The Slavery of Death: Part 24, Timor Mortis and "the Glory of Those Who Are Reborn"

As we near the end of this series it's time to clean up some lingering questions.

As you know, this entire series has been a prolonged meditation upon Hebrew 2.14-15:

Hebrews 2.14-15
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

By this point in the series we've unpacked how our lives can become "enslaved to the fear of death" and how that slavery makes us participate in "the works of the devil." We have also briefly sketched how Christ sets us free from this dynamic (Christus Victor), something I'll try to describe in a bit more detail in a final summary post. In the last post I described the beginning of this process as adopting a martyrological identity--learning to die so that we might live, losing our life so that we might find it.

In light of the word "martyr" it's time to clarify some things regarding our fear of death and address a couple of the questions you've been asking me from the very beginning of this series. Specifically, is the fear of death to be totally conquered? Are Christians to be fearless in the face of death? And if so, what prevents us from throwing our lives away?

I'd like to approach these questions by talking about the development of timor mortis in the thought of Augustine.

First, a hat tip to Charlie Collier over at Wipf & Stock. As Unclean was wrapping up Charlie and I exchanged some emails about future books I might do. I mentioned I had been thinking about a book fusing the work of Ernest Becker with theologians like William Stringfellow. In light of that, Charlie mentioned I look into Augustine's treatment of timor mortis.

Timor mortis is Latin for the "fear of death" (timor being the root of words like timorous and mortis the root for words like mortality).

Timor mortis has an interesting history in the thought of Augustine and tracing the development of his thought on this subject helps us address some of the lingering questions in this series. Like we have been doing, Augustine was trying to address these sorts of questions in relation to timor mortis: Does the faithful Christian fear death? Is the fear of death a sign of spiritual cowardice and a lack of faith?

Early in this writing Augustine seems to suggest that Christians should not fear death. To fear death would be a sign that the Christian did not trust in God and the resurrection. Here Augustine seems to have been greatly influenced by the heroic feats of both pagan and Christian martyrs, individuals who showed no fear in facing death. For Augustine this appears to have been the ideal the Christian should aspire to. More, Augustine was also influenced by the Stoics who argued that the truly wise and virtuous would be calm and fearless in the face of death. Exemplars here are Socrates and Seneca.

This heroic ideal, one based upon the examples of the Christian martyrs, seems an almost impossible standard. Normal people fear death. Does this mean that we lack faith?

Over time Augustine began to change his stance on this issue. It seems that Augustine's early treatments of timor mortis were overly influenced by his desire to place the courage of Christian martyrs in the same heroic pantheon with the pagan philosophers, warriors, and martyrs. Augustine wanted the Christian heroes to be as courageous as the pagan heroes. In this, Augustine was writing more apologetically than pastorally. Later, as his interests in timor mortis became more pastoral Augustine began to back away from the heroic ideal of the Christian martyr scorning death.

According to scholars this change in Augustine's views regarding timor mortis started during the Pelagian controversies. Why that controversy sparked this change need not concern us. But the result was that Augustine began to take a more realistic stance about the experience of timor mortis in the Christian experience. Crucially, Augustine no longer considered timor mortis to be a spiritual or moral failure. Augustine comes to argue that the fear of death is a natural and regular feature of being human. Consequently, the goal of the Christian life is not in the eradication of timor mortis but in how we wrestle with it day after day. The virtue here is less about scorning death than about daily fortitude and perseverance. Here is Carole Straw summarizing this development in Augustine:

Before Augustine, conquest of the fear of death was held to test the faith of Christians in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection; it proved confidence in the reward awaiting a life of virtue. Fear of death revealed doubt, guilt, and a misguided attachment to the body. Augustine began his career within this tradition, but the controversies he faced led him to change his views...Augustine will come to reject the triumphalism of earlier tradition. He will accept fear of death as a part of the human condition. Fear of death is a natural response that does not indicate want of faith; rather, it affirms the value of bodily existence realized finally in the resurrection. Prudence also dictates that one fear death to check sinfulness.

Various arguments seem to have moved Augustine in this direction. First, Augustine came to realize that a complete absence of timor mortis would cause Christians to become indifferent to things like suicide. More, an absence of timor mortis would cause Christians to use suicide as a sign of faith. That is, if timor mortis is a lack of faith in the resurrection wouldn't suicide become the ultimate expression of faith? Augustine senses this line of argument and he works in The City of God to push back. He mentions the student of Plato who, upon reading about the immortality of the soul, got up and jumped off a building to his death. Isn't that faith? And is that the sort of faith and fearlessness we should see in the Christian? Augustine realizes that a line of reasoning, similar to the one followed by the student of Plato, could be worked out from within the Christian tradition. Specifically, why struggle with the Christian life when we could simply commit suicide after being baptized? Wouldn't that be the easiest and safest way to guarantee our salvation? Augustine floating that argument:

[W]hy do we spend time on those exhortations to the newly baptized. We do our best to kindle their resolve to preserve their virginal purity, or to remain continent in widowhood, or to remain faithful to their marriage vows. But there is available an excellent short cut which avoids any danger of sinning; if we can persuade them to rush to a self-inflicted death immediately upon receiving remission of sins, we shall send them to the Lord in the purest and soundest condition!

To this Augustine responds that "if anyone thinks that we should go in for persuasion on these lines, I should not call him silly, but quite crazy." He concludes that "suicide is monstrous."

But why? For Augustine faith isn't really faith until it has wrestled with the fear of death across the lifespan. That is, a lack of concern about death isn't a sign of faith. Rather, faith is manifested in the daily wrestling with death. This is what perfects faith over time in the saints. Augustine writes, "[T]he faithful overcoming the fear of death is a part of the struggle of faith itself." More, the fear of death is simply an acknowledgement of the gift and goodness of life itself. To be indifferent to your life is to spurn the gift of God. Timor mortis, wanting to preserve your own life, is, at root, an act of gratitude.

What this means, then, is that timor mortis is a fact of life and a regular feature of the Christian experience. The fear of death is always with us, moment by moment and day by day. A lack of timor mortis would signal an indifference that could be, by turns, pathological, triumphalistic, or a spurning of the gift of life. Thus, a victory over the fear of death is not experienced as fearlessness, the complete absence of timor morits. Rather, the victory over the fear of death is witnessed in daily perseverance.

The key, in light of Hebrews 2, has less to do with the fear of death than with a slavery to the fear of death. The fear cannot be healthily avoided. But overcoming a slavery to the fear can be, must be, pursued day in and day out.

As Augustine says, our faith doesn't mean "that death had turned into a good thing." No, he contends, "the death of the body...is not good for anyone." So the goal of the Christian life is not to seek out death or to treat life cheaply. Death is evil. Consequently, we are to struggle against death, resisting death in all its manifestations. This struggle, according to Augustine, "increases the merit of patience if it is endured with devout faith."

For Augustine timor mortis no longer signals the failure of faith but rather works to produce "the glory of those who are reborn."