question about the eternal God creating new things, without any
novelty of will, it is easy to see how much better it is that God was
pleased to produce the human race from the one individual whom He
created, than if He had originated it in several men. For as to the
other animals, He created some solitary, and naturally seeking lonely
places,--as the eagles, kites, lions, wolves, and such like; others
gregarious, which herd together, and prefer to live in company,--as
pigeons, starlings, stags, and little fallow deer, and the like: but
neither class did He cause to be propagated from individuals, but
called into being several at once. Man, on the other hand, whose
nature was to be a mean between the angelic and bestial, He created
in such sort, that if he remained in subjection to His Creator as
his rightful Lord, and piously kept His commandments, he should pass
into the company of the angels, and obtain, without the intervention
of death,[560] a blessed and endless immortality; but if he offended
the Lord his God by a proud and disobedient use of his free will,
he should become subject to death, and live as the beasts do,--the
slave of appetite, and doomed to eternal punishment after death. And
therefore God created only one single man, not, certainly, that he
might be a solitary bereft of all society, but that by this means the
unity of society and the bond of concord might be more effectually
commended to him, men being bound together not only by similarity of
nature, but by family affection. And indeed He did not even create
the woman that was to be given him as his wife, as he created the
man, but created her out of the man, that the whole human race might
derive from one man.
22. _That God foreknew that the first man would sin, and that He at
the same time foresaw how large a multitude of godly persons
would by His grace be translated to the fellowship of the angels._
And God was not ignorant that man would sin, and that, being himself
made subject now to death, he would propagate men doomed to die, and
that these mortals would run to such enormities in sin, that even the
beasts devoid of rational will, and who were created in numbers from
the waters and the earth, would live more securely and peaceably with
their own kind than men, who had been propagated from one individual
for the very purpose of commending concord. For not even lions or
dragons have ever waged with their kind such wars as men have waged
with one another.[561] But God foresaw also that by His grace a
people would be called to adoption, and that they, being justified
by the remission of their sins, would be united by the Holy Ghost
to the holy angels in eternal peace, the last enemy, death, being
destroyed; and He knew that this people would derive profit from the
consideration that God had caused all men to be derived from one, for
the sake of showing how highly He prizes unity in a multitude.
23. _Of the nature of the human soul created in the image of God._
God, then, made man in His own image. For He created for him a soul
endowed with reason and intelligence, so that he might excel all the
creatures of earth, air, and sea, which were not so gifted. And when
He had formed the man out of the dust of the earth, and had willed
that his soul should be such as I have said,--whether He had already
made it, and now by breathing imparted it to man, or rather made it
by breathing, so that that breath which God made by breathing (for
what else is "to breathe" than to make breath?) is the soul,[562]--He
made also a wife for him, to aid him in the work of generating his
kind, and her He formed of a bone taken out of the man's side,
working in a divine manner. For we are not to conceive of this work
in a carnal fashion, as if God wrought as we commonly see artisans,
who use their hands, and material furnished to them, that by their
artistic skill they may fashion some material object. God's hand is
God's power; and He, working invisibly, effects visible results.
But this seems fabulous rather than true to men, who measure by
customary and everyday works the power and wisdom of God, whereby He
understands and produces without seeds even seeds themselves; and
because they cannot understand the things which at the beginning were
created, they are sceptical regarding them--as if the very things
which they do know about human propagation, conceptions and births,
would seem less incredible if told to those who had no experience of
them; though these very things, too, are attributed by many rather to
physical and natural causes than to the work of the divine mind.
24. _Whether the angels can be said to be the creators of any, even
the least creature._
But in this book we have nothing to do with those who do not believe
that the divine mind made or cares for this world. As for those who
believe their own Plato, that all mortal animals--among whom man
holds the pre-eminent place, and is near to the gods themselves--were
created not by that most high God who made the world, but by other
lesser gods created by the Supreme, and exercising a delegated power
under His control,--if only those persons be delivered from the
superstition which prompts them to seek a plausible reason for paying
divine honours and sacrificing to these gods as their creators, they
will easily be disentangled also from this their error. For it is
blasphemy to believe or to say (even before it can be understood)
that any other than God is creator of any nature, be it never so
small and mortal. And as for the angels, whom those Platonists prefer
to call gods, although they do, so far as they are permitted and
commissioned, aid in the production of the things around us, yet not
on that account are we to call them creators, any more than we call
gardeners the creators of fruits and trees.
25. _That God alone is the Creator of every kind of creature,
whatever its nature or form._
For whereas there is one form which is given from without to every
bodily substance,--such as the form which is constructed by potters
and smiths, and that class of artists who paint and fashion forms
like the body of animals,--but another and internal form which is not
itself constructed, but, as the efficient cause, produces not only
the natural bodily forms, but even the life itself of the living
creatures, and which proceeds from the secret and hidden choice of
an intelligent and living nature,--let that first-mentioned form be
attributed to every artificer, but this latter to one only, God, the
Creator and Originator who made the world itself and the angels,
without the help of world or angels. For the same divine and, so
to speak, creative energy, which cannot be made, but makes, and
which gave to the earth and sky their roundness,--this same divine,
effective, and creative energy gave their roundness to the eye and
to the apple; and the other natural objects which we anywhere see,
received also their form, not from without, but from the secret and
profound might of the Creator, who said, "Do not I fill heaven and
earth?"[563] and whose wisdom it is that "reacheth from one end
to another mightily; and sweetly doth she order all things."[564]
Wherefore I know not what kind of aid the angels, themselves created
first, afforded to the Creator in making other things. I cannot
ascribe to them what perhaps they cannot do, neither ought I to deny
them such faculty as they have. But, by their leave, I attribute the
creating and originating work which gave being to all natures to God,
to whom they themselves thankfully ascribe their existence. We do not
call gardeners the creators of their fruits, for we read, "Neither
is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that
giveth the increase."[565] Nay, not even the earth itself do we call
a creator, though she seems to be the prolific mother of all things
which she aids in germinating and bursting forth from the seed, and
which she keeps rooted in her own breast; for we likewise read,
"God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed
his own body."[566] We ought not even to call a woman the creatress
of her own offspring; for He rather is its creator who said to His
servant, "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee."[567] And
although the various mental emotions of a pregnant woman do produce
in the fruit of her womb similar qualities,--as Jacob with his
peeled wands caused piebald sheep to be produced,--yet the mother
as little creates her offspring, as she created herself. Whatever
bodily or seminal causes, then, may be used for the production of
things, either by the co-operation of angels, men, or the lower
animals, or by sexual generation; and whatever power the desires
and mental emotions of the mother have to produce in the tender and
plastic fœtus, corresponding lineaments and colours; yet the natures
themselves, which are thus variously affected, are the production of
none but the most high God. It is His occult power which pervades
all things, and is present in all without being contaminated, which
gives being to all that is, and modifies and limits its existence;
so that without Him it would not be thus or thus, nor would have any
being at all.[568] If, then, in regard to that outward form which
the workman's hand imposes on his work, we do not say that Rome and
Alexandria were built by masons and architects, but by the kings by
whose will, plan, and resources they were built, so that the one has
Romulus, the other Alexander, for its founder; with how much greater
reason ought we to say that God alone is the Author of all natures,
since He neither uses for His work any material which was not made
by Him, nor any workmen who were not also made by Him, and since, if
He were, so to speak, to withdraw from created things His creative
power, they would straightway relapse into the nothingness in which
they were before they were created? "Before," I mean, in respect of
eternity, not of time. For what other creator could there be of time,
than He who created those things whose movements make time?[569]
26. _Of that opinion of the Platonists, that the angels were
themselves indeed created by God, but that afterwards they
created man's body._
It is obvious, that in attributing the creation of the other animals
to those inferior gods who were made by the Supreme, he meant it to be
understood that the immortal part was taken from God Himself, and that
these minor creators added the mortal part; that is to say, he meant
them to be considered the creators of our bodies, but not of our souls.
But since Porphyry maintains that if the soul is to be purified, all
entanglement with a body must be escaped from; and at the same time
agrees with Plato and the Platonists in thinking that those who have
not spent a temperate and honourable life return to mortal bodies as
their punishment (to bodies of brutes in Plato's opinion, to human
bodies in Porphyry's); it follows that those whom they would have us
worship as our parents and authors, that they may plausibly call them
gods, are, after all, but the forgers of our fetters and chains,--not
our creators, but our jailers and turnkeys, who lock us up in the
most bitter and melancholy house of correction. Let the Platonists,
then, either cease menacing us with our bodies as the punishment of
our souls, or preaching that we are to worship as gods those whose
work upon us they exhort us by all means in our power to avoid and
escape from. But, indeed, both opinions are quite false. It is false
that souls return again to this life to be punished; and it is false
that there is any other creator of anything in heaven or earth, than
He who made the heaven and the earth. For if we live in a body only
to expiate our sins, how says Plato in another place, that the world
could not have been the most beautiful and good, had it not been filled
with all kinds of creatures, mortal and immortal?[570] But if our
creation even as mortals be a divine benefit, how is it a punishment
to be restored to a body, that is, to a divine benefit? And if God, as
Plato continually maintains, embraced in His eternal intelligence the
ideas both of the universe and of all the animals, how, then, should
He not with His own hand make them all? Could He be unwilling to be
the constructor of works, the idea and plan of which called for His
ineffable and ineffably to be praised intelligence?
27. _That the whole plenitude of the human race was embraced in the
first man, and that God there saw the portion of it which was
to be honoured and rewarded, and that which was to be condemned
and punished._
With good cause, therefore, does the true religion recognise and
proclaim that the same God who created the universal cosmos, created
also all the animals, souls as well as bodies. Among the terrestrial
animals man was made by Him in His own image, and, for the reason
I have given, was made one individual, though he was not left
solitary. For there is nothing so social by nature, so unsocial by
its corruption, as this race. And human nature has nothing more
appropriate, either for the prevention of discord, or for the healing
of it, where it exists, than the remembrance of that first parent
of us all, whom God was pleased to create alone, that all men might
be derived from one, and that they might thus be admonished to
preserve unity among their whole multitude. But from the fact that
the woman was made for him from his side, it was plainly meant that
we should learn how dear the bond between man and wife should be.
