City of God (Penguin Classics), page 70
BOOK XIII
1. The Fall of Man and his consequent mortality
WE have disposed of some very difficult questions about the beginning of the world and the start of the human race. Next on the list of subjects to be treated is the fall of the first man, or rather of the first human beings, and the origin and propagation of human mortality. For God did not create men in the same condition as the angels, completely incapable of death, even if they sinned. The condition of human beings was such that if they continued in perfect obedience they would be granted the immortality of the angels and an eternity of bliss, without the interposition of death, whereas if disobedient they would be justly condemned to the punishment of death. I have already made this point in the previous book.1
2. The death of the soul and the death of the body
It is clear to me that I must explain more carefully the kind of death I am talking about. For though the human soul is rightly described as immortal, it has nevertheless a kind of death of its own. It is said to be immortal for this reason, that it never entirely ceases to live and to feel, even if only in the slightest degree. The body, on the other hand, is mortal in that it can be completely bereft of life, and by itself it has no life of any sort. Thus the death of the soul results when God abandons it, the death of the body when the soul departs. Therefore the death of the whole man, of both these elements, comes when the soul, abandoned by God, leaves the body. For then the soul no longer derives life from God, nor does the body receive life from the soul. This death of the whole man is followed by what is called, on the authority of the divine oracles, ‘the second death’.2 And this is what the Saviour meant when he said, ‘Fear him, who has power to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna.’3
Now since this cannot happen until soul and body have been so combined that they cannot be sundered or separated, it may seem strange that the body is said to be killed by a death in which it is not abandoned by the soul, but remains possessed of soul and feeling, and endures torment in this condition. For in that final and everlasting punishment (about which we shall have to speak in greater detail in the appropriate place)4 we correctly talk of the ‘death of the soul’, because it no longer derives life from God. But how can we talk in this case of the death of the body, since it is deriving life from the soul? For otherwise it cannot feel the bodily torments which are to follow the resurrection. Is it because life of any kind is a good thing, while pain is an evil, and for that reason the body cannot be said to be alive, when the purpose of the soul is not the body’s life, but the body’s pain?
The soul therefore derives life from God, when its life is good – for its life cannot be good except when God is active in it to produce what is good – while the body derives life from the soul when the soul is alive in the body, whether the soul derives its life from God or not. For the life of the bodies of the ungodly is not the life of their souls but of their bodies, a life which souls can confer even when those souls are dead, that is, when God abandons them; for their own life, in virtue of which they are immortal, still persists, in however low a degree.
But in that last condemnation, although a man does not cease to feel, his feeling is not that of pleasure and delight, nor that of health and tranquillity. What he feels is the anguish of punishment, and so his condition is rightly called death rather than life. The second death is so called because it follows the first, in which there is a separation of natures which cohere together, either God and the soul, or the soul and the body. It can therefore be said of the first death that it is good for the good, bad for the bad; but the second death does not happen to any of the good, and without doubt it is not good for anyone.
3. Death has passed to all mankind through the sin of the first human beings. Is it the punishment of sin in the case of the saints?
A question now arises which must not be suppressed. Is death, which separates soul and body, really a good thing for the good? If so, how can it be maintained that death is itself the penalty of sin? For the first human beings would certainly not have suffered it, if they had not sinned. Now if death could only have happened to the bad, how could it be good for the good? In fact, if it could only have happened to the bad, so far from being good for the good, it ought not to have happened to them at all. Why should there have been any punishment where there were no sins to be punished?
We must therefore admit that the first human beings were created under this condition, that they would not have experienced any kind of death, if they had not sinned; and yet those first sinners were sentenced to death, with the provision that whatever sprang from their stock should incur the same punishment. For whatever was born from them could not have been different from what they themselves had been. In fact, because of the magnitude of that offence, the condemnation changed human nature for the worse; so that what first happened as a matter of punishment in the case of the first human beings, continued in their posterity as something natural and congenital.
This is because the descent of man from man is not like the derivation of man from the dust. Dust was the raw material for the making of man; but in the begetting of a human being man is a parent. Hence, although flesh was made out of earth, flesh is not the same as earth, whereas the human parent is the same kind of thing as the human offspring. Therefore the whole human race was in the first man, and it was to pass from him through the woman into his progeny, when the married pair had received the divine sentence of condemnation. And it was not man as first made, but what man became after his sin and punishment, that was thus begotten, as far as concerns the origin of sin and death.
