In Christian experience death is first revealed as a deep tragedy, as a painful metaphysical catastrophe, as a mysterious failure of human destiny. For death is not a normal end of human existence. Just the contrary. Man’s death is abnormal, is a failure. God did not create death; He created man for incorruption and true being, that we "might have being," εις το είναι (cf. Wisdom 6:18 and 2:23). The death of man is the "wages of sin" (Romans 6:23). It is a loss and corruption. And since the Fall the mystery of life is displaced by the mystery of death. What does it mean for a man to die? What is actually dying is obviously the body, for only the body is mortal and we speak of the "immortal" soul. In current philosophies nowadays, the "immortality of the soul" is emphasized to such an extent that the "mortality of man" is almost overlooked. In death this external, visible, and earthly bodily existence ceases. But yet, by some prophetic instinct, we say that it is "the man" who dies. For death surely breaks up human existence, although, admittedly, the human soul is "immortal," and personality is indestructible. Thus the question of death is first the question of the human body, of the corporeality of man. And Christianity proclaims not only the after-life of the immortal soul, but also the resurrection of the body. Man became mortal in the Fall, and actually dies. And the death of man becomes a cosmic catastrophe. For in the dying man, nature loses its immortal center, and itself, as it were, dies in man. Man was taken from nature, being made of the dust of the earth. But in a way he was taken out of nature, because God breathed into him the breath of life. St. Gregory of Nyssa comments on the narrative of Genesis in this way. "For God, it says, taking dust from the earth, fashioned man and by His own breath planted life in the creature which He formed, in order that the earthly element might be raised by union with the Divine, and so the Divine grace in one even course might uniformly extend through all creation, the lower nature being mingled with that which is above the world."18 … Man is a sort of "microcosm," every kind of life is combined in him, and in him only the whole world comes into contact with God.19 Consequently man’s apostasy estranges the whole creation from God, devastates it, and, as it were, deprives it of God. The Fall of man shatters the cosmic harmony. Sin is disorder, discord, lawlessness. Strictly speaking it is only man that dies. Death indeed is a law of nature, a law of organic life. But man’s death means just his fall or entanglement into this cyclical motion of nature, just what ought not to have happened at all. As St. Gregory says, "from the nature of dumb animals mortality is transferred to a nature created for immortality." Only for man is death contrary to nature and mortality is evil.20 Only man is wounded and mutilated by death. In the generic life of dumb animals, death is rather a natural moment in the development of the species; it is the expression rather of the generating power of life than of infirmity. However, with the fall of man, mortality, even in nature, assumes an evil and tragic significance. Nature itself, as it were, is poisoned by the fatal venom of human decomposition. With dumb animals, death is but the discontinuation of individual existence. In the human world, death strikes at personality, and personality is much greater than mere individuality. It is the body that becomes corruptible and liable to death through sin. Only the body can disintegrate. Yet it is not the body that dies, but the whole man. For man is organically composed of body and soul. Neither soul nor body separately represents man. A body without a soul is but a corpse, and a soul without body is a ghost. Man is not a ghost sans-corpse, and corpse is not a part of man. Man is not a "bodiless demon," simply confined in the prison of the body. Mysterious as the union of soul and body indeed is, the immediate consciousness of man witnesses to the organic wholeness of his psycho-physical structure. This organic wholeness of human composition was from the very beginning strongly emphasized by all Christian teachers.21 That is why the separation of soul and body is the death of the man himself, the discontinuation of his existence, of wholeness, i.e. of his existence as a man. Consequently death and the corruption of the body are a sort of fading away of the "image of God" in man. St. John Damascene, in one of his glorious anthems in the Burial Service, says of this: "I weep and I lament, when I contemplate death, and see our beauty, fashioned after the image of God, lying in the tomb disfigured, dishonored, bereft of form."22 St. John speaks not of man’s body, but of man himself. "Our beauty in the image of God," ή κατ’ εικόνα θεου πτλασθεισα ώραιότης, this is not the body, but man. He is indeed an "image of the unfathomable glory" of God, even when wounded by sin, εικών άρρητου δόξης.23 And in death it is disclosed that man, this "reasonable statue" fashioned by God, to use the phrase of St. Methodius,24 is but a corpse. "Man is but dry bones, a stench and the food of worms." This is the riddle and the mystery of death. "Death is a mystery indeed: for the soul by violence is severed from the body, is separated, by the Divine will, from the natural connection and composition… Ο marvel! Why have we been given over unto corruption, and why have we been wedded unto death?" In the fear of death, often so petty and faint-hearted, there is revealed a profound metaphysical alarm, not merely a sinful attachment to the earthly flesh. In the fear of death the pathos of human wholeness is manifested. The Fathers used to see in the unity of soul and body in man an analogy of the indivisible unity of two natures in the unique hypostasis of Christ. Analogy may be misleading. But still by analogy one may speak of man as being just "one hypostasis in two natures," and not only of, but precisely in two natures. And in death this one human hypostasis is broken up. Hence the justification for the mourning and weeping. The terror of death is only warded off by the hope of the resurrection and life eternal.
