Rowena Pailing: Does death sting? Some thoughts from the mature Augustine

Traditionally, Augustine has been perceived as being more interested in the means of attaining salvation rather than the reality of that salvation once attained.  Nonetheless, particularly in the writings of his later years when his own mortality comes into sharper focus, he takes up a long-standing tradition of debate about the nature of bodily resurrection.
This short paper will draw particularly (although not exclusively) on The City of God and contemporary sermons.  It will aim to present a brief account of Augustine's understanding of the human condition after death, and some of the tensions and paradoxes therein.
Specifically, it will address three questions: first, whether death is ‘natural'.  This is in recognition that on the one hand Augustine places great importance on the resurrection and the positive aspects of human existence after death, whilst on the other hand he does not believe that mortality was part of the pre-lapsarian human condition.  Second will be an exploration of how physical life is after death.  This will focus on issues concerning spiritual and physical embodiment, and the operation of the senses.  The third and final question will be what happens to individual identity after death, as Augustine holds the tension between individual embodiment and a more corporate existence.