These works of God do certainly seem extraordinary, because they are
the first works. They who do not believe them, ought not to believe
any prodigies; for these would not be called prodigies did they not
happen out of the ordinary course of nature. But, is it possible that
anything should happen in vain, however hidden be its cause, in so
grand a government of divine providence? One of the sacred Psalmists
says, "Come, behold the works of the Lord, what prodigies He hath
wrought in the earth."[571] Why God made woman out of man's side, and
what this first prodigy prefigured, I shall, with God's help, tell
in another place. But at present, since this book must be concluded,
let us merely say that in this first man, who was created in the
beginning, there was laid the foundation, not indeed evidently, but
in God's foreknowledge, of these two cities or societies, so far
as regards the human race. For from that man all men were to be
derived--some of them to be associated with the good angels in their
reward, others with the wicked in punishment; all being ordered by
the secret yet just judgment of God. For since it is written, "All
the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth,"[572] neither can His
grace be unjust, nor His justice cruel.
FOOTNOTES:
[520] _Vitium_: perhaps "fault" most nearly embraces all the uses of
this word.
[521] Essentia.
[522] Ex. iii. 14.
[523] Quintilian calls it _dura_.
[524] With this may be compared the argument of Socrates in the
_Gorgias_, in which it is shown that to escape punishment is worse
than to suffer it, and that the greatest of evils is to do wrong and
not be chastised.
[525] Eccles. x. 13.
[526] Specie.
[527] Ps. xix. 12.
[528] C. 13.
[529] Rom. v. 5.
[530] Ps. lxxiii. 28.
[531] _De Deo Socratis._
[532] Augustine no doubt refers to the interesting account given by
Critias, near the beginning of the _Timæus_, of the conversation of
Solon with the Egyptian priests.
[533] Augustine here follows the chronology of Eusebius, who reckons
5611 years from the Creation to the taking of Rome by the Goths;
adopting the Septuagint version of the patriarchal ages.
[534] See above, viii. 5.
[535] It is not apparent to what Augustine refers. The Arcadians,
according to Macrobius (_Saturn._ i. 7), divided their year into
three months, and the Egyptians divided theirs into three seasons:
each of these seasons having four months, it is possible that
Augustine may have referred to this. See Wilkinson's excursus on the
Egyptian year, in Rawlinson's _Herod._ Book ii.
[536] The former opinion was held by Democritus and his disciple
Epicurus; the latter by Heraclitus, who supposed that "God amused
Himself" by thus renewing worlds.
[537] The Alexandrian Neo-Platonists endeavoured in this way to
escape from the obvious meaning of the _Timæus_.
[538] Antoninus says (ii. 14), "All things from eternity are of
like forms, and come round in a circle." Cf. also ix. 28, and the
references to more ancient philosophical writers in Gataker's notes
on these passages.
[539] Eccles. i. 9, 10. So Origen, _de Prin._ iii. 5, and ii. 3.
[540] Rom. vi. 9.
[541] 1 Thess. iv. 16.
[542] Ps. xii. 7.
[543] Cf. _de Trin._ v. 17.
[544] Wisdom ix. 13-15.
[545] Gen. i. 1.
[546] Gen. i. 14.
[547] Rom. xii. 3.
[548] Titus i. 2, 3. Augustine here follows the version of Jerome,
and not the Vulgate. Comp. _Contra Priscill._ 6, and _de Gen. c.
Man._ iv. 4.
[549] 2 Cor. x. 12. Here, and in _Enar. in_ Ps. xxxiv., and also in
_Cont. Faust._ xxii. 47, Augustine follows the Greek, and not the
Vulgate.
[550] _i.e._ indefinite, or an indefinite succession of things.
[551] Again in the _Timæus_.
[552] Wisdom xi. 20.
[553] Isa. xl. 26.
[554] Matt. x. 30.
[555] Ps. cxlvii. 5.
[556] De sæculis sæculorum.
[557] Ps. cxlviii. 4.
[558] Cicero has the same (_de Amicitia_, 16): "Quonam modo quisquam
amicus esse poterit, cui se putabit inimicum esse posse?" He also
quotes Scipio to the effect that no sentiment is more unfriendly to
friendship than this, that we should love as if some day we were to
hate.
[559] C. 30.
[560] Coquæus remarks that this is levelled against the Pelagians.
[561]
"Quando leoni
Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam
Exspiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?
Indica tigris agit rabida cum tigride pacem
Perpetuam; sævis inter se convenit ursis.
Ast homini," etc.
JUVENAL, _Sat._ xv. 160-5.
--See also the very striking lines which precede these.
[562] See this further discussed in _Gen. ad Lit._ vii. 35, and in
Delitzsch's _Bibl. Psychology_.
[563] Jer. xxiii. 24.
[564] Wisdom viii. 1.
[565] 1 Cor. iii. 7.
[566] 1 Cor. xv. 38.
[567] Jer. i. 5.
[568] Compare _de Trin._ iii. 13-16.
[569] See Book xi. 5.
[570] "The Deity, desirous of making the universe in all respects
resemble the most beautiful and entirely perfect of intelligible
objects, formed it into one visible animal, containing within itself
all the other animals with which it is naturally allied."--_Timæus_,
c. xi.
[571] Ps. xlvi. 8.
[572] Ps. xxv. 10.
BOOK THIRTEENTH.
ARGUMENT.
IN THIS BOOK IT IS TAUGHT THAT DEATH IS PENAL, AND HAD ITS
ORIGIN IN ADAM'S SIN.
1. _Of the fall of the first man, through which mortality has
been contracted._
Having disposed of the very difficult questions concerning the origin
of our world and the beginning of the human race, the natural order
requires that we now discuss the fall of the first man (we may say
of the first men), and of the origin and propagation of human death.
For God had not made man like the angels, in such a condition that,
even though they had sinned, they could none the more die. He had so
made them, that if they discharged the obligations of obedience, an
angelic immortality and a blessed eternity might ensue, without the
intervention of death; but if they disobeyed, death should be visited
on them with just sentence--which, too, has been spoken to in the
preceding book.
2. _Of that death which can affect an immortal soul, and of that
to which the body is subject._
But I see I must speak a little more carefully of the nature of
death. For although the human soul is truly affirmed to be immortal,
yet it also has a certain death of its own. For it is therefore
called immortal, because, in a sense, it does not cease to live and
to feel; while the body is called mortal, because it can be forsaken
of all life, and cannot by itself live at all. The death, then, of
the soul takes place when God forsakes it, as the death of the body
when the soul forsakes it. Therefore the death of both--that is, of
the whole man--occurs when the soul, forsaken by God, forsakes the
body. For, in this case, neither is God the life of the soul, nor
the soul the life of the body. And this death of the whole man is
followed by that which, on the authority of the divine oracles, we
call the second death. This the Saviour referred to when He said,
"Fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."[573]
And since this does not happen before the soul is so joined to its
body that they cannot be separated at all, it may be matter of wonder
how the body can be said to be killed by that death in which it is
not forsaken by the soul, but, being animated and rendered sensitive
by it, is tormented. For in that penal and everlasting punishment,
of which in its own place we are to speak more at large, the soul
is justly said to die, because it does not live in connection with
God; but how can we say that the body is dead, seeing that it lives
by the soul? For it could not otherwise feel the bodily torments
which are to follow the resurrection. Is it because life of every
kind is good, and pain an evil, that we decline to say that that body
lives, in which the soul is the cause, not of life, but of pain?
The soul, then, lives by God when it lives well, for it cannot live
well unless by God working in it what is good; and the body lives by
the soul when the soul lives in the body, whether itself be living
by God or no. For the wicked man's life in the body is a life not
of the soul, but of the body, which even dead souls--that is, souls
forsaken of God--can confer upon bodies, how little soever of their
own proper life, by which they are immortal, they retain. But in
the last damnation, though man does not cease to feel, yet because
this feeling of his is neither sweet with pleasure nor wholesome
with repose, but painfully penal, it is not without reason called
death rather than life. And it is called the second death because it
follows the first, which sunders the two cohering essences, whether
these be God and the soul, or the soul and the body. Of the first and
bodily death, then, we may say that to the good it is good, and evil
to the evil. But, doubtless, the second, as it happens to none of the
good, so it can be good for none.
3. _Whether death, which by the sin of our first parents has passed
upon all men, is the punishment of sin, even to the good._
But a question not to be shirked arises: Whether in very truth death,
which separates soul and body, is good to the good?[574] For if it
be, how has it come to pass that such a thing should be the punishment
of sin? For the first men would not have suffered death had they not
sinned. How, then, can that be good to the good, which could not have
happened except to the evil? Then, again, if it could only happen to
the evil, to the good it ought not to be good, but non-existent. For
why should there be any punishment where there is nothing to punish?
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. For nothing else could be born of them than that
which they themselves had been. Their nature was deteriorated in
proportion to the greatness of the condemnation of their sin, so that
what existed as punishment in those who first sinned, became a natural
consequence in their children. For man is not produced by man, as he
was from the dust. For dust was the material out of which man was made:
man is the parent by whom man is begotten. Wherefore earth and flesh
are not the same thing, though flesh be made of earth. But as man the
parent is, such is man the offspring. In the first man, therefore,
there existed the whole human nature, which was to be transmitted by
the woman to posterity, when that conjugal union received the divine
sentence of its own condemnation; and what man was made, not when
created, but when he sinned and was punished, this he propagated,
so far as the origin of sin and death are concerned. For neither by
sin nor its punishment was he himself reduced to that infantine and
helpless infirmity of body and mind which we see in children. For God
ordained that infants should begin the world as the young of beasts
begin it, since their parents had fallen to the level of the beasts
in the fashion of their life and of their death; as it is written,
"Man when he was in honour understood not; he became like the beasts
that have no understanding."[575] Nay more, infants, we see, are even
feebler in the use and movement of their limbs, and more infirm to
choose and refuse, than the most tender offspring of other animals;
as if the force that dwells in human nature were destined to surpass
all other living things so much the more eminently, as its energy has
been longer restrained, and the time of its exercise delayed, just as
an arrow flies the higher the further back it has been drawn. To this
infantine imbecility[576] the first man did not fall by his lawless
presumption and just sentence; but human nature was in his person
vitiated and altered to such an extent, that he suffered in his members
the warring of disobedient lust, and became subject to the necessity
of dying. And what he himself had become by sin and punishment, such
he generated those whom he begot; that is to say, subject to sin and
death. And if infants are delivered from this bondage of sin by the
Redeemer's grace, they can suffer only this death which separates soul
and body; but being redeemed from the obligation of sin, they do not
pass to that second endless and penal death.
