For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death. — St. Augustine
Maybe it is because we are in the season of the year in which dark and deathly images prevail in our neighborhood, or perhaps it could be the fact that my beautiful wife works in the area of providing social services to the elderly and dying, or it just could be that I never really came out of my existential phase, but whatever the reason, I have recently been thinking about the philosophical and theological aspects of death.
St. Augustine, one of the greatest intellectual figures in Western Christianity, thought and wrote a lot about different aspects of death. In the following chapter, St. Augustine addresses the question, what happens to those who die unbaptized and yet confess Christ as Lord and Savior? That might sound like an odd question to those belonging to American evangelicalism, but as a confessional Lutheran and classical Christian, baptism is the central sacrament which works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare (Small Catechism, IV). So, although the concern which St. Augustine addresses, might sound odd to those adjacent to (though perhaps not completely outside of) classical Confessional Christianity, it really was of first importance to the early church.
St. Augustine restates the theme of this chapter several times. It is the comfort in which Christians have in the face of death. “Precious, therefore, is the death of the saints, to whom the grace of Christ has been applied with such gracious effects, that they do not hesitate to meet death themselves, if so be they might meet Him.” Christians, as justified sinners, receive the victory Christ achieved over death. That is why we can not separate our doctrine of justification from a correct understanding of death. The Gospel is simply this—Christ who did not need to die, since he was sinless, entered into death (Phil. 2:7, I Cor. 5:7, I Pet. 3:18), died “for us” (Mark 10:45, Rom. 5:6, I Thess. 5:10, Heb. 2:9) and conquered the devil and death and rose with power over them. Christians receive the gracious imputation of Christ’s righteousness to their account by genuine confession or by baptism. Either way, the sinner is declared right before God because of Christ’s righteousness. This is why justification is the gospel and the reason Christians do not have to fear death.
Of course, St. Augustine has a lot more to say about death, and what it means to the Christian. There is much more to say about this topic. Nonetheless, I found this chapter particularly insightful. Enjoy it and I encourage everyone to read the rest of St. Augustine’s City of God.
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St. Augustine, City of God, Book XIII, Chap. 7.
Of the death which the unbaptized suffer for the confession of Christ.
For whatever unbaptized [literally “unregenerate”] persons die confessing Christ, this confession is of the same efficacy for the remission of sins as if they were washed in the sacred font of baptism. For He who said, Unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God, (John 3:5) made also an exception in their favor, in that other sentence where He no less absolutely said, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven; (Matthew 10:32) and in another place, Whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find it. (Matthew 16:25) And this explains the verse, Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. For what is more precious than a death by which a man’s sins are all forgiven, and his merits increased an hundredfold? For those who have been baptized when they could no longer escape death, and have departed this life with all their sins blotted out have not equal merit with those who did not defer death, though it was in their power to do so, but preferred to end their life by confessing Christ, rather than by denying Him to secure an opportunity of baptism. And even had they denied Him under pressure of the fear of death, this too would have been forgiven them in that baptism, in which was remitted even the enormous wickedness of those who had slain Christ. But how abundant in these men must have been the grace of the Spirit, who breathes where He lists, seeing that they so dearly loved Christ as to be unable to deny Him even in so sore an emergency, and with so sure a hope of pardon! Precious, therefore, is the death of the saints, to whom the grace of Christ has been applied with such gracious effects, that they do not hesitate to meet death themselves, if so be they might meet Him. And precious is it, also, because it has proved that what was originally ordained for the punishment of the sinner, has been used for the production of a richer harvest of righteousness. But not on this account should we look upon death as a good thing, for it is diverted to such useful purposes, not by any virtue of its own, but by the divine interference. Death was originally proposed as an object of dread, that sin might not be committed; now it must be undergone that sin may not be committed, or, if committed, be remitted, and the award of righteousness bestowed on him whose victory has earned it.
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