Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 14 part 1/3

[I] Now that the most difficult questions concerning the rise of our age and the beginning of the human race have been dealt with, the order of our subject demands that we take up the discussion we have undertaken concerning the fall of the first man—or rather of the first human beings—and concerning the origin and propagation of human death. For God had not created men in the manner in which He created the angels, so that, even if they should sin, they could not die at all; but rather in such a way that, when they had discharged the duty of obedience, an angelic immortality and blessed eternity might follow without the intervention of death, whereas if they were disobedient, death might chastise them by a most just condemnation—as we have already said in the preceding book. [II] But concerning the very kind of death, I see that I must discuss the matter a little more carefully.

For although the human soul is truly said to be immortal, yet it too has a certain death of its own. For it is called immortal because in some manner, however slight, it does not cease to live and to feel; but the body is called mortal because it can be forsaken by all life and does not in itself in any way live. The death of the soul, therefore, comes to pass when God forsakes it, as the death of the body when the soul forsakes it. Therefore the death of both, that is, of the whole man, comes to pass when the soul, forsaken by God, forsakes the body. For thus neither does the soul itself live from God, nor the body from the soul. And upon this kind of death of the whole man there follows that which the authority of the divine oracles calls the second death. This the Savior signified when He said:

Fear Him who has power to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna. But since this does not take place before the soul has been so joined to the body that they are severed by no separation, it may seem strange in what way the body is said to be slain by that death by which the soul is not forsaken, but, being animated and sentient, is tormented. For in that last and everlasting punishment—of which we must discuss more diligently in its own place—the death of the soul is rightly so called, because it does not live from God; but the death of the body—in what way, when it lives from the soul? For it cannot otherwise feel the bodily torments which will be after the resurrection.

Or is it because life of whatever kind is some good, while pain is an evil, that for this reason the body must not be said to live, in which the soul is the cause not of living but of grieving? The soul, then, lives from God when it lives well; for it cannot live well save when God works in it that which is good. But the body lives from the soul when the soul lives in the body, whether the soul itself lives or does not live from God. For the life in the bodies of the impious is the life not of their souls but of their bodies; which even dead souls—that is, souls forsaken by God—can confer upon them, their own life, however slight, whereby they are also immortal, not ceasing.

But in that last condemnation, although man does not cease to feel, yet because that very feeling is neither pleasant with delight nor healthful with rest, but is penal with pain, it is not without reason called death rather than life. And it is called the second because it comes after that first death by which is wrought the sundering of natures that cohere, whether of God and the soul or of the soul and the body. Concerning the first death, then—that of the body—it can be said that to the good it is good, to the evil evil; but the second, without doubt, as it belongs to none of the good, so is it good to none. [III] But a question not to be passed over arises: whether death, whereby soul and body are separated, is in truth good to the good; for if it is so, how can it be maintained that this very death is also the penalty of sin?

For the first human beings, had they not sinned, would assuredly not have suffered this. In what way, then, can that be good to the good, which could not have befallen save the evil? But again, if it could befall none but the evil, it ought not to be good to the good, but no good at all. For why should there be any penalty in those in whom there were no things to be punished? Wherefore it must be confessed that the first human beings were indeed so established that, if they had not sinned, they would have experienced no kind of death; but that these same first sinners were so visited with death that whatever should spring from their stock would be held liable to the same penalty. For nothing else was born of them than what they themselves had been.

For, in proportion to the greatness of that fault, condemnation changed nature for the worse, so that what preceded as a penalty in the first sinning men should also follow by nature in the rest who are born. For man is not from man as man is from dust. Dust was the material for making man; but man is the parent for begetting man. Accordingly, what earth is, flesh is not, although flesh was made from earth; but what a parent man is, that too is his offspring, a man. In the first man, therefore, the whole human race was present, destined to pass into its progeny through the woman, when that pair of spouses received the divine sentence of their condemnation.