4. _Why death, the punishment of sin, is not withheld from those
who by the grace of regeneration are absolved from sin._
If, moreover, any one is solicitous about this point, how, if death
be the very punishment of sin, they whose guilt is cancelled by grace
do yet suffer death, this difficulty has already been handled and
solved in our other work which we have written on the baptism of
infants.[577] There it was said that the parting of soul and body was
left, though its connection with sin was removed, for this reason,
that if the immortality of the body followed immediately upon the
sacrament of regeneration, faith itself would be thereby enervated.
For faith is then only faith when it waits in hope for what is not
yet seen in substance. And by the vigour and conflict of faith, at
least in times past, was the fear of death overcome. Specially was
this conspicuous in the holy martyrs, who could have had no victory,
no glory, to whom there could not even have been any conflict, if,
after the laver of regeneration, saints could not suffer bodily
death. Who would not, then, in company with the infants presented
for baptism, run to the grace of Christ, that so he might not be
dismissed from the body? And thus faith would not be tested with an
unseen reward; and so would not even be faith, seeking and receiving
an immediate recompense of its works. But now, by the greater and
more admirable grace of the Saviour, the punishment of sin is turned
to the service of righteousness. For then it was proclaimed to man,
"If thou sinnest, thou shalt die;" now it is said to the martyr,
"Die, that thou sin not." Then it was said, "If ye transgress the
commandments, ye shall die;" now it is said, "If ye decline death,
ye transgress the commandment." That which was formerly set as an
object of terror, that men might not sin, is now to be undergone if
we would not sin. Thus, by the unutterable mercy of God, even the
very punishment of wickedness has become the armour of virtue, and
the penalty of the sinner becomes the reward of the righteous. For
then death was incurred by sinning, now righteousness is fulfilled
by dying. In the case of the holy martyrs it is so; for to them the
persecutor proposes the alternative, apostasy or death. For the
righteous prefer by believing to suffer what the first transgressors
suffered by not believing. For unless they had sinned, they would
not have died; but the martyrs sin if they do not die. The one died
because they sinned, the others do not sin because they die. By the
guilt of the first, punishment was incurred; by the punishment of
the second, guilt is prevented. Not that death, which was before an
evil, has become something good, but only that God has granted to
faith this grace, that death, which is the admitted opposite to life,
should become the instrument by which life is reached.
5. _As the wicked make an ill use of the law, which is good, so
the good make a good use of death, which is an ill._
The apostle, wishing to show how hurtful a thing sin is, when grace
does not aid us, has not hesitated to say that the strength of sin
is that very law by which sin is prohibited. "The sting of death
is sin, and the strength of sin is the law."[578] Most certainly
true; for prohibition increases the desire of illicit action, if
righteousness is not so loved that the desire of sin is conquered
by that love. But unless divine grace aid us, we cannot love nor
delight in true righteousness. But lest the law should be thought to
be an evil, since it is called the strength of sin, the apostle, when
treating a similar question in another place, says, "The law indeed
is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. Was then that
which is holy made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might
appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by
the commandment might become exceeding sinful."[579] _Exceeding_,
he says, because the transgression is more heinous when through the
increasing lust of sin the law itself also is despised. Why have we
thought it worth while to mention this? For this reason, because, as
the law is not an evil when it increases the lust of those who sin,
so neither is death a good thing when it increases the glory of those
who suffer it, since either the former is abandoned wickedly, and
makes transgressors, or the latter is embraced for the truth's sake,
and makes martyrs. And thus the law is indeed good, because it is
prohibition of sin, and death is evil because it is the wages of sin;
but as wicked men make an evil use not only of evil, but also of good
things, so the righteous make a good use not only of good, but also
of evil things. Whence it comes to pass that the wicked make an ill
use of the law, though the law is good; and that the good die well,
though death is an evil.
6. _Of the evil of death in general, considered as the separation
of soul and body._
Wherefore, as regards bodily death, that is, the separation of the
soul from the body, it is good unto none while it is being endured
by those whom we say are in the article of death. For the very
violence with which body and soul are wrenched asunder, which in
the living had been conjoined and closely intertwined, brings with
it a harsh experience, jarring horridly on nature so long as it
continues, till there comes a total loss of sensation, which arose
from the very interpenetration of spirit and flesh. And all this
anguish is sometimes forestalled by one stroke of the body or sudden
flitting of the soul, the swiftness of which prevents it from being
felt. But whatever that may be in the dying which with violently
painful sensation robs of all sensation, yet, when it is piously
and faithfully borne, it increases the merit of patience, but does
not make the name of punishment inapplicable. Death, proceeding by
ordinary generation from the first man, is the punishment of all who
are born of him, yet, if it be endured for righteousness' sake, it
becomes the glory of those who are born again; and though death be
the award of sin, it sometimes secures that nothing be awarded to sin.
7. _Of the death which the unbaptized_[580] _suffer for the
confession of Christ._
For whatever unbaptized persons die confessing Christ, this
confession is of the same efficacy for the remission of sins as if
they were washed in the sacred font of baptism. For He who said,
"Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter
into the kingdom of God,"[581] made also an exception in their
favour, in that other sentence where He no less absolutely said,
"Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also
before my Father which is in heaven;"[582] and in another place,
"Whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find it."[583] And
this explains the verse, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the
death of His saints."[584] For what is more precious than a death
by which a man's sins are all forgiven, and his merits increased an
hundredfold? For those who have been baptized when they could no
longer escape death, and have departed this life with all their sins
blotted out, have not equal merit with those who did not defer death,
though it was in their power to do so, but preferred to end their
life by confessing Christ, rather than by denying Him to secure an
opportunity of baptism. And even had they denied Him under pressure
of the fear of death, this too would have been forgiven them in
that baptism, in which was remitted even the enormous wickedness of
those who had slain Christ. But how abundant in these men must have
been the grace of the Spirit, who breathes where He listeth, seeing
that they so dearly loved Christ as to be unable to deny Him even in
so sore an emergency, and with so sure a hope of pardon! Precious,
therefore, is the death of the saints, to whom the grace of Christ
has been applied with such gracious effects, that they do not
hesitate to meet death themselves, if so be they might meet Him. And
precious is it, also, because it has proved that what was originally
ordained for the punishment of the sinner, has been used for the
production of a richer harvest of righteousness. But not on this
account should we look upon death as a good thing, for it is diverted
to such useful purposes, not by any virtue of its own, but by the
divine interference. Death was originally proposed as an object of
dread, that sin might not be committed; now it must be undergone that
sin may not be committed, or, if committed, be remitted, and the
award of righteousness bestowed on him whose victory has earned it.
8. _That the saints, by suffering the first death for the truth's
sake, are freed from the second._
For if we look at the matter a little more carefully, we shall see
that even when a man dies faithfully and laudably for the truth's
sake, it is still death he is avoiding. For he submits to some part
of death, for the very purpose of avoiding the whole, and the second
and eternal death over and above. He submits to the separation of
soul and body, lest the soul be separated both from God and from the
body, and so the whole first death be completed, and the second death
receive him everlastingly. Wherefore death is indeed, as I said, good
to none while it is being actually suffered, and while it is subduing
the dying to its power; but it is meritoriously endured for the sake
of retaining or winning what _is_ good. And regarding what happens
after death, it is no absurdity to say that death is good to the
good, and evil to the evil. For the disembodied spirits of the just
are at rest; but those of the wicked suffer punishment till their
bodies rise again,--those of the just to life everlasting, and of the
others to death eternal, which is called the second death.
9. _Whether we should say that the moment of death, in which
sensation ceases, occurs in the experience of the dying or in
that of the dead._
The point of time in which the souls of the good and evil are
separated from the body, are we to say it is after death, or in death
rather? If it is after death, then it is not death which is good or
evil, since death is done with and past, but it is the life which
the soul has now entered on. Death was an evil when it was present,
that is to say, when it was being suffered by the dying; for to them
it brought with it a severe and grievous experience, which the good
make a good use of. But when death is past, how can that which no
longer is be either good or evil? Still further, if we examine the
matter more closely, we shall see that even that sore and grievous
pain which the dying experience is not death itself. For so long as
they have any sensation, they are certainly still alive; and, if
still alive, must rather be said to be in a state previous to death
than in death. For when death actually comes, it robs us of all
bodily sensation, which, while death is only approaching, is painful.
And thus it is difficult to explain how we speak of those who are not
yet dead, but are agonized in their last and mortal extremity, as
being in the article of death. Yet what else can we call them than
dying persons? for when death which was imminent shall have actually
come, we can no longer call them dying but dead. No one, therefore,
is dying unless living; since even he who is in the last extremity of
life, and, as we say, giving up the ghost, yet lives. The same person
is therefore at once dying and living, but drawing near to death,
departing from life; yet in life, because his spirit yet abides in
the body; not yet in death, because not yet has his spirit forsaken
the body. But if, when it has forsaken it, the man is not even then
in death, but after death, who shall say when he is in death? On the
one hand, no one can be called dying, if a man cannot be dying and
living at the same time; and as long as the soul is in the body, we
cannot deny that he is living. On the other hand, if the man who is
approaching death be rather called dying, I know not who is living.
10. _Of the life of mortals, which is rather to be called death
than life._
For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin
to move ceaselessly towards death.[585] For in the whole course of
this life (if life we must call it) its mutability tends towards
death. Certainly there is no one who is not nearer it this year than
last year, and to-morrow than to-day, and to-day than yesterday,
and a short while hence than now, and now than a short while ago.
