Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 14

[I] Now that the most difficult questions concerning the rise of our age and the beginning of the human race have been dealt with, the order of our subject demands that we take up the discussion we have undertaken concerning the fall of the first man—or rather of the first human beings—and concerning the origin and propagation of human death. For God had not created men in the manner in which He created the angels, so that, even if they should sin, they could not die at all; but rather in such a way that, when they had discharged the duty of obedience, an angelic immortality and blessed eternity might follow without the intervention of death, whereas if they were disobedient, death might chastise them by a most just condemnation—as we have already said in the preceding book. [II] But concerning the very kind of death, I see that I must discuss the matter a little more carefully.

For although the human soul is truly said to be immortal, yet it too has a certain death of its own. For it is called immortal because in some manner, however slight, it does not cease to live and to feel; but the body is called mortal because it can be forsaken by all life and does not in itself in any way live. The death of the soul, therefore, comes to pass 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, comes to pass when the soul, forsaken by God, forsakes the body. For thus neither does the soul itself live from God, nor the body from the soul. And upon this kind of death of the whole man there follows that which the authority of the divine oracles calls the second death. This the Savior signified when He said:

Fear Him who has power to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna. But since this does not take place before the soul has been so joined to the body that they are severed by no separation, it may seem strange in what way the body is said to be slain by that death by which the soul is not forsaken, but, being animated and sentient, is tormented. For in that last and everlasting punishment—of which we must discuss more diligently in its own place—the death of the soul is rightly so called, because it does not live from God; but the death of the body—in what way, when it lives from the soul? For it cannot otherwise feel the bodily torments which will be after the resurrection.

Or is it because life of whatever kind is some good, while pain is an evil, that for this reason the body must not be said to live, in which the soul is the cause not of living but of grieving? The soul, then, lives from God when it lives well; for it cannot live well save when God works in it that which is good. But the body lives from the soul when the soul lives in the body, whether the soul itself lives or does not live from God. For the life in the bodies of the impious is the life not of their souls but of their bodies; which even dead souls—that is, souls forsaken by God—can confer upon them, their own life, however slight, whereby they are also immortal, not ceasing.

But in that last condemnation, although man does not cease to feel, yet because that very feeling is neither pleasant with delight nor healthful with rest, but is penal with pain, it is not without reason called death rather than life. And it is called the second because it comes after that first death by which is wrought the sundering of natures that cohere, whether of God and the soul or of the soul and the body. Concerning the first death, then—that of the body—it can be said that to the good it is good, to the evil evil; but the second, without doubt, as it belongs to none of the good, so is it good to none. [III] But a question not to be passed over arises: whether death, whereby soul and body are separated, is in truth good to the good; for if it is so, how can it be maintained that this very death is also the penalty of sin?

For the first human beings, had they not sinned, would assuredly not have suffered this. In what way, then, can that be good to the good, which could not have befallen save the evil? But again, if it could befall none but the evil, it ought not to be good to the good, but no good at all. For why should there be any penalty in those in whom there were no things to be punished? Wherefore it must be confessed that the first human beings were indeed so established that, if they had not sinned, they would have experienced no kind of death; but that these same first sinners were so visited with death that whatever should spring from their stock would be held liable to the same penalty. For nothing else was born of them than what they themselves had been.

For, in proportion to the greatness of that fault, condemnation changed nature for the worse, so that what preceded as a penalty in the first sinning men should also follow by nature in the rest who are born. For man is not from man as man is from dust. Dust was the material for making man; but man is the parent for begetting man. Accordingly, what earth is, flesh is not, although flesh was made from earth; but what a parent man is, that too is his offspring, a man. In the first man, therefore, the whole human race was present, destined to pass into its progeny through the woman, when that pair of spouses received the divine sentence of their condemnation.

And what man became—not when he was created, but when he sinned and was punished—that he begot, at least so far as concerns the origin of sin and death. For he was not, by sin or by penalty, reduced to that infantile dullness and that weakness of mind and body which we see in little ones—which God willed to be, as it were, the beginnings of whelps whose parents He had cast down into a bestial life and death; for, as it is written: Man, when he was in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the beasts that have no understanding, and was made like unto them—save that we perceive that infants are even weaker in the use and movement of their limbs and in the sense of seeking and avoiding than are the tenderest young of other animals;

as though human power raised itself the more excellently above the other living creatures, in proportion as it had held back and deferred its own impetus—like an arrow when the bow is drawn back—by being pulled backward. Not, then, to these infantile rudiments was the first man cast down or driven by unlawful presumption and just condemnation; but human nature was in him so far vitiated and changed that it suffered in its members a rebellious disobedience of concupiscence, and was bound by the necessity of dying, and thus begot offspring liable to sin and death—which is what it had become by vice and by penalty. And if from this bond of sin infants are loosed through the grace of Christ the Mediator, they can suffer only this death, which sunders the soul from the body;

but into that second, everlasting penal death they do not pass, being freed from the obligation of sin. [IV] But if anyone is troubled why they suffer even this first death, if it too is the penalty of sin, seeing that their guilt is abolished through grace—this question has already been treated and resolved in another work of ours, which we wrote concerning the baptism of little ones; where it was said that the experience of separation from the body is left to the soul for this reason, even though the bond of the crime has now been taken away: because, if immortality of the body were to follow immediately upon the sacrament of regeneration, faith itself would be enfeebled—that faith which is faith precisely when there is awaited in hope what is not yet seen in fact.

