City of God, Book 13

Having disposed of the very difficult questions about 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 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 still could not die. He had made them in such a way that if they fulfilled the obligations of obedience, an angelic immortality and a blessed eternity might ensue, without the intervention of death; but if they disobeyed, death would be inflicted on them by a just sentence — which has also been discussed in the preceding book.

But I see I must speak a little more carefully of the nature of death. For although the human soul is truly said to be immortal, it also has a certain death of its own. For it is 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 by 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. The Savior referred to this when He said, “Fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28 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 a 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 given life and feeling by it, is tormented. For in that everlasting punishment, of which we are to speak more fully in its own place, 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, since 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 a 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 except by God working in it what is good; and the body lives by the soul when the soul lives in the body, whether the soul itself is living by God or not. 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 by God — can confer on bodies, however little of their own life, by which they are immortal, they retain. But in the last damnation, though man does not cease to feel, still, because this feeling of his is neither sweet with pleasure nor wholesome with repose, but a painful punishment, it is not without reason called death rather than life. And it is called the second death because it follows the first, which separates two natures that were joined, whether these are 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 the second, without doubt, just as it happens to none of the good, can be good for no one.

But a question not to be shirked arises: Whether death, which separates soul and body, is really good to the good? For if it is, how has it come about that such a thing should be the punishment of sin? For the first men would not have suffered death if they had 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? Therefore we must say that the first men were indeed created in such a way 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 whatever sprang from their stock should also be punished with the same death. For nothing else could be born of them than what 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. Therefore earth and flesh are not the same thing, though flesh is made of earth. But what man the parent is, man the offspring is also. 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, as far as the origin of sin and death is concerned. For he himself was not reduced by sin or its punishment to that infantile and helpless weakness of body and mind which we see in children. For God ordained that infants should begin life 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, did not understand; he became like the beasts that have no understanding.” More than that, infants, we see, are even feebler in the use and movement of their limbs, and weaker in choosing and refusing, 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 all the more remarkably because its energy has been longer restrained, and the time of its exercise delayed, just as an arrow flies the higher the farther back it has been drawn. The first man did not fall into this infantile weakness by his lawless presumption and just sentence; but human nature was in his person corrupted 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, he passed on to those whom he fathered; 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 death of punishment.

If, moreover, anyone is troubled about this point, how, if death is the very punishment of sin, those whose guilt is canceled by grace still suffer death, this difficulty has already been handled and solved in our other work which we have written on the baptism of infants. 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 on the sacrament of regeneration, faith itself would be weakened by it. For faith is faith only 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, the fear of death was overcome. This was especially 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 washing 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, so that he might not be released from the body? And thus faith would not be tested with an unseen reward; and so it 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 Savior, the punishment of sin is turned to the service of righteousness. For then it was proclaimed to man, “If you sin, you shall die;” now it is said to the martyr, “Die, so that you do not sin.” Then it was said, “If you transgress the commandments, you shall die;” now it is said, “If you refuse death, you transgress the commandment.” What was formerly set as an object of terror, so that men might not sin, is now to be undergone if we are not to 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 offers 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 first 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.

The apostle, wishing to show how harmful 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.” 1 Corinthians 15:56 Most certainly true; for prohibition increases the desire for illicit action, if righteousness is not so loved that the desire for sin is conquered by that love. But unless divine grace aids us, we cannot love or delight in true righteousness. But so that the law would not be thought 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 to me? Certainly not. But sin, so that it might be shown to be sin, worked death in me through what is good; so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.” Romans 7:12-13 Exceedingly, he says, because the transgression is more heinous when through the increasing lust of sin the law itself is also despised. Why have we thought it worthwhile to mention this? For this reason, because, just as the law is not an evil when it increases the lust of those who sin, so death is not 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. So it happens that the wicked make bad use of the law, though the law is good; and that the good die well, though death is an evil.

Therefore, as regards bodily death, that is, the separation of the soul from the body, it is good to no one while it is being endured by those who we say are at the point of death. For the very violence with which body and soul are wrenched apart, which in the living had been joined and closely intertwined, brings with it a harsh experience, jarring horribly against nature as long as it continues, until 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 departure 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 them of all sensation, still, 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 is endured for the sake of righteousness, it becomes the glory of those who are born again; and though death is the wages of sin, it sometimes ensures that nothing is owed to sin.