For whatever time we live is deducted from our whole term of life,
and that which remains is daily becoming less and less; so that our
whole life is nothing but a race towards death, in which no one is
allowed to stand still for a little space, or to go somewhat more
slowly, but all are driven forwards with an impartial movement, and
with equal rapidity. For he whose life is short spends a day no more
swiftly than he whose life is longer. But while the equal moments are
impartially snatched from both, the one has a nearer and the other
a more remote goal to reach with this their equal speed. It is one
thing to make a longer journey, and another to walk more slowly.
He, therefore, who spends longer time on his way to death does not
proceed at a more leisurely pace, but goes over more ground. Further,
if every man begins to die, that is, is in death, as soon as death
has begun to show itself in him (by taking away life, to wit; for
when life is all taken away, the man will be then not in death, but
after death), then he begins to die so soon as he begins to live.
For what else is going on in all his days, hours, and moments, until
this slow-working death is fully consummated? And then comes the time
_after death_, instead of that in which life was being withdrawn,
and which we called being _in death_. Man, then, is never in life
from the moment he dwells in this dying rather than living body,--if,
at least, he cannot be in life and death at once. Or rather, shall
we say, he is in both?--in life, namely, which he lives till all is
consumed; but in death also, which he dies as his life is consumed?
For if he is not in life, what is it which is consumed till all be
gone? And if he is not in death, what is this consumption itself?
For when the whole of life has been consumed, the expression "after
death" would be meaningless, had that consumption not been death. And
if, when it has all been consumed, a man is not in death but after
death, when is he in death, unless when life is being consumed away?
11. _Whether one can both be living and dead at the same time._
But if it is absurd to say that a man is in death before he reaches
death (for to what is his course running as he passes through life,
if already he is in death?), and if it outrage common usage to speak
of a man being at once alive and dead, as much as it does so, to
speak of him as at once asleep and awake, it remains to be asked
when a man is dying? For, before death comes, he is not dying but
living; and when death has come, he is not dying but dead. The one
is before, the other after death. When, then, is he in death so that
we can say he is dying? For as there are three times, before death,
in death, after death, so there are three states corresponding,
living, dying, dead. And it is very hard to define when a man is in
death or dying, when he is neither living, which is before death,
nor dead, which is after death, but dying, which is in death. For so
long as the soul is in the body, especially if consciousness remain,
the man certainly lives; for body and soul constitute the man. And
thus, before death, he cannot be said to be in death; but when, on
the other hand, the soul has departed, and all bodily sensation is
extinct, death is past, and the man is dead. Between these two states
the dying condition finds no place; for if a man yet lives, death has
not arrived; if he has ceased to live, death is past. Never, then,
is he dying, that is, comprehended in the state of death. So also
in the passing of time,--you try to lay your finger on the present,
and cannot find it, because the present occupies no space, but is
only the transition of time from the future to the past. Must we
then conclude that there is thus no death of the body at all? For if
there is, where is it, since it is in no one, and no one can be in
it? Since, indeed, if there is yet life, death is not yet; for this
state is before death, not in death: and if life has already ceased,
death is not present; for this state is after death, not in death. On
the other hand, if there is no death before or after, what do we mean
when we say "after death," or "before death?" This is a foolish way
of speaking if there is no death. And would that we had lived so well
in Paradise that in very truth there were now no death! But not only
does it now exist, but so grievous a thing is it, that no skill is
sufficient either to explain or to escape it.
Let us, then, speak in the customary way,--no man ought to speak
otherwise,--and let us call the time before death come, "before death;"
as it is written, "Praise no man before his death."[586] And when it
has happened, let us say that "after death" this or that took place.
And of the present time let us speak as best we can, as when we say,
"He, when dying, made his will, and left this or that to such and such
persons,"--though, of course, he could not do so unless he were living,
and did this rather before death than in death. And let us use the same
phraseology as Scripture uses; for it makes no scruple of saying that
the dead are not after but in death. So that verse, "For in death there
is no remembrance of thee."[587] For until the resurrection men are
justly said to be in death; as every one is said to be in sleep till
he awakes. However, though we can say of persons in sleep that they
are sleeping, we cannot speak in this way of the dead, and say they
are dying. For, so far as regards the death of the body, of which we
are now speaking, one cannot say that those who are already separated
from their bodies continue dying. But this, you see, is just what I
was saying,--that no words can explain how either the dying are said
to live, or how the dead are said, even after death, to be in death.
For how can they be after death if they be in death, especially when we
do not even call them dying, as we call those in sleep, sleeping; and
those in languor, languishing; and those in grief, grieving; and those
in life, living? And yet the dead, until they rise again, are said to
be in death, but cannot be called dying.
And therefore I think it has not unsuitably nor inappropriately come
to pass, though not by the intention of man, yet perhaps with divine
purpose, that this Latin word _moritur_ cannot be declined by the
grammarians according to the rule followed by similar words. For
_oritur_ gives the form _ortus est_ for the perfect; and all similar
verbs form this tense from their perfect participles. But if we ask the
perfect of _moritur_, we get the regular answer, _mortuus est_ with a
double _u_. For thus _mortuus_ is pronounced, like _fatuus_, _arduus_,
_conspicuus_, and similar words, which are not perfect participles but
adjectives, and are declined without regard to tense. But _mortuus_,
though in form an adjective, is used as perfect participle, as if that
were to be declined which cannot be declined; and thus it has suitably
come to pass that, as the thing itself cannot in point of fact be
declined, so neither can the word significant of the act be declined.
Yet, by the aid of our Redeemer's grace, we may manage at least to
decline the second. For that is more grievous still, and, indeed, of
all evils the worst, since it consists not in the separation of soul
and body, but in the uniting of both in death eternal. And there, in
striking contrast to our present conditions, men will not be before or
after death, but always in death; and thus never living, never dead,
but endlessly dying. And never can a man be more disastrously in death
than when death itself shall be deathless.
12. _What death God intended, when He threatened our first parents
with death if they should disobey His commandment._
When, therefore, it is asked what death it was with which God
threatened our first parents if they should transgress the commandment
they had received from Him, and should fail to preserve their
obedience,--whether it was the death of soul, or of body, or of the
whole man, or that which is called second death,--we must answer, It is
all. For the first consists of two; the second is the complete death,
which consists of all. For, as the whole earth consists of many lands,
and the Church universal of many churches, so death universal consists
of all deaths. The first consists of two, one of the body, and another
of the soul. So that the first death is a death of the whole man, since
the soul without God and without the body suffers punishment for a
time; but the second is when the soul, without God but with the body,
suffers punishment everlasting. When, therefore, God said to that first
man whom he had placed in Paradise, referring to the forbidden fruit,
"In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,"[588] that
threatening included not only the first part of the first death, by
which the soul is deprived of God; nor only the subsequent part of the
first death, by which the body is deprived of the soul; nor only the
whole first death itself, by which the soul is punished in separation
from God and from the body;--but it includes whatever of death there
is, even to that final death which is called second, and to which none
is subsequent.
13. _What was the first punishment of the transgression of our
first parents?_
For, as soon as our first parents had transgressed the commandment,
divine grace forsook them, and they were confounded at their own
wickedness; and therefore they took fig-leaves (which were possibly
the first that came to hand in their troubled state of mind), and
covered their shame; for though their members remained the same,
they had shame now where they had none before. They experienced a
new motion of their flesh, which had become disobedient to them, in
strict retribution of their own disobedience to God. For the soul,
revelling in its own liberty, and scorning to serve God, was itself
deprived of the command it had formerly maintained over the body. And
because it had wilfully deserted its superior Lord, it no longer held
its own inferior servant; neither could it hold the flesh subject, as
it would always have been able to do had it remained itself subject
to God. Then began the flesh to lust against the Spirit,[589] in
which strife we are born, deriving from the first transgression
a seed of death, and bearing in our members, and in our vitiated
nature, the contest or even victory of the flesh.
14. _In what state man was made by God, and into what estate he
fell by the choice of his own will._
For God, the author of natures, not of vices, created man upright;
but man, being of his own will corrupted, and justly condemned, begot
corrupted and condemned children. For we all were in that one man,
since we all were that one man who fell into sin by the woman who was
made from him before the sin. For not yet was the particular form
created and distributed to us, in which we as individuals were to
live, but already the seminal nature was there from which we were
to be propagated; and this being vitiated by sin, and bound by the
chain of death, and justly condemned, man could not be born of man
in any other state. And thus, from the bad use of free will, there
originated the whole train of evil, which, with its concatenation of
miseries, convoys the human race from its depraved origin, as from a
corrupt root, on to the destruction of the second death, which has no
end, those only being excepted who are freed by the grace of God.
15. _That Adam in his sin forsook God ere God forsook him, and
that his falling away from God was the first death of the soul._
It may perhaps be supposed that because God said, "Ye shall die the
death,"[590] and not "deaths," we should understand only that death
which occurs when the soul is deserted by God, who is its life; for
it was not deserted by God, and so deserted Him, but deserted Him,
and so was deserted by Him. For its own will was the originator of
its evil, as God was the originator of its motions towards good,
both in making it when it was not, and in re-making it when it had
fallen and perished. But though we suppose that God meant only this.
death, and that the words, "In the day ye eat of it ye shall die the
death," should be understood as meaning, "In the day ye desert me in
disobedience, I will desert you in justice," yet assuredly in this
death the other deaths also were threatened, which were its inevitable
consequence. For in the first stirring of the disobedient motion which
was felt in the flesh of the disobedient soul, and which caused our
first parents to cover their shame, one death indeed is experienced,
that, namely, which occurs when God forsakes the soul. (This was
intimated by the words He uttered, when the man, stupefied by fear,
had hid himself, "Adam, where art thou?"[591]--words which He used not
in ignorance of inquiry, but warning him to consider where he was,
since God was not with him.) But when the soul itself forsook the body,
corrupted and decayed with age, the other death was experienced of
which God had spoken in pronouncing man's sentence, "Earth thou art,
and unto earth shalt thou return."[592] And of these two deaths that
first death of the whole man is composed. And this first death is
finally followed by the second, unless man be freed by grace. For the
body would not return to the earth from which it was made, save only
by the death proper to itself, which occurs when it is forsaken of the
soul, its life. 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; for God, taking
vengeance on sin, said to the man, in whom we all then were, "Dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
16. _Concerning the philosophers who think that the separation of
soul and body is not penal, though Plato represents the supreme
Deity as promising to the inferior gods that they shall never
be dismissed from their bodies._
But the philosophers against whom we are defending the city of God,
that is, His Church, seem to themselves to have good cause to deride
us, because we say that the separation of the soul from the body
is to be held as part of man's punishment. For they suppose that
the blessedness of the soul then only is complete, when it is quite
denuded of the body, and returns to God a pure and simple, and, as it
were, naked soul. On this point, if I should find nothing in their
own literature to refute this opinion, I should be forced laboriously
to demonstrate that it is not the body, but the corruptibility of
the body, which is a burden to the soul. Hence that sentence of
Scripture we quoted in a foregoing book, "For the corruptible body
presseth down the soul."[593] The word corruptible is added to show
that the soul is burdened, not by any body whatsoever, but by the
body such as it has become in consequence of sin. And even though
the word had not been added, we could understand nothing else.
