The City of God, Volume I

A pressing question emerges: if bodily death separates soul from body, can it be good for the righteous? How can something good result from what would not exist apart from sin? The first humans would never have experienced any form of death had they not transgressed. Augustine resolves this by distinguishing between the origin of death and its subsequent application. The first humans were created with the possibility of immortality; their sin introduced death not only for themselves but for all their offspring. What began as punishment in the first transgressors became a natural condition in their descendants, for parents can only beget what they themselves have become. Adam’s nature was corrupted and altered by his sin and its penalty—he experienced rebellious desire in his members and became subject to mortality—and this corrupted nature he transmitted to all who would come from him.

This transmission explains why even infants, who have committed no personal sin, are born subject to death. The whole human race existed seminally in Adam, and when he fell, all fell in him. Yet the grace of Christ delivers from the second death those who are regenerated, even though they must still pass through the first death of bodily separation. The question then arises: why do the regenerated still die if their guilt is removed?

Augustine answers that the retention of bodily death serves the purposes of faith. If regeneration immediately conferred bodily immortality, faith would be undermined, for faith by definition hopes for what it does not yet see. The martyrs demonstrate this truth most clearly: their victory and glory depend on facing death after their conversion. Had Christians been rendered incapable of dying after baptism, martyrdom would have been impossible, and the church would have been deprived of its most powerful witnesses. The punishment of sin has thus been transformed into an instrument of righteousness. What was once threatened as a deterrent—“if you sin, you shall die”—now becomes a command to the faithful: “die, that you may not sin.” The penalty that the first transgressors incurred through disobedience becomes the path to glory for those who embrace it in obedience.

This paradox finds a parallel in the relationship between the law and sin. The apostle Paul calls the law the strength of sin, yet he also insists that the law is holy, just, and good. The prohibition of sin can actually increase sinful desire when righteousness is not loved sufficiently to overcome temptation. Yet the law remains good even when the wicked misuse it to their condemnation. Similarly, death remains an evil—the wages of sin—yet the righteous make good use of it. The wicked abuse both good things and evil things to their harm; the righteous employ both good things and evil things to their benefit. Death is not good in itself, but God’s grace enables the faithful to transform it into a means of attaining eternal life.

The violence of death—the wrenching apart of what God joined together—remains genuinely terrible. The separation of soul and body, which had been intimately intertwined, brings harsh experience and natural horror. Yet when endured faithfully, this suffering increases the merit of patience without ceasing to be punishment. Death remains the penalty inherited from Adam, but for those born again, it becomes the doorway to glory.

Even those who die confessing Christ without baptism receive the full remission of sins through their confession. Christ’s absolute statements about confessing Him before men and losing one’s life for His sake create an exception to the ordinary requirement of water baptism. The death of such martyrs is precious to God, for it accomplishes both complete forgiveness and abundant merit. Those who could have avoided death by denying Christ, yet chose death rather than denial, display a grace that surpasses even the forgiveness granted to those who sin after baptism.

Augustine then turns to a philosophical inquiry into the timing and experience of death. When does death actually occur? Is the soul’s departure after death or in death? If after death, then death itself is neither good nor evil—it is past and gone. What remains is the soul’s new condition. Death was evil while being suffered, but once it has passed, how can something that no longer exists be characterized as good or bad?

Closer examination reveals that even the pain of dying is not death itself. So long as sensation remains, the person is still alive—still before death rather than in it. When death truly arrives, it removes all bodily sensation. This creates a logical puzzle: those in their final agony are called dying, yet they are still living. When death comes, they are no longer dying but dead. No one can be dying without being alive, yet the moment of death itself seems to have no duration. The present moment, like the point of transition from future to past, cannot be grasped.

This leads Augustine to a striking observation about human existence: from the moment we begin to live in the body, we begin to move toward death. Every day, every hour, every moment brings us closer to the end. Our entire earthly existence is a race toward death in which no one can pause or slow down—all proceed at the same speed, though some have longer to travel than others. If dying begins when death starts to take away life, then dying begins at birth. What is happening throughout our days and moments except the gradual consumption of life by death? When life is fully consumed, we speak of what happens “after death”—but that consumption itself was death. We are simultaneously living (for something is being consumed) and dying (for that consumption is occurring).

The logical and linguistic difficulties here are real. We cannot say a person is “in death” in the same way we say someone is “in sleep” or “in grief.” Those who sleep are sleeping; those who grieve are grieving; but those who are dead are not dying. The dead are said to be “in death” until the resurrection, yet we do not call them dying. Augustine finds it fitting that the Latin language itself reflects this mystery: the verb moritur (to die) cannot form its perfect tense according to the normal grammatical pattern. While similar verbs yield a perfect participle, moritur produces mortuus, which functions as an adjective rather than a participle. Just as the reality of dying cannot be captured in a definite state, so the word resists normal grammatical declension. Yet this applies only to the first death. In the second death, the wicked will always be in death—never living, never dead, but endlessly dying. Never will anyone be more disastrously in death than when death itself becomes deathless.

When God threatened Adam with death for eating the forbidden fruit, which death did He mean? Augustine answers: all of them. The first death comprises two—the soul forsaken by God and the body forsaken by the soul. The second death is the complete death, comprising all deaths in one eternal punishment. God’s warning encompassed the whole cascade of consequences that would flow from transgression.