And what man became—not when he was created, but when he sinned and was punished—that he begot, at least so far as concerns the origin of sin and death. For he was not, by sin or by penalty, reduced to that infantile dullness and that weakness of mind and body which we see in little ones—which God willed to be, as it were, the beginnings of whelps whose parents He had cast down into a bestial life and death; for, as it is written: Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the beasts that have no understanding, and was made like unto them—save that we perceive that infants are even weaker in the use and movement of their limbs and in the sense of seeking and avoiding than are the tenderest young of other animals;

as though human power raised itself the more excellently above the other living creatures, in proportion as it had held back and deferred its own impetus—like an arrow when the bow is drawn back—by being pulled backward. Not, then, to these infantile rudiments was the first man cast down or driven by unlawful presumption and just condemnation; but human nature was in him so far vitiated and changed that it suffered in its members a rebellious disobedience of concupiscence, and was bound by the necessity of dying, and thus begot offspring liable to sin and death—which is what it had become by vice and by penalty. And if from this bond of sin infants are loosed through the grace of Christ the Mediator, they can suffer only this death, which sunders the soul from the body;

but into that second, everlasting penal death they do not pass, being freed from the obligation of sin. [IV] But if anyone is troubled why they suffer even this first death, if it too is the penalty of sin, seeing that their guilt is abolished through grace—this question has already been treated and resolved in another work of ours, which we wrote concerning the baptism of little ones; where it was said that the experience of separation from the body is left to the soul for this reason, even though the bond of the crime has now been taken away: because, if immortality of the body were to follow immediately upon the sacrament of regeneration, faith itself would be enfeebled—that faith which is faith precisely when there is awaited in hope what is not yet seen in fact.

Moreover, by the strength and struggle of faith—at least in the more advanced ages—even the fear of death had to be overcome, which shone forth most conspicuously in the holy martyrs; of which struggle there would surely be no victory, no glory (since there could be no struggle at all), if after the laver of regeneration the saints could no longer suffer bodily death. But with infants to be baptized, who would not run all the more to the grace of Christ for this reason, that he might not be loosed from the body? And thus faith would be proved not by an invisible reward, but there would be no faith at all, since it would forthwith seek and receive the wages of its own work. But now, by a greater and more wonderful grace of the Savior, the penalty of sin has been turned to the uses of righteousness.

For then it was said to man: You shall die, if you sin; now it is said to the martyr: Die, lest you sin. Then it was said: If you transgress the commandment, you shall surely die; now it is said: If you refuse death, you shall transgress the commandment. What then was to be feared, that sin might not be committed, is now to be embraced, lest sin be committed. Thus, through the ineffable mercy of God, even the penalty of vices passes over into the arms of virtue, and the punishment of the sinner becomes the merit of the righteous. For then death was acquired by sinning, now righteousness is fulfilled by dying. But this is so among the holy martyrs, to whom by the persecutor one of two things is set forth: either to abandon the faith or to endure death.

For the righteous prefer to suffer by believing that which the first unrighteous suffered by not believing. For unless those had sinned, they would not have died; but these will sin, unless they die. Those, then, died because they sinned; these do not sin because they die. It came about through the fault of those that punishment was arrived at; it comes about through the punishment of these that fault is not arrived at—not because death has been made some good thing, which before was evil, but because God bestowed upon faith so great a grace that death, which is agreed to be contrary to life, has become the instrument through which one passes over to life.

[V] The Apostle, when he wished to show how much sin, with grace not coming to aid, avails to do harm, did not hesitate to call even the law itself, by which sin is prohibited, the strength of sin. The sting of death, he says, is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. Most truly indeed. For prohibition increases the desire of the unlawful deed, when righteousness is not so loved that the lust of sinning is overcome by delight in it. But that true righteousness may be loved and give delight, only divine grace comes to aid. But lest the law should on this account be thought an evil, since it was called the strength of sin, therefore he himself, treating this kind of question in another place, says: And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

That which is good, then, he says, was it made death to me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, wrought death in me through that which is good, that the sinner, or sin, might become beyond measure sinful through the commandment. He said "beyond measure" because transgression too is added, when, the lust of sinning being increased, the law itself is likewise despised. Why did we think this worth recalling? Because, forsooth, just as the law is not an evil when it increases the concupiscence of sinners, so neither is death a good when it increases the glory of those who suffer it—since either the one is abandoned for iniquity's sake and makes transgressors, or the other is undertaken for truth's sake and makes martyrs. And thus the law is indeed good, because it is a prohibition of sin; but death is evil, because it is the wages of sin.