Moreover, by the strength and struggle of faith—at least in the more advanced ages—even the fear of death had to be overcome, which shone forth most conspicuously in the holy martyrs; of which struggle there would surely be no victory, no glory (since there could be no struggle at all), if after the laver of regeneration the saints could no longer suffer bodily death. But with infants to be baptized, who would not run all the more to the grace of Christ for this reason, that he might not be loosed from the body? And thus faith would be proved not by an invisible reward, but there would be no faith at all, since it would forthwith seek and receive the wages of its own work. But now, by a greater and more wonderful grace of the Savior, the penalty of sin has been turned to the uses of righteousness.

For then it was said to man: You shall die, if you sin; now it is said to the martyr: Die, lest you sin. Then it was said: If you transgress the commandment, you shall surely die; now it is said: If you refuse death, you shall transgress the commandment. What then was to be feared, that sin might not be committed, is now to be embraced, lest sin be committed. Thus, through the ineffable mercy of God, even the penalty of vices passes over into the arms of virtue, and the punishment of the sinner becomes the merit of the righteous. For then death was acquired by sinning, now righteousness is fulfilled by dying. But this is so among the holy martyrs, to whom by the persecutor one of two things is set forth: either to abandon the faith or to endure death.

For the righteous prefer to suffer by believing that which the first unrighteous suffered by not believing. For unless those had sinned, they would not have died; but these will sin, unless they die. Those, then, died because they sinned; these do not sin because they die. It came about through the fault of those that punishment was arrived at; it comes about through the punishment of these that fault is not arrived at—not because death has been made some good thing, which before was evil, but because God bestowed upon faith so great a grace that death, which is agreed to be contrary to life, has become the instrument through which one passes over to life.

[V] The Apostle, when he wished to show how much sin, with grace not coming to aid, avails to do harm, did not hesitate to call even the law itself, by which sin is prohibited, the strength of sin. The sting of death, he says, is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. Most truly indeed. For prohibition increases the desire of the unlawful deed, when righteousness is not so loved that the lust of sinning is overcome by delight in it. But that true righteousness may be loved and give delight, only divine grace comes to aid. But lest the law should on this account be thought an evil, since it was called the strength of sin, therefore he himself, treating this kind of question in another place, says: And so the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

That which is good, then, he says, was it made death to me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, wrought death in me through that which is good, that the sinner, or sin, might become beyond measure sinful through the commandment. He said "beyond measure" because transgression too is added, when, the lust of sinning being increased, the law itself is likewise despised. Why did we think this worth recalling? Because, forsooth, just as the law is not an evil when it increases the concupiscence of sinners, so neither is death a good when it increases the glory of those who suffer it—since either the one is abandoned for iniquity's sake and makes transgressors, or the other is undertaken for truth's sake and makes martyrs. And thus the law is indeed good, because it is a prohibition of sin; but death is evil, because it is the wages of sin.

But just as unrighteousness uses ill not only evil things but even good ones, so righteousness uses well not only good things but even evil ones. Hence it comes about that the evil use the law ill, although the law is a good, and the good die well, although death is an evil. [VI] Wherefore, as regards the death of the body, that is, the separation of the soul from the body, when they suffer it who are called the dying, it is good to none. For the very force by which both are torn asunder—which had been joined and interwoven in the living—has a harsh sensation, and one contrary to nature, as long as it lasts, until all sensation, which was present from that very union of soul and flesh, is taken away.

This whole distress is sometimes cut short by a single blow of the body or a sudden snatching-away of the soul, and, by its forestalling swiftness, does not permit it to be felt. Yet whatever it is in the dying that with grievous sensation takes sensation away, when it is borne piously and faithfully, it increases the merit of patience, but does not take away the name of penalty. Thus, although death, from the perpetuated propagation of the first man, is without doubt the penalty of the one being born, yet if it is paid out for piety's and righteousness' sake, it becomes the glory of the one being reborn; and although death is the retribution of sin, sometimes it obtains that nothing be requited to sin.

[VII] For whoever die for the confession of Christ, even without having received the laver of regeneration, it avails them as much for the remission of sins as if they had been washed in the sacred font of baptism. For He who said: Unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, by another sentence made these excepted, where He says, no less generally: Whosoever shall confess Me before men, I also will confess him before My Father who is in heaven; and in another place: Whosoever shall lose his life for My sake shall find it. Hence it is that it is written: Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. For what is more precious than that death through which it comes to pass that both all offenses are remitted and merits are heaped up more abundantly?

For those are not of such great merit who, since they could not defer death, were baptized and, with all their sins blotted out, departed from this life, as are those who did not defer death when they could, because they preferred to end life by confessing Christ rather than, by denying Him, to attain to His baptism. Which, if indeed they had done, even this would have been remitted to them in that laver—that through fear of death they had denied Christ—in which laver even to those was so monstrous a crime remitted who had slain Christ. But when could they, without the abundance of the grace of that Spirit who breathes where He wills, so love Christ that in so great a peril of life, under so great a hope of pardon, they could not deny Him?