But when Plato most expressly declares that the gods who are made
by the Supreme have immortal bodies, and when he introduces their
Maker himself promising them as a great boon that they should abide
in their bodies eternally, and never by any death be loosed from
them, why do these adversaries of ours, for the sake of troubling
the Christian faith, feign to be ignorant of what they quite well
know, and even prefer to contradict themselves rather than lose
an opportunity of contradicting us? Here are Plato's words, as
Cicero has translated them,[594] in which he introduces the Supreme
addressing the gods He had made, and saying, "Ye who are sprung from
a divine stock, consider of what works I am the parent and author.
These (your bodies) are indestructible so long as I will it; although
all that is composed can be destroyed. But it is wicked to dissolve
what reason has compacted. But, seeing that ye have been born, ye
cannot indeed be immortal and indestructible; yet ye shall by no
means be destroyed, nor shall any fates consign you to death, and
prove superior to my will, which is a stronger assurance of your
perpetuity than those bodies to which ye were joined when ye were
born." Plato, you see, says that the gods are both mortal by the
connection of the body and soul, and yet are rendered immortal by the
will and decree of their Maker. If, therefore, it is a punishment to
the soul to be connected with any body whatever, why does God address
them as if they were afraid of death, that is, of the separation
of soul and body? Why does He seek to reassure them by promising
them immortality, not in virtue of their nature, which is composite
and not simple, but by virtue of His invincible will, whereby He
can effect that neither things born die, nor things compounded be
dissolved, but preserved eternally?
Whether this opinion of Plato's about the stars is true or not, is
another question. For we cannot at once grant to him that these
luminous bodies or globes, which by day and night shine on the earth
with the light of their bodily substance, have also intellectual and
blessed souls which animate each its own body, as he confidently
affirms of the universe itself, as if it were one huge animal, in
which all other animals were contained.[595] But this, as I said,
is another question, which we have not undertaken to discuss at
present. This much only I deemed right to bring forward, in opposition
to those who so pride themselves on being, or on being called
Platonists, that they blush to be Christians, and who cannot brook
to be called by a name which the common people also bear, lest they
vulgarize the philosophers' coterie, which is proud in proportion to
its exclusiveness. These men, seeking a weak point in the Christian
doctrine, select for attack the eternity of the body, as if it were
a contradiction to contend for the blessedness of the soul, and to
wish it to be always resident in the body, bound, as it were, in a
lamentable chain; and this although Plato, their own founder and
master, affirms that it was granted by the Supreme as a boon to the
gods He had made, that they should not die, that is, should not be
separated from the bodies with which He had connected them.
17. _Against those who affirm that earthly bodies cannot be made
incorruptible and eternal._
These same philosophers further contend that terrestrial bodies
cannot be eternal, though they make no doubt that the whole earth,
which is itself the central member of their god,--not, indeed, of the
greatest, but yet of a great god, that is, of this whole world,--is
eternal. Since, then, the Supreme made for them another god, that
is, this world, superior to the other gods beneath Him; and since
they suppose that this god is an animal, having, as they affirm,
a rational or intellectual soul enclosed in the huge mass of its
body, and having, as the fitly situated and adjusted members of its
body, the four elements, whose union they wish to be indissoluble
and eternal, lest perchance this great god of theirs might some day
perish; what reason is there that the earth, which is the central
member in the body of a greater creature, should be eternal, and the
bodies of other terrestrial creatures should not possibly be eternal
if God should so will it? But earth, say they, must return to earth,
out of which the terrestrial bodies of the animals have been taken.
For this, they say, is the reason of the necessity of their death and
dissolution, and this the manner of their restoration to the solid
and eternal earth whence they came. But if any one says the same
thing of fire, holding that the bodies which are derived from it to
make celestial beings must be restored to the universal fire, does
not the immortality which Plato represents these gods as receiving
from the Supreme evanesce in the heat of this dispute? Or does this
not happen with those celestials because God, whose will, as Plato
says, overpowers all powers, has willed it should not be so? What,
then, hinders God from ordaining the same of terrestrial bodies? And
since, indeed, Plato acknowledges that God can prevent things that
are born from dying, and things that are joined from being sundered,
and things that are composed from being dissolved, and can ordain
that the souls once allotted to their bodies should never abandon
them, but enjoy along with them immortality and everlasting bliss,
why may He not also effect that terrestrial bodies die not? Is
God powerless to do everything that is special to the Christian's
creed, but powerful to effect everything the Platonists desire? The
philosophers, forsooth, have been admitted to a knowledge of the
divine purposes and power which has been denied to the prophets! The
truth is, that the Spirit of God taught His prophets so much of His
will as He thought fit to reveal, but the philosophers, in their
efforts to discover it, were deceived by human conjecture.
But they should not have been so led astray, I will not say by their
ignorance, but by their obstinacy, as to contradict themselves so
frequently; for they maintain, with all their vaunted might, that
in order to the happiness of the soul, it must abandon not only its
earthly body, but every kind of body. And yet they hold that the
gods, whose souls are most blessed, are bound to everlasting bodies,
the celestials to fiery bodies, and the soul of Jove himself (or this
world, as they would have us believe) to all the physical elements
which compose this entire mass reaching from earth to heaven. For
this soul Plato believes to be extended and diffused by musical
numbers,[596] from the middle of the inside of the earth, which
geometricians call the centre, outwards through all its parts to the
utmost heights and extremities of the heavens; so that this world is
a very great and blessed immortal animal, whose soul has both the
perfect blessedness of wisdom, and never leaves its own body, and
whose body has life everlasting from the soul, and by no means clogs
or hinders it, though itself be not a simple body, but compacted
of so many and so huge materials. Since, therefore, they allow so
much to their own conjectures, why do they refuse to believe that by
the divine will and power immortality can be conferred on earthly
bodies, in which the souls would be neither oppressed with the burden
of them, nor separated from them by any death, but live eternally
and blessedly? Do they not assert that their own gods so live in
bodies of fire, and that Jove himself, their king, so lives in the
physical elements? If, in order to its blessedness, the soul must
quit every kind of body, let their gods flit from the starry spheres,
and Jupiter from earth to sky; or, if they cannot do so, let them be
pronounced miserable. But neither alternative will these men adopt.
For, on the one hand, they dare not ascribe to their own gods a
departure from the body, lest they should seem to worship mortals; on
the other hand, they dare not deny their happiness, lest they should
acknowledge wretches as gods. Therefore, to obtain blessedness,
we need not quit every kind of body, but only the corruptible,
cumbersome, painful, dying,--not such bodies as the goodness of God
contrived for the first man, but such only as man's sin entailed.
18. _Of earthly bodies, which the philosophers affirm cannot be in
heavenly places, because whatever is of earth is by its natural
weight attracted to earth._
But it is necessary, they say, that the natural weight of earthly
bodies either keep them on earth or draw them to it; and therefore
they cannot be in heaven. Our first parents were indeed on earth, in
a well-wooded and fruitful spot, which has been named Paradise. But
let our adversaries a little more carefully consider this subject
of earthly weight, because it has important bearings, both on the
ascension of the body of Christ, and also on the resurrection body
of the saints. If human skill can by some contrivance fabricate
vessels that float, out of metals which sink as soon as they are
placed on the water, how much more credible is it that God, by
some occult mode of operation, should even more certainly effect
that these earthy masses be emancipated from the downward pressure
of their weight? This cannot be impossible to that God by whose
almighty will, according to Plato, neither things born perish, nor
things composed dissolve, especially since it is much more wonderful
that spiritual and bodily essences be conjoined than that bodies
be adjusted to other material substances. Can we not also easily
believe that souls, being made perfectly blessed, should be endowed
with the power of moving their earthy but incorruptible bodies as
they please, with almost spontaneous movement, and of placing them
where they please with the readiest action? If the angels transport
whatever terrestrial creatures they please from any place they
please, and convey them whither they please, is it to be believed
that they cannot do so without toil and the feeling of burden?
Why, then, may we not believe that the spirits of the saints, made
perfect and blessed by divine grace, can carry their own bodies
where they please, and set them where they will? For, though we have
been accustomed to notice, in bearing weights, that the larger the
quantity the greater the weight of earthy bodies is, and that the
greater the weight the more burdensome it is, yet the soul carries
the members of its own flesh with less difficulty when they are
massive with health, than in sickness when they are wasted. And
though the hale and strong man feels heavier to other men carrying
him than the lank and sickly, yet the man himself moves and carries
his own body with less feeling of burden when he has the greater
bulk of vigorous health, than when his frame is reduced to a minimum
by hunger or disease. Of such consequence, in estimating the weight
of earthly bodies, even while yet corruptible and mortal, is the
consideration not of dead weight, but of the healthy equilibrium of
the parts. And what words can tell the difference between what we now
call health and future immortality? Let not the philosophers, then,
think to upset our faith with arguments from the weight of bodies;
for I don't care to inquire why they cannot believe an earthly body
can be in heaven, while the whole earth is suspended on nothing.
