Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity by Ellen Muehlberger (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity by Ellen Muehlberger Scott G. Bruce Moment of Reckoning: Imagined Death and its Consequences in Late Ancient Christianity Ellen Muehlberger Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. xiii + 245. ISBN: 978-0190459161. Building on the work of Éric Rebillard, Brian E. Daley, and other laborers in the field of death rituals in Late Antiquity, Ellen Muehlberger invites us to consider how Christian preachers in the fourth and fifth centuries encouraged their congregations to imagine and reflect upon the experience of their eventual death and how they freighted this occasion with a moral weight by presenting it as a moment of evaluation, as a "pitched event—stark, frightening, and a time when a summary judgment of a person's actions throughout life would be rendered" (10). Already in the early fourth century, Christian authors depicted the deathbed scenes of famous men as barometers of the quality of their lives (Chapter 1). Eusebius represented Constantine as dying "serenely and undisturbed" (38) as a reflection of his faithfulness, while emperors like Galerius who opposed Christianity suffered terrible ends by divine retribution. Likewise, heretics such as Arius allegedly died by disembowelment in the manner of Judas. In each of these stories, the way in which someone died revealed something about their character. This concern for death as a moment that laid bare an individual's moral standing attacted the notice of preachers addressing generic Christians in the decades around 400 (Chapter 2). From North Africa to Egypt to Syria, Muehlberger finds a widespread interest in presenting the future deaths of congregants in vivid and realistic detail in sermons by Augustine of Hippo, Jacob of Serugh, Cyril of Alexandria, and Shenoute of Atripe. In each case, these preachers recounted the experience of death from the point of view of the person dying and thereby taught their audiences about death "by inducing them to create an experience of it that they can imagine to be their own" (91). The goal of this attention to everyone's inevitable, frightening end was didactic. It forced the listener to consider the following questions: what will I come to regret about the way I have lived at the moment of my death? And how can I avoid that regret by living differently in the time I have left? Muehlberger argues that these preachers applied rhetorical techniques—in particular, prosopopoiea or "speech in character"—to convey this moral imperative to their audiences (Chapter 3). Their techiques for vividly evoking the final moments of their congregants' lives drew directly on their rhetorical training in writing speeches in the voices of historical characters in tragic situations. When they applied these skills in their sermons, their achievement was nothing less than the introduction of "a [End Page 557] new mode of ethical self-evaluation—a practical exercise of the imagination to nurse preventative caution where it had not existed before" (141). Why was death so fearful to Christians in this period? While the teachings of the church were clear that the soul lay in wait after death, as though asleep until the general resurrection and judgment at the end of time, contemporary apocryphal writings like the Vision of Paul depicted an afterlife immediately after death but preceding the judgement, where human souls persisted in recognizable bodies that were vulnernable to physical punishment commeasurate with their sins (Chapter 4). Muhlberger dubs this alarming new phase of human existence the "postmortal." It is the fear of punishment in the postmortal state of the soul, determined at the moment of death, that lent late antique sermons on dying their efficacy. One of the strengths of this chapter is the insight that pseudepigrapha like the Vision of Paul did not introduce these ideas but rather responded to their growing popularity long before they achieved any official authority as doctrine. Muhlberger argues that this new understanding of the immediate fate of the soul after death justified forcing others to adopt correct Chrisian beliefs in order to help them to avoid the fates awaiting them in their postmortal state (Chapter 5). In doing so, she shows how pastoral care could have a direct influence on...