The death of the saints, therefore, is precious—to whom the death of Christ was so bestowed and given beforehand with such grace that, to gain Him, they did not hesitate to spend their own—and it has shown that what had before been appointed for the penalty of sin has been reduced to these uses, that from thence a richer fruit of righteousness might be born. Death, therefore, ought not on that account to seem a good, because it has been turned to so great a usefulness—not by its own power, but by divine assistance—so that what was then set forth to be feared, lest sin should be committed, is now set forth to be undertaken, that sin may not be committed and, once committed, may be blotted out, and that the palm of righteousness, owed to a great victory, may be rendered.

[VIII] For if we consider more diligently, even when anyone dies faithfully and laudably for the truth, death is guarded against. For a part of it is undergone for this very reason, that the whole may not befall, and that the second death besides, which shall never end, may not come on. For the separation of the soul from the body is undergone, lest, God being separated from the soul, the soul itself also be separated from the body, and so, the first death of the whole man being completed, the second, everlasting death take it up. Wherefore death indeed, as I have said, when the dying suffer it, and when it works in them that they may die, is good to none, but is laudably endured for the holding or the gaining of a good; but when they are in it who are now called dead, it is not absurdly said to be both evil to the evil and good to the good.

For the souls of the pious, separated from the body, are in rest, but those of the impious pay their penalties, until the bodies of the former revive unto eternal life, but of the latter unto eternal death, which is called the second. [IX] But that time in which the souls, separated from the body, are either among good things or among evil, is it to be said to be after death rather than in death? For if it is after death, then it is no longer death itself, which has been transacted and is past, but the present life of the soul after it, that is good or evil. But death was then evil to them when it was, that is, when they were suffering it, when they were dying, since its grievous and troublesome sensation was present; which evil the good use well. But how is death, once accomplished, either good or evil, which now is not?

Moreover, if we attend still more diligently, that will not even appear to be death of which we said the sensation in the dying was grievous and troublesome. For as long as they feel, they still assuredly live; and if they still live, they are to be said to be before death rather than in death, since death, when it comes, takes away all bodily sensation, which is troublesome as it draws near. And by this, in what way we may call those dying who are not yet dead, but are already tossed by the last and death-bringing affliction with imminent death, is difficult to explain—even though these are rightly called dying, since, when the death that now impends has arrived, they are called not dying but dead.

No one, therefore, is dying save one living, since, when he is in such an extremity of life as are those whom we say are yielding up the soul, assuredly he who has not yet lost his soul still lives. The very same person, then, is at once both dying and living, but approaching death and departing from life; still, however, in life, because the soul is in the body; but not yet in death, because it has not yet withdrawn from the body. But if, when it shall have withdrawn, he will not even then be in death, but rather after death, when shall anyone say that he is in death? For no one will be dying, if it is impossible for anyone to be at once dying and living. For as long as the soul is in the body, we cannot deny that he is living.

Or if he is rather to be called dying, in whose body it is now being wrought that he should die, and no one can at once be both living and dying, I know not when anyone is living. [X] For from the moment anyone has begun to be in this body destined to die, it is never not being wrought in him that death should come. For its mutability, throughout the whole time of this life (if life it is to be called), effects this—that one arrives at death. For there is no one who is not, after a year, nearer than he was before the year, and tomorrow than today, and today than yesterday, and a little later than now, and now than a little before;

since whatever of time is lived is subtracted from the span of living, and daily there becomes less and less of what remains, so that the time of this life is altogether nothing else than a running toward death, in which no one is permitted to stand even a little, or to go somewhat more slowly; but all are urged on by an equal motion, nor are they driven forward with a different pace. For neither did he whose life was shorter pass his day more swiftly than he whose life was longer; but, since equal moments were snatched equally from both, the one had nearer, the other more remote, that toward which both were running with no unequal speed. It is one thing to have traversed a longer way, another to have walked more slowly. He, then, who to his death spends more extended spans of time, does not proceed more slowly, but accomplishes more of the journey.

Furthermore, if everyone begins to die—that is, to be in death—from the moment that death itself, that is, the taking-away of life, begins to be wrought in him (because, when it shall have been finished by taking away, he will then be after death, not in death): assuredly, from the moment he begins to be in this body, he is in death. For what else is being wrought in single days, hours, and moments, until that death which was being wrought, being consumed, is completed, and there begins now to be the time that is after death, which, while life was being taken away, was in death? Never, therefore, is man in life, from the moment he is in this body dying rather than living—if he cannot be at once both in life and in death. Or is he rather at once both in life and in death: in life, namely, in which he lives, until it be wholly taken away;

but in death, because he is now dying, since life is being taken away? For if he is not in life, what is it that is being taken away, until its complete consumption comes to pass? But if he is not in death, what is that very taking-away of life? For not without reason, when life has been wholly taken from the body, is it now said to be after death, unless because it was death while it was being taken away. For if, when it has been taken away, the man is not in death, but after death, when—except while it is being taken away—will he be in death?

[XI] But if it is absurd that we should say a man is already in death before he arrives at death (for to what does he draw near by passing through the times of his life, if he is already in it?)—especially because it is too strange that he should be said to be at once both living and dying, since he cannot be at once both waking and sleeping—it must be asked when he will be dying. For before death comes, he is not dying but living; but when death has come, he will be dead, not dying. The former, then, is still before death; the latter is already after death. When, therefore, is he in death? For then he is dying, so that, just as there are three when we say "before death, in death, after death," so three single terms may be rendered to the single stages: "living, dying, and dead."