But just as unrighteousness uses ill not only evil things but even good ones, so righteousness uses well not only good things but even evil ones. Hence it comes about that the evil use the law ill, although the law is a good, and the good die well, although death is an evil. [VI] Wherefore, as regards the death of the body, that is, the separation of the soul from the body, when they suffer it who are called the dying, it is good to none. For the very force by which both are torn asunder—which had been joined and interwoven in the living—has a harsh sensation, and one contrary to nature, as long as it lasts, until all sensation, which was present from that very union of soul and flesh, is taken away.

This whole distress is sometimes cut short by a single blow of the body or a sudden snatching-away of the soul, and, by its forestalling swiftness, does not permit it to be felt. Yet whatever it is in the dying that with grievous sensation takes sensation away, when it is borne piously and faithfully, it increases the merit of patience, but does not take away the name of penalty. Thus, although death, from the perpetuated propagation of the first man, is without doubt the penalty of the one being born, yet if it is paid out for piety's and righteousness' sake, it becomes the glory of the one being reborn; and although death is the retribution of sin, sometimes it obtains that nothing be requited to sin.

[VII] For whoever die for the confession of Christ, even without having received the laver of regeneration, it avails them as much for the remission of sins as if they had been washed in the sacred font of baptism. For He who said: Unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, by another sentence made these excepted, where He says, no less generally: Whosoever shall confess Me before men, I also will confess him before My Father who is in heaven; and in another place: Whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it. Hence it is that it is written: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. For what is more precious than that death through which it comes to pass that both all offenses are remitted and merits are heaped up more abundantly?

For those are not of such great merit who, since they could not defer death, were baptized and, with all their sins blotted out, departed from this life, as are those who did not defer death when they could, because they preferred to end life by confessing Christ rather than, by denying Him, to attain to His baptism. Which, if indeed they had done, even this would have been remitted to them in that laver—that through fear of death they had denied Christ—in which laver even to those was so monstrous a crime remitted who had slain Christ. But when could they, without the abundance of the grace of that Spirit who breathes where He wills, so love Christ that in so great a peril of life, under so great a hope of pardon, they could not deny Him?

The death of the saints, therefore, is precious—to whom the death of Christ was so bestowed and given beforehand with such grace that, to gain Him, they did not hesitate to spend their own—and it has shown that what had before been appointed for the penalty of sin has been reduced to these uses, that from thence a richer fruit of righteousness might be born. Death, therefore, ought not on that account to seem a good, because it has been turned to so great a usefulness—not by its own power, but by divine assistance—so that what was then set forth to be feared, lest sin should be committed, is now set forth to be undertaken, that sin may not be committed and, once committed, may be blotted out, and that the palm of righteousness, owed to a great victory, may be rendered.

[VIII] For if we consider more diligently, even when anyone dies faithfully and laudably for the truth, death is guarded against. For a part of it is undergone for this very reason, that the whole may not befall, and that the second death besides, which shall never end, may not come on. For the separation of the soul from the body is undergone, lest, God being separated from the soul, the soul itself also be separated from the body, and so, the first death of the whole man being completed, the second, everlasting death take it up. Wherefore death indeed, as I have said, when the dying suffer it, and when it works in them that they may die, is good to none, but is laudably endured for the holding or the gaining of a good; but when they are in it who are now called dead, it is not absurdly said to be both evil to the evil and good to the good.

For the souls of the pious, separated from the body, are in rest, but those of the impious pay their penalties, until the bodies of the former revive unto eternal life, but of the latter unto eternal death, which is called the second. [IX] But that time in which the souls, separated from the body, are either among good things or among evil, is it to be said to be after death rather than in death? For if it is after death, then it is no longer death itself, which has been transacted and is past, but the present life of the soul after it, that is good or evil. But death was then evil to them when it was, that is, when they were suffering it, when they were dying, since its grievous and troublesome sensation was present; which evil the good use well. But how is death, once accomplished, either good or evil, which now is not?

Moreover, if we attend still more diligently, that will not even appear to be death of which we said the sensation in the dying was grievous and troublesome. For as long as they feel, they still assuredly live; and if they still live, they are to be said to be before death rather than in death, since death, when it comes, takes away all bodily sensation, which is troublesome as it draws near. And by this, in what way we may call those dying who are not yet dead, but are already tossed by the last and death-bringing affliction with imminent death, is difficult to explain—even though these are rightly called dying, since, when the death that now impends has arrived, they are called not dying but dead.

No one, therefore, is dying save one living, since, when he is in such an extremity of life as are those whom we say are yielding up the soul, assuredly he who has not yet lost his soul still lives. The very same person, then, is at once both dying and living, but approaching death and departing from life; still, however, in life, because the soul is in the body; but not yet in death, because it has not yet withdrawn from the body. But if, when it shall have withdrawn, he will not even then be in death, but rather after death, when shall anyone say that he is in death? For no one will be dying, if it is impossible for anyone to be at once dying and living. For as long as the soul is in the body, we cannot deny that he is living.

Or if he is rather to be called dying, in whose body it is now being wrought that he should die, and no one can at once be both living and dying, I know not when anyone is living. [X] For from the moment anyone has begun to be in this body destined to die, it is never not being wrought in him that death should come. For its mutability, throughout the whole time of this life (if life it is to be called), effects this—that one arrives at death. For there is no one who is not, after a year, nearer than he was before the year, and tomorrow than today, and today than yesterday, and a little later than now, and now than a little before;

since whatever of time is lived is subtracted from the span of living, and daily there becomes less and less of what remains, so that the time of this life is altogether nothing else than a running toward death, in which no one is permitted to stand even a little, or to go somewhat more slowly; but all are urged on by an equal motion, nor are they driven forward with a different pace. For neither did he whose life was shorter pass his day more swiftly than he whose life was longer; but, since equal moments were snatched equally from both, the one had nearer, the other more remote, that toward which both were running with no unequal speed. It is one thing to have traversed a longer way, another to have walked more slowly. He, then, who to his death spends more extended spans of time, does not proceed more slowly, but accomplishes more of the journey.

Furthermore, if everyone begins to die—that is, to be in death—from the moment that death itself, that is, the taking-away of life, begins to be wrought in him (because, when it shall have been finished by taking away, he will then be after death, not in death): assuredly, from the moment he begins to be in this body, he is in death. For what else is being wrought in single days, hours, and moments, until that death which was being wrought, being consumed, is completed, and there begins now to be the time that is after death, which, while life was being taken away, was in death? Never, therefore, is man in life, from the moment he is in this body dying rather than living—if he cannot be at once both in life and in death. Or is he rather at once both in life and in death: in life, namely, in which he lives, until it be wholly taken away;

but in death, because he is now dying, since life is being taken away? For if he is not in life, what is it that is being taken away, until its complete consumption comes to pass? But if he is not in death, what is that very taking-away of life? For not without reason, when life has been wholly taken from the body, is it now said to be after death, unless because it was death while it was being taken away. For if, when it has been taken away, the man is not in death, but after death, when—except while it is being taken away—will he be in death?

[XI] But if it is absurd that we should say a man is already in death before he arrives at death (for to what does he draw near by passing through the times of his life, if he is already in it?)—especially because it is too strange that he should be said to be at once both living and dying, since he cannot be at once both waking and sleeping—it must be asked when he will be dying. For before death comes, he is not dying but living; but when death has come, he will be dead, not dying. The former, then, is still before death; the latter is already after death. When, therefore, is he in death? For then he is dying, so that, just as there are three when we say "before death, in death, after death," so three single terms may be rendered to the single stages: "living, dying, and dead."

When, therefore, he may be dying—that is, in death, where he is neither living, which is before death, nor dead, which is after death, but dying, that is, in death—is most difficult to define. For as long as the soul is in the body, especially if sensation also is present, without doubt the man lives, who consists of soul and body, and thereby is to be said to be still before death, not in death; but when the soul has withdrawn and taken away all sensation of the body, he is now held to be after death and dead. Between the two, therefore, that whereby he is dying, or in death, perishes; since, if he still lives, he is before death; if he has ceased to live, he is now after death. Never, therefore, is he grasped as dying, that is, in death.

