Victor Shepherd, ThD
Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Victor Shepherd is Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at Tyndale, and Adjunct Prof. of Theology at University of Toronto.  At Tyndale Seminary Victor Shepherd teaches courses in the history and theology of the Sixteenth Century Reformation, the theology of Wesley and the spirituality of the Puritans.  In addition he teaches philosophy.

Prior to joining the Tyndale faculty in 1993, Dr. Shepherd was Adjunct Professor in the Department of Church History, Emmanuel College, University of Toronto, the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University and the Department of Religious Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland.   A frequent lecturer, he has addressed learned societies both in Canada and abroad, including the North American Calvin Studies Society and the Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies.

An adjunct professor at the Toronto School of Theology (University of Toronto) Dr. Shepherd supervises PhD comprehensive examinations and dissertations on themes related to the Sixteenth Century Reformation and to the tradition arising from it

Christian Concept of Death
Keynote Address
12:30 - 2:00pm, Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Amidst assorted attempts to romanticise death, deny it, flee it, or find refuge in diverse forms of escapism, a Christian approach to death realistically owns the finality of death together with death’s concomitant visitation of meaningless and annihilation. In addition a Christian approach recognizes the distress, physical or mental, that accompanies the dying of many whose affliction is painful, devoid of dignity, and horrific to family members whose suffering is different from that of the dying but intense and menacing nonetheless. A Christian approach to death eschews all facile pseudo-explanations concerning ease for the ‘good’ and anguish for the ‘evil’.

At the same time a Christian approach to death maintains that all death occurs in the context of the one whom Christians affirm to have been rendered victorious over death and its implicates. Death, therefore, is seen to have been de-natured (incapable of occasioning definitive separation), and is viewed now not to threaten life with ultimate futility or ultimate loss.

A Christian approach to death entails acknowledging fulfilment and vindication in the life-to-come, as well as the role of the ‘great cloud of witnesses’, the community of faith, in supporting the dying and their survivors. Since Christians are beneficiaries of the one who has conquered death, they are free to live in the light of this victory as they embrace life fully and joyfully in a spirit of self-forgetful affirmation.

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