When, therefore, he may be dying—that is, in death, where he is neither living, which is before death, nor dead, which is after death, but dying, that is, in death—is most difficult to define. For as long as the soul is in the body, especially if sensation also is present, without doubt the man lives, who consists of soul and body, and thereby is to be said to be still before death, not in death; but when the soul has withdrawn and taken away all sensation of the body, he is now held to be after death and dead. Between the two, therefore, that whereby he is dying, or in death, perishes; since, if he still lives, he is before death; if he has ceased to live, he is now after death. Never, therefore, is he grasped as dying, that is, in death.

So too in the passing of times the present is sought and not found, because it is without any span through which there is a passing from the future into the past. Ought we not, then, to see to it, lest by this reasoning the death of the body be said to be nothing at all? For if it is, when is it—that death in which no one, and in which no one can be? Since, if one lives, it is not yet, because this is before death, not in death; but if one has now ceased to live, it is no longer, because this too is after death, not in death. But again, if there is no death, either before or after, what is that which is called before death or after death? For this too is said in vain, if there is no death. And would that in paradise we had spent our lives by living well, so that in truth there were no death!

But now it not only exists, it is even so troublesome that it can neither be unfolded by any speech nor avoided by any reasoning. Let us therefore speak according to common usage (for we ought not to do otherwise) and say 'before death,' that is, before death occurs, as it is written: 'Praise no man before his death.' Let us also say, when it has occurred: 'After the death of this man or that, this or that was done.' Let us likewise speak of the present time as best we can, as when we say: 'That man, while dying, made his will,' and: 'While dying he left this and that to these and those persons' — although he could not do this at all unless he were living, and indeed he did it rather before death than 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 comes that saying: 'For in death there is no one who is mindful of thee.' For until they come to life again, they are rightly said to be in death, just as anyone is said to be in sleep until he awakes; and although we call those who are laid in sleep 'sleepers,' we cannot in the same manner call those who are now dead 'dying.' For they are no longer dying who, as far as pertains to the death of the body — of which we are now treating — are already separated from their bodies.

But this is what I said cannot be unfolded by any speech: in what way either the dying can be said to live, or those already dead can be said still to be in death even after death. For how can it be after death, if they are still in death? — especially since we do not call them 'dying,' as we call those who are asleep 'sleeping,' and those in weakness 'weak,' and those in pain assuredly 'suffering,' and those in life 'living'; whereas the dead, before they rise again, are said to be in death, and yet cannot be called 'dying.'

Wherefore I think it has come about not unfittingly nor incongruously — even if not by human contrivance, then perhaps by divine judgement — that this word 'moritur' (he dies) in the Latin tongue not even the grammarians have been able to decline by the rule by which other such words are declined. For from 'oritur' (it arises) is formed the verb of past tense 'ortus est' (it has arisen); and any similar words are declined through participles of the past tense. But from 'moritur,' if we seek the past-tense verb, the customary answer is 'mortuus est' (he has died), with the letter 'u' doubled. For 'mortuus' is said in the manner of 'fatuus,' 'arduus,' 'conspicuus' and any like words, which are not of the past tense, but since they are nouns, are declined without tense.

But that word — as though to decline what cannot be declined — has a noun set in place of the past-tense participle. Fittingly, then, it has come about that, just as the thing which it signifies cannot be done in the doing, so the word itself could not be declined in the speaking. Yet it can be brought about, by the aid of the grace of our Redeemer, that we may at least decline (avoid) the second death. For that is the graver death and the worst of all evils, which comes about not by the separation of soul and body, but rather by the joining of both in eternal punishment. There, on the contrary, men will not be before death and after death, but always in death; and by this they will never be living, never dead, but dying without end.

For never will it be worse for a man in death than where death itself will be without death. [XII] When therefore it is asked what death God threatened to the first men, if they should transgress the commandment they had received and not keep obedience — whether the death of the soul, or of the body, or of the whole man, or that which is called the second death — the answer must be: All of them. For the first death 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. Since the first consists of two, one of the soul, the other of the body: so that the first death of the whole man is when the soul, without God and without the body, pays its penalties for a time;

but the second death is where the soul, without God yet with the body, pays eternal penalties. When therefore God said to that first man whom He had set in paradise, concerning the forbidden food: 'On whatever day you eat of it, by death you shall die' — that threat embraced not only the earlier part of the first death, where the soul is deprived of God, nor only the latter part, where the body is deprived of the soul, nor only that whole first death alone, where the soul, separated both from God and from the body, is punished; but whatever there is of death, right up to the last, which is called the second, than which there is none later. [XIII] For after the transgression of the precept was committed, immediately, as divine grace forsook them, they were confounded by the nakedness of their bodies.