However, death is not just the self-revelation of sin. Death itself is already, as it were, the anticipation of the resurrection. By death God not only punishes but also heals fallen and ruined human nature. And this not merely in the sense that He cuts the sinful life short by death and thereby prevents the propagation of sin and evil. God turns the very mortality of man into a means of healing. In death human nature is purified, pre-resurrected as it were. Such was the common opinion of the Fathers. With greatest emphasis this conception was put forward by St. Gregory of Nyssa. "Divine providence introduced death into human nature with a specific design," he says, "so that by the dissolution of body and soul, vice may be drawn off and man may be refashioned again through the resurrection, sound, free from passions, pure, and without any admixture of evil." This is particularly a healing of the body. In St. Gregory’s opinion, man’s journey beyond the grave is a means of cleansing. Man’s bodily structure is purified and renewed. In death, as it were, God refines the vessel of our body as in a refining furnace. By the free exercise of his sinful will man entered into communion with evil, and our structure became alloyed with the poison of vice. In death man falls to pieces, like an earthenware vessel, and his body is decomposed again in the earth, so that by purification from the accrued filth he may be restored to his normal form, through the resurrection. Consequently death is not an evil, but a benefit (ευεργεσία). Death is the wages of sin, yet at the same time it is also a healing process, a medicine, a sort of fiery tempering of the impaired structure of man. The earth is, as it were, sown with human ashes, that they may shoot forth in the last day, by the power of God; this was the Pauline analogy. The mortal remains are committed to the earth unto the resurrection. Death implies within itself a potentiality of resurrection. The destiny of man can be realized only in the resurrection, and in the general resurrection. But only the Resurrection of Our Lord resuscitates human nature and makes the general resurrection possible. The potentiality of resurrection inherent in every death was realized only in Christ, the "first-fruits of them that are asleep" (1 Cor. 15:20).25
Redemption is above all an escape from death and corruption, the liberation of man from the "bondage of corruption" (Romans 8:21), the restoration of the original wholeness and stability of human nature. The fulfilment of redemption is in the resurrection. It will be fulfilled in the general "quickening" when "the last enemy shall be abolished, death" (1 Cor. 15:26: έσχατος εχθρός). But the restoration of unity within human nature is possible only through a restoration of the union of man with God. The resurrection is possible only in God. Christ is the Resurrection and the Life. "Unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility," says St. Irenaeus. The way and the hope of the resurrection is revealed only through the Incarnation of the Word.26 St. Athanasius expresses this point even more emphatically. The mercy of God could not permit "that creatures once made rational, and having partaken of the Word, should go to ruin and turn again to non-existence by the way of corruption." The violation of the law and disobedience did not abolish the original purpose of God. The abolition of that purpose would have violated the truth of God. But human repentance was insufficient. "Penitence does not deliver from the state of nature [into which man has relapsed through sin], it only discontinues the sin." For man not only sinned but fell into corruption. Consequently the Word of God descended and became man, assumed our body, "that, whereas man turned towards corruption, he might turn them again towards incorruption, and quicken them from death by appropriation of his body and by the grace of the Resurrection, banishing death from them like a straw from the fire."27 Death was grafted on to the body, then life must be grafted on to the body again, that the body may throw off corruption and be clothed in life. Otherwise the body would not be raised. "If death had been kept away from the body by a mere command, it would nonetheless have been mortal and corruptible, according to the nature of our bodies. But that this should not be, it put on the incorporeal Word of God, and thus no longer fears either death or corruption, for it has life as a garment, and corruption is done away in it."28 Thus, according to St. Athanasius, the Word became flesh in order to abolish corruption in human nature. However, death is vanquished, not by the appearance of Life in the mortal body, but rather by the voluntary death of the Incarnate Life. The Word became incarnate on account of death in the flesh, St. Athanasius emphasizes. "In order to accept death He had a body," and only through His death was the resurrection possible.29
The ultimate reason for Christ’s death must be seen in the mortality of man. Christ suffered death, but passed through it and overcame mortality and corruption. He quickened death itself. By His death He abolishes the power of death. "The dominion of death is cancelled by Thy death, Ο Strong One." And the grave becomes the life-giving "source of our resurrection." And every grave becomes rather a "bed of hope" for believers. In the death of Christ, death itself is given a new meaning and significance. "By death He destroyed death."
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