness. The neurotic is thrown back on his true perceptions of the human condition, which caused his isolation and individualism in the first place. He tried to build a glorified private inner world because of his deeper anxieties, but life takes its revenge. The more he separates and inflates himself, the more anxious he becomes. There is no way to avoid paying the debt of dependency and yielding to the larger meaning of the rest of nature(1973, 197).

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This is to say that, for Becker, the sinners attempt to live a lie by his denial of limitation, of the true state of natural affairs, must certainly fail, and this for several reasons. First, while this attempt may reasonably satisfy ones Eros motive, it fails utterly to address ones Agape motive, including especially the need for transference onto some greater power source (1975, 89). Secondly, this solution fails to deal with the human need for guilt-expiation, for, Becker notes, one cannot finally turn to oneself for atonement and have it really satisfy ones need. If expiation of ones guilt is to be effective, it must come from outside the selfand ideally from a far greater power source than any mere human. Thus the sinner, in Beckers view, is one who feels in her deepest self unworthy and unimportant and therefore doomed to final extinction, and who then seeks to overcome these feelings by establishing her senses of power, meaning, heroism, and self-value from within herself and within the empirical world aloneincluding seeking transference onto and guilt expiation from other finite persons around her who cannot finally provide the help she needs. As a result, she must repress vast areas of awareness in order not to expose the lie of her attempt at saving herself. In other words, for Becker the sinner is one who seeks to work out her own salvation by a self-centered (Niebuhrs pride) or worldcentered (Niebuhrs sensuality) preoccupation, and this inevitably brings her into disharmony not only with the rest of nature but also with that mysterious power that undergirds all life and nature, which we term God. Sin is therefore in Beckers understanding, as in that of the Christian tradition, essentially the turning of the individual away from God and towards the self and the world; the choosing of a self-centered rather than a God-centered existence; the attempt to live from oneself and ones own powers rather than in proper dependence on God (Agape) and obedience to the divine will that human life be lived in concern for and harmony with the rest of creation in furtherance of Gods purposes for the universe (Eros). As such, this form of existence bears negative consequences for the self and for all other creatures, both human and non-human. If Becker and traditional and contemporary Christian thought agree essentially on the nature of the human problem as sin, this leads to the question of their respective answers to a correlative question, one we have seen generated by the Christian original sin debate: what is it that motivates people to attempt to live this self-defeating lie, to center their lives on themselves rather than on God.

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For Becker, as we have seen, and for Rank and Kierkegaard as well, it is above all their fear of death and unwillingness to live with the fact of death as their final fate that motivates people to make this sinful choice. Interestingly, this is what Becker, following Kierkegaard, understands as the root message of the Garden of Eden myth as well as the result of modern psychological theory: that death is mans peculiar and greatest anxiety (1973, 70). The coherence between Beckers view here and the personalist Christian theological understandings of humankinds motivation for sin that we have examined are obvious. Becker and the Christian personalist tradition, especially in its existentialist forms, both agree that the root temptation to sin is found in essential human nature, in the existential dilemma faced by humans who have a powerful inborn instinct for survival yet who are also self-conscious beings who know they must inevitably die. And yet, while this personalistic evaluation is foundational to Beckers understanding of why people choose the sinful mode of death denial/immortality striving, there is also a social element which, as we have seen, is important for Becker. In his view the socialization process into the cultural fiction of ones society is a powerful shaper of ones goals and motivations. But if ones socialization experience was such that it created a more fearful, insecure person, and if the cultural fiction of ones society leads one to seek his or her immortality in self-centered rather than God-centered ways, then this will only reinforce the personalistic motive for this sinful choice, making ones finding of a nonsinful solution to ones existential paradox all the more difficult. This view clearly echoes the situationalist Christian theological view, in which ones social experience is understood to be a major factor in impelling people toward a sinful solution to their fundamental life-problems. Thus Beckers full perspective on the factors in human nature and experience which motivate people to sin can be seen to cohere very well with both the personalist and situationalist understandings of original sin in contemporary Christian theology. In this way Beckers work can be viewed as lending helpful social-scientific support to both positions and making either explanation in itself only partially adequate to a comprehensive understanding of the human propensity to sin. But must one inevitably sin? Here we find Becker more in concert with the Pelagian and Irenaean view rather than the Augustinian perspective. Becker does not believe that humankinds existential problem must inevitably issue in human evil. Some people do have the strength and courage and creativity, he maintains, to resist sinfully self-centered solutions to their death-anxiety and find more life-affirming solutionsthe apex of which, as we have seen, is the saint. So freedom, even if limited, does remain for the individual, and therefore also the freedom to sin or not to sin in any given situation. Nonetheless, we must also attend to two other features of Beckers thought which are significant for this discussion. First, we must recall that, according to