Whence too they covered their shameful parts with fig-leaves, which perhaps were the first things found by them in their disturbance; these were the same members as before, but before they were not shameful. They therefore felt a new movement of their disobedient flesh, as a kind of reciprocal punishment for their own disobedience. For now the soul, delighting in its own liberty turned to perversity and disdaining to serve God, was deprived of its former servitude of the body; and because by its own choice it had forsaken its higher Lord, it did not hold its lower servant to its own choice, 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 strife — or the victory — of that first transgression. [XIV] For God created man upright, being the author of natures, not indeed of vices; but man, depraved by his own will and justly condemned, begot offspring depraved and condemned. For we all were in that one man, when we all were that one man, who fell into sin through the woman who was made from him before the sin. There was not yet individually created and distributed to us the form in which we severally should live; but there already was the seminal nature from which we should be propagated;

and when this had been vitiated because of sin, bound by the chain of death, and justly condemned, man could not be born of man of any other condition. And thus, from the evil use of free will, the whole train of this calamity has arisen, which, through nature depraved at its origin, as though the root were corrupted, leads the human race by an unbroken chain of miseries down to the destruction of the second death, which has no end — except those alone who are set free by the grace of God. [XV] Wherefore, even if in what was said, 'By death you shall die,' since it was not said 'By deaths,' we understand only that death which comes about when the soul is forsaken by its own life, which is God (for it was not forsaken so that it should forsake, but it forsook so that it should be forsaken; for toward its evil, its own will is prior;

but toward its good, the will of its Creator is prior — whether to make it, when it was nothing, or to remake it, because it had fallen and perished) — even if, then, we understand that God announced this death when He said, 'On the day you eat of it, by death you shall die,' as though He said, 'On the day you forsake me through disobedience, I will forsake you through justice': assuredly in that death the others too were announced, which without doubt were to follow. For in this — that a disobedient movement arose in the flesh of the disobedient soul, on account of which they covered their shameful parts — was felt the one death, in which God forsook the soul. This was signified by His words, when to the man hiding himself in demented fear He said: 'Adam, where art thou?'

not indeed asking in ignorance, but admonishing by rebuke, that he might attend to where he was — namely, in a state 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 man: 'Earth thou art, and unto earth thou shalt go'; so that from these two, that first death, which is of the whole man, might be completed, which the second follows at the last, unless the man be set free by grace. For neither would the body, which is of the earth, return to 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 the law of nature, by which God made no death for man, but by the merit of sin, since God, avenging sin, said to man, in whom then we all were: 'Earth thou art, and unto earth thou shalt go.' [XVI] But the philosophers, against whose calumnies we defend the City of God, that is, His Church, think themselves to jeer wisely at us because we say that the separation of the soul from the body is to be reckoned among its penalties — because, forsooth, they suppose its perfect blessedness comes to it only when, wholly stripped of all body, it returns to God simple and alone and in a manner naked.

But if I found nothing in their writings by which this opinion might be refuted, I should have to argue more laboriously to demonstrate that it is not the body which is a burden to the soul, but the corruptible body. Whence comes that which we recalled from our own Scriptures in the earlier book: 'For the corruptible body weighs down the soul.' By adding the word 'corruptible,' he showed that the soul is weighed down not by any kind of body, but by such a body as was made corruptible by the punishment following upon sin. And even if he had not added it, we ought to understand nothing else.

But since Plato most openly proclaims that the gods made by the supreme God have immortal bodies, and represents that very God by whom they were made promising them, as a great benefit, that they shall remain forever with their bodies and be loosed from them by no death: what is it that these men, to harass the Christian faith, pretend not to know what they do know, or even, contradicting themselves and being at war with their own selves, prefer to say, while they cease not to contradict us? Surely these are the words of Plato, as Cicero rendered them into Latin, in which he represents the supreme God addressing the gods whom He made and saying: 'You who are sprung from the seed of gods, attend:

of these works I am the parent and the maker, and they are indissoluble against my will, although everything bound together can be dissolved; but it is by no means good to wish to dissolve by reason what has been bound together. But since you have come into being, immortal indeed you cannot be, nor indissoluble; 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 to your perpetuity than those with which you were bound together at the time when you were being begotten.' Behold, Plato says that the gods are both mortal by the joining of body and soul, and yet immortal by the will and counsel of the god by whom they were made.

If, then, it is a penalty for the soul to be bound in a body of any kind, why is it that the god, addressing them as though anxious lest perchance they 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 things which have arisen do not perish, and things joined together are not dissolved, but persevere incorruptibly? And whether indeed Plato says this truly of the heavenly bodies is another question.

For it is not straightway to be conceded to him that those globes of light, or little orbs shining with corporeal light above the earth by day or by night, live by certain souls of their own, and by souls intellectual and blessed at that — which he insistently affirms even of the whole universe itself, as of one greatest living creature, in which all the other living creatures are contained. But this, as I said, is another question, which we have not now undertaken to discuss. This much only I thought worth recalling against those who boast that they are called, or are, Platonists — whose pride in that name makes them blush to be Christians, lest the appellation common to them with the vulgar should cheapen the wearers of the pallium, a company all the more puffed up as it is the more scanty in number.

And seeking what they may reprehend in Christian doctrine, they harass the eternity of bodies, as though these things were mutually contradictory — that we should both seek the blessedness of the soul and yet wish it always to be in a body, as though bound in a wretched chain; whereas their own founder and master, Plato, says that a gift was granted by the supreme god to the gods made by him, that they should never die, that is, be separated from the bodies to which he joined them. [XVII] These men further contend that earthly bodies cannot be everlasting, although they do not doubt that the whole earth itself is a member of their god — not the supreme, yet a great one, that is, of this whole world — set in the midst and everlasting.

Since therefore that supreme god made for them another which 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 a living creature — with a soul, namely, as they assert, rational or intellectual, enclosed in so great a mass of its body — and constituted the four elements as it were the members of that very body, set and arranged each in its own place, the joining of which they wish to be indissoluble and everlasting, lest their god so great should ever die: what reason is there that in the body of the greater living creature the earth should be an eternal member, as it were the middle one, and the bodies of other earthly living creatures, if God should so will, as He wills that, could not be eternal?

But the earth, they say, must be given back to the earth, whence the earthly bodies of animals were taken; from which it follows, they say, that it is necessary for these to be dissolved and to die, and in this way to be restored to the stable and everlasting earth whence they had been taken. If anyone should now similarly affirm this also of fire, and say that the bodies which were taken thence to become heavenly living creatures must be given back to the universal fire: will not the immortality which Plato, as though the supreme god were speaking, promised to such gods, fall away as it were by the violence of this argument? Or does it not so happen there, because God wills it not — whose will, as Plato says, no force overcomes?

What, then, prevents God from being able to bring this about also concerning earthly bodies, seeing that Plato confesses that God can bring it about that things which have arisen do not perish, that things which are bound are not dissolved, that things which are taken from the elements are not given back, and that souls established in bodies neither ever forsake them and yet enjoy immortality and everlasting blessedness together with them? Why, then, could He not bring it about that earthly things too should not die? Or is God not powerful as far as Christians believe, but only as far as the Platonists wish? Doubtless, indeed, the philosophers could know the counsel and power of God, and the prophets could not;

whereas, on the contrary, His own Spirit rather taught the prophets of God to announce His will, so far as He deigned, but deceived the philosophers in coming to know it by human conjecture. Yet they ought not to have been so far deceived — not only by ignorance, but also by obstinacy — as both most openly to contradict themselves, asserting with great forces of argument that, in order for the soul to be able to be blessed, not only the earthly but every body must be fled from, and again saying that the gods have most blessed souls and yet are bound to eternal bodies — the heavenly gods to fiery bodies, but the soul of Jupiter himself, whom they hold to be this world, enclosed in absolutely all the corporeal elements by which this whole mass rises from earth to heaven.

For Plato opines that this soul is diffused and extended from the inmost middle of the earth, which geometers call the centre, through all its parts up to the highest and outermost bounds of heaven, by musical numbers, so that this world is a living creature, greatest, most blessed, everlasting — whose soul both holds the perfect felicity of wisdom and does not leave its own body, and whose body both lives forever from that soul, and, although not simple but compacted of so many and so great bodies, could not dull or slow it down.

Since therefore they allow these things by their own surmises, why are they unwilling to believe that by the divine will and power earthly bodies too can be made immortal, in which souls, separated from them by no death and weighed down by no burdens of them, may live everlastingly and happily — which 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 it may be blessed, every body must be fled from by the soul, let their gods flee from the globes of the stars, let Jupiter flee from heaven and earth; or if they cannot, let them be judged wretched.

But these men will have neither: they dare neither grant to their gods separation from their bodies, lest they seem to worship mortals, nor privation of blessedness, lest they confess them to be unhappy. Not all bodies, therefore, are to be fled from for the attaining of blessedness; but the corruptible, troublesome, heavy, dying ones — not such as the goodness of God made for the first men, but such as the punishment of sin compelled them to be. [XVIII] But it is necessary, they say, that natural weight should either 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 obtained the name of paradise;

but since this too must be answered, both on account of the body of Christ with which He ascended into heaven, and on account of the bodies of the saints, such as they will be in the resurrection, let them consider a little more attentively the earthly weights themselves. For if human art brings it about that, from metals which, placed in water, are straightway submerged, vessels fashioned in certain ways can even float:

how much more credibly and effectively can some hidden mode of the working of God — by whose most omnipotent will, as Plato says, neither do things which have arisen perish nor can things bound together be dissolved, since it is far more marvellous that incorporeal things should be joined to corporeal than that any bodies whatever should be joined to any bodies whatever — grant to earthly masses that they be depressed by no weight into the depths, and to the souls themselves most perfectly blessed, that they may place their bodies, though earthly yet now incorruptible, wherever they will, and move them whither they will, with the easiest position and motion! Or is it indeed to be believed that, if angels do this and snatch up whatever earthly animals from wherever they please and set them wherever they please, either they cannot, or they feel the burdens?

Why, then, should we not believe that the perfected and blessed spirits of the saints will, by divine gift, be able without any difficulty to bear their bodies whithersoever they will and to set them wherever they will? For while, as we are accustomed to feel the burden of earthly bodies in carrying, the greater the quantity, the greater also is the weight, so that more pounds press more than fewer: nevertheless the soul bears the members of its own flesh more lightly when they are robust in health than when they are wasted in weakness. And while to others carrying him a man sound and strong is more burdensome than one thin and sickly, yet he himself is more agile in moving and carrying his own body when in good health he has more bulk, than when in plague or famine he has the least of strength.

