City of God by Augustine (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example)
Augustine sees that there are two deaths for man:
(i) the death of the soul (when God abandons it);
(ii) the death of the body (when the soul departs).
The origin of death is Adam's sin which passed death onto the whole human race because the 'whole human race was in the first man'.
Next Augustine shows us that although death is evil and always a bad thing for the unrighteous, death is actually made a good thing for the righteous as it is a gateway to life
Then follows a discussion about whether anyone can be said to be 'dying'. It is difficult to say that anyone is dying because if someone is dying they are still alive and therefore not dead. Nevertheless Augustine says that we should 'conform to normal usage' and speak of people dying even when they are still living.
After that Augustine looks at which of the types of death God threatened the first human beings with if they sinned. The answer is 'All of these deaths'.
Then to finish today's reading Augustine begins to examine the arguments against Christians by Platonists concerning death and resurrection. Philosophers claim that it is ridiculous to understand that man will be raised for eternity with an actual body, but Augustine points out that Plato himself endorses eternal physical bodies.
What grabbed me
Excellent discussion of death.
I loved the reminder that despite what we may deceive ourselves to believe, we are all in the process of dying: 'For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly towards death. For in the whole course of this life (if life we must call it) its mutability tends towards death. Certainly there is no one who is not nearer it this year than last year, and to-morrow than to-day, and to-day than yesterday, and a short while hence than now, and now than a short while ago. For whatever time we live is deducted from our whole term of life, and that which remains is daily becoming less and less; so that our whole life is nothing but a race towards death, in which no one is allowed to stand still for a little space, or to go somewhat more slowly, but all are driven forwards with an impartial movement, and with equal rapidity. For he whose life is short spends a day no more swiftly than he whose life is longer. But while the equal moments are impartially snatched from both, the one has a nearer and the other a more remote goal to reach with this their equal speed.'
We are all marching steadily toward our own death. The sooner we wake up to that fact, the sooner we will begin to prepare ourselves for it.
Conclude Book 13 by reading Chapters 17 to 24.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
2 comments:
It was indeed an excellent discussion of death. The grammatical/linguistic issues that arise from the word for death were most interesting to me. "That no words can explain how either the dying are said to live, or how the dead are said, even after death, to be in death....That this Latin word moritur cannot be declined by the grammarians according to the rule followed by similar words....[but like] adjectives, and are declined without regard to tense."
As if death itself were such a foreign and evil thing, that even in our languages, we can not speak of it with perfect precision. But how God in His grace and mercy works all things together for good, even death, which Augustine brought out so beautifully in these sections.
CJ, I think this is your second comment on Augustine's examination of the Latin language.
I like that you have such a healthy interest in the analysis of language.
Keep the comments coming, I always enjoy them.
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