Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 41/87

For even this is said in vain, if there is no death. And would that, by living well in paradise, we had brought it about that in truth there were no death. But now not only is there death, but it is even so distressing that it can neither be explained by any speech nor avoided by any reasoning. Let us therefore speak according to custom (for we ought not to do otherwise), and let us say 'before death,' before death befalls; as it is written: 'Praise no man before his death.' Let us also say, when it has befallen: 'After his death or that man's death, this or that was done.' Let us also speak of the present time as we can, as when we thus say: 'That dying man made his will,' and: 'To these and those persons, dying, he left this and that';

although he could by no means do this except as a living man, and rather did this before death, not in death. Let us also speak as divine Scripture speaks, which does not hesitate to say that the dead too are not after death, but in death. For hence is that: 'Since there is none in death who is mindful of Thee.' For until they revive, they are rightly said to be in death, just as anyone is said to be in sleep until he awakes; though we call those placed in sleep 'sleeping,' yet we cannot in that manner call those who are now dead 'dying.' For they are not still dying who, as far as concerns the death of the body, of which we are now discoursing, are already separated from their bodies. But this is what I have said cannot be explained by any speech:

namely, in what way either the dying may be said to live, or those already dead may be said still, even after death, to be in death. For how are they after death, if they are still in death? Especially since we do not even call them dying, as we call those who are in sleep 'sleeping,' and those in languor 'languishing,' and those in pain certainly 'suffering pain,' and those in life 'living'; but the dead, before they rise again, are said to be in death, and yet cannot be called dying. Whence I think it has come about, not inopportunely or incongruously—even if not by human industry, then perhaps by divine judgment—that this verb, which is 'he dies' (moritur), in the Latin tongue not even the grammarians have been able to decline by that rule by which other such verbs are declined.

For from that which is oritur ('he rises'), there is formed the past-tense word ortus est ('he has risen'); and if there are any similar ones, they are declined through the participles of the past tense. But from that which is moritur ('he dies'), if we seek a past-tense word, the answer is usually given mortuus est ('he has died'), with the letter u doubled. For mortuus is said in the same way as fatuus ('foolish'), arduus ('steep'), [carduus ('thistle')], conspicuus ('conspicuous'), and any similar ones, which are not of the past tense but, since they are nouns, are declined without tense. But that one, as if it might be declined, which cannot be declined, is put in place of a participle of the past tense as a noun. Fittingly therefore has it come about that, just as that which it signifies cannot be done by acting, so the very word itself cannot be declined by speaking.

Yet it can be brought about, by the help of the grace of our Redeemer, that we may at least decline (escape) the second death. For that is the more grievous and the worst of all evils, which comes not by the separation of soul and body, but rather by the conjunction of both unto eternal punishment. There, on the contrary, men will not be before death and after death, but always in death; and on this account never living, never dead, but without end dying. For never will it be worse for a man in death than where death itself shall be without death. CHAPTER XII. With what death God had threatened the first men, if they should transgress His commandment.

When therefore it is asked with what death God had threatened the first men, if they should transgress the commandment received from Him and not keep their obedience—whether the death of the soul, or of the body, or of the whole man, or that which is called the second—it must be answered: All. For the first consists of two, the second of all together as a whole. For just as the whole earth consists of many lands, and the whole Church of many churches, so the whole of death consists of all. For the first consists of two: one of the soul, the other of the body; so that there is a first death of the whole man, when the soul, without God and without the body, pays its penalties for a time; but the second, where the soul, without God but with the body, pays eternal penalties.

When therefore God said to that first man, whom He had placed in paradise, concerning the forbidden food: 'On whatever day you eat of it, you shall die the death'—that threat embraced not only the former part of the first death, where the soul is deprived of God, nor only the latter, where the body is deprived of the soul, nor only the whole first death itself, where the soul, separated both from God and from the body, is punished; but whatever of death there is, up to the last, which is called the second, than which there is none later. CHAPTER XIII. What penalty the transgression of the first men first felt. For after the transgression of the precept was committed, immediately, with divine grace forsaking them, they were ashamed at the nakedness of their bodies.

Whence they also covered their shameful parts with fig leaves, which were perhaps the first things found by the perturbed pair; which same members were before, but were not shameful. They felt therefore a new motion of their disobedient flesh, as a reciprocal penalty for their own disobedience. For now the soul, delighting in its own freedom turned to perversity and disdaining to serve God, was deprived of the former service of the body; and because by its own will it had forsaken its higher Lord, it did not hold its lower servant subject to its will, nor did it have the flesh in every way subject, as it could always have had it, if it had itself remained subject to God.

Then therefore the flesh began to lust against the spirit, with which conflict we are born, drawing the origin of death, and bearing in our members and our vitiated nature the contention—or the victory—of that first transgression. CHAPTER XIV. What kind of man was made by God, and into what lot he fell by the choice of his own will. For God created man upright, being the author of natures, not indeed of vices; but, depraved of his own accord and justly condemned, he begot depraved and condemned offspring. For we all were in that one man, when we all were that one, who fell into sin through the woman, who was made from him before the sin. As yet there was not formed and distributed to us individually the form in which we should severally live;

but there was already the seminal nature from which we should be propagated; which nature, namely, being vitiated on account of sin and bound by the chain of death and justly condemned, man could not be born of man in any other condition. And on this account, from the evil use of free will arose the series of this calamity, which, by an origin depraved as if from a corrupted root, leads the human race, through a connected chain of miseries, even to the destruction of the second death, which has no end—those alone excepted who are freed by the grace of God. CHAPTER XV. That Adam, when about to sin, first forsook God himself, before he was forsaken by God; and that the first death of the soul was to have departed from God. Wherefore, even if in that which was said: 'You shall die the death,' since it was not said:

'You shall die deaths,' in the plural) we should understand only that death which occurs when the soul is forsaken by its own life, which is God to it (for it was not forsaken so that it might forsake, but it forsook so that it might be forsaken; for unto its evil its own will is prior, but unto its good the will of its Creator is prior—whether to make it, which was nothing, or to remake it, because, having fallen, it had perished)—even if therefore we understand that God announced this death in that which He said: 'On the day you eat of it, you shall die the death,' as though He said: 'On the day you forsake Me through disobedience, I will forsake you through justice'—surely in that death the others also were announced, which without doubt were to follow.

For in that there arose a disobedient motion in the flesh of the disobedient soul, on account of which they covered their shameful parts, one death was felt, in which God forsook the soul. This was signified by His words, when, to the man hiding himself out of demented fear, He said: 'Adam, where are you?'—not indeed seeking in ignorance, but admonishing by rebuke, that he should attend to where he was, in which God was not. But when the soul itself forsook the body, corrupted by age and worn out by old age, there came into experience the other death, concerning which God, still punishing sin, had said to the man: 'You are earth, and into earth you shall go'; so that out of these two there might be completed that first death, which is of the whole man, which the second follows at the last, unless a man be freed by grace.

For the body, which is from the earth, would not return into the earth except by its own death, which befalls it when it is forsaken by its own life, that is, the soul. Whence it is established among Christians who truly hold the catholic faith, that even this death of the body itself was inflicted upon us not by a law of nature—by which God made no death for man—but by the desert of sin, since God, avenging sin, said to the man, in whom we all then were: 'You are earth, and into earth you shall go.' CHAPTER XVI. Concerning the philosophers who think the separation of the soul from the body is not penal, whereas Plato introduces the supreme God promising to the lesser gods that they should never be stripped of their bodies.

But the philosophers, against whose calumnies we defend the City of God, that is, His Church, think themselves to mock wisely, because we say that the separation of the soul from the body is to be reckoned among its penalties; namely because they suppose that its perfect blessedness then comes about for it, when, stripped utterly of all body, it returns to God simple and alone and in a manner naked. Here, if I found nothing in their own writings by which this opinion might be refuted, I should have to dispute more laboriously, to demonstrate that it is not the body that is a burden to the soul, but the corruptible body. Whence is that which we recalled from our Scriptures in the previous book: 'For the corruptible body weighs down the soul.'

By adding 'corruptible,' assuredly, he declared that the soul is weighed down not by just any kind of body, but by such a body as has been made by the vengeance that follows sin. And even if he had not added this, we ought to understand nothing else. But since Plato most openly proclaims that the gods made by the supreme God have immortal bodies, and introduces God Himself, by whom they were made, promising them as a great benefit that they shall remain forever with their bodies and shall be dissolved from them by no death: what is this, that these men, to harass the Christian faith, feign not to know what they know, or even, contradicting themselves, prefer to speak against themselves, so long as they do not cease to contradict us?

