The City of God by Augustine - 13 - The Origins of Death
Book Thirteen
Quote
📝 Thus, by the unutterable mercy of God, even the very punishment of wickedness has become the armour of virtue, and the penalty of the sinner becomes the reward of the righteous. For then death was incurred by sinning, now righteousness is fulfilled by dying.
Notes
🔥 Augustine moves on to discuss the fall of man and the propagation of human death. There are two deaths actually, according to Augustine, the death of the body, and the death of the soul, which happens to the damned.
🔥 There are some questions about how death is a punishment if it reunites us to God. In particular for martyrs, to die for one's beliefs is the greatest thing: "death is the instrument by which life is reached."
🔥 But, of course, death is no good for people who are evil, since they aren't reunited with God after death. In the end, "death is good to the good, and evil to the evil."
🔥 He spends some time thinking about the state of dying. Technically, everyone is dying, since we're all moving steadily towards death: "Our whole life is nothing but a race toward death, in which no one is allowed to stand still." But if we're dying, we're still living. Not sure what his interest is with this, since it's mostly a language thing(?).
🔥 Augustine says when Adam ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the soul lost it's hold on the body. Bodily desires and impulses were able to take over.
🔥 Some say the story of Adam and Eve in the garden is only an allegory. Augustine says it can have symbolic meaning while also being a real place that really existed. The two are not mutually exclusive.
🔥 Platonist philosophers believe that death returns us to a state of purity in soul and that the body is a burden to the soul. Augustine makes the distinction that the soul is burdened by the corruptible (sinful) body only.
🔥 Platonist philosophers also say that gods have eternal bodies, which doesn't make sense if they say bodies are a burden. Augustine believes God created our bodies — and the whole physical world — good, but our sin corrupted them. Our bodies were not meant as a burden, but as a companion of the soul.
🔥 Some Platonists believe in a reincarnation where the good become stars, then they go back to start over again in an earthly body. Others alter this theory to say the wise shed bodies altogether, and that is the most heavenly state. Augustine counters with the resurrection of the body. Again, God created the world as an expression of goodness and beauty. It is not something to be escaped or overcome, but something to be redeemed after its fall into sin, according to Augustine. The body will become spiritual when it properly serves the spirit.
🔥 He expands some more on the idea of a spiritual body which is both physical and spiritual. There are stories in the Bible where Jesus, after his resurrection, eats with the disciples. Augustine says he doesn't eat because he's hungry anymore. He eats solely for pleasure and for the experience. This will be the experience of everyone one day. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
🔥 Human beings are unique in this mysterious combination of body and spirit. "Man is not a body alone, nor a soul alone, but a being composed of both."
Reflection
💬 It seems to me that Christianity has a unique view on death and the afterlife, as expressed by Augustine here (though not all Christians see it this way). The idea is that life in the physical world was meant to be a good thing, and even though free will allowed it to be corrupted, the point is still to bring it back to its original intent. This would seem to encourage people to live a more positive life, and to be good stewards of the earth.
Other spiritual traditions seem to see the world as a temporary testing ground, or something to be transcended. Or it's only a random occurrence that's here today and gone tomorrow.