Why do we have to die?
Most human beings have asked the question. It cuts deep when you are facing a loss, or facing your own mortality. Or when you are a kid, trying to figure out the basics.
Why do we have to die?
The Heidelberg Catechism (that globally and historically popular, but locally and currently ignored, Reformed summary of biblical Christianity that I’ve been blogging on since its 450th anniversary) asks the question directly, but with a slight theological twist.
It comes up partway through the Catechism’s explanation of the Apostles’ Creed. The Creed says Jesus died, and they explain that his death was for us, to save us from condemnation.
So at question 42 they ask,
Q. Since Christ has died for us, why do we still have to die?
Put it that way and it can sound oddly, dryly theoretical.
And the answer may seem simple: Of course we die. All creatures great and small eventually die.
So if it seems like a theoretical query, look deeper; listen to your heart instead of your noggin.
A Paradox
Any Christian who has been around a while has faced the puzzle. It comes across as a paradox really, a seeming contradiction between core teachings and personal experience.
First the teaching: Christ has conquered death.
You hear it most emphatically if you ever attend an Orthodox church in the season of Easter:
Christ is risen from the dead
Trampling down death by death
And upon those in the tombs bestowing life!
You sing it about a thousand times, actually.
Scripture is no less insistent on the point:
‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’
‘Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor 15:54-57 NRSV)
Second, the experience: death happens
Everyone who has lost a loved one or faces a terminal diagnosis hears that teaching and cries out,
Death stings right here. It stings a lot, actually.
It feels very much like death has had the victory.
But seeing and feeling the paradox doesn’t usually mean we have lost our faith. It means we have a puzzle to solve on our way back to stronger faith and joy.
Is Death Conquered?
The Catechism doesn’t dive into the existential crisis, the emotional black hole of death.
Maybe that’s a fault, I don’t know. Does any doctrinal statement of any denomination?
Instead our Reformed theologians of 1563, concerned as they are with how Christian teaching is helpful to us, comforting, and encouraging at every turn, keep their theological focus on the purpose of Christ’s death:
A. Our death does not pay the debt of our sins.
Rather, it puts an end to our sinning
and is our entrance into eternal life.
From the Catechism’s perspective, the ultimate problem for us all is sin.
We’ve gone the wrong way in God’s world. We need God’s forgiveness. Our death does not solve that ultimate problem.
Christ’s death did that — which opened the door to eternal life for us.
Problem solved.
But the whole world still deals with the consequences of humanity’s sin.
The consequence is, first, death itself. Death is what God said would happen if humanity made the wrong choice (Genesis 2:16-17). We all still face it.
And so we die, as part of fallen creation — and you might say we can’t actually step through the door Christ’s death opens until our own death comes.
But the second consequence of humanity’s sin is our brokenness — our deep-rooted tendency to make more bad choices.
If this life didn’t end, neither would our string of bad choices. As Christians we struggle with our lack of holiness, our continual need to ask forgiveness. Death breaks the cycle with the transformation we long for.
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I’d love to hear your thoughts on why we have to die, or on the Catechism’s answer to the question. Please leave a comment!
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Hi Gary,
The topic of death is a good one. Everyone, at one point or another, thinks about it.
I think Eusebius, in his Church History, has an interesting answer to the question. Allow me to quote a passage.
“Their [the martyrs being described] time of respite was not idle or unfruitful: through their endurance [of tortures and, eventually, death through martyrdom] the infinite mercy of Christ was revealed; for through the living [the martyrs] the dead [those who avoided martyrdom] were being brought back to life; and martyrs were bestowing grace on those who had failed to be martyrs, and there was great joy in the heart of the Virgin Mother [the Church], who was receiving her stillborn children back alive; for by their means most of those who had denied their Master travelled once more the same road, conceived and quickened a second time, and learnt to confess Christ. Alive now and braced up, their ordeal sweetened by God, who does not desire the death of a sinner but is gracious towards repentance…”
The language used is very interesting. Here we learn that us – breathing humans – are the ones who are actually dead. The ones who are alive are the those who died for Christ in martyrdom.
What’s most interesting is the language used for those who found a way out of martyrdom (perhaps by offering incense to Caesar) – they are the stillborn, having avoided being “born” (i.e., martyred).
The point of this passage is that Christ’s death and resurrection are taken seriously. Through Christ’s passion, everything gets turned upside down, so that death is now a birth.
What we perceive as life (walking around the earth now) is really the process of dying. We are no better than corpses walking around compared to the birth we have by being united to Christ’s death through baptism.
OK, all that having been said, I do have a question.
Why does the Catechism say that the ultimate problem is sin? Scripture would seem to say that it’s death!
“Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” (Hebrews 2:14-15 RSV)
“”O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:55-58 RSV)
“Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” (Romans 5:14 RSV)
“If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:17 RSV)
“While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” (Romans 7:5 RSV)
Thanks Fr. Dustin.
The passage from Eusebius rings a similar note as Athanasius, who argued the truth of the faith in part from the fact that Christians no longer feared death, as seen in the martyrs.
This is a separate point from the very natural question asked by both Christians and non-Christians when faced with loss and mortality apart from martyrdom: WHY do we have to die?
Or the question asked by the Catechism: If Jesus died FOR us, then WHY do we too have to die?
Your second point, that the human problem is not sin but death, sounds a bit like saying “Lincoln’s HEAD is not on the penny. It is the Lincoln MEMORIAL.” However there may be more too it than that, so feel free to let me know if I’m missing something.
Hi Gary,
I guess I could elaborate on why I used the martyr’s story. My intention was to show how death becomes a new birth. So, the answer to the question “why do we still die” is: we die because death is how we are born to eternal life. My intention of the passage from Eusebius was to show in what way, or to illustrate the way our death is now transformed. Of course, now that death is the new “womb,” one could ask, “OK, but what if I’m not dead yet when Jesus comes again?” Well, St. Paul simply says, “Don’t worry about it, you’ll be taken care of.”
As for sin vs. death…it might be splitting hairs a bit, but I think it’s important to be theologically precise. St. Paul argues (Romans 5) that one sin (Adam and Eve’s) led to death for all, but it’s now the threat of death that causes the rest of us to sin (Romans 5:12 – read in the Greek because it was mistranslated by Jerome in the Latin and, unfortunately, many English translations follow the same mistake).
Why might this make a difference? Well, it would affect one’s understanding of what is accomplished by Christ (death and resurrection). Was Christ’s death to satisfy a debt owed to God, or satisfying an angry God who required “payment” for sins? Or, perhaps, was Christ destroying the work of the devil and accomplishing the reversal of death?
In my own faith journey, I am always trying to balance various theological understandings of Scripture with the best of what we know about the world from contemporary learning.
The best of contemporary learning tells us that organisms have been dying long before human beings showed up on the scene.
In light of this fact, what other deeper ways are there of understanding the concept of death in relationship with human sin? Is Genesis driving at an idea of death that goes beyond how we usually think of it?
Hi Gary,
You raise an interesting intersection between faith and theology. From a theological perspective, my question is…have organisms been dying before humanity showed up on the scene? Genesis (and, later, St. Paul) paints the picture in such a way that death – including all death in the world – came about as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve.
Fr. Dustin, it sounds like you are presenting faith VS. science as a sort of either/or choice — like literal chrolological account of the creation and fall, vs. an earth that held life for millions of years. Or am I misreading you?
Gary, I think this is an interesting point. Scripture and the Fathers (e.g. Athanasius in “On the Incarnation” present death as a consequence of sin. The history of the world, in the fossil record, makes that sound pretty far off — unless the dinos were really the first sinners.
What if we took Athanasius’ view of death (as corruption, moving away from God and toward non-being) as a specifically human death problem?
A T-Rex, or a gob of algae, that died millions of year before the first human stood up and reached for an apple would have died, but this death would not have been a problem: Neither one was created in God’s image.
And from such a perspective, even the mere physical death of the first human generations might not be such a problem. The problematic death is the one that sends someone created in God’s image permanently and eternally in the direction away from God, so that the image ceases to be.
What do you think?
Hi Gary and Gary!
Great conversation! I love it.
Contrary to the way I may have presented it, I don’t believe science and faith is an either/or situation.
I’m speaking, of course, theologically rather than chronologically. Think of it this way, the beginning of an academic paper is the thesis (which is the point or reason of the paper – dare I say “logos” of the paper?). However, this “beginning” is not the first sentence of the paper. Usually, there’s some sort of introduction that presents a “setting” for the paper and it works its way up to the thesis. This is how I’m thinking of it…Adam and Eve’s sin is the “beginning” of death (whether that’s chronological or not is beside the point). I think this is how Genesis presents it, and, if you’re wanting to understand Scripture, I’m not sure you can look at it any other way – one has to enter into the “language” of Scripture to understand what it’s saying. I believe St. Irenaeus makes a similar argue by stating that everything begins with a crucified Christ, even though he’s actually crucified in history – not at the beginning.
Thank you Fr. Dustin and Gary for such thoughtful comments.
Gary – I find your phrasing very intriguing and helpful: “The problematic death is the one that sends someone created in God’s image permanently and eternally in the direction away from God, so that the image ceases to be.”
However we read the Scriptures, surely something very much like this is intended by Romans and Genesis.
(And, by the way, I find it very gratifying that a pre-modern theologian such as Athanasius can help us with “a post modern” theological question. That’s really the mark of a great thinker!)
Fr. Dustin: The “theological vs. chronological” distinction is useful and important.
This distinction helps us reflect on what it means to think theologically — and how this is different from the way we think scientifically, historically (in the modern/post-modern sense of the term), and even philosophically.
Many problems are created when these categories are mixed up — what ways of thinking appropriate in one field are used thoughtlessly in another.
Thanks again.