These indeed are Plato's words, as Cicero translated them into Latin, in which he introduces the supreme God addressing the gods whom He made, and saying: 'You who are sprung from the seed of the gods, attend: those works of which I am the parent and maker are indissoluble against My will, although everything that is bound together can be dissolved; but it is by no means good to wish to dissolve by reason that which is bound by reason. But since you have come into being, immortal indeed and indissoluble you cannot be; yet you shall by no means be dissolved, nor shall any fates of death destroy you, nor shall they be more powerful than My counsel, which is a greater bond unto your perpetuity than those by which you were bound together when you were begotten.'

Behold, Plato says they are gods, and mortal by the binding together of body and soul, and yet immortal by the will and counsel of the God by whom they were made. If therefore it is a penalty for the soul to be bound in any kind of body whatsoever, why is it that the god, addressing them as though anxious lest they should perchance die—that is, be dissolved from the body—makes them secure concerning their immortality, not on account of their nature, which is compounded, not simple, but on account of his own most invincible will, by which he is able to bring it about that neither things that have come into being should perish, nor things conjoined should be dissolved, but should incorruptibly endure? And whether indeed Plato says this truly of the stars is another question.

For it is not at once to be conceded to him that these globes of lights, or little orbs, shining with bodily light above the earth, whether by day or by night, live by certain proper souls of their own, and those intellectual and blessed—which he insistently affirms also of the whole universe itself, as of one greatest living being, by which all the other living beings are contained. But these things, as I said, are another question, which we have not now undertaken to discuss. This much only I have thought worth recalling against those men who glory in being called or being Platonists, of whose name's pride they blush to be Christians—lest the appellation common to them with the vulgar should make cheap the company of cloak-wearers, the more puffed up the more scanty their fewness;

and, seeking what they may reprehend in Christian doctrine, they harass the eternity of bodies, as though these things were mutually contrary—that we should both seek the blessedness of the soul and wish it always to be in a body, as if bound in a wretched chain; whereas their own author and master Plato says that a gift was granted by the supreme God to the gods made by him, that they should never at any time die, that is, be separated from the bodies in which he conjoined them. CHAPTER XVII. Against those who assert that earthly bodies cannot be made incorruptible and eternal.

These men also contend that earthly bodies cannot be everlasting, although they do not doubt that the whole earth itself is a member of their god—not indeed the supreme, but yet a great god, that is, of this whole world—placed in the midst and everlasting. When therefore that supreme god made for them another, whom they think a god, that is, this world, to be preferred to the other gods who are beneath him, and they suppose this same to be an animate being, namely with a rational or intellectual soul, as they assert, enclosed in so great a mass of its body, and that he constituted the four elements as it were the members of that very body, placed and arranged in their own places—whose juncture, lest ever their god so great should die, they wish to be insoluble and everlasting:

what reason is there that, in the body of the greater living being, the earth should be eternal as a kind of middle member, while the bodies of other earthly living beings, if God should so will as He wills that, cannot be eternal? But, they say, the earth must be rendered to the earth, whence the earthly bodies of animals were taken; from which it comes about, they say, that it is necessary for these to be dissolved and to die, and in that way to be restored to the stable and everlasting earth from which they had been taken. If anyone should affirm this likewise of fire as well, and say that the bodies which were taken from it, that they might become celestial animals, must be rendered to the universal fire: would not the immortality which Plato promised to such gods, as though the supreme god spoke, fall away as it were by the violence of this argument?

Or does it not happen there for this reason, because God does not will it, whose will, as Plato says, no force overcomes? What then prevents God from being able to effect this also concerning earthly bodies—since Plato confesses that God can bring it about both that things which have come into being should not perish, and that things which are bound should not be dissolved, and that things which are taken from the elements should not be rendered back, and that souls constituted in bodies should never forsake them and should enjoy with them immortality and everlasting blessedness? Why then could He not bring it about that earthly bodies too should not die? Or is God not powerful as far as Christians believe, but only as far as the Platonists wish?

It is no wonder, indeed, that the philosophers were able, and the prophets unable, to know the counsel and power of God; for rather, on the contrary, His Spirit taught the prophets of God to declare His will, so far as He saw fit to reveal it, whereas mere human conjecture deceived the philosophers in their endeavor to know it.

Yet they ought not to have been deceived to such a degree, not only through ignorance but even through obstinacy, that they should most openly contradict themselves: with great force of argument maintaining that, for the soul to be able to be blessed, it must flee not only every earthly body but every body whatsoever, and yet again saying that the gods have most blessed souls which are nonetheless bound to eternal bodies—the celestial gods to fiery bodies, while the soul of Jupiter himself, whom they hold to be this very universe, is enclosed within absolutely all the corporeal elements by which this whole mass rises from earth to heaven.

For Plato supposes that this soul is diffused and extended through musical numbers from the inmost center of the earth—which the geometers call the centron—through all its parts up to the highest and outermost reaches of heaven, so that this universe is a living being most great, most blessed, and everlasting; whose soul both holds the perfect felicity of wisdom and does not forsake its own body, and whose body both lives forever from that soul and—though it is not simple but compacted of so many and so great bodies—cannot dull or slow the soul.

Since, then, they grant these things to their own surmises, why are they unwilling to believe that by the divine will and power earthly bodies can be made immortal, in which souls, separated by no death and burdened by no weight of those bodies, may live everlastingly and in blessedness—the very thing they assert their own gods can do in fiery bodies, and Jupiter himself, their king, in all the corporeal elements? For if, in order that the soul may be blessed, every body must be fled, let their gods flee from the orbs of the stars, let Jupiter flee from heaven and earth; or if they cannot, let them be judged wretched.

But these men are willing to admit neither: they dare not grant separation from bodies to their gods, lest they seem to worship mortal beings, nor deprivation of blessedness, lest they confess them to be unhappy. Therefore not all bodies must be fled in order to attain blessedness, but the corruptible, troublesome, heavy, dying ones—not such as God's goodness made for the first men, but such as the penalty of sin compelled them to be. CHAPTER XVIII. On earthly bodies, which the philosophers affirm cannot exist in the heavens, because whatever is earthly is recalled to earth by its natural weight. But it is necessary, they say, that natural weight should hold earthly bodies on the earth or force them toward the earth, and therefore they cannot be in heaven.

Those first men, indeed, were in a land wooded and fruitful, which bore the name of Paradise; but since this too must be answered—whether on account of Christ's body, with which He ascended into heaven, or on account of the saints' bodies such as they shall be in the resurrection—let them consider a little more attentively those very earthly weights. For if human skill can bring it about that, out of metals which when placed in water are immediately submerged, vessels are fashioned in certain ways so that they can even float:

how much more credibly and effectually can some hidden mode of God's working—by whose most omnipotent will Plato says that nothing once arisen perishes and nothing bound together can be dissolved, since the incorporeal is joined to the corporeal far more wondrously than any bodies are joined to any bodies—grant to earthly masses that they be weighed down by no weight into the depths, and grant to souls themselves, perfectly blessed, that they may set their bodies (earthly, yet now incorruptible) wherever they will, and move them whither they will, with the easiest posture and motion! Or rather, if angels do this, and seize whatever earthly animals they please from wherever they please and set them down wherever they please, are we to believe that either they cannot do it or feel the burdens?

Why then should we not believe that the perfected and blessed spirits of the saints, by a divine gift, can bear their own bodies without any difficulty wherever they will, and set them down wherever they will? For though we are accustomed, in carrying earthly bodies as burdens, to find that the greater the quantity the greater the weight, so that more pounds press more heavily than fewer—nevertheless the soul carries the members of its own flesh more lightly when they are robust in health than when they are wasted in sickness. And though to others who carry him a healthy and strong man is more burdensome than a thin and sickly one, yet the man himself is more agile in moving and bearing his own body when in good health he has more bulk than when in sickness or famine he has the least strength.

So great is the power, even in possessing earthly bodies (though still corruptible and mortal), not of the weight of quantity, but of the measure of temperament. And who can explain in words how great a distance lies between this present condition which we call health, and the immortality to come? Therefore the philosophers do not refute our faith by their arguments about the weights of bodies. For I do not wish to ask why they do not believe that an earthly body can exist in heaven, when the whole earth is balanced upon nothing. For perhaps from the very central place of the universe—because all the heavier things come together into it—an argument closer to the truth may even be drawn. This is what I say:

If the lesser gods, to whom Plato says the making of the rest of the earthly animals, and even of man, was entrusted, were able—as he says—to remove from fire the quality of burning while leaving the quality of shining that flashes forth through the eyes, shall we hesitate to grant to the supreme God (to whose will and power Plato granted that things once arisen should not die, and that things so diverse and so dissimilar, namely the corporeal and incorporeal, when joined to one another, could be separated by no dissolution) that He should remove corruption from the flesh of man, to whom He grants immortality, while leaving its nature, retaining the fitting harmony of its figure and members, and taking away the sluggishness of weight?

But concerning the faith of the resurrection of the dead and concerning their immortal bodies, this must be discussed more carefully, if God will, at the end of this work. CHAPTER XIX. Against the doctrines of those who do not believe that the first men, had they not sinned, would have been immortal, and who wish the eternity of souls to be without bodies. Now let us set forth what we have undertaken concerning the bodies of the first men; for that death—which is held to be good for the good, and is known not only to a few who understand or believe, but to all, by which the separation of soul from body takes place, by which assuredly the body of a living being, which was evidently alive, evidently dies—could not have befallen them, had not the desert of sin followed.

For although it is not lawful to doubt that the souls of the just and pious dead live in rest, yet so much better would it be for them to live with their own bodies in good health, that even those who deem it most blessed to be wholly without a body refute this opinion of theirs by a contrary verdict. For none of them will dare to prefer wise men—whether about to die or already dead, that is, either lacking bodies or about to leave their bodies—to the immortal gods, to whom the supreme God in Plato promises a mighty gift, namely an indissoluble life, that is, an eternal fellowship with their own bodies.

But the same Plato thinks it goes best with men—provided they have passed this life piously and justly—if, separated from their own bodies, they are received into the bosom of the very gods who never desert their bodies. 'Forgetful, surely, that they may revisit the vaulted heights above, and begin again to wish to return into bodies'; which Virgil is praised for having said from the Platonic doctrine. For thus indeed he supposes that the souls of mortals can neither be forever in their own bodies, but are dissolved by the necessity of death, nor endure perpetually without bodies, but, by alternating turns, that the living are unceasingly made from the dead and the dead from the living;

so that in this the wise seem to differ from other men: that after death they are borne to the stars, so that each may rest somewhat longer in a star congenial to himself, and thence again, forgetful of his former misery and overcome by the desire of possessing a body, return to the labors and troubles of mortals; whereas those who have led a foolish life are rolled back, by their own deserts, to bodies owed them, whether of men or of beasts, near at hand. And so in this most harsh condition he places even good and wise souls, to whom no such bodies have been allotted as those with which they might live always and immortally—souls that can neither remain in bodies nor endure without them in eternal purity.

Concerning this Platonic doctrine we have already said, in the earlier books, that in the Christian age Porphyry blushed for it, and not only removed the bodies of beasts from human souls, but also wished the souls of the wise to be so liberated from corporeal bonds that, fleeing every body, they might be held in blessedness with the Father without end. And so, lest he should seem to be overcome by Christ, who promised the saints perpetual life, he too placed purified souls in eternal felicity, without any return to their former miseries; and, in order to oppose Christ, denying the resurrection of incorruptible bodies, he asserted that those souls would live forever not only without earthly bodies, but without any bodies at all.

Yet not even by this opinion, such as it was, did he teach that they should at least not be subjected to embodied gods by the homage of religion. Why so, unless because he did not believe those souls—though joined to no body—to be better than those gods? Wherefore, if these men will not dare (as I judge they will not dare) to prefer human souls to the most blessed gods who are nonetheless established in eternal bodies, why does it seem absurd to them—what the Christian faith proclaims—both that the first men were so created that, had they not sinned, they would have been loosed from their bodies by no death, but, endowed with immortality as the reward of obedience kept, would have lived with them forever;

and that the saints in the resurrection shall have those very bodies in which they here labored, so that neither can any corruption or difficulty befall their flesh, nor any pain or unhappiness befall their blessedness? CHAPTER XX. That the flesh of the saints, which now rests in hope, is to be restored to a better quality than that of the first men before sin. Accordingly, now the souls of the departed saints do not have a grievous death—that by which they were separated from their bodies—because their flesh rests in hope, however many indignities it may be seen to have received now without any sensation.