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ST. AUGUSTIN'S CITY OF GOD

Book 13

Argument—In this book it is taught that death is penal, and had its origin in Adam’s sin.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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
577 Ps. xxv. 10.
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both soul and body in hell.”578 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 so-ever 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,
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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.
Chapter 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?579 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
578 Matt. x. 28.
579 On this question compare the 24th and 25th epistles of Jerome, de obitu Leæ, and de obitu Blesillæ filiæ. Coquæus.
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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 honor understood not; he became like the beasts that have no understanding.”580 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 imbecility581 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.
Chapter 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.582 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
580 Ps. xlix. 12.
581 On which see further in de Peccat. Mer. i. 67, et seq.
582 De Baptismo Parvulorum is the second half of the title of the book, de Peccatorum Meritis et Remissione.
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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 vigor 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
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the layer 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 shall die;” now it is said
to the martyr, “Die, that thou sin not.” Then it was said, “If ye trangress 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 armor 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.
Chapter 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.”583 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
583 1 Cor. xv. 56.
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might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might
become exceeding sinful.”584 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.
Chapter 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
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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.
Chapter 7.—Of the Death Which the Unbaptized585 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,
584 Rom. vii. 12, 13.
585 Literally, unregenerate.
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“Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,”586
made also an exception in their favor, 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;”587 and in another place, “Whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find it.”588 And
this explains the verse, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”589 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.
Chapter 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
586 John iii. 5.
587 Matt. x. 32.
588 Matt. xvi. 25.
589 Ps. cxvi. 15.
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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.
Chapter 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
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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.
Chapter 10.—Of the Life of Mortals, Which is Rather to Be Called Death Than Life.
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For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly towards
death.590 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?
Chapter 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,
590 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, quotide enim demitur aliqua pars vitæ.
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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
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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.”591
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.”592 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.
591 Ecclus. xi. 28.
592 Ps. vi. 5.
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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.
Chapter 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,
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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,”593 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.
593 Gen. ii. 17.
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Chapter 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 willfully 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,594 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.
Chapter 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.
Chapter 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.
594 Gal. v. 17.
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It may perhaps be supposed that because God said, “Ye shall die the death,”595 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 remaking 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?”596—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 shall thou return.”597 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
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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 shall thou return.”
Chapter 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
595 Gen. ii. 17.
596 Gen. iii. 9.
597 Gen. iii. 19.
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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.”598 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,599 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.600 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
598 Wisdom ix. 15.
599 A translation of part of the Timæus, given in a little book of Cicero’s, De Universo.
600 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.
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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
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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.
Chapter 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
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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,601 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
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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.
Chapter 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 keeps them on earth
or draws 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
601 On these numbers see Grote’s Plato, iii. 254.
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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.
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Chapter 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
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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.”602 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 labors 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 said603 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
602 Virgil, Æn, vi. 750, 751.
603 Book x. 30.
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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,604 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?
Chapter 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,”605
but because it is subject to the spirit with a perfect and marvellous readiness of obedience, and
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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
604 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.).
605 1 Cor. xv. 42.
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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.”606
Chapter 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!”607 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;608 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,
606 Prov. iii. 18.
607 1 Cor. x. 4.
608 Cant. iv. 13.
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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,”609 and when chastened, may say,” Because of his strength I will wait upon
Thee.”610 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.611
Chapter 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
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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;”612 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.
609 Ps. xlii. 6.
610 Ps. lix. 9.
611 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.
Augustin condemns the Seleucians for this among other heresies, that they denied a visible Paradise.—De Hæres. 59.
612 Tobit xii. 19.
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Chapter 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,”613 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.”614 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
613 Gen. ii. 17.
614 Rom. viii. 10, 11.
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since in the words, “Earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou return,”615 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.616 But the second death is not common to all, those being excepted who
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were “called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did pre destinate to
be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren.”617
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 dishonor, 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.”618 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.”619
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
615 Gen. iii. 19.
616 In uno commune factum est omnibus.
617 Rom. viii. 28, 29.
618 1 Cor. xv. 42–45.
619 Gen. ii. 7.
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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.”620 So he elsewhere says,
“As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ;”621 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.”622 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,”623—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?
259 Chapter 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.”
620 1 Cor. xv. 47–49.
621 Gal. iii. 27.
622 Rom. viii. 24.
623 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22.
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Some have hastily supposed from the words, “God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of
life, and man became a living soul,624” 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.”625 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,”626 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,”627 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
624 Gen. ii. 7.
625 John xx. 22.
626 Gen. ii. 6.
627 2 Cor. iv. 16.
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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
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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 Isaiah chapter vii, verse 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?”628 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?”629 or of
that physical spirit which is called wind, for so the Psalmist calls it: “Fire and hail; snow and
vapors; stormy wind;”630 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,”631
words which very expressly and excellently commend the Trinity; and where it is said, “God is a
Spirit;”632 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
628 1 Cor. ii. 11.
629 Eccles. iii. 21.
630 Ps. cxlviii. 8.
631 Matt. xxviii. 19.
632 John iv. 24.
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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,”633 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,”634 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 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.”635 Wisdom,
indeed, does not say it was breathed out of the mouth of God, but proceeded out of it. But as we
633 “Breath,” Eng. ver.
634 Gen. i. 24.
635 Ecclus. xxiv. 3.
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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;
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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.”636
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.”637 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
636 Rev. iii. 16.
637 1 Cor. xv. 44–49.
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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.

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