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THE DARK SIDE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY
Follow Our Lord's example, and hate your body; if you love it, strive to lose it, says Holy Scripture, in order to save it; if you wish to make peace with it, always go armed, always wage war against it; treat it like a slave, or soon you yourself shall be its unhappy slave.64 In the Christian world the very word "carnal," which means simply "of or relating to the body,"65 took on the meaning of sin and immorality. Orthodox Christians also often contended that death was not a natural part of life but rather was a punishment. St. Augustine argued that death existed only as a punishment for sin: Wherefore we must say that the first men were indeed so created, that if they had not sinned, they would not have experienced any kind of death; but that, having become sinners, they were so punished with death, that whatsoever sprang from their stock should also be punished with the same death.66 And: ...therefore it is agreed among all Christians who truthfully hold the catholic faith, that we are subject to the death of the body, not by the law of nature, by which God ordained no death for man, but by His righteous infliction on account of sin...67 Just as Augustine had argued that sin had created sexual desire, so he also believed that sin had created death. Death, in the eyes of the orthodox, was to be conquered. Paul wrote in I Corinthians, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."68 St. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, describes how the Apostles "despised death, and were found to rise above death."69 Christian faith is believed to imbue one with power over death. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says: