Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 43/87

There is therefore no reason why we should resist the apostle, who speaks most plainly, where, distinguishing the animal body from the spiritual body, that is, that in which we are now from that in which we shall be hereafter, he says: 'It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body; if there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual; so also it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening spirit. But not first that which is spiritual, but that which is animal, afterward the spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is of heaven, heavenly. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, let us bear also the image of Him who is of heaven.'

Concerning all these apostolic words we have spoken above. The animal body, then, in which the apostle says the first man Adam was made, was so made, not that it could in no way die, but that it would not die unless man had sinned. For that which by the quickening spirit will be spiritual and immortal will be in no way able to die, just as the soul has been created immortal, which, although it is said to be dead by sin, lacking a certain life of its own, that is, the Spirit of God, by which it could also have lived wisely and blessedly, nevertheless does not cease to live by a certain proper life of its own, though a wretched one, because it has been created immortal;

just as also the deserter angels, although in a certain mode they are dead by sinning, because they deserted the fountain of life, which is God, by drinking of whom they could have lived wisely and blessedly, nevertheless could not so die as to cease in every way to live and to feel, since they were created immortal; and thus after the last judgment they will be cast headlong into the second death, so that not even there will they lack life, since indeed they will not lack even sense, when they will be in torments. But men belonging to the grace of God, fellow citizens of the holy angels abiding in the blessed life, will be so clothed with spiritual bodies that they will neither sin any more nor die; clothed, however, with that immortality which,

like that of the angels, can be taken away neither by sin; their nature indeed remaining, but with no carnal corruptibility or sluggishness at all remaining. There follows, however, a question that must necessarily be treated and, with the Lord God of truth helping, resolved: If the lust of the disobedient members arose from the sin of disobedience in those first men, when the divine grace had deserted them; whence they opened their eyes upon their own nakedness, that is, they regarded it more curiously, and because the shameless motion resisted the choice of their will, they covered their pudenda: in what manner would they have begotten children, if, as they had been created, they had remained without transgression.

But since this book also must be closed, and so great a question must not be cramped within the narrows of one discourse, it is deferred, with a more convenient arrangement, to the one that follows. That through the disobedience of the first man all would have rushed into the perpetuity of the second death, had not the grace of God set many free.

We have already said in the foregoing books that God willed to establish men from one man, in order that the human race should be united not only by the likeness of nature, but also bound together by a certain kinship of relationship in the harmonious unity of peace by the bond of concord; and that this race would not have died in each individual, had not the two first — of whom one was created out of nothing, the other out of him — by their disobedience deserved it; by whom so great a sin was committed that human nature was thereby changed for the worse, the obligation of sin and the necessity of death being transmitted even to their posterity.

Now the reign of death so dominated over men, that it would drive all headlong, by their due punishment, even into the second death, of which there is no end, had not the undeserved grace of God set some free from it. And by this it has come about that, although so many and so great nations throughout the world, living by diverse rites and customs, are distinguished by a manifold variety of languages, arms, and dress, yet there exist no more than two certain kinds of human society, which according to our Scriptures we might rightly call two cities.

For there is one of those who wish to live according to the flesh, the other of those who wish to live according to the spirit, each in the peace of its own kind; and, when they attain what they seek, living each in the peace of its own kind. CHAPTER 2. Of the carnal life, which is to be understood not only from the vices of the body, but also from those of the soul. First, then, we must see what it is to live according to the flesh, and what it is to live according to the spirit.

For whoever inspects at first glance what we have said, either not recalling or paying too little attention to how the holy Scriptures speak, might suppose that the Epicurean philosophers indeed live according to the flesh, because they placed the highest good of man in bodily pleasure, and if there are any others who in any way held the good of the body to be man's highest good, and that whole rabble of those who, not by any dogma or in that philosophical manner, but being prone to lust, know not how to rejoice except in the pleasures which they take through the bodily senses; but the Stoics, who place the highest good of man in the soul, live according to the spirit, because what is man's soul but spirit?