For when any unbaptized persons die confessing Christ, this confession is as effective for the remission of sins as if they were washed in the sacred font of baptism. For He who said, “Unless a man is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” John 3:5 also made an exception in their favor, in that other sentence where He no less absolutely said, “Whoever confesses me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven;” Matthew 10:32 and in another place, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 16:25 And this explains the verse, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” For what is more precious than a death by which a man's sins are all forgiven, and his merits increased a 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, do not have 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 if they had 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 killed Christ. But how abundant in these men must have been the grace of the Spirit, who breathes where He wills, since they loved Christ so dearly as to be unable to deny Him even in so grave a crisis, 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 only they might meet Him. And it is precious, 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 divine intervention. Death was originally proposed as an object of dread, so that sin might not be committed; now it must be undergone so that sin may not be committed, or, if committed, be remitted, and the reward of righteousness bestowed on the one whose victory has earned it.

For if we look at the matter a little more carefully, we shall see that even when a man dies faithfully and praiseworthily 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, so that the soul may not be separated both from God and from the body, and so the whole first death be completed, and the second death receive him everlastingly. Therefore death is indeed, as I said, good to no one 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 everlasting life, and those of the others to eternal death, which is called the second death.

Are we to say that the moment in which the souls of the good and evil are separated from the body is after death, or rather in death? 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, of which the good make good use. But when death is past, how can what no longer exists be either good or evil? Still further, if we examine the matter more closely, we shall see that even that severe and grievous pain which the dying experience is not death itself. For as long as they have any sensation, they are certainly still alive; and, if still alive, must rather be said to be in a state before 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 at the point of death. Yet what else can we call them than dying persons? For when death which was imminent has actually come, we can no longer call them dying but dead. No one, therefore, is dying unless living; since even the one who is at the very end of life, and, as we say, giving up his spirit, is still alive. The same person is therefore at once dying and living, but drawing near to death, departing from life; yet in life, because his spirit still remains in the body; not yet in death, because his spirit has not yet forsaken the body. But if, when it has forsaken it, the man is not even then in death, but after death, who can 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 is rather to be called dying, I do not know who is living.

For no sooner do we begin to live in this dying body, than we begin to move ceaselessly toward death. For in the whole course of this life (if life we must call it) its mutability tends toward death. Certainly there is no one who is not nearer it this year than last year, and tomorrow than today, and today than yesterday, and a short while from now than now, and now than a short while ago. For whatever time we live is deducted from our whole term of life, and what remains is daily becoming less and less; so that our whole life is nothing but a race toward death, in which no one is allowed to stand still for a little while, or to go somewhat more slowly, but all are driven forward with an impartial movement, and with equal rapidity. For a person whose life is short spends a day no more swiftly than one 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 at this equal speed. It is one thing to make a longer journey, and another to walk more slowly. Whoever, therefore, spends a 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 (that is, by taking away life; for when life is all taken away, the man will be then not in death, but after death), then he begins to die as 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 that 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 until all is 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 if that consumption had 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 if not when life is being consumed?

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 he is already in death?), and if it offends 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 corresponding states, 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 as long as the soul is in the body, especially if consciousness remains, 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 still lives, death has not arrived; if he has ceased to live, death is past. He is never, then, dying, that is, contained within 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 therefore 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? For if there is still life, death has not yet come; 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 if only we had lived so well in Paradise that there really were no death now! But not only does it now exist, it is so grievous a thing 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 comes, “before death;” as it is written, “Praise no man before his death.”⁠a 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 does not hesitate to say that the dead are not after but in death. So that verse, “For in death there is no remembrance of you.” For until the resurrection men are justly said to be in death; as everyone is said to be in sleep until 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, 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 are 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 come about quite suitably and appropriately, not by the intention of man, but 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 so it has fittingly come about that, just as the thing itself cannot in fact be declined, the word that signifies the act cannot be declined either. 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 eternal death. 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 a man can never be more disastrously in death than when death itself is deathless.

