The final enemy

Moreover, our bodies are destined for death and decay. Sooner or later but one and all, we are mastered by the power of death. Try to overcome death, the Christian story says, and you will see how it, too, is a power more powerful than you. Demons, unclean spirits, Beelzebul, other “gods and lords” (1 Cor 8:5)—all these, too, are more powerful than the human creature. But death is that against which we finally fight and to which we inevitably lose. Against all those both ancient and modern who would say we can become cozy with death, the Christians say otherwise. Death is the final enemy.—One True Life: The Stoics and Early Christians as Rival Traditions, 217