A ÁGUA COMO SÍMBOLO DE PASSAGEM DA MORTE PARA A VIDA

Abstract

The theme developed in this bibliographical research is the water as a symbol of the passage from death to life. The symbol is what gives the man try to express his experience with the sacred and for this analysis is used the contributions of Otto, Eliade, Girard, Bourdieu and Berger. Religious experience is a manner of meaning to human life, and religion does so through the effects of consecration and legitimation, concepts present in Bourdieu and Berger. Water in this study is presented through biblical texts that represent foundational events for the constitution of the faith of the people of Israel and the foundations of Christianity. From the Old Testament, the priestly text of Exodus 14 (and its intertexts in the Old Testament) dealing with the exodus, the passage of the Red Sea, is analyzed. In the New Testament, we refer to Paul's text to the Romans (6: 1-11), prioritizing the death and resurrection of Jesus, whose mystical participation the Christian already lives from baptism. The theme of water as the passage from death to life opens the possibility for the reading of the postmodern context of the religious scene, in which humanity, marked by Bauman's liquidity, is not necessarily less religious, but it can be needeed of symbols that account to re-signify instability, insecurity, fluid relationships, a less institutionalized spiritualization, the decline of metaphysics and the possibility of more solidary relationships, marked by respect for human life.