For the first man was not reduced by his sin, or by its punishment, to the state of infantile torpor and weakness of mind and body which we observe in little children. Such was to be the early state of children, like the early state of young animals, according to the decision of God, who had cast down their parents to a life and death like that of animals. As Scripture says, ‘Man was in a place of honour, but did not realize it: he has been brought to the level of the animals without understanding and been made like them.’5 Though in fact we observe that infants are weaker than the most vulnerable of the young of other animals in the control of their limbs, and in their instincts of appetition and defence; this seems designed to enhance man’s superiority over other living things, on the analogy of an arrow whose impetus increases in proportion to the backward extension of the bow.
Thus the result of the first man’s lawless presumption and his just condemnation was not a relapse – or a repulse – into the rudimentary condition of infancy. But human nature in him was vitiated and altered, so that he experienced the rebellion and disobedience of desire in his body, and was bound by the necessity of dying; and he produced offspring in the same condition to which his fault and its punishment had reduced him, that is, liable to sin and death. But if infants are released from the bonds of this sin through the grace of Christ the Mediator, they can only suffer the death which separates soul from body; they do not pass on to that second death of unending punishment, since they have been freed from the entanglement of sin.
4. Why absolution from sin does not entail deliverance from death, sin’s punishment
If anyone is troubled by the question why those whose guilt is removed through grace should suffer the death which is the penalty of sin, this problem has been treated, and its solution given, in another book of mine, On the Baptism of Infants.6 There it is suggested that the experience of the separation of soul from body remains, although its connection with guilt is removed, because if the immortality of the body followed immediately upon the sacrament of regeneration, faith itself would be weakened, since faith is only faith when what is not yet seen in reality is awaited in hope.7
Futhermore, it was by the strength of faith and in the conflict of faith that even the fear of death admitted of being conquered, at any rate in the earlier ages; and this was seen pre-eminently in the holy martyrs. This conflict would have had no victory, no glory, since there could have been no conflict at all, if after the ‘washing of regeneration’8 the saints were straightway exempt from bodily death. If this were so, surely everyone would rush to the grace of Christ, with the children to be baptized, just to avoid being released from the body. And faith would not be tested by the fact that its reward was unseen; indeed, it would not be faith any longer, since the reward of the act of faith would be demanded and taken immediately.
But as it is, the punishment of sin has been turned by the great and wonderful grace of our Saviour to a good use, to the promotion of righteousness. It was then said to man, ‘You will die if you sin.’ Now it is said to the martyr, ‘Die, rather than sin.’ It was then said, ‘If you break the commandment you will certainly die.’ Now it is said, ‘If you shrink from death, you will break the commandment.’ What was then an object of fear, to prevent man from sinning, is now something to be chosen, to avoid sinning.
So by the ineffable mercy of God even the penalty of man’s offence is turned into an instrument of virtue, and the punishment of the sinner becomes the merit of the righteous. Then death was purchased by sinning; now righteousness is fulfilled by dying. This is true of the holy martyrs, who are presented by their persecutors with this choice; either to abandon the faith, or to suffer death. The righteous prefer to endure for their belief what the first sinners suffered for their unbelief. For if those sinners had not sinned, they would not have died; the martyrs would sin, if they did not die. And so the former died because they sinned; the latter do not sin, because they die. The effect of the fault was to bring the offenders under punishment; the effect of their punishment is now to prevent the incurring of guilt. It is not that death has turned into a good thing, when it was formerly an evil. What has happened is that God has granted to faith so great a gift of grace that death, which all agree to be the contrary of life, has become the means by which men pass into life.
5. The wicked turn a good, the law, to bad account: the good turn death, an evil, to good
When the Apostle wanted to show sin’s power to do harm when grace was not there to help, he did not shrink from saying that the law, which forbids sin, is itself the strength of sin. ‘The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.’9 This is very true; for the prohibition increases the desire to commit the unlawful act, when the love of righteousness is not strong enough to overcome the sinful desire by the delight it affords. And genuine righteousness is never so beloved, never gives such delight, without the help of God’s grace. But the Apostle is concerned that the law should not be considered an evil because it is called ‘the strength of sin’; and so he says, in another place, when dealing with the same problem,
And so the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just and good. Does this mean that something which is good has turned into death for me? Perish the thought! What has happened is that sin was made to show its true character: it used a good thing to effect my death, so that sin should appear for what it is, and sinner or sin should go beyond all bounds, because of the commandment.10
‘Beyond all bounds’, because violation of the law is added, when the law itself is despised by the increased lust for sinning.
Why have we thought this worth mentioning? Because, just as the law is not an evil thing when it increases the evil desire of the sinner, so death is not itself a good thing when it enhances the glory of the sufferer; when the law is abandoned for wickedness and thus produces law-breakers, or when death is accepted for truth’s sake and so produces martyrs. It follows that the law is good, because it is the prohibition of sin, while death is evil, because it is the reward of sin.11 But as unrighteousness puts all things, good and evil alike, to a bad use, so righteousness puts all things, evil as well as good, to good employment. Thus it is that the evil make bad use of the law, though it is a good thing, and the good die a good death, although death itself is an evil.
