[O Death, Where is Your Sting? Fear of Death and Love of Life in Christianity] Nobody can escape him, the great leveller, Death. Life is dangerous. Who lives, dies, wrote the Polish aphorist Stanislaw Jerzy Lec with black humour. And for Elias Canetti as for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe death was nothing but an object of hate. But in marked contrast to that, Christianity with Paul confesses: Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? (1. Corinthians 15:54-55). This means more than the Socratic immortality as developed by Platon in his Phaidon. According to Christoph Markschies it was not least the intense pastoral care for mourning sisters and brothers and the expectation of the resurrection, denying in no way the painful finality of earthly life, which because of its cheerful serenity contributed to the rapid growth of the early Christian communities. This stimulating book asks how the victory of Christ, swallowing up death, is to be interpreted today in view of an excessive materialism that sees death as the cold final word that it tries to repress if possible. sakriti opis