Latin original · 40 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 5:2934–5:2973 (4615 verses in all)
Why, then, Peter should have wished to mention only those to whom, when shut up in prison, the Gospel was preached—those who in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built, were unbelieving—you see how obscure a matter it is, and what things move me not to dare to affirm anything from this. To this is added that, when the apostle had said, 'which also baptism, in a similar form, now saves you—not the putting off of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, swallowing up death, that we might be made heirs of eternal life, having gone into the heavens, angels and Powers and Virtues being made subject to Him'—he immediately subjoined:
'Since Christ therefore suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same knowledge; for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sins, to this end, that he may now live the remaining time in the flesh no longer by the desires of men but by the will of God.' Then he added: 'For the time past suffices to have accomplished the will of men, walking in lusts and concupiscences and drunkenness, in revellings, drinking-bouts, and unlawful services of idols; wherein they are astonished that you do not run with them into the same confusion of luxury, blaspheming. They shall render account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.' Having said these things, he subjoins:
'For this cause was the Gospel preached also to the dead, that they might indeed be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.' Whom does this depth not move? He says the Gospel was preached to the dead. If we understand these to be those who have departed from the body, they will, I think, be those of whom he said above, 'who were unbelieving in the days of Noah'—or certainly all whom Christ found among the nether regions. What, then, does he mean by 'that they might indeed be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit'? In what way are they judged in the flesh which they do not have, if they are among the nether regions, or which they have not yet received back, if they are already loosed even from the pangs of hell?
For not even, if (as you say in your inquiry) the nether regions were emptied out, are all who were then there to be believed to have risen in the flesh; nor did those who appeared risen with the Lord receive back their flesh for this purpose, that they might be judged in it according to man—which I do not see how it can be understood even of those who were unbelieving in the days of Noah; for it is not written, nor can it be believed, that they lived in the flesh, or that the pangs of hell were therefore loosed for them, that those who were freed from thence might receive back the flesh to pay the penalty. What then means 'that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit'?
Or was it perhaps granted to those whom Christ found among the nether regions, that through the Gospel they might be made alive in the spirit, although at the future resurrection they are to be judged in the flesh, so that they might pass through some penalty of the flesh into the kingdom of God? But if this is so, why is this said only of those who once did not believe in the days of Noah, and not also of the rest, whom the visitation of Christ found there and who, through the preaching of the Gospel, afterwards revived in the spirit, to be judged in the flesh by a transitory penalty? But if we take it of all, the question remains why Peter mentioned only those who were then unbelieving when the ark was being built.
That also moves me, that those who try to give a reason for this matter say, therefore, that when Christ descended to the nether regions, for those who were found there those places of punishment were emptied out as it were like prisons, because they had not heard the Gospel which was being preached throughout the whole world while they lived, and had just causes why they should not have believed what had not been announced to them; but that thereafter those will have no excuse who despise the preaching of the Gospel celebrated and diffused among all nations; and therefore, those prisons being then emptied out, a just judgment now remains, whereby the obstinate and unbelieving are punished even with eternal fire.
But those who hold this do not consider that this same excuse can belong to all who, even after the resurrection of Christ, departed from this life before the Gospel reached them. For it is not the case that, after the Lord returned from the nether regions, no one was permitted to go to the nether regions except one who had heard the Gospel—since so many were dying throughout the whole world before this announcement reached them.
All these will have the excuse which is said to be taken away from those to whom the Lord, when He had come—because they had not heard before—is said to have preached in hell; unless perhaps it be said that even those who, after the Lord's resurrection, have died or do die when the Gospel has not yet been announced to them, could or can hear it there among the nether regions, so as to believe there what ought to be believed concerning Christ's truth, and may themselves also have that remission and salvation which those obtained to whom Christ made announcement there. For it is not the case that, because Christ again ascended from the nether regions, His fame was therefore extinguished there; for from here too He ascended into heaven, and yet by the announcement of Him those who have believed in Him shall be saved.
For this reason indeed He was exalted and there was given to Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Him every knee should bow, not only of things heavenly and earthly but even of things infernal. But if we admit this opinion, by which it can be thought that men who while they lived did not at all believe are able to believe in Christ among the nether regions, who could bear the absurd and faith-contrary consequences that follow? First, that we should seem to grieve in vain over those who departed from the body without that grace, and in vain to take care and urgently exhort men to receive it before they die, lest they be punished with everlasting death.
Or, if only those believe uselessly and fruitlessly among the nether regions who, having the Gospel announced to them, refused to believe here, but it will profit those to believe who did not here despise what they could not at all hear—another and more absurd consequence follows: that the Gospel should not be preached here, since all are assuredly going to die and, without any guilt of despising the Gospel, ought to come to the nether regions, that it may be able to profit them, when they shall have believed there—which to hold is a mark of impious folly. Wherefore let us hold most firmly what faith holds, confirmed by best-founded authority:
That Christ died according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures, and the rest which have been recorded concerning Him with best-attested truth. Among these is also this: that He was among the nether regions, and, their pangs being loosed by which it was impossible for Him to be held, He is rightly understood also to have loosed and delivered whom He willed; and that the body, which He had left on the cross and which was laid in the sepulchre, He received back. But concerning that question which you have proposed, of the words of Peter the apostle, since you perceive the things that move me, and perhaps others too, if they be examined more diligently, may move us, let us seek—either by pondering these things with ourselves, or by consulting those whom it is fitting and whom we are able to consult.
Consider nevertheless whether perhaps that whole passage which the apostle Peter says concerning the spirits shut up in prison, who in the days of Noah had not believed, does not pertain to the nether regions at all, but rather to those times, whose figure he transferred to these times. For that deed done had been a figure of things to come, so that those who now do not believe the Gospel, while in all nations the Church is being built up, should be understood to be like those who then did not believe when the ark was being built; but those who believe and are saved through baptism should be compared to those who then were saved in that same ark through water. Whence he says: 'So also baptism, in a similar form, now saves you.'
To this likeness of figure, therefore, let us fit the rest also concerning the unbelieving, and let us not suspect that among the nether regions the Gospel was preached, or is even still being preached, to make believers and to deliver them—as though there too a Church were established. To that sense, then, which moves you, those seem to have been drawn who believed that Peter meant this, because he said the Gospel was preached to the spirits shut up in prison—as though souls which were then in the flesh and were enclosed in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison cannot be understood as spirits. From such a prison he who says this desires to be delivered:
'Bring my soul out of prison, that it may confess to Thy name'—which is elsewhere called the shadow of death, from which men are delivered assuredly not among the nether regions but here, of whom it is written: 'Those who sat in the shadow of death, a light has arisen for them.' But to those in the days of Noah it was preached in vain, because they did not believe, though the patience of God awaited them through the time of so many years in which that same ark was being built—for even its building was in a certain manner a preaching—just as now those like them do not believe, who under the same figure are shut up in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison, gazing in vain upon the Church being constructed throughout the whole world, with judgment impending like a flood, by which then all the unbelieving perished. For the Lord says:
'As in the days of Noah, so shall it also be in the days of the Son of man. They ate, they drank, they were given in marriage, they took wives, until Noah entered into the ark; the flood came and destroyed them all.' But because that deed done also signified a future thing, therefore there the flood signified both baptism to the faithful and punishment to the unfaithful—just as in a figure not of a deed done but only of a thing said, that which is written concerning the stone, by which Christ was signified, two things were foretold: both an offence to the unfaithful and an edifice to the faithful.
But sometimes in the same figure, whether of deed or of word, even two things signify some one thing—just as the faithful were signified by the timbers which were fitted together for the fabric of the ark, and the same faithful also by the eight souls which were delivered in that same ark; in the manner in which, in that evangelical likeness of the sheepfold, the same Christ is both the shepherd and the door. Nor let it move anyone to hinder this understanding, that the apostle Peter said the same Christ preached to those shut up in prison, who once had not believed in the days of Noah—so that we should therefore not think this must be understood, because at that time Christ had not yet come. For He had not yet come indeed in the flesh, as He came when after these things He was seen on earth and dwelt among men.
