Learning to Die from Augustine: The Forgotten Christian Art of Dying Well (Part 1)

by on September 29, 2026 | Comment

Death is a difficult topic for modern Christians. We know that we will die. We confess it in our theology, see it in our families, and hear it announced in prayer meetings, hospital rooms, and funeral homes. Yet for all that, many of us are remarkably unprepared for it.

Part of the difficulty is that death has been pushed to the edges of ordinary life. In previous generations, people often died at home, so children saw death. Families prepared bodies, and churches gathered around the sick and dying. Church buildings often stood next to graveyards; it was almost as if the earthly congregation worshiped in view of those who had already fallen asleep in Christ.

This is generally not our experience now. We live in a culture that hides death. We send the dying to institutions. We speak in euphemisms and treat death as a medical failure rather than as the last enemy. Even the death of animals, killed for our food, is hidden from us, tucked away in slaughterhouses and supply chains. Human death is often managed by hospitals, nursing homes, and funeral professionals. These things are not evil in themselves. There is mercy in medical care, hospice work, and funeral service, but the effect can be that death becomes less a spiritual reality to be faced and more a logistical problem to be managed.

There is also a theological problem. There is also a theological problem: The modern church has a thin doctrine of suffering. In some circles, the prosperity gospel has trained Christians to think of the Christian life mainly in terms of victory, health, success, and visible blessing. But even where that theology is formally rejected, its instincts often remain. We may not preach that faith guarantees wealth and health, but we can still act as though the Christian life is chiefly about present happiness. The result is that death feels like an interruption to discipleship rather than one of the central realities for which discipleship prepares us.

The older Christian tradition had a name for this preparation: ars moriendi, the art of dying well. The phrase may sound strange at first, perhaps even morbid, but it names something deeply biblical and pastoral. While the literary tradition of the ars moriendi is usually traced to the fifteenth century, the theological concern is much older: Christians have long understood that they must face death in faith, not merely endure it as a biological event.1 If Christ tarries, every one of us will die. Some will die suddenly, and others will die slowly. Some will have time to speak, pray, confess, remember, and bless, while others will not. But all of us need to learn how to live in such a way that death does not find us spiritually unprepared.

This is not just important for hospice chaplains. It is important for every pastor, elder, family, and Christian who wants to live and die in faith. The question is not whether Christians should think about death. Scripture requires us to do so. Moses prays, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps 90:12). Ecclesiastes tells us that “it is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting,” because “this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart” (7:2). Paul can say, without contradiction, that death is an enemy and that to depart and be with Christ is “far better” (1 Cor 15:26; Phil 1:23). The Christian faith does not teach us to pretend death is harmless; it teaches us to face death truthfully considering Christ. Augustine is a helpful first guide as we think about this truth.

Augustine was not a detached theologian speaking about death from a safe distance. He knew grief. In his famous work Confessions, he records the death of a close friend, the death of his mother, Monica, and the death of his son. His description of grief over his friend is striking because it is so human. He writes, “I was in misery” and describes his soul as “lacerated” by the loss of one he loved. His grief was so severe because he felt that his friend and he had been “one soul in two bodies.”2 Such a friendship is a special blessing.

This is not the language of Stoicism. Augustine does not treat grief as weakness. He does not rebuke all sorrow as unbelief. He knows that love makes death painful. Death wounds because it separates what God made to be joined in community. It breaks fellowship and silences familiar voices. Death empties chairs, beds, rooms, and destroys routines. When Christians speak about death, we must begin there. Death is not natural in the sense of being morally normal or neutral. It is not merely “part of life.” It is an invader, an enemy; it is the wages of sin.

At the same time, Augustine’s grief over his mother has a different character. Monica’s death is still painful, but it is not hopeless. Shortly before her death, Monica tells Augustine that the great earthly desire of her life had been fulfilled: She had seen him become a Christian. “What have I to do here?” she asks.3 Her life had not been meaningless; it had been directed toward God’s purpose. She had prayed, waited, suffered, and seen the mercy of God.

That sentence stands out: “What have I to do here?” It is not contempt for creation, nor is it despair. It is the speech of a pilgrim who knows that this world is not the final homeland. Monica can release her hold on this life because her hope does not terminate in this life. She does not need the world to provide ultimate fulfillment. Her God has been faithful. Her son has been brought to Christ. Her pilgrimage is nearly complete.

Modern Christians need to recover that kind of spiritual clarity. We often speak as though dying well means dying peacefully, painlessly, surrounded by family, with all relationships reconciled and all affairs in order. Those are mercies when God gives them. But they are not the essence of dying well. A Christian may die well through pain, confusion, weakness, and even loneliness. A Christian may die well without having time to say goodbye. The heart of dying well is not control over the circumstances of death; it is faith in the Lord of life.

Augustine’s theology helps us here because he considers death in three ways: its source, its reality, and its end. First, death has a source. It entered the world through sin. Augustine takes with full seriousness the warning given to Adam in the garden: “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). This means that death is not an original feature of God’s good creation; it is judgment. Death includes the body’s separation from the soul, but even more deeply, it is bound up with the soul’s separation from God.4

If we detach death from sin, we will sentimentalize it. If death is only biological, then comfort can only be emotional. But if death is theological, then comfort must be theological too. The dying need more than soothing words; they need the gospel. They need to know that Christ has borne the curse, conquered the grave, and secured resurrection life for all who belong to him.

Second, Augustine teaches us to face the reality of death. Death is not optional. We are all moving toward it. Augustine says, “No one, therefore, is dying unless living,” and presses the point further: From the moment we begin to live in this dying body, we move toward death.5 This may sound severe, but it is simply wisdom. Every birthday is also a reminder that life is passing. Every illness, every funeral, every gray hair, every weakening of the body preaches the same sermon: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19).

The purpose of such reflection is not melancholy. Christians are not called to mope through life; we are called to sobriety. The difference is important. Melancholy fixates on death as though it were ultimate. Christian sobriety remembers death so that life may be lived wisely before God. The man who numbers his days is not less joyful; he is less foolish. He knows that his time is short, his sins are serious, his relationships matter, and his hope must be anchored beyond the grave.

This is one reason our churches need to speak about death before it arrives. If the first serious teaching a Christian receives about dying comes in the hospital room, then we have waited too long. The promises of God are not meant to be introduced only in crisis. They are meant to be stored up over a lifetime. The sickbed should not be the first school of mortality. The Lord’s Day, the sermon, the Supper, the Psalms, the prayers of the church, and the fellowship of the saints should all teach us, slowly and steadily, that we are mortal and Christ is our life.

Third, Augustine directs us to the end of death. For the unbeliever, death opens into what Scripture calls the second death. Augustine describes this with terrible clarity: Eternal punishment is not true life but “eternal death.” There is, he says, no worse death than the death in which “death never dies.”6 That phrase is meant to unsettle us. There is something worse than physical death. There is death without escape, without communion with God, without hope.

But for the believer, death is not the final word. The Christian’s hope is not mere survival of the soul, a vague spiritual existence, or the comforting thought that memories continue. The Christian hope is resurrection. Augustine says that the saints will inhabit the very bodies in which they have toiled, but without corruption, heaviness, grief, or trouble.7 This is not an escape from creation; it is the redemption of creation. The body that is buried in weakness will be raised in glory. The grave will not keep what belongs to Christ.

This is where Christian teaching about death must always end: not with death, but with Christ. Jesus does not merely comfort Martha by saying that Lazarus is in a better place. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). The hope of the Christian is personal before it is circumstantial. Our hope is not first that dying will be easy, heaven will be beautiful, or grief will be temporary, though all of that is true in its place. Our hope is that Christ himself has entered death and come out the other side. He has made death serve the salvation of his people.

This does not make death good in itself. Augustine is careful here. Death remains contrary to life. It remains evil. But God, in his mercy, has made death an instrument through which the believer comes to life.8 This is a distinctly Christian paradox. Death is an enemy, but it is a defeated enemy. Death is a curse, but Christ has borne the curse. Death separates body and soul, but it cannot separate the believer from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So what would it mean for modern Christians to recover the art of dying well? It would mean, first, telling the truth. We should not speak of death in ways that hide its horror. Death is not merely “passing away.” It is not merely the next stage of the journey. Death is the wages of sin, and it is the last enemy. A Christian doctrine of death must be honest enough to grieve.

Second, it would mean recovering preparation. We prepare for careers, marriage, retirement, and emergencies. We buy insurance, write wills, and plan funerals. But the deepest preparation is spiritual. Are we reconciled to God through Christ? Are we living in repentance and faith? Are we learning the promises of Scripture? Are we practicing prayer? Are we teaching our children how Christians grieve? Are we preparing our people to suffer without concluding that God has abandoned them?

Third, it would mean recovering heavenly-mindedness. Many Western Christians are not really longing for heaven. We want a better version of this life: improved health, more comfort, longer years, successful children, stable finances, and peaceful circumstances. These are good gifts, but they are poor gods. The older Christian tradition presses us to ask whether we are living as pilgrims or settlers. If heaven is our home, then death, however painful, is not exile into darkness. It is departure to be with Christ.

Fourth, it would mean recovering pastoral courage. Pastors must not save all talk of death for funerals. Preaching and prayer should prepare people to die. The Lord’s Supper should prepare people to die because it proclaims the Lord’s death until he comes. The communion of saints should prepare people to die because every Lord’s Day we gather as those who belong to a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

The church does not need a morbid fascination with death. It needs a mature doctrine of death. It needs to be able to sit beside the hospital bed and speak truth without panic. It needs to know how to pray when the body weakens. It needs to know how to grieve without despair. It needs to know how to bury its dead in hope.

The forgotten art of dying well is really part of the art of living well. To live well is to live before God, in Christ, by faith, with eternity in view. To die well is to finish that same course still clinging to the same Savior. The Christian does not prepare for death by becoming less human, less sorrowful, or less attached to those he loves. He prepares by learning, in life and in death, to say, “I belong to Christ.”

This is why the church must learn to die again. Not because death is lovely or because grief is small or because the grave is harmless—but because Christ is risen. And if Christ is risen, then the Christian can look at death honestly, grieve it deeply, prepare for it soberly, and finally pass through it hopefully, knowing that the One who said, “I am the resurrection and the life,” will not lose any of those whom the Father has given him.

Notes

  1. Nancy Lee Beaty, The Craft of Dying: A Study in the Literary Tradition of the Ars Moriendi in England (Yale University Press, 1970), 1.
  2. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford University Press, 2008), 4.6.11.
  3. Augustine, Confessions, 9.10.26.
  4. Augustine, The City of God, 13.12, in vol. 2 of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Marcus Dods (Logos Research Systems, 1997), 251.
  5. Augustine, City of God, 13.10.
  6. Augustine, City of God, 6.12.
  7. Augustine, City of God, 13.20.  And the Westminster Standards agree in Confession of Faith 32.2 and Larger Catechism 87 where resurrection includes “the self-same bodies.”
  8. Augustine, City of God, 13.4.

©Everett Henes. All Rights Reserved.

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    Post authored by:

  • Everett Henes
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    Everett Henes (MDiv, ThM, DMin) is pastor of Hillsdale Orthodox Presbyterian Church, where he has served since 2008. He is husband to Kimberly and father of five children and grandfather of five (and counting!). He teaches US History and Philosophy of History for Jackson College in Michigan. He is currently working towards a PhD in Humanities with a focus in US Religious History from Faulkner University. In his spare time, he enjoys competing in powerlifting and strongman and teaching homeschoolers Taekwondo.

    More by Everett Henes ›

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