The problem that Ernest Becker addresses in this book is one that theologians such as Paul Tillich, and philosophers like Albert Camus, have sought to confront in their work. It is the problem of finitude, or mortality, and the essential absurdity of human existence in the face of what Becker calls:
Creation . . . a nightmare spectacular taking place on a planet that has been soaked for hundreds of millions of years in the blood of all its creatures. (Becker, 1973, p. 283)
Becker approaches the issue primarily through psychology, although also drawing upon the work of theologians and others. It is his contention that it is this finitude, although in repressed fashion, that drives much of our behavior. Like Rollo May, Becker associates anxiety with repression, denial, or hiding of the truth, rather than with the disturbing truth of finitude itself.
At the same time, finitude is itself the source of dread or anxiety even with non-repressed. Becker noted that both the existential philosophers and psychologists focused on this fact, and asserted that in the work of Kierkegaard it is possible to see that at its core, the analysis of psychology and the analysis of religion regarding the human condition are inextricable. (This is not, perhaps, as evident in regard to either contemporary psychology or contemporary theology, which seem to have gone in quite different directions. Nonetheless, it remains an important strand in both.)
The focus in this essay, however, is one religion, or faith, and the way in which finitude, mortality, and the mixed nature of being human conditions the relationship of the human person with his or her God.
Finitude can be understood in a larger scope as including all human limitation, not just human mortality. According to Tillich, human beings have destines which are created by the interplay of their limitations with their freedom. The Judaeo-Christian story very much builds upon this inter...