From the Archives: "What Does Paul Say to Us about Death?"

Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.

Photo by Ryan S. Brandenberg, © 2016 Temple University

Lucy Bregman asks what it is that the Apostle Paul says about death. Paul’s letters show his afflictions and suffering, his imprisonment, his persistence in the face of dangers, and his intention to proclaim Christ despite the hardships. He sought meaning in these difficulties, and Bregman notes that faithful readers of his letters want from Paul not simply his theological ideas but his own self. We want to know Paul, the person. We construct, therefore, a portrait of him which may or may not be true or even fair. Yet, while we can see in his writings on death that he welcomed it as release from the pain of living as a witness to Christ, we are still left with the question, “How does Paul face death?” The answer, Bregman tells us, is that Paul linked his own death with Christ’s.

Selected Quotes from

“What Does Paul Say to Us about Death?”

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“Paul’s complaints are never accusations against God but reveal a secret process of transforming personal human sufferings into something more: Christ’s own death and pain.”

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“Paul has received the gift of knowing how to suffer, to be weak without despair. “Afflicted but not crushed,” Paul does let himself look ahead to a future free from sufferings and ambiguities
(2 Cor 4:17), but here in the midst of life, an unserene and unheroic yet truly Christian response to pain and death is possible.” 

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“Paul the historical individual was martyred in Rome, and we shall never know his very last thoughts and feelings. Paul the person known through his letters is available, as one who faced death and aflliction and struggled to find meaning in them. He turned his own painful experiences into a sharing of Christ's sufferings, so that both the life and death of Jesus could appear in himself.“

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Lucy Bregman is emeritus professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia. She is the author of many books on death, including Religion, Death, and Dying (3 vols., 2009); Death and Dying in World Religions (2009); Preaching Death (2011); and Death in the Midst of Life (1992).

If you would like access to this article, please follow this link:

Bregman, L. (1992). What Does Paul Say to Us about Death? Liturgy, 10(3), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/0458063X.1992.10392109