But as divine Scripture speaks, both are shown to live according to the flesh. For it calls 'flesh' not only the body of an earthly and mortal living being (as when it says: 'Not all flesh is the same flesh; one indeed of man, another the flesh of beasts, another of birds, another of fishes'), but it uses the signification of this word in many other ways as well, among which various modes of expression it often even calls man himself, that is, the nature of man, 'flesh,' by a mode of expression naming the whole from the part, such as: 'By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.' For what did it wish to be understood but every man? Which it says a little more openly shortly afterward: 'In the law no one is justified,' and to the Galatians:

'Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law.' According to this is understood: 'And the Word was made flesh,' that is, man; which some, not rightly receiving, have supposed that a human soul was lacking in Christ. For just as the part is taken for the whole, where in the gospel the words of Mary Magdalene are read, saying: 'They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him,' when she spoke only of the flesh of Christ, which, being buried, she thought had been taken from the tomb: so also the whole is understood from the part, when 'flesh' is named, that is, man, as are those instances which we mentioned above. Since, then, in many ways, which it would be tedious to search out and gather together, divine Scripture names 'flesh':

in order that we may be able to track down what it is to live according to the flesh (which is assuredly evil, although the very nature of the flesh is not evil), let us diligently inspect that passage of the epistle of the apostle Paul which he wrote to the Galatians, where he says: 'Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are fornications, uncleannesses, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkennesses, revellings, and the like; which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that they who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.'

This whole passage of the apostolic epistle, considered as far as shall seem sufficient for the present matter, will be able to resolve this question, what it is to live according to the flesh. For in the works of the flesh, which he said are manifest and which, having enumerated, he condemned, we find not only those which pertain to the pleasure of the flesh, such as fornications, uncleannesses, lasciviousness, drunkennesses, revellings; but also those by which vices of the soul are demonstrated, alien from the pleasure of the flesh. For who would not understand the servitude that is rendered to idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envyings, to be rather vices of the soul than of the flesh?

Since indeed it can happen that, for the sake of idolatry or the error of some heresy, a man may be temperate from the pleasures of the body; and yet even then a man, although he may seem to restrain and curb the lusts of the flesh, is convicted by this apostolic authority of living according to the flesh, and in that very thing in which he abstains from the pleasures of the flesh, is shown to perform damnable works of the flesh. For who does not have enmities in the soul? Or who would so speak as to say to his enemy, or to one whom he thinks an enemy: 'You have an evil flesh,' and not rather: 'You have an evil soul against me'? Finally, just as if anyone heard of 'carnalities,' so to speak, he would not doubt to attribute them to the flesh, so no one doubts that 'animosities' pertain to the soul.

Why then does the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth call all these and the like 'works of the flesh,' except because, by that mode of expression in which the whole is signified from the part, he wishes man himself to be understood by the name of flesh? CHAPTER 3. That the cause of sin proceeded from the soul, not from the flesh, and that the corruption contracted from sin is not sin, but its penalty. But if anyone says that the flesh is the cause, in evil morals, of whatsoever vices, in that the soul, affected by the flesh, so lives, assuredly he does not diligently attend to the whole nature of man. For 'the corruptible body indeed weighs down the soul.' Hence also the same apostle, treating of this corruptible body, of which he had said a little before, 'Though our outward man is corrupted':

'We know,' he says, 'that if our earthly house of this habitation is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this also we groan, desiring to be clothed upon with our dwelling which is from heaven; if so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we also who are in this tabernacle groan, being burdened; in that we would not be unclothed, but clothed upon, that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life.' We are therefore weighed down by the corruptible body, and, knowing that the cause of this very weighing-down is not the nature and substance of the body, but its corruption, we wish not to be despoiled of the body, but to be clothed with its immortality. For then too it will exist, but because it will not be corruptible, it will not weigh down.

The corruptible body, then, now weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation presses down the mind that ponders many things. Nevertheless, those who think that all the soul's evils have befallen it from the body are in error. For although Virgil seems to expound the Platonic opinion in splendid verses when he says: 'Fiery is the vigor and heavenly the origin of those seeds, so far as harmful bodies do not retard them, and earthly limbs and dying members dull them,' and wishing all those four most well-known perturbations of the soul — desire and fear, joy and sadness — to be understood as the origins, so to speak, of all sins and vices, to befall from the body, he subjoins and says:

'Hence they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, nor do they look up to the airs, shut in by darkness and a blind prison': yet our faith holds otherwise. For the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin, but its penalty; nor did the corruptible flesh make the soul sinful, but the sinful soul made the flesh corruptible. From which corruption of the flesh, although there arise certain incitements to vices and the vicious desires themselves, nevertheless not all the vices of an iniquitous life are to be attributed to the flesh, lest we acquit of all these the devil, who has no flesh.

For although the devil cannot be called a fornicator or a drunkard, or anything of this kind of evil that pertains to the pleasures of the flesh — although he is even the hidden persuader and instigator of such sins — yet he is in the highest degree proud and envious. Which viciousness so took hold of him that on account of it he was destined to eternal punishment in the prisons of this murky air. Now these vices, which hold the chief place in the devil, the apostle attributes to the flesh, which it is certain the devil does not have. For he says that enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, envyings are works of the flesh; of all which evils the head and origin is pride, which reigns in the devil without flesh. But who is more an enemy to the saints than he?

Who is found more contentious against them, more animated and more jealous and envious? Yet since he has all these without flesh, how are they works of the flesh, except because they are works of man, whom, as I said, he calls by the name of flesh? For not by having flesh, which the devil does not have, but by living according to himself, that is, according to man, did man become like the devil; because he too wished to live according to himself, when he stood not in the truth, so that he spoke a lie not from God's, but from his own — he who is not only a liar, but also the father of lies. For he was the first to lie, and from him, from whom sin began, lying also began. CHAPTER 4. What it is to live according to man, and what it is to live according to God.

When, then, a man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil; because neither was it according to an angel, but according to God, that an angel ought to have lived, so that he might stand in the truth and speak the truth from Him, not a lie from his own. For of man also, in another place, the same apostle says: 'But if the truth of God has abounded in my lie.' He called the lie ours, the truth God's. When, therefore, a man lives according to the truth, he lives not according to himself, but according to God. For it is God who said: 'I am the truth.' But when he lives according to himself, that is, according to man, not according to God, he assuredly lives according to a lie;

not because man himself is a lie, since his author and creator is God, who is assuredly not the author and creator of a lie, but because man was so made upright that he should live not according to himself, but according to Him by whom he was made — that is, that he should do His will rather than his own: not to live in the manner in which he was made to live, this is a lie. For he wishes to be blessed even by not living in such a way that he can be so. What is more a lie than this will? Hence it can be said not without reason that every sin is a lie. For sin is not committed except by that will by which we will that it may be well with us, or are unwilling that it may be ill with us.

Therefore it is a lie that, when it is done that it may be well with us, hence rather it is ill with us; or when it is done that it may be better with us, hence rather it is worse with us. Whence comes this, except because it can be well with man from God, whom by sinning he deserts, not from himself, according to whom by living he sins? Therefore, in that we said that hence arose two cities, diverse and contrary to one another, in that some lived according to the flesh, others according to the spirit: it can also be said in this way, that some live according to man, others according to God. For Paul most plainly says to the Corinthians: 'For since there are among you jealousy and contention, are you not carnal, and walk according to man?'

To walk according to man, then, is the same as to be carnal, since by 'flesh,' that is, by a part of man, the whole man is understood. For the very same persons whom he had earlier called 'natural' (animales) he afterward called 'carnal,' speaking thus: 'For who among men,' he says, 'knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God none knows, save the Spirit of God. But we,' he says, 'have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we may know the things that are freely given to us by God; which things also we speak, not in the words taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him.'

To such persons, therefore, that is, to the natural, he says a little later: 'And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal.' Both expressions, the former and the latter, follow the same manner of speech, namely, naming the whole from a part. For both from the soul and from the flesh, which are parts of man, the whole, which is man, can be signified; and thus the natural man is not one thing and the carnal another, but both are the very same, namely, a man living according to man; just as nothing other than men are signified, whether where it is read, 'By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified,' or where it is written, 'Seventy-five souls went down with Jacob into Egypt.'

For in the one place, by 'all flesh' is understood every man, and in the other, by 'seventy-five souls' are understood seventy-five men. And what was said, 'not in the words taught by human wisdom,' could have been said, 'not in the words of carnal wisdom'; just as what was said, 'You walk according to man,' could have been said, 'You walk according to the flesh.' But this appeared more plainly in what he subjoined: 'For when one says, I indeed am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not men?' What he was saying, 'You are natural,' and 'You are carnal,' he said more expressly, 'You are men,' which means, 'You live according to man, not according to God; and if you lived according to Him, you would be gods.' CHAPTER 5.

That concerning the nature of body and soul the opinion of the Platonists is indeed more tolerable than that of the Manichaeans, but is itself also to be reproved, since they ascribe the causes of all vices to the nature of the flesh. There is therefore no need, in our sins and vices, to accuse the nature of the flesh to the injury of the Creator; for in its kind and order it is good. But, having forsaken the good Creator, to live according to the created good is not good, whether anyone choose to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole man, who consists of soul and flesh (and who therefore can be signified by the name of the soul alone or by the name of the flesh alone).

For he who praises the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and accuses the nature of the flesh as evil, assuredly both desires the soul carnally and flees the flesh carnally, since he judges this by human vanity, not by divine truth. The Platonists indeed are not so foolish as the Manichaeans, that they should detest earthly bodies as though of an evil nature, since they attribute all the elements of which this visible and tangible world is compacted, and their qualities, to God the Maker; yet nonetheless they suppose that souls are so affected by their earthly frame and dying members, that from this come to them the diseases of desires and fears and of gladness or sadness;

in which four disturbances, as Cicero calls them, or passions, as most render the Greek word for word, all the viciousness of human conduct is contained. But if this is so, what is it that Aeneas, in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in the underworld that souls would return again to bodies, wonders at this opinion, exclaiming: 'O father, must we think that some lofty souls go hence to heaven, and again return to sluggish bodies? Why this dread longing for the light in the wretched ones?' Does this dread longing remain in souls from their earthly frame and dying members, even in that most vaunted purity?

Does he not assert that they have been purged from all such bodily plagues, as he says, when they begin again to wish to return into bodies? From which it is gathered that, even if it were so (which is altogether most vain), namely that there is an alternating, ceaselessly recurring cleansing and defiling of souls departing and returning, it could not truly be said that all the blameworthy and vicious motions of souls grow into them from earthly bodies, since according to these very men that 'dread longing,' as the noble speaker says, is so far from being from the body, that it compels the soul itself, purged from every bodily plague and set outside every body, to be in a body.

Whence even by their own admission the soul is affected, not by the flesh alone, so as to desire, fear, rejoice, and grieve, but it can also be agitated by these motions from itself. CHAPTER 6. On the quality of the human will, under whose judgment the affections of the mind are held to be either depraved or right. But it matters what the will of a man is like; for if it is perverse, it will have these motions perverse; but if it is right, they will be not only blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in all of them; indeed, they are all nothing other than wills. For what is desire and gladness but a will in consent to the things we will? And what is fear and sadness but a will in dissent from the things we will not?

But when we consent by seeking the things we will, it is called desire; and when we consent by enjoying the things we will, it is called gladness. Likewise, when we dissent from that which we are unwilling should happen, such a will is fear; but when we dissent from that which happens to us against our will, such a will is sadness. And altogether, according to the variety of things which are sought and shunned, just as the will of man is enticed or offended, so it is changed and turned into these or those affections. Wherefore the man who lives according to God, and not according to man, must be a lover of the good; whence it follows that he must hate evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice:

he who lives according to God owes a perfect hatred to the wicked, so that he neither hates a man on account of his vice, nor loves the vice on account of the man, but hates the vice and loves the man. For when the vice is healed, all that ought to be loved will remain, and nothing that ought to be hated. CHAPTER 7. That 'love' (amor) and 'affection' (dilectio) are found indifferently for both good and evil in the sacred Scriptures. For he whose purpose it is to love God, and to love his neighbor not according to man but according to God, even as also himself: without doubt he is, on account of this love, called of good will, which in the holy Scriptures is more usually called charity (caritas); but it is also called love (amor) according to those same sacred Scriptures.