When, therefore, it is asked what death it was with which God threatened our first parents if they transgressed the commandment they had received from Him, and failed 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 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 you eat of it you shall surely die,” Genesis 2:17 that threat 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 after which there is no other.

For, as soon as our first parents had transgressed the commandment, divine grace forsook them, and they were put to shame by 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, reveling 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; nor could it hold the flesh subject, as it would always have been able to do if it had remained itself subject to God. Then the flesh began to lust against the Spirit, Galatians 5:17 in which strife we are born, deriving from the first transgression a seed of death, and bearing in our members, and in our corrupted nature, the contest or even victory of the flesh.

For God, the author of natures, not of vices, created man upright; but man, corrupted by his own will and justly condemned, fathered 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 the particular form in which we as individuals were to live had not yet been created and distributed to us, but the seminal nature was already there from which we were to be propagated; and since this was corrupted 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 chain of miseries, escorts the human race from its depraved origin, as from a corrupt root, on to the destruction of the second death, which has no end, with the exception only of those who are freed by the grace of God.

It may perhaps be supposed that because God said, “You shall die the death,” Genesis 2:17 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 toward 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 you eat of it you shall die the death,” should be understood as meaning, “In the day you desert me in disobedience, I will desert you in justice,” still certainly 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 indicated by the words He uttered, when the man, stupefied by fear, had hidden himself, “Adam, where are you?” Genesis 3:9 — 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 you are, and to earth shall you return.” Genesis 3:19 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 is freed by grace. For the body would not return to the earth from which it was made, except by its own death, which occurs when it is forsaken by 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 punishment on account of sin; for God, taking vengeance on sin, said to the man, in whom we all then were, “Dust you are, and to dust shall you return.”

But the philosophers against whom we are defending the city of God, that is, His Church, think they 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 is complete only when it is entirely stripped of the body, and returns to God a pure and simple, and, as it were, naked soul. On this point, if I found nothing in their own literature to refute this opinion, I would be forced to demonstrate laboriously that it is not the body, but the corruptibility of the body, which is a burden to the soul. This is the point of that sentence of Scripture we quoted in an earlier book, “For the corruptible body presses down the soul.”⁠a The word corruptible is added to show that the soul is burdened, not by any body whatever, 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 favor that they would remain in their bodies eternally, and never be released from them by any death, why do these adversaries of ours, for the sake of troubling the Christian faith, pretend 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, in which he introduces the Supreme addressing the gods He had made, and saying, “You who are sprung from a divine stock, consider of what works I am the parent and author. These (your bodies) are indestructible as long as I will it; although all that is composed can be destroyed. But it is wicked to dissolve what reason has joined together. But, since you have been born, you cannot indeed be immortal and indestructible; yet you 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 you were joined when you were born.” Plato, you see, says that the gods are both mortal by the connection of the body and soul, and yet are made 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 by virtue of their nature, which is composite and not simple, but by virtue of His invincible will, by which He can bring it about that things born do not die, and things compounded are not dissolved, but are 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. But this, as I said, is another question, which we have not undertaken to discuss at present. Only this much I thought it 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 bear to be called by a name which the common people also bear, for fear of cheapening the philosophers' circle, 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 favor 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.

These same philosophers further contend that terrestrial bodies cannot be eternal though they have no doubt that the whole earth, which is itself the central member of their god — not, indeed, of the greatest, but still 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, for fear that 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 so willed it? But earth, they say, 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 from which they came. But if anyone 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 vanish 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 separated, 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 bring it about that earthly bodies do not die? Is God powerless to do everything that is special to the Christian's creed, but powerful to effect everything the Platonists desire? The philosophers, of course, 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 as much of His will as He saw 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 for the soul to be happy, 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 want us to 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, from the middle of the inside of the earth, which geometricians call the center, outward 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 it is not itself a simple body, but composed of so many and such 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, to be blessed, the soul must leave every kind of body, let their gods depart from the starry spheres, and Jupiter from earth to sky; or, if they cannot do so, let them be pronounced miserable. But these men will adopt neither alternative. For, on the one hand, they dare not ascribe to their own gods a departure from the body, for fear of seeming to worship mortals; on the other hand, they dare not deny their happiness, for fear of acknowledging wretches as gods. Therefore, to obtain blessedness, we need not leave 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 only such as man's sin brought on.

