Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Consider a massive accident, such as an airplane crush. Note that the people who perished in it, say, all 300 of them, had nothing in common with each other, other than the manner of their death. They were all different people with unique and perhaps highly interesting stories to tell about their lives who just happened to board the same unlucky plane. Yet the way they died was exactly the same, namely, at the same time, from the same cause, and in close proximity to one another. Now if you thought of death as a natural culmination of life, then this scenario puts a damper on this idea. For how likely is it that the same kind of death was a fitting end to lives that were so different? On the contrary, it appears that death in our case struck randomly and arbitrarily, cutting down the saints and the sinners, the mighty and the lowly, etc. But this is obviously outrageous, an unfitting conclusion to these lives, inappropriate. But if death is absurd in the case of a plane crush (or a natural disaster or plague or war), striking without discrimination, however “it” pleases, then it must be absurd everywhere.

Now sometimes death does seem like a relief, for example, when a person dies after a long and painful illness, and death puts an end to his suffering. But if death is a scandal in principle, then it is inappropriate even when it alleviates suffering in its own perverse way. The obvious implication is that the agony before death is equally abnormal.

And this brings us to the question of why we die in the first place. The doctrine of the Original Sin, whatever its other flaws, at least tries to answer this question. Now remember first that, though creation is metaphysically good, it is not God the Son, and so it has metaphysical evil in it. But just as moral evil (sin) causes physical evil (misery in the sinner), though not necessarily but almost inevitably; so metaphysical evil (the limitations of human nature) causes moral evil. God established, demonstrated to whom it may concern, that metaphysically evil or imperfect creatures will succumb to moral evil. Any rational creature that does not have a divine nature will make mistakes or do bad things. Angels were created with great natural perfections and furthermore given grace, yet so many of them fell. Adam and Eve were given everything, too, yet they fell, anyway, as well.

In other words, Adam and Eve were cursed and expelled from the Garden, because of their moral evil. But we, their descendants, though free from actual sin at the beginning of our lives, nevertheless are similarly cursed because of a counterfactual: “For all men, if one were placed in the Garden of Eden for an indefinite period of time, then he would eventually sin.” For we inherit the metaphysical defects of Adam and of all creation.

Hence I can identify three reasons for death:

1. Eternal life in this world in impossible, for in infinite time all possibilities are realized; so, given that suicide is possible, it is inevitable.

2. At some point you must actually catch the happiness you are pursuing, something possible only in heaven.

3. As punishment attendant on moral evil and as a fitting finale to metaphysically imperfect creatures.