For the apostle says that he who is to be chosen to rule the people ought to be a lover of the good; and the Lord Himself, when questioning the apostle Peter, having said, 'Do you love (diligis) me more than these?' Peter answered, 'Lord, You know that I love (amo) You'; and again the Lord asked, not whether Peter loved (amaret), but whether he loved (diligeret) Him; but he answered again, 'Lord, You know that I love (amo) You'; and at the third questioning Jesus Himself does not say, 'Do you love (diligis) me?' but, 'Do you love (amas) me?' Whereupon the evangelist follows, saying: 'Peter was grieved, because He said to him the third time, Do you love (amas) me?' though the Lord had said, not three times, but once, 'Do you love (amas) me?' but twice, 'Do you love (diligis) me?' Whence we understand that even when the Lord said, 'Do you love (diligis) me?' He was saying nothing other than, 'Do you love (amas) me?'

But Peter did not change the word of this one thing, but even the third time said, 'Lord, You know all things, You know that I love (amo) You.' I thought this should be recalled for this reason, because some suppose that 'affection' (dilectio) or 'charity' (caritas) is one thing, and 'love' (amor) another. For they say that 'affection' is to be taken in a good sense, 'love' in an evil one. But it is most certain that not even the authors of secular literature spoke thus. But let the philosophers see whether, or by what reasoning, they distinguish these; yet their own books sufficiently declare that they greatly esteem love in good things and toward God Himself.

But it had to be pointed out that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we set before all other writings, do not call love one thing, and affection or charity another. For we have already shown that love is spoken of in a good sense. But lest anyone suppose that love indeed is both in evil and in good, but affection is to be said only of good, let him attend to what is written in the psalm: 'But he who loves (diligit) iniquity hates his own soul,' and to that of the apostle John: 'If any man loves (dilexerit) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him.' Behold, in one place affection is both in good and in evil. But that no one should demand love in an evil sense (since we have already shown it in a good one), let him read what is written: 'For men shall be lovers of themselves, lovers of money.'

A right will, therefore, is good love, and a perverse will is evil love. Love, then, longing to have what is loved, is desire; but having and enjoying it, is gladness; fleeing what is contrary to it, is fear; and feeling it when it has befallen, is sadness. Accordingly these things are evil, if the love is evil; good, if it is good. Let us prove what we say from the Scriptures. The apostle 'desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ'; and, 'My soul has desired to long for Your judgments,' or if it is more fittingly said, 'My soul has longed to desire Your judgments'; and, 'The desire of wisdom leads to the kingdom.'

Yet the custom of speech has so prevailed that, if 'desire' (cupiditas) or 'concupiscence' (concupiscentia) is spoken and it is not added of what thing it is, it cannot be understood except in an evil sense. Gladness is in a good sense: 'Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous'; and, 'You have given gladness in my heart'; and, 'You will fill me with gladness with Your countenance.' Fear is in a good sense in the apostle, where he says: 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling'; and, 'Be not high-minded, but fear'; and, 'But I fear, lest, as the serpent beguiled Eve by his subtlety, so your minds also should be corrupted from the chastity which is in Christ.' But concerning sadness (which Cicero rather calls distress, but Virgil grief, where he says:

'they grieve and rejoice'; but I have rather chosen to call it sadness, because distress or grief is more usually spoken of bodily things), it is a more scrupulous question whether it can be found in a good sense. CHAPTER 8. On the three disturbances which the Stoics held to be in the mind of the wise man, grief or sadness being excluded, which the virtue of the mind ought not to feel. For what the Greeks call eupatheiai, but which Cicero in Latin named 'constancies' (constantiae), the Stoics held to be three, corresponding to the three disturbances in the mind of the wise man: for desire, will (voluntas); for gladness, joy (gaudium); for fear, caution (cautio);