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 consider a little more carefully 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 hidden way of working, should even more certainly bring it about that these earthly masses are freed 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 are joined than that bodies are fitted to other material substances. Can we not also easily believe that souls, being made perfectly blessed, would be endowed with the power of moving their earthly 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 where 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 carrying weights, that the larger the quantity, the greater the weight of earthly bodies, 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 healthy and strong man feels heavier to other men carrying him than the thin 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 still 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, expect 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 center all heavy bodies. But this I say, if the lesser gods, to whom Plato entrusted 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 fitting form and members? But about our belief in the resurrection of the dead, and about their immortal bodies, we shall speak more fully, God willing, at the end of this work.

For now 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 just now visibly living is now visibly dead. For though there can be no doubt at all that the souls of the just and holy dead live in peaceful rest, it would be so much better for them to be alive in healthy, sound bodies that even those who hold the doctrine that it is most blessed to be rid of every kind of body, condemn this opinion in spite of themselves. For no one will dare to set wise men, whether still to die or already dead — in other words, whether already rid of the body, or shortly to be so — above the immortal gods, to whom the Supreme, in Plato, promises as a generous gift a life that cannot be dissolved, that is, 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; “so that, forgetful of the past, they may revisit the upper air, and conceive the longing to return again to the body.” Virgil is applauded for borrowing this from the Platonic system. Certainly Plato thinks that the souls of mortals cannot always be in their bodies, but must necessarily be released by death; and, on the other hand, he thinks that without bodies they cannot endure forever, 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, so that each man may rest for a while in a star suitable for him, and may from there return to the labors and miseries of mortals when he has forgotten his former misery, and been seized by 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 only such as they can neither keep permanently nor do without and still enjoy eternal purity. We have already said in an earlier book that Porphyry was ashamed of this notion of Plato's in the light of these Christian times, so that he not only freed 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 so that he might not seem to be outdone by Christ's promise of everlasting life to His saints, he also established purified souls in endless happiness, without return to their former woes; but, in order to 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, if not because he did not believe that the souls, even though separate from the body, were superior to those gods? Therefore, 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 absurd what the Christian faith preaches, namely, that our first parents were so created that, if they had not sinned, they would not have been released 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 a way that no corruption or heaviness will be allowed to attach to their flesh, nor any grief or trouble to cloud their happiness?

Thus the souls of departed saints are not affected by the death which releases 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 weakness, opposed their will, and had to be constrained by the spiritual law, how much more will they love it when it has itself 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 imagine from the words, “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption,” 1 Corinthians 15:42 but because it is subject to the spirit with a perfect and marvelous 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 state of health, but it will surpass the bodies of our first parents before they sinned. For, though they were not to die unless they sinned, they still used food as men do now, since their bodies were not yet spiritual, but animal only. And though they did not decay with the years or draw nearer to death — a condition secured to them in God's marvelous grace by the tree of life, which grew along with the forbidden tree in the midst of Paradise, — they still took other nourishment, though not of that one tree, which was forbidden 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 so that their animal bodies might not suffer the discomfort of hunger or thirst; but they tasted the tree of life, so that death might not steal on them from any quarter, and that they might not, worn out 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 those who lay hold of her.” Proverbs 3:18

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 did not exist 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 slave 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 in it Christ can be seen in a figure, as the same apostle says, “Now that rock was Christ!” 1 Corinthians 10:4 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; Song of Songs 4:13 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 despises the will of God, he can only destroy himself; and so he learns the difference between consecrating himself to the common good and reveling in his own. For whoever loves himself is abandoned to himself, so that, being overwhelmed with fears and sorrows, he may cry, if there is still soul in him to feel his ills, in the words of the psalm, “My soul is cast down within me,” and when chastened, may say, Because of his strength I will wait on You. These and similar allegorical interpretations may be suitably put upon Paradise without giving offense to anyone, while we still believe the strict truth of the history, confirmed by its circumstantial narrative of facts.