6. Death, the severing of soul from body, is, in general, an evil
For this reason, the death of the body, the separation of the soul from the body, is not good for anyone, as it is experienced by those who are, as we say, dying. This violent sundering of the two elements, which are conjoined and interwoven in a living being, is bound to be a harsh and unnatural experience as long as it lasts, until the departure of all feeling, which depended on this interconnection of soul and body. All this unpleasantness is sometimes cut short by one sudden physical blow, or by the sudden snatching away of the soul, where the speed of the stroke outruns sensation and does not allow death to be felt. But whatever it is which in dying men takes away sensation with such a distressing sensation, it increases the merit of patience if it is endured with devout faith, though it does not cancel the term ‘punishment’. And so, although death is perpetuated by propagation from the first man, and is without doubt the penalty of all who are born, yet it becomes the glory of those who are reborn, if it is the price paid for piety and righteousness; and death, the recompense of sin, sometimes ensures that there is no sin to be recompensed.
7. Some who are not reborn in baptism undergo death for the confession of Christ
For whenever men die for confessing Christ, even though they have not yet been reborn in baptism, their death is of the same value for the remission of their sins as if they had been washed in the sacred font of baptism. It is true that Christ said, ‘No one will enter into the kingdom of heaven if he has not been reborn from water and the spirit;’12 but in another statement he made an exception in favour of those to whom I am referring. For he said, with the same generality, ‘Anyone who acknowledges me before men, I shall acknowledge before my Father in heaven’;13 and in another passage, ‘Anyone who loses his life for me will find it.’14
Hence the text, ‘Precious in the Lord’s sight is the death of his saints.’15 For what is more precious than a death which ensures that all offences are forgiven and the store of merits abundantly increased? Those who have been baptized when they could not postpone their death and have departed from this life with all their sins wiped out, have won less merit than those who could have deferred their death but did not, because they chose to end their life by confessing Christ, rather than by denying him to arrive at his baptism. Even if they had denied him, this also would have been forgiven in that sacramental washing, because that denial was prompted by the fear of death. For in that sacrament forgiveness was given even to the appalling crime of those who killed Christ. But how could they have loved Christ so dearly as to be unable to deny him in the ultimate crisis, when offered the hope of official pardon? How, except by the abundant grace of the Spirit which ‘inspires where he wills’?16
Therefore the death of the saints is precious, the saints for whom the death of Christ was the price already paid in advance. And such grace came from Christ’s death that to gain him they did not hesitate to pay the price of their own death, the death which showed that what had been imposed as the penalty for sin had been turned to such good use that it brought to birth a richer harvest of righteousness. Death therefore ought not to be regarded as a good thing because it has been turned to such great advantage. For this happened not in virtue of any quality of its own, but by the help of God; so that death, which was put forward as a fearful warning against sin, is now set before men as something to be accepted when that acceptance means the avoidance of sin and the cancellation of sins committed, and the award of the palm of victory as the just reward of righteousness.
8. The acceptance of the first death in the cause of truth abolishes the second death
Careful consideration shows that the very act of dying faithfully and laudably for the truth’s sake is a precaution against death. A partial death is certainly accepted, but that is so that total death may not come, so that the second death may not supervene, that death which has no end. For the separation of soul from body is accepted, so that the soul may not be separated from God and then severed from the body, and thus when the first death of the whole man was past, the second death, the eternal death, should follow.
For this reason, as I have said, death as it is experienced by the dying, death as the cause of that condition, is not good in itself for anyone, but it is endured (and this is praiseworthy) for the attainment and possession of a good. But when men are in the state of death, when they are called ‘the dead’, then death is evil for the evil, but good for the good. This may be said without absurdity. For the souls of the faithful, when separated from the body, are at rest, while the souls of the wicked are paying their penalty, until the bodies of the righteous come to life again for eternal life, and the bodies of the wicked rise to be consigned to the eternal, the second, death.
9. Problems about the meaning of ‘death’, ‘dying.’ dead’
There is a problem about the period when the souls separated from the body exist either in a state of good or in a state of evil. Are we to say that this period is after death or in death? If it is after death, then it is not the actual death, which is by now past and gone, which is good or bad, but the present life of the soul after death. Death was evil for them, certainly at the time when it was present, that is, when they were experiencing it in the act of dying, since it entailed a heavy burden of suffering – though the good make good use of that evil. But now that death is past, how can it be good or evil, since it no longer exists?