For perhaps the world keeps its central place by the same law that
attracts to its centre all heavy bodies. But this I say, if the
lesser gods, to whom Plato committed the creation of man and the
other terrestrial creatures, were able, as he affirms, to withdraw
from the fire its quality of burning, while they left it that of
lighting, so that it should shine through the eyes; and if to the
supreme God Plato also concedes the power of preserving from death
things that have been born, and of preserving from dissolution things
that are composed of parts so different as body and spirit;--are we
to hesitate to concede to this same God the power to operate on the
flesh of him whom He has endowed with immortality, so as to withdraw
its corruption but leave its nature, remove its burdensome weight but
retain its seemly form and members? But concerning our belief in the
resurrection of the dead, and concerning their immortal bodies, we
shall speak more at large, God willing, in the end of this work.
19. _Against the opinion of those who do not believe that the
primitive men would have been immortal if they had not sinned._
At present let us go on, as we have begun, to give some explanation
regarding the bodies of our first parents. I say then, that, except
as the just consequence of sin, they would not have been subjected
even to this death, which is good to the good,--this death, which
is not exclusively known and believed in by a few, but is known to
all, by which soul and body are separated, and by which the body of
an animal which was but now visibly living is now visibly dead. For
though there can be no manner of doubt that the souls of the just
and holy dead live in peaceful rest, yet so much better would it
be for them to be alive in healthy, well-conditioned bodies, that
even those who hold the tenet that it is most blessed to be quit of
every kind of body, condemn this opinion in spite of themselves.
For no one will dare to set wise men, whether yet to die or already
dead,--in other words, whether already quit of the body, or shortly
to be so,--above the immortal gods, to whom the Supreme, in Plato,
promises as a munificent gift life indissoluble, or in eternal union
with their bodies. But this same Plato thinks that nothing better can
happen to men than that they pass through life piously and justly,
and, being separated from their bodies, be received into the bosom
of the gods, who never abandon theirs; "that, oblivious of the past,
they may revisit the upper air, and conceive the longing to return
again to the body."[597] Virgil is applauded for borrowing this from
the Platonic system. Assuredly Plato thinks that the souls of mortals
cannot always be in their bodies, but must necessarily be dismissed
by death; and, on the other hand, he thinks that without bodies they
cannot endure for ever, but with ceaseless alternation pass from
life to death, and from death to life. This difference, however,
he sets between wise men and the rest, that they are carried after
death to the stars, that each man may repose for a while in a star
suitable for him, and may thence return to the labours and miseries
of mortals when he has become oblivious of his former misery, and
possessed with the desire of being embodied. Those, again, who have
lived foolishly transmigrate into bodies fit for them, whether human
or bestial. Thus he has appointed even the good and wise souls to a
very hard lot indeed, since they do not receive such bodies as they
might always and even immortally inhabit, but such only as they can
neither permanently retain nor enjoy eternal purity without. Of this
notion of Plato's, we have in a former book already said[598] that
Porphyry was ashamed in the light of these Christian times, so that
he not only emancipated human souls from a destiny in the bodies of
beasts, but also contended for the liberation of the souls of the
wise from all bodily ties, so that, escaping from all flesh, they
might, as bare and blessed souls, dwell with the Father time without
end. And that he might not seem to be outbid by Christ's promise of
life everlasting to His saints, he also established purified souls in
endless felicity, without return to their former woes; but, that he
might contradict Christ, he denies the resurrection of incorruptible
bodies, and maintains that these souls will live eternally, not
only without earthly bodies, but without any bodies at all. And
yet, whatever he meant by this teaching, he at least did not teach
that these souls should offer no religious observance to the gods
who dwelt in bodies. And why did he not, unless because he did not
believe that the souls, even though separate from the body, were
superior to those gods? Wherefore, if these philosophers will not
dare (as I think they will not) to set human souls above the gods who
are most blessed, and yet are tied eternally to their bodies, why
do they find that absurd which the Christian faith preaches,[599]
namely, that our first parents were so created that, if they had not
sinned, they would not have been dismissed from their bodies by any
death, but would have been endowed with immortality as the reward of
their obedience, and would have lived eternally with their bodies;
and further, that the saints will in the resurrection inhabit those
very bodies in which they have here toiled, but in such sort that
neither shall any corruption or unwieldiness be suffered to attach to
their flesh, nor any grief or trouble to cloud their felicity?
20. _That the flesh now resting in peace shall be raised to a
perfection not enjoyed by the flesh of our first parents._
Thus the souls of departed saints are not affected by the death which
dismisses them from their bodies, because their flesh rests in hope,
no matter what indignities it receives after sensation is gone. For
they do not desire that their bodies be forgotten, as Plato thinks
fit, but rather, because they remember what has been promised by Him
who deceives no man, and who gave them security for the safe keeping
even of the hairs of their head, they with a longing patience wait in
hope of the resurrection of their bodies, in which they have suffered
many hardships, and are now to suffer never again. For if they did not
"hate their own flesh," when it, with its native infirmity, opposed
their will, and had to be constrained by the spiritual law, how
much more shall they love it, when it shall even itself have become
spiritual! For as, when the spirit serves the flesh, it is fitly called
carnal, so, when the flesh serves the spirit, it will justly be called
spiritual. Not that it is converted into spirit, as some fancy from the
words, "It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption,"[600]
but because it is subject to the spirit with a perfect and marvellous
readiness of obedience, and responds in all things to the will that
has entered on immortality,--all reluctance, all corruption, and all
slowness being removed. For the body will not only be better than it
was here in its best estate of health, but it will surpass the bodies
of our first parents ere they sinned. For, though they were not to die
unless they should sin, yet they used food as men do now, their bodies
not being as yet spiritual, but animal only. And though they decayed
not with years, nor drew nearer to death,--a condition secured to them
in God's marvellous grace by the tree of life, which grew along with
the forbidden tree in the midst of Paradise,--yet they took other
nourishment, though not of that one tree, which was interdicted not
because it was itself bad, but for the sake of commending a pure and
simple obedience, which is the great virtue of the rational creature
set under the Creator as his Lord. For, though no evil thing was
touched, yet if a thing forbidden was touched, the very disobedience
was sin. They were, then, nourished by other fruit, which they took
that their animal bodies might not suffer the discomfort of hunger or
thirst; but they tasted the tree of life, that death might not steal
upon them from any quarter, and that they might not, spent with age,
decay. Other fruits were, so to speak, their nourishment, but this
their sacrament. So that the tree of life would seem to have been in
the terrestrial Paradise what the wisdom of God is in the spiritual, of
which it is written, "She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon
her."[601]
21. _Of Paradise, that it can be understood in a spiritual sense
without sacrificing the historic truth of the narrative
regarding the real place._
On this account some allegorize all that concerns Paradise itself,
where the first men, the parents of the human race, are, according to
the truth of holy Scripture, recorded to have been; and they understand
all its trees and fruit-bearing plants as virtues and habits of life,
as if they had no existence in the external world, but were only so
spoken of or related for the sake of spiritual meanings. As if there
could not be a real terrestrial Paradise! As if there never existed
these two women, Sarah and Hagar, nor the two sons who were born to
Abraham, the one of the bond woman, the other of the free, because the
apostle says that in them the two covenants were prefigured; or as if
water never flowed from the rock when Moses struck it, because therein
Christ can be seen in a figure, as the same apostle says, "Now that
rock was Christ!"[602] No one, then, denies that Paradise may signify
the life of the blessed; its four rivers, the four virtues, prudence,
fortitude, temperance, and justice; its trees, all useful knowledge;
its fruits, the customs of the godly; its tree of life, wisdom herself,
the mother of all good; and the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, the experience of a broken commandment. The punishment which God
appointed was in itself a just, and therefore a good thing; but man's
experience of it is not good.
These things can also and more profitably be understood of the
Church, so that they become prophetic foreshadowings of things
to come. Thus Paradise is the Church, as it is called in the
Canticles;[603] the four rivers of Paradise are the four gospels; the
fruit-trees the saints, and the fruit their works; the tree of life
is the holy of holies, Christ; the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, the will's free choice. For if man despise the will of God, he
can only destroy himself; and so he learns the difference between
consecrating himself to the common good and revelling in his own. For
he who loves himself is abandoned to himself, in order that, being
overwhelmed with fears and sorrows, he may cry, if there be yet soul
in him to feel his ills, in the words of the psalm, "My soul is cast
down within me,"[604] and when chastened, may say, "Because of his
strength I will wait upon Thee."[605] These and similar allegorical
interpretations may be suitably put upon Paradise without giving
offence to any one, while yet we believe the strict truth of the
history, confirmed by its circumstantial narrative of facts.[606]
22. _That the bodies of the saints shall after the resurrection be
spiritual, and yet flesh shall not be changed into spirit._
The bodies of the righteous, then, such as they shall be in the
resurrection, shall need neither any fruit to preserve them from
dying of disease or the wasting decay of old age, nor any other
physical nourishment to allay the cravings of hunger or of thirst;
for they shall be invested with so sure and every way inviolable an
immortality, that they shall not eat save when they choose, nor be
under the necessity of eating, while they enjoy the power of doing
so. For so also was it with the angels who presented themselves to
the eye and touch of men, not because they could do no otherwise,
but because they were able and desirous to suit themselves to men
by a kind of manhood ministry. For neither are we to suppose, when
men receive them as guests, that the angels eat only in appearance,
though to any who did not know them to be angels they might seem
to eat from the same necessity as ourselves. So these words spoken
in the Book of Tobit, "You saw me eat, but you saw it but in
vision;"[607] that is, you thought I took food as you do for the
sake of refreshing my body. But if in the case of the angels another
opinion seems more capable of defence, certainly our faith leaves
no room to doubt regarding our Lord Himself, that even after His
resurrection, and when now in spiritual but yet real flesh, He ate
and drank with His disciples; for not the power, but the need, of
eating and drinking is taken from these bodies. And so they will be
spiritual, not because they shall cease to be bodies, but because
they shall subsist by the quickening spirit.