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Becker, all humankind exists along a continuum whose extremes are people who are maximally constricted/minimally free and people who are minimally constricted/maximally free. Thus personal constriction and freedom are a matter of degree, not an absolute either-or. Different people will lie at different points along the continuum, depending on their natural gifts and the nature of their upbringing. And since freedom, and hence the freedom to sin or not to sin, is not absolute, Beckers understanding suggests a view of sin in which the sinners responsibility for his or her sin is also a matter of degree, tied to the degree of freedom of the individual. Just as we know the odds of a person from a disadvantaged background, either physically, mentally or socially, succeeding in life are less than a person from an advantaged background, so we must recognize, Beckers position suggests, the option for not sinning to be more difficult for the person with fewer natural gifts and whose upbringing has been traumatic than for the person with greater natural gifts who has had a fortunate upbringing. Only God could finally know the degree of personal responsibility of any given individual for his or her sinful choices, lending weight to the traditional Christian injunction to judge not. And yet, on the other hand, Becker would repudiate any view, such as Augustines, in which the person, no matter how disadvantaged, was said to have no real freedom of choice and hence could bear no responsibility for his or her actions or for the center chosen for his or her life. The individual always bears to some greater or lesser degree responsibility for his or her actions, according to Beckerthe amount of which, again, God alone could know. How all of this plays out in terms of the traditional Christian debate regarding what is required for one to attain eternal salvation is, of course, not treated by Becker and so is left to the theologians. But his view does suggest the existence of variable degrees of freedom and hence of responsibility among people, and this is a concept which might have much to offer Christian theologians in their reflections on the nature and consequences of sin. To summarize, then: having assessed the fundamental perspectives of both Becker and Christian theology on the human problem, we can conclude that there is broad agreement between Beckers Science of Man and traditional and contemporary Christian thought on the nature of the human problem as sin and with at least aspects of the Christian personalist and situationalist theological traditions on the motivations which tempt people to choose sinful solutions to their fundamental life problems. What Christianity gains from Beckers work is social-scientific backing for these traditional and contemporary views. We can also suggest that in his understanding of the reality of human freedom and yet the concomitant variability of human freedom and hence responsibility for sin, Becker has bequeathed to Christian theology a perspective which it has not sufficiently considered but which might help to refine its understanding of the nature and consequences of sin.

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Becker and Christianity on the Solution to the Human Problem

We have already noted in Part II that for Becker the solution to the human problem is necessarily religious, given the human terror of death and the resultant need to deny death and find some form of symbolic immortality something impossible within the empirical world. The question for us here, then, is how well Becker conceived Christianity to function as an ideal religious solution to the human problem, both in theory and in its historical practice. As with our discussion of the human problem, we will begin by assessing Beckers occasional explicit statements on how well Christianity functions soteriologically before moving on to the broader evaluation implicit in his thought. In general, Becker is quite positive about the Christian understanding of salvation as an appropriate solution to the human problem, though more in its theoretical ideal than its historical incarnation within the church. All religions fall far short of their own ideals. . . . But as an ideal, Christianity . . . stands high, perhaps highest in some vital ways. . . (l973, 204). This is so for Becker because of the propriety of the Christian solution of faith to the problem of sin (faith properly construed to mean the centering of ones whole existence on God rather than oneself, and including therefore the key elements of trust, beliefs, and actions). The Christian, Becker notes, is so to live, act, and consecrate [her] life, as to increase the power and glory of the Eternal One (1971a, 12324). Traditionally, for Christians every important thing that you did in life marriage, children, careerhad repercussions in the eternal dimension. Even the small daily tasks were part of a larger scheme, with ramifications not confined to earth (l971a, 122-23). In this way Christianity democratized cosmic heroism to include all people, even the social outcast, giving meaning to their lives in a revolutionary new way.
Little did it matter that the earth was a vale of tears, of horrid sufferings, of incommensurateness, or torture and humiliating daily pettiness, of sickness and death, the place where man could expect nothing, achieve nothing for himself. Little did it matter, because it served God and so would serve the servant of God. In a word, mans cosmic heroism was assured, even if he was nothing. This is the remarkable achievement of the Christian world picture: that it could take slaves, cripples, imbeciles, the simple and the mighty, and make them all secure heroes(1971a, 159-60).

And yet, while secure in the most meaningful cosmic heroismthereby fulfilling ones Eros motivethe Christian also fulfills her Agape motive through submission and giving over her life to God and his purposes. This is for

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Becker the necessary human transference onto a greater power for which the Christian God functions ideally in that this God functions to free rather than restrict the individual (cf. 1973, 174, 251). Becker can even use the religious language of redemption to refer to this transaction and its implications for fulfilling the most basic human needs:
we want redemptionnothing less. We want to be rid of our faults, of our feelings of nothingness. We want to be justified, to know that our creation has not been in vain. Human partners cant do this. Redemption can only come from outside the individual, from beyond, from our conceptualization of the ultimate source of things, the perfection of creation. It can only come, as Rank saw, when we lay down our individuality, give it up, admit our creatureliness and helplessness (1973, 167-68).

Thus, in Beckers view, the Christian understanding of the life of faith fulfills the twin ontological motives of Eros and Agape while also being kept in necessary balance. This, in turn, means that the needs for meaning, self-esteem, power, death denial, guilt expiation, heroismand thus also the need to overcome ones death anxietyare also effectively met by the Christian form of life. Becker finds this Christian ideal excellently delineated in Kierkegaards model of the knight of faith, which he terms surely one of the most beautiful and challenging ideals ever put forth by man (1973, 258). The knight of faith is the person
who lives in faith, who has given over the meaning of life to his Creator, and who lives centered on the energies of his Maker. He accepts whatever happens in this visible dimension without complaint, lives his life as a duty, faces his death without a qualm. No pettiness is so petty that it threatens his meanings; no task is too frightening to be beyond his courage. He is fully in the world on its terms and wholly beyond the world in his trust in the invisible dimension. The great strength of such an ideal is that it allows one to be open, generous, courageous, to touch others lives and enrich them and open them in turn. As the knight of faith has no fear-of-life-and-death trip to lay onto others, he does not cause them to shrink back upon themselves, he does not coerce or manipulate them. The knight of faith, then, represents what we might call an ideal of mental health, the continuing openness of life out of the death throes of dread (1973, 257-58).

Paul Tillichs New Being is another portrait of the ideal Christian which Becker finds helpful. For one who has attained the New Being of faith,

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The Human Problem and Its Solution: Ernest Becker and Christian Theology His daily life becomes truly a duty of cosmic proportions, and his courage to face the anxiety of meaninglessness becomes a true cosmic heroism. He tries to achieve what the creative powers of emergent Being have themselves so far achieved with lower forms of life: the overcoming of that which would negate life (ibid.).

He would also be the type of person

who would live more in harmony with nature, less driven, more perceptive, more in touch with his own creative energies, and who might go on to form genuine communities to replace the collectivities of our time, communities of truer persons in place of the objective creatures created by our materialistic culture (1973, 277).

In all this, then, it is clear that Becker finds the Christian solution to the problem of human being and existenceat least as that has been expressed by certain Christian existentialist theologians, but which he also takes to be the essence of the primitive Christian visionto be an ideal solution. He is under no illusions, however, nor does he see Christian theology as having any illusions, about the frequency or ease with which such saints appear. Indeed, he claims that ironically, theologians today are often the most sober about immanence and its possibilities (1973, 277), because they recognize how difficult faith, this God-centered existence, is for us humans. Reflecting Paul Tillichs understanding of the challenge facing the person of faith, Becker avers that the call to faith is a call to the highest and most difficult effortand not to simple joy. . . . [It] means that man has to have the courage to be himself, to stand on his own feet, to face up to the eternal contradictions of the real world; and it is this courage to face the anxiety of meaninglessness that constitutes the true cosmic heroism (1973, 278-79). One must renounce the world and oneself and lay the meaning of it to the powers of creation, even while recognizing that this is the hardest thing for man to achieve (1973, 173). It is not surprising, then, Becker believes, that, given the magnitude of the task, so few saints ever emerge within the human family. This problem is particularly acute, he notes, for contemporary Western persons, for not only do they face this personal challenge of achieving faith, but they do so in a cultural situation where no generally accepted social fiction or world-view exists to effectively support their efforts. It has always been difficult for people, who live on the level of the visible and tangible and know nothing of the invisible realm, to commit to the transcendent.
Man succumbs easily to the temptation of created life, which is to exercise power mainly in the dimension in which he moves and acts as an organism.

The Human Problem and Its Solution: Ernest Becker and Christian Theology The pull of the body is so strong, lived experience is so direct; the supernatural is so remote and problematic, so abstract and intangible (1975, 85).

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And even where this commitment to the transcendent is possible, Becker notes, it is still difficult to continue to live astride both worlds, the visible and the invisible, as one tends to pull you away from the other (1973, 259). Traditionally, at least, most cultural fictions included the belief in the transcendent as a significant factor in the lived experience of everyday life. But today, Becker notes, we live in the scientifically-minded modern era in which logic and cause-and-effect have been elevated and mystery banished (1973, 200). Further, with the rise of pluralism we have become aware of the wide variety of worldviews existent among the different human cultures, with the resultant difficulty for thinking people of absolutizing their own. And even with all the worlds cultures to choose from, none of these, nor all of them taken together, represents an integrated world conception into which we fit ourselves with pure belief and trust (1975, 71). What we moderns have constructed, then, Becker asserts, is a secular-humanist immortality ideology in which ones immortality is gained through ones own acts and accomplishments and in which the earth is the only area of self-perpetuation (1975, 71-72). This wholly secular modern immortality ideology, combined with the already substantial personal challenges of the life of faith, explains fully, in Beckers view, why modern man cannot do . . . what Kierkegaard prescribed: the lonely leap into faith, the naive personal trust in some kind of transcendental support for ones life (1973, 200). It also explains, he believes, the ultimately futile materialism and drivenness of contemporary Western man. Part of the blame for this state of affairs, Becker claims, must be laid at the doorstep of Christianity itself. Early on it sacrificed much of its radicality and idealism as it was co-opted by the Roman Empire to serve its own ends, and it has never succeeded in escaping this connection with the state nor its own bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies (e.g., 1975, 69-70). In addition, following the general human tendency to absolutize the past, Christianity, like all religions, has in practice reinforced the regressive transference into an even more choking bind: the fathers are given the sanction of divine authority (1973, 204). Tradition thereby becomes stultifying and the enemy of continued theological and moral development. Further, Becker asserts, the churches cultural accommodation continues today as the churches subscribe to this empty heroics of possession, display, manipulation (1975, 164). Thus, he opines,
I think that Christianity is in trouble not because its myths are dead, but because it does not offer its ideal of heroic sainthood as an immediate personal one to be lived by all believers. In a perverse way, the churches have turned

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The Human Problem and Its Solution: Ernest Becker and Christian Theology their backs both on the miraculousness of creation and on the need to do something heroic in this world. The early promise of Christianity was to bring about once and for all the social justice that the ancient world was crying for; Christianity never fulfilled this promise, and is as far away from it today as ever. Even worse, as they have done all through history, the churches still bless unheroic wars and sanctify group hatred and victimage. It is an age-old story(ibid.).

What we need today, Becker believes, is a creative new religious worldview reflecting a new openness in dealing with stale perceptions about reality, one in which contemporary people can believe and to which they can commit their lives (1973, 277-78). And while the prescriptions for such a new cultural fiction are not for a specifically Christian solution, it is clear from the above that he believes the Christian solution, properly conceived, to offer real promise as a world-view for our time (cf. 1973, 204). For finally, as we have already seen, the human problem is for Becker fundamentally theological, and therefore its solution must also be theological.
Religion gives the individual the validation that nothing else gives. . . . I dont think one can be a hero in any really elevating sense without some transcendental referent, like being a hero for God, or for the creative powers of the universe. The most exalted type of heroism involves feelings that one has lived to some purpose that transcends one (Keen 183).

Nonetheless, Becker warns, a religious solution can be neither naive nor fictive regarding the human situation: we have to be as hard-headed as possible about reality and possibility, since a fundamental requirement of a truly generative cultural myth is to help men see the reality of their condition (1973, 280). This means frankly acknowledging, among other things, the possible truth that human life may not be more than a meaningless interlude in a vicious drama of flesh and bones that we call evolution (1973, 187).
Genuine heroism for man is still the power to support contradictions, no matter how glaring or hopeless they may seem. The ideal critique of a faith must also be whether it embodies within itself the fundamental contradictions of the human paradox and yet is able to support them without fanaticism, sadism, narcissism, but with openness and trust (1971b, 198).

Religion can accomplish this task, Becker believes, because of one important fact: we cant know. . . the nature of ultimate reality, since we ourselves are transcended by it and all is relative to our perceptual equipment and to our transcended place (1971a, 190). For this reason we cant know the overall

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plan of creation, where it is supposed to come out and how we are to fit into it, what we are supposed to contribute to it (ibid.). Thus, he claims, the religious world-view cannot be said to be inherently unreasonable. But if we cant know the real in any objective way, we can at least know what is false to our lives, to the forward momentum of our conduct. This is a viable, relativist, pragmatic criterion by which to judge all cultural fictions (ibid.). The primary weakness of the modern secular cultural fiction is that it cannot help solve the fundamental human problem, our existential dilemma; in fact, Becker believes, by focusing only on the level of empirical reality, it makes that problem worse. The religious hero-system, on the other hand, includes the level of the invisible, the possible multi-dimensionality of reality, the problem of creation and the meaning of it which are, in fact, the real dimensions of mans existence (197lb, 191). For these reasons, then, Becker claims, it is in fact quite reasonable to choose the religious solution. And therefore he can claim that both science and religion, both the work of Rank and the work of Kierkegaard, demonstrate that the psychiatric and religious perspectives on reality are intimately linked, for they both recognize that the only possible solution to the human problem created by death and our knowledge of it is some form of religious solution (1973, 63, 197ff.). But how does Becker envision an appropriate form of religious solution for contemporary Western people? In addition to being fully honest about the more negative truths of human nature and existence as these have been explicated in his anthropology, Becker also insists we must consider the more positive and fundamental issue of the direction of human evolution on this planet and its meaning. For, he notes, the human ego represents, as far as we can judge, a natural urge by the life force itself toward an expansion of experience, toward more life, and towards the self-consciousness which is a step into a true kind of sub-divinity in nature (1973, 263). And, indeed, congruent with Reinhold Niebuhrs classic Christian existentialist analysis, it is precisely this uniqueness, this being both animal and yet more than mere animalor, as Becker put it, gods with anusesthat is fundamental to the anxiety which is the core human problem (ibid.). Further, Becker suggests, it seems that this life force which we see operating within ourselves reaches naturally even beyond earth itself, so that we appear to ourselves part of a larger purpose in the universeeven if we do not understand that purpose (cf. 1973, 191).
In the mysterious way in which life is given to us in evolution on this planet, it pushes in the direction of its own expansion. We dont understand it simply because we dont know the purpose of creation; we only feel life straining in ourselves and see it thrashing about in others as they devour each other. Life seeks to expand in an unknown direction for unknown reasons. There is a driving force behind a mystery that we cannot understand, and it includes more than reason alone. The urge to cosmic heroism, then, is sacred and mys-

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The Human Problem and Its Solution: Ernest Becker and Christian Theology terious and not to be neatly ordered and rationalized by science and secularism (1973, 284).

An appropriate religious solution, then, Becker believes, would suggest answers to this question about the direction of evolution on a universal scale and the purpose of God (or the life force) within itsomething neither science qua science nor secular ideologies can do. Such would be a truly helpful Christian theologyone which did not lie about the truth of the human situation yet held out hope and meaning on a cosmic scale, inviting humankind to assist God in Gods great plan for the universe. Clearly something like this is what Christianity and the other world religious traditions have sought to do, even if they have not been fully self-conscious in so doing. How might one, then, judge the relative adequacies of all the various religious world-viewswhich one is truest? Again, at least with regard to their transcendental claims, Becker would reiterate his pragmatist criterion for judging among competing religious world-views: since we cannot finally judge the ultimate truth of their metaphysical assertions, we must adjudge that one as best which, in addition to being truest to the facts of empirical reality, supports most adequately the creation of healthier, more life-enhancing people and societies. This is a criterion which can be judged empirically, he notes; and it is the task of the religious geniuses or saints to criticize the existing visions where they are weak and provide societies with new, more adequate (i.e., life-enhancing) visions in their stead. But again, such a religious world-view, while providing support for the critical human task of achieving faith, a lived trust in God and Gods purposes as a transcendental support for ones life (1973, 200), is still only thata support. The more fundamental task remains for the individual to attain this faith in his or her lifeto internalize it fully within ones beingand, as Becker notes, this is the hardest thing for man to achieve (1973, 173). To trust that God exists and to dedicate ones life to this largely unknown and unknowable God, to support the contradictions and ambiguities of ones own nature and existence, and to conquer ones terrors and insecurities requires a strength and courage which most people simply do not have; and for this reason, Becker believes, following Kierkegaard, that finally faith is a matter not only of human effort but also of grace.
Theres the rub; faith is a matter of grace. As Tillich later put it: religion is first an open hand to receive gifts (grace) and then a closed hand to give them. One cannot give the gifts of the knight of faith without first being dubbed a knight by some Higher Majesty (1973, 258).

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Here we have a striking congruity between Beckers anthropological analysis and the classic Pauline doctrine of salvation by grace through faithand further evidence of Beckers claim that what he has effected is a merger of science and religion in their understandings of the human problem and its solution. A life of faith alone can save one, at least as salvation can be experienced in this life, and yet to have such faith requires the grace of being gifted by nature and/or nurture (and/or the divine) with the strength and courage for such a life in the face of ones existential dilemma. Again, this is why Becker can say that it is ironically the theologians, not the scientists, who have been most sober in their assessment of what is possible for humankind on this earth. Thus, Becker concludes, this faith, this New Being, is an ideal that might be worked toward and so partly realized but also one which, as Kierkegaard aptly put it, is continually developing itself out of the death throe of dread (1973, 91, 277). This new, religious heroism, then, and the mystery it serves
is not something that can be programmed by science. Even more, it comes from the vital energies of masses of men sweating within the nightmare of creationand it is not even in mans hands to program. Who knows what form the forward momentum of life will take in the time ahead or what use it will make of our anguished searching. The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion somethingan object or ourselvesand drop it into the confusion, make an offering of it, so to speak, to the life force (1973, 285).

The correlation between Beckers understanding of the solution to the human problem and the Christian solution of faith is thus strong in at least several respects. First, like the Christian solution, Becker conceives a life centered on Godwhat Christianity has termed faithas the only possible solution to the human problem. Secondly, with at least a substantial part of historical Christian thought, Becker conceives human effort to be required to attain this faith, yet recognizes that attaining this is at best a very difficult task for the individual. Finally, Becker agrees with the mainline Christian tradition that to some degree Gods grace is required for personal salvation, in that certain personal gifts and/or a supportive environment are needed if one is to be able to attain to the Christian ideal of faith. Beckers perspective, then, both explicitly and implicitly, offers some interesting suggestions regarding what kind of Christian theology would be best suited to support the striving of individuals and groups for faithsuggestions which might be significant for contemporary theologians. In particular, his work suggests that, first, Christianity must develop a theology which gives to all people of every gender, age, race and social stratum the kind of support they need to conquer their terror of death and find their own immortality in less destructive, more humanly noble ways than have heretofore existed. This point

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carries with it a number of corollaries. It implies that an appropriate Christian theology must be as true to all the facts of reality as these are known at any given time. This means that a viable Christian theology must include a welcoming acceptance of the role of science in understanding the nature of our world and ourselves as well as in its potential for suggesting aspects of the divine role in nature. This also means that Christian theology must remain flexible to incorporate the new insights science will bring in the futuremoving forward with the freedom to modify certain traditional ideas where these are refuted by the clear findings of the various sciences. Such a theology must also include a full acknowledgement of the reality of the human situation in the world, including humankinds existential paradox of being both godlike and wormlike and the terror of death with which each person lives-and it is here, regarding the psychology of sin, that Beckers theories have much to contribute. Finally, an appropriate theology for Becker would include a frank acknowledgement of the mysteriousness of God and so take a less dogmatic approach to Christian belief than has been typical historically of theology in both East and West (with the apophatic theology, especially of the mystics, the notable exception). From all of this, then, we can say that, based on Beckers perspective, an appropriate contemporary Christian theology must articulate an understanding of God and the place of each individual in Gods purposes in the universe which is believable and directs the natural human strivings for heroism and death-denial in the direction of the struggle for a faith-existence in this difficult world. None of these elements is foreign to the essence of Christian teaching; indeed, the development of such a non-dogmatic and pragmatic vision might in fact be truer to the Christian essence than most theologies previously devised. But Beckers analysis is highly significant, I believe, in that it suggests that Christianity must critically examine its theologies to determine where they are part of the solution, where they serve to build up and support humans and their natural strivings, and where they are part of the problem, supporting human suffering and degradation. Obviously, such an admission of its theologies culpability in the misery of the world past and present would not be easy for Christianity; yet I would agree with Becker that this is necessary if Christianity is to remain true to its calling and transcend its imperfect past. But Beckers vision also implies, importantly, that contemporary Christianity must propound a system of ethics in which each person is truly valued and nurtured towards becoming a hero for God and/or Christ. Indeed, this would seem to be required by the core Christian ethical principal of love, in which one is always and in every situation to do the most loving thing possible for all concerned. In addition to formulating such an ethical vision, though, the church must also itself, in Beckers understanding, live this ethic, even when that brings it into conflict with current cultural standards. In doing this the church would

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not only lend conviction to its theological and ethical systems but would also be recovering the counterculturalism of the earliest Christian churchthough, hopefully, unlike the patristic church, it would continue to hold fast to its vision and refrain from finally capitulating to the standards of the dominant secular culture(s). Though this prescription for Christianity in the modern world might seem fairly simple and straightforward, Beckers perspective argues that it would not be easy for the churches to achieve. Such creative new theologies would depend on those who have been graced with the strength, courage, creativity, and faith to challenge the old visions and propound new ones that meet the criteria necessary to undergirding the human quest for faith. And the sainthood required to accomplish this, Becker again notes, is not only dependent on grace, but is also an idealnever completely attained by any individual, but rather attained only in part, such that sainthood is thus ever relative, a matter of degree. The circularity of the societys shaping of the individual and the individuals shaping of society essentially guarantees this for Becker. But it is here that Becker seems to miss a crucial support for humans as they strive to attain faith: the support of other persons striving for the same goal in communities. Indeed, this has been understood to be a crucial function of churches historically in Christianityto provide mutual support for persons in their shared striving to live a more God-centered life; and in the early church this was reflected in the understanding of the church as an alternative society to the secular Roman society in which they had previously lived. Thus, while it will still be extremely difficult for individuals to achieve a truly God-centered life, the support of like-minded people in a shared community can make that goal at least somewhat easier to attain or attainable at least to a greater degree.

Conclusion
We have at last reached the goal which we set for ourselves at the beginning of this book, which was to compare Beckers anthropological perspective with that of classical and contemporary Christianity regarding their understandings of the fundamental human problem and its solution, and to assess the potential contributions of Beckers understanding for Christian thought and practice. In this chapter we have seen that there exists substantial correlation between Ernest Beckers perspective and that of at least certain important strands of Western Christian theology. We have seen that, for Becker, the core human problem is the universal human need to deny death and gain a conviction of some form of personal or symbolic immortality in the face of our natural and persistent fear of deaththis latter being the result of our existential dilemma of being an animal and yet more than simply an animal: a self-conscious animal aware of its inevitable death. This attempt to deny death and gain immortality is

