Back those many years ago when I was in seminary, one of the most influential and widely read theologians was the Roman Catholic priest, Hans Kung. Tubingen University, with Kung on the Catholic faculty and Jurgen Moltmann on the Protestant faculty, took on almost mythical character in my mind’s eye! Kung’s big book at the time was Christsein, translated into English as On Being a Christian. (Personally, I think simply Being Christian would have been a better translation, but that is no matter now.) As I went off to Europe for doctoral studies, I learned that it was a common tradition for theologians to publish their ideas in thesis form, to facilitate discussion, before publishing the full book treatment of their ideas. This helped make sense in my mind of Martin Luther’s action of nailing theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral door. I mention Kung’s work because it was careful studying his little book Thesen zum Christsein, which as far as I know was never itself published in English, that helped me learn basic modern theological vocabulary in German.

In that tradition, I want to present in thesis during the coming months the ideas I have been honing for many years now, which I have called a “Theory of Generative Death Anxiety.” Aside from the many theologians I have studied (among whom Paul Tillich deserves special mention) this theory draws heavily on ideas of Otto Rank, Robert J. Lifton, Rollo May, Terror Management Theory in social psychology, and most especially on the ideas of Ernest Becker, to whom I was introduced while in seminary and to whose work I have devoted the lion’s share of my scholarly work. You may well recognize other influences and connections to other theories not mentioned explicitly as well. This theory, which includes a defensible perspective on the origins of religion and spirituality, is an attempt to outline the deep structures of human psychology, emotions and motivations, and has, I believe, significant implications for our self-understanding and of our communal, social and political life. I invite your responses to each thesis as I post them, and I hope this provokes rigorous discussion together.
 
Thesis #1: All living creatures, including human beings, have a strong, even overwhelming urge to continue living (commonly called the survival instinct).

My hope is that your response here is “well, of course, so what?” That is the best kind of thesis, one that begins with simple common sense statements of life as we know it. As we build on this simple thesis in coming columns, however, the key importance, the deeper implications, of this statement will become increasingly clear.

One might think it unnecessary to expand upon or argue for this basic common sense statement. I do think it is worth a bit more reflection, however. For one thing, while we speak easily in everyday language of a survival instinct, this notion of instinct has come under a lot of criticism among specialists, particularly as it pertains to human beings. This is no doubt a good reminder to us to be careful in how we use certain terminology.

Nevertheless, while there is a myriad of survival strategies and mechanisms, from simply massive reproduction in the case of primitive species to sharp claws and teeth, speed, heavy protective hide, venom and much else in the case of higher species, we are on the whole justified in concluding that self-preservation is an almost universal hallmark of life, a direction that guides species adaptation in the evolutionary process. Whether or not we apply the word instinct to describe the physical and behavioral adaptation resulting from this process of self-preservative adaptation, it is nearly impossible to imagine a successful species, a species that survives over any period of time, that is not fundamentally responsive to the drive for self-preservation. And that is as much as we need to establish in this first thesis.

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Daniel Liechty is a Professor in the School of Social Work and Arts & Sciences Distinguished Lecturer at Illinois State University, Normal IL. Read more about Daniel Leichty here.