23. _What we are to understand by the animal and spiritual body; or
of those who die in Adam, and of those who are made alive in
Christ._
For as those bodies of ours, that have a living soul, though not as
yet a quickening spirit, are called soul-informed bodies, and yet are
not souls but bodies, so also those bodies are called spiritual,--yet
God forbid we should therefore suppose them to be spirits and not
bodies,--which, being quickened by the Spirit, have the substance,
but not the unwieldiness and corruption of flesh. Man will then be
not earthly but heavenly,--not because the body will not be that very
body which was made of earth, but because by its heavenly endowment it
will be a fit inhabitant of heaven, and this not by losing its nature,
but by changing its quality. The first man, of the earth earthy, was
made a living soul, not a quickening spirit,--which rank was reserved
for him as the reward of obedience. And therefore his body, which
required meat and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst, and which had
no absolute and indestructible immortality, but by means of the tree
of life warded off the necessity of dying, and was thus maintained in
the flower of youth,--this body, I say, was doubtless not spiritual,
but animal; and yet it would not have died but that it provoked God's
threatened vengeance by offending. And though sustenance was not denied
him even outside Paradise, yet, being forbidden the tree of life, he
was delivered over to the wasting of time, at least in respect of that
life which, had he not sinned, he might have retained perpetually in
Paradise, though only in an animal body, till such time as it became
spiritual in acknowledgment of his obedience.
Wherefore, although we understand that this manifest death, which
consists in the separation of soul and body, was also signified by
God when He said, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely
die,"[608] it ought not on that account to seem absurd that they were
not dismissed from the body on that very day on which they took the
forbidden and death-bringing fruit. For certainly on that very day
their nature was altered for the worse and vitiated, and by their
most just banishment from the tree of life they were involved in the
necessity even of bodily death, in which necessity we are born. And
therefore the apostle does not say, "The body indeed is doomed to die
on account of sin," but he says, "The body indeed is dead because of
sin." Then he adds, "But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus
from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead
shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in
you."[609] Then accordingly shall the body become a quickening spirit
which is now a living soul; and yet the apostle calls it "dead,"
because already it lies under the necessity of dying. But in Paradise
it was so made a living soul, though not a quickening spirit, that it
could not properly be called dead, for, save through the commission
of sin, it could not come under the power of death. Now, since God by
the words, "Adam, where art thou?" pointed to the death of the soul,
which results when He abandons it, and since in the words, "Earth
thou art, and unto earth shalt thou return,"[610] He signified the
death of the body, which results when the soul departs from it, we
are led, therefore, to believe that He said nothing of the second
death, wishing it to be kept hidden, and reserving it for the New
Testament dispensation, in which it is most plainly revealed. And
this He did in order that, first of all, it might be evident that
this first death, which is common to all, was the result of that sin
which in one man became common to all.[611] But the second death is
not common to all, those being excepted who were "called according to
His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born
among many brethren."[612] Those the grace of God has, by a Mediator,
delivered from the second death.
Thus the apostle states that the first man was made in an animal body.
For, wishing to distinguish the animal body which now is from the
spiritual, which is to be in the resurrection, he says, "It is sown in
corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour, it
is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it
is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." Then, to prove
this, he goes on, "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual
body." And to show what the animated body is, he says, "Thus it was
written, The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam
was made a quickening spirit."[613] He wished thus to show what the
animated body is, though Scripture did not say of the first man Adam,
when his soul was created by the breath of God, "Man was made in an
animated body," but "Man was made a living soul."[614] By these words,
therefore, "The first man was made a living soul," the apostle wishes
man's animated body to be understood. But how he wishes the spiritual
body to be understood he shows when he adds, "But the last Adam was
made a quickening spirit," plainly referring to Christ, who has so
risen from the dead that He cannot die any more. He then goes on to
say, "But that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual." And here he much more
clearly asserts that he referred to the animal body when he said that
the first man was made a living soul, and to the spiritual when he
said that the last man was made a quickening spirit. The animal body
is the first, being such as the first Adam had, and which would not
have died had he not sinned, being such also as we now have, its nature
being changed and vitiated by sin to the extent of bringing us under
the necessity of death, and being such as even Christ condescended
first of all to assume, not indeed of necessity, but of choice;
but afterwards comes the spiritual body, which already is worn by
anticipation by Christ as our head, and will be worn by His members in
the resurrection of the dead.
Then the apostle subjoins a notable difference between these two men,
saying, "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is
the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are
earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the
image of the heavenly."[615] So he elsewhere says, "As many of you
as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ;"[616] but in
very deed this shall be accomplished when that which is animal in us
by our birth shall have become spiritual in our resurrection. For,
to use his words again, "We are saved by hope."[617] Now we bear the
image of the earthly man by the propagation of sin and death, which
pass on us by ordinary generation; but we bear the image of the
heavenly by the grace of pardon and life eternal, which regeneration
confers upon us through the Mediator of God and men, the Man Christ
Jesus. And He is the heavenly Man of Paul's passage, because He came
from heaven to be clothed with a body of earthly mortality, that
He might clothe it with heavenly immortality. And he calls others
heavenly, because by grace they become His members, that, together
with them, He may become one Christ, as head and body. In the same
epistle he puts this yet more clearly: "Since by man came death,
by Man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all
die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,"[618]--that is to
say, in a spiritual body which shall be made a quickening spirit.
Not that all who die in Adam shall be members of Christ,--for the
great majority shall be punished in eternal death,--but he uses the
word "all" in both clauses, because, as no one dies in an animal
body except in Adam, so no one is quickened a spiritual body save
in Christ. We are not, then, by any means to suppose that we shall
in the resurrection have such a body as the first man had before he
sinned, nor that the words, "As is the earthy, such are they also
that are earthy," are to be understood of that which was brought
about by sin; for we are not to think that Adam had a spiritual body
before he fell, and that, in punishment of his sin, it was changed
into an animal body. If this be thought, small heed has been given
to the words of so great a teacher, who says, "There is a natural
body, there is also a spiritual body; as it is written, The first man
Adam was made a living soul." Was it after sin he was made so? or was
not this the primal condition of man from which the blessed apostle
selects his testimony to show what the animal body is?
24. _How we must understand that breathing of God by which "the
first man was made a living soul," and that also by which
the Lord conveyed His Spirit to His disciples when He said,
"Receive ye the Holy Ghost."_
Some have hastily supposed from the words, "God breathed into Adam's
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,"[619]
that a soul was not then first given to man, but that the soul
already given was quickened by the Holy Ghost. They are encouraged
in this supposition by the fact that the Lord Jesus after His
resurrection breathed on His disciples, and said, "Receive ye the
Holy Spirit."[620] From this they suppose that the same thing was
effected in either case, as if the evangelist had gone on to say,
And they became living souls. But if he had made this addition, we
should only understand that the Spirit is in some way the life of
souls, and that without Him reasonable souls must be accounted dead,
though their bodies seem to live before our eyes. But that this
was not what happened when man was created, the very words of the
narrative sufficiently show: "And God made man dust of the earth;"
which some have thought to render more clearly by the words, "And
God formed man of the clay of the earth." For it had before been
said that "there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole
face of the ground,"[621] in order that the reference to clay, formed
of this moisture and dust, might be understood. For on this verse
there immediately follows the announcement, "And God created man dust
of the earth;" so those Greek manuscripts have it from which this
passage has been translated into Latin. But whether one prefers to
read "_created_" or "_formed_," where the Greek reads ἔπλασεν, is
of little importance; yet "_formed_" is the better rendering. But
those who preferred "created" thought they thus avoided the ambiguity
arising from the fact, that in the Latin language the usage obtains
that those are said to form a thing who frame some feigned and
fictitious thing. This man, then, who was created of the dust of the
earth, or of the moistened dust or clay,--this "dust of the earth"
(that I may use the express words of Scripture) was made, as the
apostle teaches, an animated body when he received a soul. This man,
he says, "was made a living soul;" that is, this fashioned dust was
made a living soul.
They say, Already he had a soul, else he would not be called a man;
for man is not a body alone, nor a soul alone, but a being composed of
both. This, indeed, is true, that the soul is not the whole man, but
the better part of man; the body not the whole, but the inferior part
of man; and that then, when both are joined, they receive the name of
man,--which, however, they do not severally lose even when we speak of
them singly. For who is prohibited from saying, in colloquial usage,
"That man is dead, and is now at rest or in torment," though this can
be spoken only of the soul; or "He is buried in such and such a place,"
though this refers only to the body? Will they say that Scripture
follows no such usage? On the contrary, it so thoroughly adopts it,
that even while a man is alive, and body and soul are united, it
calls each of them singly by the name "_man_," speaking of the soul
as the "inward man," and of the body as the "outward man,"[622] as if
there were two men, though both together are indeed but one. But we
must understand in what sense man is said to be in the image of God,
and is yet dust, and to return to the dust. The former is spoken
of the rational soul, which God by His breathing, or, to speak more
appropriately, by His inspiration, conveyed to man, that is, to his
body; but the latter refers to his body, which God formed of the dust,
and to which a soul was given, that it might become a living body, that
is, that man might become a living soul.
Wherefore, when our Lord breathed on His disciples, and said, "Receive
ye the Holy Ghost," He certainly wished it to be understood that
the Holy Ghost was not only the Spirit of the Father, but of the
only-begotten Son Himself. For the same Spirit is, indeed, the Spirit
of the Father and of the Son, making with them the trinity of Father,
Son, and Spirit, not a creature, but the Creator. For neither was that
material breath which proceeded from the mouth of His flesh the very
substance and nature of the Holy Spirit, but rather the intimation,
as I said, that the Holy Spirit was common to the Father and to the
Son; for they have not each a separate Spirit, but both one and the
same. Now this Spirit is always spoken of in sacred Scripture by the
Greek word πνεῦμα, as the Lord, too, named Him in the place cited when
He gave Him to His disciples, and intimated the gift by the breathing
of His lips; and there does not occur to me any place in the whole
Scriptures where He is otherwise named. But in this passage where it
is said, "And the Lord formed man dust of the earth, and breathed, or
inspired, into his face the breath of life;" the Greek has not πνεῦμα,
the usual word for the Holy Spirit, but πνοή, a word more frequently
used of the creature than of the Creator; and for this reason some
Latin interpreters have preferred to render it by "breath" rather
than "spirit." For this word occurs also in the Greek in Isa. lvii.