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supported by the attempts to gain power, self-esteem, meaning, heroic status, fulfillment of the twin ontological motives of Eros and Agape, and the expiation of guilt, all of which are undergirded by the prescriptions of the dominant worldview of ones cultural group and by the individuals transference onto higher powers and repression of awarenesses which operate counter to the fulfillment of these needs. These fundamental drives all combine for Becker to create individuals who are self-absorbed in this quest, unable to rationally assess the means they have chosen and those prescribed by the social fiction of their cultural group for fulfilling these needs. These factors, he believes, together explain the reason for the majority of humanly caused evil in the world. As we have seen, this understanding of the human problem as selfcenteredness coheres well with the classic Christian understanding of sin, understood as centering ones life on oneself rather than on God, even while going beyond the Christian definition in its description of the psychology underlying this self-centered preoccupation. In addition, Beckers understanding that human evil results both from the individuals self-centeredness and the inadequacies of the cultural systems and world-views by which people live mirrors contemporary Western Christian understandings of the personalistic and situationalistic factors which function to encourage the human tendency to sin. Regarding the solution to this human problem, we have seen here too a fundamental coherence between Beckers perspective and that of the Christian tradition. For Becker, the only real solution to the human problem is a religious solution, since the hunger for immortality leads us beyond what can be attained within empirical reality. Such a religious solution must entail for Becker trusting in and making ones whole life an offering to the fundamental powers of the universe, to the life force itself, to God. Similarly, the classic Christian solution to the problem of sin is faith, conceived as a refocusing of the center of ones life away from oneself and onto God. In addition, just as for Becker a lifeaffirming and supportive religious world-view is needed to support the individuals efforts to center his or her life on God, so too has Christianity traditionally claimed that the Christian world-view constitutes the appropriate one to provide the support individuals need in their attempts to live a life of faith. Thus, we have seen, Beckers anthropological perspective and that of the mainline Christian tradition are in substantial agreement on the basic human problem and its solutionand this was, as already noted, also Beckers opinion. Of course, this does not ignore the fact that there are also some important differences, which are only to be expected given that Becker writes as a social scientist, not as a Christian theologian. (Indeed, his own spiritual journey through the years led him from the atheism of his earlier life to a reaffirmation of his Jewish roots.) One example of the differences between Becker and Christian theology concerns the question of life after death. For most of his career, Becker evidenced a skepticism regarding the possibility that life might in fact continue in

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some form after death, as most religions have claimed, referring to this as the fantasy of immortality (1973, 120). Yet when specifically challenged as to the warrants for making such a claim, Becker responded, Im not saying. . .that there arent other dimensions in existence. . . . I would have to agree that the transcendence of death, symbolically or from the point of view of the whole universe, may be very real (Keen, 188, 198; cf. chp. 4, note 12). In addition, all specifically Christian theological claimsabove all, that it is in Christ that humankind finds its salvationare also not treated by Becker; and, of course, this is again only what we would expect given the scientific objectivity with which he always sought to formulate his theories. Nonetheless, Becker did, as we have seen, appreciate the Christian perspective and considered it to be in its ideal form and, potentially at least in its historical incarnation, one of the best if not the best religious world-view for answering the fundamental human problem. Christian theologians and their churches would do well to learn from Becker both in his understanding of human motivation and in his critique of traditional Christianity. For, interestingly, in the end they both seek essentially the same thinga refocusing of human lives from self onto God with a resultant increase in human fulfillment and reduction in the amount of humanly caused evil in the world. Ernest Becker understood his life-work to have been to help bring together the scientific (especially Adlerian and Rankian) and religious (especially JudeoChristian) understandings of humankind into a new Science of Man which might be employed to ameliorate humankinds unique destructiveness in the world. By the end of his career he believed that he had largely accomplished this goal. The next step, he implied, was up to the religious geniuses or saints, who must create new immortality ideologies/theologies to help people channel their attempts to deny death and gain immortality into more life-affirming forms. Were Becker alive today he would surely reaffirm what he said some thirty years ago: that realizing this goal remains the essential and unfinished task of Christianity.