The bodies of the righteous, then, such as they will be in the resurrection, will 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 will be clothed with so sure and in every way inviolable an immortality that they will not eat except when they choose, nor be under the necessity of eating, while they enjoy the power of doing so. For so it was with the angels who presented themselves to the eye and touch of men, not because they could do nothing else, but because they were able and desirous to suit themselves to men by a kind of human service. For we are not 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 only in a vision;”⁠a 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 defense, certainly our faith leaves no room to doubt regarding our Lord Himself, that even after His resurrection, and when now in spiritual but still 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 will cease to be bodies, but because they will subsist by the life-giving spirit.

For as those bodies of ours, that have a living soul, though not yet a life-giving spirit, are called ensouled bodies, and yet are not souls but bodies, so also those bodies are called spiritual, — though we must certainly not suppose on that account that they are spirits and not bodies — which, being given life by the Spirit, have the substance, but not the heaviness 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 it will be so not by losing its nature, but by changing its quality. The first man, of the earth earthy, was made a living soul, not a life-giving spirit, — a rank which was reserved for him as the reward of obedience. And therefore his body, which required food 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 if it had not provoked God's threatened vengeance by offending. And though sustenance was not denied him even outside Paradise, still, being forbidden the tree of life, he was delivered over to the wasting of time, at least with respect to that life which, if he had not sinned, he might have kept perpetually in Paradise, though only in an animal body, until it became spiritual in acknowledgment of his obedience. Therefore, 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 you eat of it you shall surely die,” Genesis 2:17 it ought not on that account to seem absurd that they were not released 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 corrupted, and by their most just banishment from the tree of life they were bound by 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 who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you.” Romans 8:10-11 Then, accordingly, the body which is now a living soul will become a life-giving spirit; and yet the apostle calls it “dead,” because it already lies under the necessity of dying. But in Paradise it was so made a living soul, though not a life-giving spirit, that it could not properly be called dead, for, except by committing sin, it could not come under the power of death. Now, since God by the words, “Adam, where are you?” pointed to the death of the soul, which results when He abandons it, and since in the words, “Earth you are, and to earth shall you return,” Genesis 3:19 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. But the second death is not common to all, since those are excepted who were “called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Romans 8:28-29 These the grace of God has delivered, through a Mediator, 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 life-giving spirit.” 1 Corinthians 15:42-45 He wished in this way 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.” Genesis 2:7 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 life-giving 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 it is not the spiritual that was first, but the natural; and afterward the 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 life-giving spirit. The animal body is the first, being such as the first Adam had, and which would not have died if he had not sinned, being such also as we now have, its nature being changed and corrupted by sin to the extent of bringing us under the necessity of death, and being such as even Christ stooped to assume first of all, not indeed of necessity, but of choice; but afterward comes the spiritual body, which is already worn in advance by Christ as our head, and will be worn by His members in the resurrection of the dead. Then the apostle adds 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 the earthy one is, so also are those who are earthy, and as the heavenly one is, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” 1 Corinthians 15:47-49 So he elsewhere says, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ;” Galatians 3:27 but in actual fact this will be accomplished when what is animal in us by our birth has become spiritual in our resurrection. For, to use his words again, We are saved by hope. Romans 8:24 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 eternal life, which regeneration confers on 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, so that He might clothe it with heavenly immortality. And he calls others heavenly, because by grace they become His members, so that, together with them, He may become one Christ, as head and body. In the same epistle he puts this still 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,” 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 — that is to say, in a spiritual body which will be made a life-giving spirit. Not that all who die in Adam will be members of Christ — for the great majority will be punished in eternal death — but he uses the word “all” in both clauses, because, just as no one dies in an animal body except in Adam, so no one is given life in a spiritual body except 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 the earthy one is, so also are those who 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 anyone thinks this, he has paid little attention 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 this not the original condition of man from which the blessed apostle selects his testimony to show what the animal body is?