16, where God says, "I have made all breath," meaning, doubtless, all
souls. Accordingly, this word πνοή is sometimes rendered "breath,"
sometimes "spirit," sometimes "inspiration," sometimes "aspiration,"
sometimes "soul," even when it is used of God. Πνεῦμα, on the other
hand, is uniformly rendered "spirit," whether of man, of whom the
apostle says, "For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the
spirit of man which is in him?"[623] or of beast, as in the book of
Solomon, "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the
spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?"[624] or of
that physical spirit which is called wind, for so the Psalmist calls
it: "Fire and hail; snow and vapours; stormy wind;"[625] or of the
uncreated Creator Spirit, of whom the Lord said in the gospel, "Receive
ye the Holy Ghost," indicating the gift by the breathing of His mouth;
and when He says, "Go ye and baptize all nations in the name of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,"[626] words which very
expressly and excellently commend the Trinity; and where it is said,
"God is a Spirit;"[627] and in very many other places of the sacred
writings. In all these quotations from Scripture we do not find in the
Greek the word πνοή used, but πνεῦμα, and in the Latin, not _flatus_,
but _spiritus_. Wherefore, referring again to that place where it is
written, "He inspired," or, to speak more properly, "breathed into his
face the breath of life," even though the Greek had not used πνοή (as
it has) but πνεῦμα, it would not on that account necessarily follow
that the Creator Spirit, who in the Trinity is distinctively called the
Holy Ghost, was meant, since, as has been said, it is plain that πνεῦμα
is used not only of the Creator, but also of the creature.
But, say they, when the Scripture used the word "spirit,"[628] it would
not have added "of life" unless it meant us to understand the Holy
Spirit; nor, when it said, "Man became a soul," would it also have
inserted the word "living" unless that life of the soul were signified
which is imparted to it from above by the gift of God. For, seeing
that the soul by itself has a proper life of its own, what need, they
ask, was there of adding living, save only to show that the life which
is given it by the Holy Spirit was meant? What is this but to fight
strenuously for their own conjectures, while they carelessly neglect
the teaching of Scripture? Without troubling themselves much, they
might have found in a preceding page of this very book of Genesis the
words, "Let the earth bring forth the living soul,"[629] when all the
terrestrial animals were created. Then at a slight interval, but still
in the same book, was it impossible for them to notice this verse,
"All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the
dry land, died," by which it was signified that all the animals which
lived on the earth had perished in the deluge? If, then, we find that
Scripture is accustomed to speak both of the "living soul" and the
"spirit of life" even in reference to beasts; and if in this place,
where it is said, "All things which have the spirit of life," the word
πνοή, not πνεῦμα, is used; why may we not say, What need was there to
add "living," since the soul cannot exist without being alive? or, What
need to add "of life" after the word spirit? But we understand that
Scripture used these expressions in its ordinary style so long as it
speaks of animals, that is, animated bodies, in which the soul serves
as the residence of sensation; but when man is spoken of, we forget
the ordinary and established usage of Scripture, whereby it signifies
that man received a rational soul, which was not produced out of the
waters and the earth like the other living creatures, but was created
by the breath of God. Yet this creation was so ordered that the human
soul should live in an animal body, like those other animals of which
the Scripture said, "Let the earth produce every living soul," and
regarding which it again says that in them is the breath of life, where
the word πνοή and not πνεῦμα is used in the Greek, and where certainly
not the Holy Spirit, but their spirit, is signified under that name.
But, again, they object that breath is understood to have been
emitted from the mouth of God; and if we believe that is the soul,
we must consequently acknowledge it to be of the same substance, and
equal to that wisdom, which says, "I come out of the mouth of the
Most High."[630] Wisdom, indeed, does not say it was breathed out of
the mouth of God, but proceeded out of it. But as we are able, when
we breathe, to make a breath, not of our own human nature, but of the
surrounding air, which we inhale and exhale as we draw our breath and
breathe again, so almighty God was able to make breath, not of His
own nature, nor of the creature beneath Him, but even of nothing;
and this breath, when He communicated it to man's body, He is most
appropriately said to have breathed or inspired,--the Immaterial
breathing it also immaterial, but the Immutable not also the
immutable; for it was created, He uncreated. Yet, that these persons
who are forward to quote Scripture, and yet know not the usages of
its language, may know that not only what is equal and consubstantial
with God is said to proceed out of His mouth, let them hear or read
what God says: "So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold
nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."[631]
There is no ground, then, for our objecting, when the apostle so
expressly distinguishes the animal body from the spiritual,--that is
to say, the body in which we now are from that in which we are to
be. He says, "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual
body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so
it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last
Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which
is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is
spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is
the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are
earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear
the image of the heavenly."[632] Of all which words of his we have
previously spoken. The animal body, accordingly, in which the apostle
says that the first man Adam was made, was not so made that it could
not die at all, but so that it should not die unless he should have
sinned. That body, indeed, which shall be made spiritual and immortal
by the quickening Spirit shall not be able to die at all; as the soul
has been created immortal, and therefore, although by sin it may be
said to die, and does lose a certain life of its own, namely, the
Spirit of God, by whom it was enabled to live wisely and blessedly,
yet it does not cease living a kind of life, though a miserable,
because it is immortal by creation. So, too, the rebellious angels,
though by sinning they did in a sense die, because they forsook
God, the Fountain of life, which while they drank they were able
to live wisely and well, yet they could not so die as to utterly
cease living and feeling, for they are immortals by creation. And
so, after the final judgment, they shall be hurled into the second
death, and not even there be deprived of life or of sensation, but
shall suffer torment. But those men who have been embraced by God's
grace, and are become the fellow-citizens of the holy angels who have
continued in bliss, shall never more either sin or die, being endued
with spiritual bodies; yet, being clothed with immortality, such as
the angels enjoy, of which they cannot be divested even by sinning,
the nature of their flesh shall continue the same, but all carnal
corruption and unwieldiness shall be removed.
There remains a question which must be discussed, and, by the help of
the Lord God of truth, solved: If the motion of concupiscence in the
unruly members of our first parents arose out of their sin, and only
when the divine grace deserted them; and if it was on that occasion
that their eyes were opened to see, or, more exactly, notice their
nakedness, and that they covered their shame because the shameless
motion of their members was not subject to their will,--how, then,
would they have begotten children had they remained sinless as they
were created? But as this book must be concluded, and so large a
question cannot be summarily disposed of, we may relegate it to the
following book, in which it will be more conveniently treated.
MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH,
PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE.
FOOTNOTES:
[573] Matt. x. 28.
[574] On this question compare the 24th and 25th epistles of Jerome,
_de obitu Leæ_, and _de obitu Blesillæ filiæ_. Coquæus.
[575] Ps. xlix. 12.
[576] On which see further in _de Peccat. Mer._ i. 67 et seq.
[577] _De Baptismo Parvulorum_ is the second half of the title of the
book, _de Peccatorum Meritis et Remissione_.
[578] 1 Cor. xv. 56.
[579] Rom. vii. 12, 13.
[580] Literally, unregenerate.
[581] John iii. 5.
[582] Matt. x. 32.
[583] Matt. xvi. 25.
[584] Ps. cxvi. 15.
[585] Much of this paradoxical statement about death is taken from
Seneca. See, among other places, his epistle on the premeditation of
future dangers, the passage beginning, "Quotidie morimur, quotidie
enim demitur aliqua pars vitæ."
[586] Ecclus. xi. 28.
[587] Ps. vi. 5.
[588] Gen. ii. 17.
[589] Gal. v. 17.
[590] Gen. ii. 17.
[591] Gen. iii. 9.
[592] Gen. iii. 19.
[593] Wisdom ix. 15.
[594] A translation of part of the _Timæus_, given in a little book
of Cicero's, _De Universo_.
[595] Plato, in the _Timæus_, represents the Demiurgus as
constructing the _kosmos_ or universe to be a complete representation
of the idea of animal. He planted in its centre a soul, spreading
outwards so as to pervade the whole body of the _kosmos_; and then
he introduced into it those various species of animals which were
contained in the idea of animal. Among these animals stand first the
celestial, the gods embodied in the stars; and of these the oldest
is the earth, set in the centre of all, close packed round the great
axis which traverses the centre of the _kosmos_.--See the _Timæus_
and Grote's _Plato_, iii. 250 et seq.
[596] On these numbers see Grote's _Plato_, iii. 254.
[597] Virgil, _Æneid_, vi. 750, 751.
[598] Book x. 30.
[599] A catena of passages, showing that this is the catholic
Christian faith, will be found in Bull's _State of Man before the
Fall_ (_Works_, vol. ii.).
[600] 1 Cor. xv. 42.
[601] Prov. iii. 18.
[602] 1 Cor. x. 4.
[603] Cant. iv. 13.
[604] Ps. xlii. 6.
[605] Ps. lix. 9.
[606] Those who wish to pursue this subject will find a pretty
full collection of opinions in the learned commentary on Genesis
by the Jesuit Pererius. Philo was, of course, the leading culprit,
but Ambrose and other Church fathers went nearly as far. Augustine
condemns the Seleucians for this among other heresies, that they
denied a visible Paradise.--_De Hæres._ 59.
[607] Tobit xii. 19.
[608] Gen. ii. 17.
[609] Rom. viii. 10, 11.
[610] Gen. iii. 19.
[611] "In uno commune factum est omnibus."
[612] Rom. viii. 28, 29.
[613] 1 Cor. xv. 42-45.
[614] Gen. ii. 7.
[615] 1 Cor. xv. 47-49.
[616] Gal. iii. 27.
[617] Rom. viii. 24.
[618] 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22.
[619] Gen. ii. 7.
[620] John xx. 22.
[621] Gen. ii. 6.
[622] 2 Cor. iv. 16.
[623] 1 Cor. ii. 11.
[624] Eccles. iii. 21.
[625] Ps. cxlviii. 8.
[626] Matt. xxviii. 19.
[627] John iv. 24.
[628] "Breath," Eng. ver.
[629] Gen. i. 24.
[630] Ecclus. xxiv. 3.
[631] Rev. iii. 16.
[632] 1 Cor. xv. 44-49.
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End of Project Gutenberg's The City of God, Volume I, by Aurelius Augustine