Yet from the beginning of the human race—whether to convict the wicked, as He did with Cain, and earlier with Adam himself and his wife; or to console the good; or to admonish both, so that some might believe unto their salvation and others might not believe unto their punishment—He assuredly came not in the flesh but in the spirit, addressing through fitting visions those whom He willed, as He willed. But as for what I said, 'He came in the spirit,' the Son Himself indeed, in the substance of the deity, since He is not a body, is assuredly Spirit. But what does the Son do without the Holy Spirit, or without the Father, since all the works of the Trinity are inseparable? The very words of the Scripture also, of which we treat, indicate this sufficiently, I think, to those who attend diligently:
'For Christ,' he says, 'once died for our sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also, coming to those spirits who were shut up in prison, He preached—those who once had been unbelieving in the days when the patience of God waited, in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built.' Now, as I judge, the order of the words is to be attended to:
Christ, put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit—in which spirit, coming, He preached also to those spirits who once had been unbelieving in the days of Noah; because, before He came in the flesh to die for us (which He did once), He often before came in the spirit to those whom He willed, admonishing them by visions as He willed, assuredly in the spirit, by which spirit He was also made alive, when in His passion He was put to death in the flesh. For what does 'made alive in the spirit' mean, except that the same flesh, in which alone He had been put to death, rose again by the life-giving spirit?
For that Jesus was put to death in the soul—that is, in that spirit which is man's—who would dare to say, since the death of the soul is nothing but sin, from which He was altogether immune, when for us He was put to death in the flesh? For if the souls of all men are from that one which was breathed into the first man, through whom sin entered into the world and through sin death, and thus it passed unto all men, then either the soul of Christ is not thence, since He had no sin at all, whether original or personal, on account of which death would seem due to Him—for He paid on our behalf that death which He did not owe, in whom the prince of the world and overseer of death found nothing;
for it is not absurd that He who created the soul for the first man should create one also for Himself—or, if it too is from that source, that by assuming it He cleansed it, so that, coming to us without any sin whatever, whether committed or transmitted, He should be born of the Virgin. But if souls are not propagated from that one, and the flesh alone derives original sin from Adam, then the Son of God so created a soul for Himself as He creates for the rest, which nevertheless He did not mingle with the flesh of sin, but with the likeness of the flesh of sin. For He took from the Virgin a true substance indeed of flesh, yet not the flesh of sin, since it was neither sown nor conceived from carnal concupiscence—mortal indeed and mutable through the ages, as being most like, without sin, to the flesh of sin.
And through this, whatever true opinion there may be concerning the soul—none of which I yet dare rashly to affirm, save only to repudiate that one by which souls are believed to be thrust, according to the merits of I know not what former acts of theirs, one by one into single bodies as into prisons—certainly the soul of Christ is not only immortal according to the nature of the rest, but was also put to death by no sin nor punished by any damnation, by which two causes the death of the soul can be understood; and therefore Christ could not be said to be 'made alive in the spirit' according to it. For He was made alive in that in which He had been put to death. Therefore it was said of the flesh; for it, the soul returning, revived, since it was the very thing that was dead, the soul departing.
He was therefore said to be put to death in the flesh, because He died according to the flesh alone; but made alive in the spirit, because, by the working of that spirit in which He came to those He willed and preached, the flesh itself also, made alive, arose—the flesh in which He now came to men. Accordingly, that too which was afterwards said concerning the unbelieving, 'who shall render account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead,' does not follow that we should here understand those to be dead who departed from the body. For it can be that he called the unfaithful dead—that is, dead in soul—of whom it is said, 'Let the dead bury their dead'; but the living, those who believe in Him, not hearing in vain:
'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall enlighten thee'; of whom the Lord Himself also says: 'The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live.' Accordingly, that also which follows, and Peter says, 'For this cause was the Gospel preached also to the dead, that they might indeed be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit,' does not compel it to be understood among the nether regions. For for this cause, in this life, the Gospel was preached also to the dead—that is, to the unfaithful and the unrighteous—that, when they had believed, they might indeed be judged according to men in the flesh, that is, in various tribulations and in the very death of the flesh. Whence the same apostle in another place says that it is the time for judgment to begin at the house of the Lord.
'But live according to God in the spirit'—because in it too they had been put to death, when they were held by the death of unfaithfulness and impiety. This exposition of the words of Peter, if it displeases anyone, or if, even though it does not displease, it nevertheless does not suffice for anyone, let him seek to understand those words according to the nether regions. If he shall have been able so to resolve those things by which I have above mentioned that I am moved, as to take away their doubtfulness, let him impart it to me also. And if this be done, those words will be able to be understood in either way; this opinion is convicted of no falsity. But to those questions which you sent before, apart from the vision of God through the body—whence a greater work must be undertaken—I have replied as I could, and sent it by Asellus the deacon, which I now think you have received.
But in your recent memorandum, to which I have now replied, you had asked two things, both of which have been treated—one more at length, the other more briefly—namely concerning the words of the apostle Peter and concerning the soul of the Lord. As for the copy of your letter which contains the inquiry whether the substance of God can be seen bodily as though in a place, it has somehow gone astray among us and could not be found, though long sought; again I remind you not to be reluctant to send it. CLXV. TO THE TRULY HOLY LORDS, AND VENERABLE IN ALL THE LOVE OF OFFICES, HIS SONS MARCELLINUS AND ANAPSYCHIA, JEROME SENDS GREETING IN CHRIST.
At last I have received from Africa the letter of your unanimity, and I do not regret the boldness with which, while you kept silent, I repeatedly pressed my letters upon you, so that I might earn a reply and learn that you are well not from others' report but rather from your own words. I remember your little question concerning the state of the soul — nay, that greatest of ecclesiastical questions — whether it has fallen from heaven, as the philosopher Pythagoras and all the Platonists and Origen suppose; or is an emanation of God's substance, as the Stoics, Manichaeus, and the Spanish heresy of Priscillian imagine; or whether souls, once created, are kept in God's treasury.
— as certain churchmen confidently believe out of a foolish persuasion — or whether they are made daily by God and sent into bodies, according to what is written in the Gospel: 'My Father works until now, and I too work'; or whether it comes by transmission (ex traduce), as Tertullian, Apollinaris, and the greatest part of the Westerns assert, so that, just as body is born from body, so soul is born from soul and subsists on a condition similar to that of the brute beasts. As to what I think about this matter, I know that I once wrote in my little works against Rufinus, in the pamphlet directed against him.
— which he presented to Anastasius of holy memory, bishop of the Roman church — in which, by a slippery and cunning, nay, foolish confession, while he strives to delude the simplicity of his hearers, he made a mockery of his own faith, or rather of his own perfidy. I think that your holy father Oceanus has those books, for they were published long ago, refuting the many calumnies of Rufinus's book against us. Certainly you have there the holy and learned man, Bishop Augustine, who will be able to teach you by the living voice, as they say, and to expound his own — nay, through himself, our — opinion.
Long ago I wished to undertake the volume of Ezekiel and to fulfill the frequent promise I had made to my zealous readers; but at the very outset of dictating, my mind was so confounded by the devastation of the western provinces and especially of the city of Rome that, as the common proverb has it, I did not even know my own name, and for a long while I kept silent, knowing that it was a time of tears. This year, however, when I had completed three books, there came the sudden onslaught of the barbarians of whom your Virgil says, 'and the Barcaeans ranging far and wide,' and of whom holy Scripture says concerning Ishmael:
'He shall dwell over against the face of all his brethren' — thus he overran the frontier of Egypt, of Palestine, of Phoenicia, of Syria, sweeping everything along with him like a torrent, so that we scarcely, by the mercy of Christ, were able to escape their hands. But if, according to the illustrious orator, 'amid arms the laws are silent,' how much more the studies of the Scriptures, which require both a multitude of books and silence and the diligence of copyists, and — what is especially their own — the security and leisure of those who dictate! And so I have sent two books to my holy daughter Fabiola, from whom, if you wish, you may borrow copies; for owing to the shortness of time I could not have others transcribed.
When you have read them and seen the vestibules, it will be an easy conjecture what kind of house the whole will be. But I trust in the mercy of God, who helped us in the most difficult beginning of the aforesaid work, that He Himself will help also in the nearly final parts of the prophet — those in which the wars of Gog and Magog are told — and in the very last parts, in which the building, variety, and measurement of the most sacred and inexplicable temple are described. Our holy brother Oceanus, to whom you desire to be commended, is so great and so eminent a man, and so learned in the law of the Lord, that even without any request of ours he can instruct you and expound our opinion on all questions of the Scriptures, according to the measure of our common ability.