Some have hastily supposed from the words, “God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,” Genesis 2:7 that a soul was not then first given to man, but that the soul already given was brought to life by the Holy Spirit. They are encouraged in this supposition by the fact that the Lord Jesus after His resurrection breathed on His disciples, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:22 From this they suppose that the same thing was done in both cases, as if the evangelist had gone on to say, And they became living souls. But if he had made this addition, we would understand only that the Spirit is in some way the life of souls, and that without Him rational souls must be counted as 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 translate 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,” Genesis 2:6 so 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 translation. But those who preferred “created” thought that in this way they avoided the ambiguity arising from the fact that in Latin usage those who make up some invented and fictitious thing are said to form it. This man, then, who was created of the dust of the earth, or of the moistened dust or clay — this “dust of the earth” (to 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, He already had a soul, or 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 individually 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 said 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,” 2 Corinthians 4:16 as if there were two men, though both together are indeed only 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 said 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, so that it might become a living body, that is, so that man might become a living soul. Therefore, when our Lord breathed on His disciples, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” He certainly wished it to be understood that the Holy Spirit 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 that material breath which came from the mouth of His flesh was not the very substance and nature of the Holy Spirit, but rather the sign, as I said, that the Holy Spirit was common to the Father and to the Son; for they do not each have 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 signified the gift by the breathing of His lips; and no place occurs to me in the whole of Scripture where He is named otherwise. 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 does not have 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 translate 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 translated “breath,” sometimes “spirit,” sometimes “inspiration,” sometimes “aspiration,” sometimes “soul,” even when it is used of God. Πνεῦμα, on the other hand, is uniformly translated “spirit,” whether of man, of whom the apostle says, “For what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him?” 1 Corinthians 2:11 or of beast, as in the book of Solomon, “Who knows the spirit of man that goes upward, and the spirit of the beast that goes downward to the earth?” Ecclesiastes 3:21 or of that physical spirit which is called wind, for so the Psalmist calls it: “Fire and hail; snow and vapors; stormy wind;” or of the uncreated Creator Spirit, of whom the Lord said in the gospel, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” indicating the gift by the breathing of His mouth; and when He says, “Go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” Matthew 28:19 words which very expressly and excellently commend the Trinity; and where it is said, “God is Spirit;” John 4:24 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. Therefore, 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 necessarily follow on that account that the Creator Spirit, who in the Trinity is distinctively called the Holy Spirit, 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, they say, when the Scripture used the word “spirit,” 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, since the soul by itself has a life of its own, what need was there, they ask, to add living, except 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 on an earlier page of this very book of Genesis the words, “Let the earth bring forth the living soul,” Genesis 1:24 when all the terrestrial animals were created. Then a little later, 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 on 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 as long as it speaks of animals, that is, animated bodies, in which the soul serves as the seat of sensation; but when man is spoken of, we forget the ordinary and established usage of Scripture, by which 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 would 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.”⁠a Wisdom, indeed, does not say it was breathed out of the mouth of God, but came 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 imparted 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. But so that these persons who are quick to quote Scripture, and yet do not know the usages of its language, may know that not only what is equal and consubstantial with God is said to come out of His mouth, let them hear or read what God says: “So then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Revelation 3:16 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 life-giving spirit. However, it is not the spiritual that was first, but the natural; and afterward the spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As the earthy one is, so also are those who are earthy; and as the heavenly one is, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” 1 Corinthians 15:44-49 We have already spoken of all these words of his. 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 would not die unless he sinned. That body, indeed, which will be made spiritual and immortal by the life-giving Spirit will not be able to die at all; just 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, it still does not cease living a kind of life, though a miserable one, 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, from which, while they drank, they were able to live wisely and well, still could not die in such a way as to cease entirely living and feeling, for they are immortals by creation. And so, after the final judgment, they will be hurled into the second death, and even there will not be deprived of life or sensation, but will suffer torment. But those men who have been taken up by God's grace, and have become the fellow citizens of the holy angels who have continued in bliss, will never again either sin or die, being endowed 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 will remain the same, but all carnal corruption and heaviness will be removed. There remains a question which must be discussed, and, with 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 fathered and borne children if they had remained sinless as they were created? But since this book must be concluded, and so large a question cannot be summarily disposed of, we may defer it to the following book, in which it will be more conveniently treated.