Spirituality and Human Finitude

Abstract

Since the Enlightenment, human finitude has become a question; but for thousands of years before that to question it would have been unthinkable. The story of Adam and Eve expelled from the Garden reflects a firm belief in finitude as a fundamental fact of life. Thereafter, we would have to give birth in pain and create wealth through toil. The notion in the New Testament of God becoming a man dramatizes the frustrating and painful limits of human existence. It is hardly surprising when Jesus lashes out in anger at a fig tree for not providing figs when he wanted them. How could an unlimited being suddenly limited not lash out? We who know nothing of life outside such annoying and often crushing constraints might have reacted the same way. From ancient times through at least the Middle Ages, most people did not live what we would consider long. Death from disease or accident was commonplace. Infant deaths were legion. “As late as the time of the Roman Empire, when modern Homo sapiens had already been in existence for some forty thousand years, average life expectancy was less than thirty years; infectious disease and inadequate nutrition were the big killers, with trauma bringing up the rear.”¹ For most of human history, there was no denying the basic fact of human finitude.