So too in the passing of times the present is sought and not found, because it is without any span through which there is a passing from the future into the past. Ought we not, then, to see to it, lest by this reasoning the death of the body be said to be nothing at all? For if it is, when is it—that death in which no one, and in which no one can be? Since, if one lives, it is not yet, because this is before death, not in death; but if one has now ceased to live, it is no longer, because this too is after death, not in death. But again, if there is no death, either before or after, what is that which is called before death or after death? For this too is said in vain, if there is no death. And would that in paradise we had spent our lives by living well, so that in truth there were no death!

But now it not only exists, it is even so troublesome that it can neither be unfolded by any speech nor avoided by any reasoning. Let us therefore speak according to common usage (for we ought not to do otherwise) and say 'before death,' that is, before death occurs, as it is written: 'Praise no man before his death.' Let us also say, when it has occurred: 'After the death of this man or that, this or that was done.' Let us likewise speak of the present time as best we can, as when we say: 'That man, while dying, made his will,' and: 'While dying he left this and that to these and those persons' — although he could not do this at all unless he were living, and indeed he did it rather before death than in death.

Let us also speak as divine Scripture speaks, which does not hesitate to say that the dead too are not after death but in death. For hence comes that saying: 'For in death there is no one who is mindful of thee.' For until they come to life again, they are rightly said to be in death, just as anyone is said to be in sleep until he awakes; and although we call those who are laid in sleep 'sleepers,' we cannot in the same manner call those who are now dead 'dying.' For they are no longer dying who, as far as pertains to the death of the body — of which we are now treating — are already separated from their bodies.

But this is what I said cannot be unfolded by any speech: in what way either the dying can be said to live, or those already dead can be said still to be in death even after death. For how can it be after death, if they are still in death? — especially since we do not call them 'dying,' as we call those who are asleep 'sleeping,' and those in weakness 'weak,' and those in pain assuredly 'suffering,' and those in life 'living'; whereas the dead, before they rise again, are said to be in death, and yet cannot be called 'dying.'

Wherefore I think it has come about not unfittingly nor incongruously — even if not by human contrivance, then perhaps by divine judgement — that this word 'moritur' (he dies) in the Latin tongue not even the grammarians have been able to decline by the rule by which other such words are declined. For from 'oritur' (it arises) is formed the verb of past tense 'ortus est' (it has arisen); and any similar words are declined through participles of the past tense. But from 'moritur,' if we seek the past-tense verb, the customary answer is 'mortuus est' (he has died), with the letter 'u' doubled. For 'mortuus' is said in the manner of 'fatuus,' 'arduus,' 'conspicuus' and any like words, which are not of the past tense, but since they are nouns, are declined without tense.

But that word — as though to decline what cannot be declined — has a noun set in place of the past-tense participle. Fittingly, then, it has come about that, just as the thing which it signifies cannot be done in the doing, so the word itself could not be declined in the speaking. Yet it can be brought about, by the aid of the grace of our Redeemer, that we may at least decline (avoid) the second death. For that is the graver death and the worst of all evils, which comes about not by the separation of soul and body, but rather by the joining of both in eternal punishment. There, on the contrary, men will not be before death and after death, but always in death; and by this they will never be living, never dead, but dying without end.

For never will it be worse for a man in death than where death itself will be without death. [XII] When therefore it is asked what death God threatened to the first men, if they should transgress the commandment they had received and not keep obedience — whether the death of the soul, or of the body, or of the whole man, or that which is called the second death — the answer must be: All of them. For the first death consists of two, the second of all together as a whole. For just as the whole earth consists of many lands, and the whole Church of many churches, so the whole of death consists of all. Since the first consists of two, one of the soul, the other of the body: so that the first death of the whole man is when the soul, without God and without the body, pays its penalties for a time;

but the second death is where the soul, without God yet with the body, pays eternal penalties. When therefore God said to that first man whom He had set in paradise, concerning the forbidden food: 'On whatever day you eat of it, by death you shall die' — that threat embraced not only the earlier part of the first death, where the soul is deprived of God, nor only the latter part, where the body is deprived of the soul, nor only that whole first death alone, where the soul, separated both from God and from the body, is punished; but whatever there is of death, right up to the last, which is called the second, than which there is none later. [XIII] For after the transgression of the precept was committed, immediately, as divine grace forsook them, they were confounded by the nakedness of their bodies.