The City of God, Books VIII–XVI

Book Thirteen

BOOK THIRTEEN Chapter 1 Now that I have discussed the intricate problem about the origin of the world and the beginning of the human race, a proper order calls for a study of the fall of the first man, in fact, of the first parents, and of the origin and transmission of human mortality. It is true that God did not endow man with the same nature that He gave to the angels-who could not possibly die even if they sinned-yet, had our first parents complied with the obligations of obedience, they, too, would have attained, without interruption of death, an immortality like that of the angels and an everlasting happiness . However, as I have pointed out in the preceding Book,l God so made men that, should they disobey, death was to be a just judgment for their disobedience. Chapter 2 It seems to me that I ought to examine more carefully the nature of death. For, although the human soul is, in a true sense, immortal, nonetheless it, too, can suffer its own sort of death. It is said to be immortal because it can never, in the least degree, cease to live and perceive. The body, on the other hand, is mortal because it can be deprived entirely of 1 Cf. above, 12.21. 299 300 SAINT AUGUSTINE life and because, of itself, it has no power to live. Death comes to the soul when God abandons it, just as death comes to the body when the soul departs. There is also a total death for man, a death of body and soul, namely, when a soul, abandoned by God, abandons the body. In this case, the soul has no life from God and the body no life from the soul. The consequence of such total death is the second death, so called on the authority of divine Revelation.l This is the death which our Saviour meant when He said: 'Be afraid of him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.'2 Since this second death does not occur until soul and body are reunited, never to be separated again, you might wonder how the body is said to die by a death in which it is not deserted by the soul but rather is given a life by the soul to feel the torment it endures. For, in man's last and everlasting punishment (of which I shall have more to say in its proper place3 ) the soul is rightly said to be dead when its life from God is gone, but, since the body's life depends on the soul, how can the body be said to be dead? If the body were dead, it could not feel the bodily torments which are to be felt after the resurrection. Perhaps it is because any sort of life is a real good while pain is an evil that we ought not to say that a body is alive when the only purpose of its soul is not so much to give it life but rather to keep it in pain! The soul takes its life from God when it lives holily, for the reason that it cannot live holily unless God is the cause of its good works.5 The body, I Apoc. 2.11; 20.14; 21.8. 2 Matt. 10.28. 3 Cf. below, 19.28. 4 ... ideo nee vivere corpus dieendum est, in quo anima non vivendi causa est, sed dolendi. 5 ... non enim potest bene vivere nisi Deo in se operante quod bonum est. THE CITY OF GOD: BOOK XIII 301 however, takes its life from the soul when the soul is alive in the body, whether the soul is receiving any life from God or not. Life in the bodies of the impious is not the life of their souls, but simply the life of their bodies. This life, even souls that are dead, in the sense of being deserted by God, can confer, since they do not desist from that flicker of life which they can call their own, that is, the life which makes them immortal. It is true that, when a man is finally damned, he does not lose sensation; nevertheless, because his feelings are not gentle enough to give pleasure nor soothing enough to be restful, but are purifying to the point of pain, they can more properly be called death rather than life. The reason why this death of...