So much does it avail, even in the having of earthly bodies — though still corruptible and mortal — not the weight of quantity, but the measure of temperament. And who can unfold in words how great a distance lies between the present state which we call health, and the immortality to come? Not, therefore, do the philosophers refute our faith concerning the weights of bodies. For I do not wish to ask why they do not believe that an earthly body can be in heaven, when the whole earth is poised upon nothing. For perchance, concerning that very middle place of the world, because all heavier things come together into it, an argument even more like the truth might be held. This I say:

If the lesser gods, to whom Plato committed the making of the other earthly animals, and of man too among them, were able, as he says, to remove from fire the quality of burning, and to leave the quality of shining which should flash forth through the eyes: shall we then doubt to concede to the supreme God — to whose will and power that other conceded that things which have arisen do not die, and that things so diverse, so dissimilar, that is, corporeal and incorporeal, joined to one another can be sundered by no dissolution — that from the flesh of man, to which He grants immortality, He should take away corruption, leave the nature, retain the harmony of the figure and of the members, and withdraw the sluggishness of weight?

But concerning the faith of the resurrection of the dead, and concerning their immortal bodies, we must, if God will, treat more diligently at the end of this work. [XIX] Now let us explain what we have undertaken concerning the bodies of the first men; since not even this death — which is reputed good to the good, and is known not only to a few who understand or believe, but to all, by which the separation of the soul from the body comes about, by which certainly the body of a living creature, which was evidently living, evidently dies — could 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 departed live in rest, yet it would be so much the better for them to live with their bodies in good health, that even those who suppose it to be most blessed to be in every way without a body refute this opinion of theirs by their own judgement which contradicts it. 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, indissoluble life, that is, an eternal fellowship with their own bodies.

And that same Plato judges it to fare best with men, if only they have passed through this life piously and justly, that, separated from their bodies, they be received into the bosom of the very gods who never forsake their bodies — 'Forgetful, forsooth, that they may revisit the vaults above, and begin again to wish to return into bodies'; which Virgil is praised for having said out of Platonic doctrine (for thus he supposes that the souls of mortals can neither always be in their bodies, but are dissolved by the necessity of death, nor endure forever without bodies, but thinks that, by alternating turns, the living are made from the dead and the dead from the living without ceasing);

so that wise men are seen to differ from other men in this — that after death they are borne to the stars, so that each may rest somewhat longer in the star congenial to him, and thence again, forgetful of his former misery and overcome by the desire of having a body, returns to the labours and hardships of mortals; but those who have led a foolish life are rolled back close by into bodies owed to their merits, whether of men or of beasts. In this most harsh condition, therefore, he places even the good and wise souls, to which such bodies have not been distributed as those with which they might live always and immortally, so that they can neither remain in bodies nor endure in eternal purity without them.

Concerning this Platonic doctrine we have already said in the earlier books that Porphyry, in the Christian era, blushed at it, and not only removed the bodies of beasts from human souls, but also wished the souls of the wise to be so freed from corporeal bonds that, fleeing every body, they should be held blessed with the Father without end. And so, lest he should seem to be conquered by Christ, who promises perpetual life to the saints, he too established purged souls in eternal felicity without any return to their former miseries; and, that he might oppose Christ, denying the resurrection of incorruptible bodies, he asserted that they should live forever not only without earthly bodies, but without any bodies whatsoever.

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

and that the saints in the resurrection shall have those very bodies in which here they laboured, so that neither can anything of corruption or difficulty befall their flesh, nor anything of grief and unhappiness befall their blessedness? [XX] Accordingly, the souls of the departed saints now do not have as grievous the death by which they were separated from their bodies, because their flesh rests in hope, however much it may be seen to have received insults now without any feeling at all.

For they do not, as it seemed to Plato, desire their bodies through forgetfulness, but rather, because they remember what has been promised them by Him who deceives no one, who gave them assurance even concerning the integrity of their very hairs, they longingly and patiently await the resurrection of the bodies in which they suffered many hard things, being about to feel nothing further of the kind in them. For if they did not hate their flesh, when by spiritual right they were curbing it as it resisted their mind by its weakness, how much more do they love it, seeing it too is to be spiritual!

For just as the spirit serving the flesh is not incongruously called carnal, so the flesh serving the spirit will rightly be called spiritual — not because it will be turned into spirit, as some suppose from what is written: 'It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body,' but because it will be subject to the spirit with a supreme and wonderful ease of obedience, unto the fulfilling of the most assured will of an indissoluble immortality, every sense of trouble, all corruptibility and sluggishness being withdrawn.

For it will not only not be such as it now is in the best possible state of health, but not even such as it was in the first human beings before sin; who, although they would not have died had they not sinned, nevertheless used food as men do, bearing bodies not yet spiritual but still animal and earthly.

