The shape of death

The core of the Christian faith is pessimism about life and optimism about God, and therefore hope for life in God. These five chapters examine some of the forms that this pessimism about life and optimism about God took during the second and third centuries, as the Christian community began to reflect upon the implications of its message. They are based upon the though of five Church Fathers from those centuries: Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, Origen and Irenaeus. The titles of these essays are symbols taken from plane geometry because these five figures seem to summarize the several insights into "the shape of death" characteristic of these five Christian theologians.