May Christ our God, the Almighty, keep you unharmed and flourishing in long life, my lords truly holy. 166. ON THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL. Our God, who has called us into His own kingdom and glory, I have prayed and do pray, that what I write to you, holy brother Jerome, consulting you concerning those things which I do not know, He may will to be fruitful to us. For although you are much greater than I am in age, yet I too, already an old man, consult you; but for learning what is needful, no age can seem to me too late, since, even though it better befits the old to teach than to learn, it is still better to learn than to be ignorant of what they should teach.
Indeed, in all my straits, which I suffer in the most difficult questions, I bear nothing more grievously than the absence of your charity at so great a distance, so that I can scarcely send my letters, scarcely receive yours, at intervals not of days, not of months, but of several years. Whereas, if it could be done, I should wish to have you daily present, with whom I might speak of whatever I wished. Yet not on that account ought I to have failed to do what I could, even if I could not do the whole of what I wished.
Behold, there has come to me a devout young man, a brother in catholic peace, in age a son, in rank our fellow-presbyter, Orosius — keen of intellect, ready of speech, ardent in zeal, desiring to be a useful vessel in the house of the Lord for the refuting of the false and pernicious doctrines that have slaughtered the souls of the Spaniards far more disastrously than the barbarian sword has slaughtered their bodies. For from there, from the shore of the Ocean, he has hastened all the way to us, stirred by the report that from me he might hear whatever he wished concerning those things he desired to know. Nor did he reap no fruit of his coming: first, that he should not believe too much of the fame about me; then, I taught the man what I could, and as for what I could not, I directed him where he might learn it, and I exhorted him to go to you.
In this matter, since he received my counsel or rather precept willingly and obediently, I asked him that, on coming from you, he might return to his own country by way of us. Holding to this promise of his, I believed that an opportunity had been granted me by the Lord, whereby I might write to you concerning those things which I desire to know through you. For I was seeking whom I might send to you, and no one suitable readily presented himself — one both trustworthy in acting, eager in obeying, and practiced in traveling. When therefore I had found this young man by experience, I could not doubt that he was the very one such as I was asking of the Lord. Receive then those things which, at my request, may you not think it a burden to open up and discuss. The question concerning the soul moves many, among whom I confess that I too am one. For what I hold most firmly concerning the soul, I will not be silent about;
then I will add what I still wish to be resolved for me. The soul of man is immortal after a certain manner of its own; for it is not immortal in every way, as God is, of whom it is said that He alone has immortality; for concerning the deaths of the soul holy Scripture makes many mentions, whence comes that saying: 'Let the dead bury their dead.' But because it so dies, being alienated from the life of God, that nevertheless it does not altogether cease to live in its own nature, it is thus found for some cause mortal, in such a way that it is also not without reason called immortal. The soul is not a part of God.
For if it were, it would in every way be unchangeable and incorruptible; and if it were such, it would neither fall away to the worse nor advance to the better, nor would it either begin to have in itself something it did not have, or cease to have something it had, as far as pertains to its own affections. But that it stands quite otherwise, there is no need of testimony from without; whoever attends to himself recognizes it. And it is said in vain by those who wish the soul to be a part of God, that this its stain and baseness, which we see in the most wicked men, and finally this infirmity and sickness, which we feel in all men, is in it not from itself but from the body.
What difference does it make from what source it sickens, if, being unchangeable, it could not sicken from any source whatever? For that which is truly unchangeable and incorruptible can be changed or corrupted by the accession of nothing; otherwise not only Achilles, as the fables tell, but all flesh would be invulnerable, if no mischance befell it. That nature therefore is not unchangeable, which in some manner, from some cause, in some part, is changeable. But it is impious to believe God to be anything but truly and supremely unchangeable. The soul, therefore, is not a part of God. That the soul is also incorporeal, although it can be persuaded with difficulty to the more slow-witted, is nevertheless, I confess, persuaded to me.
But lest I either needlessly raise a dispute about a word or deservedly suffer one, since, when the matter is agreed upon, there is no need to contend about a name: if every substance, or essence, or whatever more fitly names that which in some way exists in itself, is a body, then the soul is a body. Likewise, if that alone is pleased to be called an incorporeal nature which is supremely unchangeable and is everywhere whole, then the soul is a body, since it is not any such thing. But further, if there is no body except what is so placed or moved through a space of place, by some length, breadth, and height, that it occupies a greater place with its greater part and a smaller with its smaller, and is less in a part than in the whole, then the soul is not a body.