Although these bodies would not have grown decrepit with age, so as to be brought of necessity to death (a condition granted them by the wondrous grace of God through the tree of life, which stood in the midst of paradise together with the forbidden tree), yet they also took other foods besides the one tree that had been forbidden — forbidden not because it was itself an evil, but for the sake of commending the good of pure and simple obedience, which is a great virtue in a rational creature set under its Creator and Lord. For where no evil thing was being touched, surely, if what was forbidden were touched, the sin would be one of disobedience alone. Their eating of the other things, then, was done so that their animal bodies might not feel any distress through hunger and thirst;

but of the tree of life they partook for this reason: that death might not steal upon them from any quarter, nor that, worn out by old age, they should perish once the spans of their times had run their course — as though the other trees were for nourishment, but that one for a sacrament; so that the tree of life in the corporeal paradise is to be understood in the same way as, in the spiritual — that is, the intelligible — paradise, the Wisdom of God, of which it is written: She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her. [XXI] Hence some refer that whole paradise, in which sacred Scripture in its truth relates that the first human beings, parents of the human race, dwelt, to intelligible realities, and turn those trees and fruit-bearing woods into the virtues and manners of life;

as though those things were not visible and corporeal, but were spoken of or written in such a manner for the sake of signifying intelligible realities. As if paradise could not for that reason have been corporeal, because it can also be understood spiritually; just as if, for that reason, there had not been two women, Hagar and Sarah, and from them two sons of Abraham, one of the bondwoman, the other of the free, because the Apostle says that the two testaments are figured in them; or as though for that reason water had not flowed from any rock when Moses struck it, because there too, by a figurative signification, Christ can be understood, the same Apostle saying: And that rock was Christ.

No one, therefore, forbids us to understand paradise as the life of the blessed; its four rivers as the four virtues — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice; its trees as all the useful branches of learning; the fruits of the trees as the manners of the pious; the tree of life as wisdom itself, the mother of all good things; and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as the experience of a transgressed commandment. For God appointed a punishment for sinners, indeed a good one, since it is just, yet man does not experience it as good for himself. These things can also be understood as referring to the Church, so that we may take them rather as prophetic indications foreshadowing things to come: namely paradise as the Church herself, as is read concerning her in the Song of Songs;

the four rivers of paradise as the four Gospels; the fruit-bearing trees as the saints; their fruits as their works; the tree of life as the Holy of Holies, namely Christ; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as the will's own power of choice. For man, having despised the divine will, can make no use of himself except a ruinous one, and thus learns what difference there is between cleaving to the good that is common to all and taking delight in what is his own. For in loving himself he is given over to himself, so that, being thereby filled with fears and sorrows, he sings in the psalm — if indeed he perceives his own evils: My soul is troubled within me; and, being now corrected, he says: My strength I will keep unto thee.

Let these things, and any others that may be more fittingly said concerning a spiritual understanding of paradise, be said with no one forbidding it, provided nevertheless that the truth of that history, commended by its most faithful narration of things done, be also believed. [XXII] The bodies of the just, therefore, which are to be in the resurrection, will need neither any tree by which it may come about that they die of no disease or worn-out old age, nor any other bodily nourishments by which any distress of hunger and thirst might be avoided; since they will be clothed with the sure and in every way inviolable gift of immortality, so that they may eat, if they will, by possibility and not by necessity.

This the angels also did, when they appeared visibly and tangibly — not because they had need, but because they willed and were able, that by a certain humanity of their ministry they might accord with men (for it is not to be believed that the angels ate in a mere phantom, when men received them into hospitality); although, to those who did not know whether they were angels, they seemed to eat with a need like our own. Whence it is that the angel says in the Book of Tobit: You saw me eat, but you saw with your sight — that is, you supposed that I took food, as you do, out of the necessity of refreshing the body.

But even if concerning the angels something more credible can perhaps be argued, the Christian faith at least does not doubt concerning the Saviour himself that, even after the resurrection, in a flesh now indeed spiritual, yet nonetheless real, he took food and drink with his disciples. For it is not the power, but the need, of eating and drinking that will be taken away from such bodies. Hence they will also be spiritual, not because they will cease to be bodies, but because they will subsist by a life-giving spirit. [XXIII] For just as these bodies, which have a living soul but not yet a life-giving spirit, are called animal bodies, and yet are not souls but bodies: so those are called spiritual bodies;

yet far be it from us to believe that they will be spirits, but rather that they will have the substance of the flesh of the body, though suffering no carnal sluggishness or corruption, by reason of the life-giving spirit. Then man will be no longer earthly, but heavenly; not because the body, which was made of the earth, will not be the very same, but because by a heavenly gift it will already be such that, its nature not lost but its quality changed, it may be fit even to inhabit heaven. Now the first man was made of the earth, earthly, into a living soul, not into a life-giving spirit — which was reserved for him after the merit of obedience.

Therefore his body, which had need of food and drink lest it be afflicted by hunger and thirst, and which was kept from the necessity of death not by that absolute and indissoluble immortality, but by the tree of life, and was held in the flower of youth, was without doubt not spiritual but animal; yet in no wise destined to die, unless by transgressing it had fallen into the sentence of God who foretold and threatened, and had, though nourishment even outside paradise was not denied to it, been kept from the tree of life and handed over to be finished off by time and old age — at least in that life which, in a body albeit animal, until it should become spiritual by the merit of obedience, it could have had perpetually in paradise had it not sinned.

Wherefore, even if we understand that this manifest death, by which the separation of soul from body occurs, was also signified together in that which God had said: In the day that you eat of it, you shall die the death: it ought not therefore to seem absurd, because they were not straightway loosed from the body on that very day on which they took the forbidden and death-bringing food. For on that day their nature, changed for the worse and vitiated, and separated by a most just separation from the tree of life, brought about in them the necessity even of bodily death — with which necessity we too have been born. On which account the Apostle does not say: The body indeed is destined to die because of sin; but says: The body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. Then he added: