A re-examination of the question concerning death, which entered into the world through sin. 1. You have, I believe, that which may touch and goad you; but if you are once more stirred up, I know that, by God's gift, you will be bound the more tightly hereafter, so that you may not be stirred. 2. Yet, by a necessary consideration, I shall come back to the points above, exploring more closely what you think about the penalty which the transgression of our first parents merited by the divine judgment; and by leading you back to this question, I shall once more lay open your pit. When this has been untangled, and when the authority of the divine Scriptures has pressed upon your throat, you will know that you have furnished arms to the Gentiles and the Jews — with all your books — but arms, to be sure, of lead;
for they could have no strength to overthrow the faith that is in Christ. 3. But let us see again what they are, and of what kind, in which — I ask — who is this inexplicable error of the labyrinth? What insoluble problems of the Theban monster? In your letter, which, as we have recalled, was sent to Pope Zosimus of holy memory, you are displeased, and you condemn, the one who holds that Adam was made mortal — that, whether he sinned or did not sin, he would have died. And you say that this too is not supported by reason; 'for I believe,' you say, 'that he was indeed made immortal, but in such a way that, had he not sinned by tasting of the tree of life, he might have been able to attain the strength of immortality.'
You add also that he is to be rightly reproved who contradicts the Apostle's preaching when he says: 'As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Cor. 15:22). And presently you append this other testimony: 'Through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead' (ibid.). When the simple Christian hears these things, believing that no guile, no deceit of falsehood is being brought forward — in the manner in which the Church is wont to be taught by the apostles — he reckons you his best and own master, and being intent on hearing the rest of the same Apostle which you pursue in this cause, he decides.
But you, having one thing shut up in your breast and another ready on your tongue, a novel and distinguished disputant, now thrust this into that work of yours, elaborated after so long a time in Cilicia. 4. Therefore, by a necessary repetition of the chapter, let us once more scrutinize what new and unheard-of thing you have brought thence, having ploughed the sea and surveyed the East. 'There entered therefore,' you say, 'according to the Apostle, through one man sin into this world, and through sin death, since the world beheld him as guilty and destined to the condemnation of eternal death.' And you subjoin: 'But upon all men death alone passed, because one form of judgment comprised every transgressor, even of the remaining age;
yet this death is not permitted to rage against the saints, nor against any innocent ones, but it passes only into those (you say) whom it shall have seen to be imitators of the transgression; which transgression, although it was not made natural, was nevertheless a form of sin; and on account of this, although it does not weigh down those being born, yet it accuses those who imitate it: but the judicial death passed over into that, in that all sinned — yet by free will.' These then are the more probable and refined senses of your doctrine; and of those definitions of the earlier time, is loss made?
Or have you something hidden and profound, which perhaps is to be expounded to us by the Brahmins, the Gymnosophists, or the Hyperboreans, or whatever other nations there are wiser than those of the known world? 5. Let us come then to that more recent definition, by which it pleased you to say that sin entered through one man, and through sin death; but that upon all men death only passed over. I ask — do not abuse the slowness or the thinness of my wit — you say that two things entered, sin and death; but you will have it that death alone passed into men, yet not into absolutely all men. Most foolishly! For if sin entered and did not pass through, where did that remain which entered?
I suppose it is to be expected that the partner should wait until it goes out, after some business has been transacted! But if we are dealing seriously — and a matter so great is not to be laughed at — then, by your own reasoning: if sin was able to enter, it passed through; but if it could not pass through, neither did it enter. Or did it enter in order to stand still? But if it is absurd even to say this, it passed through — and whither, except that it was able to pass into all men? Then, how an imitative sin (as it pleases you) should have a passage, while an original one should not, you will never be able to explain. These things cannot be read without a guffaw — nay rather, without tears — since you are rather to be wept over by Christians than laughed at.
To those who read you, then — but Christians and prudent ones — let us leave it to judge what they ought to think of your vanity. For who could even suspect that you, in your foregoing opinion, feel anything other than what all those felt who, when Pope Zosimus of holy memory presided, the priests of God condemned Pelagius, Coelestius, and yourself, concerning all those chapters about Adam, which were earlier reproved and condemned by you, and now, as though gathered up again and stored away, have been deemed worthy to be received into your faith. 6.
Next, concerning this question — namely, of death — let us see what the universal Church (which in the Greek tongue we call catholic) says and feels, and teaches her sons, by what death she knows that both Adam and Eve were punished after the transgression. Was it that death which severs the soul from the body, which we know and see to be common to absolutely all the human race from him? Or that which is spoken of according to the soul, and is eternal, of which it is written: 'The widow who lives in pleasures is dead while living' (1 Tim. 5:6); and again: 'Let the dead bury their own dead' (Matt. 8:22), and whatever other things can be brought forward for this understanding?
But there is no doubt that they were punished by both, and that Christ brought a remedy for both. For since through the laver of regeneration and renewal He remits sins, and is to confer immortality through the resurrection of the flesh — which now we hold in hope through faith — upon all at one time; it must be believed that the aforesaid progenitors of the human race were condemned in no other way than by a twofold death, and that both pass into the race. 7.
But since this most learned master here feels, and tries to teach, that this bodily death was natural to them and is in like manner natural to us, and that it neither at any time passed through by sin nor can pass through by means of the seeds — let us see, as I have said, what meanwhile the Apostle Paul felt and preached concerning it. For writing to the Corinthians, when he was treating of the resurrection of the body, to which this death is contrary — that is, the dissolution of the body, or the separation of the soul from it — he speaks thus more at large: 'Now I make known to you the Gospel, brethren, which I preach to you, which also you received, in which you are saved;
by what reasoning I preached it to you, if you hold it fast, unless you have believed in vain: for I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures' (1 Cor. 15:1-3). Come now, wanderer, declare, if you dare, that the death of Christ — who died for sins — does not pertain to the little children, whom you defend to be without sins, or that they are not baptized into the death of Christ. 'And that He was buried,' he says, 'and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, and after these by the eleven. Then He was seen by more than five hundred brethren at once, of whom many remain until now, but some also have fallen asleep. Then He was seen by James, then by all the apostles.'
'And last of all, as to one born out of due time, He was seen also by me; for I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all — yet not I, but the grace of God with me. Whether therefore it was I or they, so we preached, and so you believed. Now if Christ is preached that He rose from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ risen; and if Christ has not risen,
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. And we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we have testified against God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up, if indeed the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen; and if Christ has not risen, your faith is vain, and you are still in your sins; therefore those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we are hoping in Christ, we are of all men the most miserable. But now Christ has risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who sleep; for since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead;
and as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive; but each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then they who are Christ's, who believed at His coming; then the end, when He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to God the Father; for He must reign until He puts all His enemies under His feet; and the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed' (1 Cor. 15:4, 26). Likewise the same, after a little: 'Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed. At the last trumpet — for it shall sound — the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
And when this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is thy sting? Where, O death, is thy strife?' (Hos. 13:14) 'Now the sting of the flesh is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ' (ibid., 51-57). 8. Have you heard, most insane one — do you feel, with singular shamelessness and most rabid fury? 'Through a man came death,' he says. What is this death here, tell us, which the preacher proclaims to have run through by means of a man? Is it that death of yours, or that which the Church knows to have been already conquered by Christ's resurrection, and to be at last conquered also in us in the end?
But, I admonish you, lend your ear, and hear what follows: 'For as in Adam,' he says, 'all die, so all in Christ shall be made alive.' Who has ever doubted that the Apostle here understood no other quickening except the resurrection of the flesh, which is to come to pass in all men? Will you then command that only a very few should rise again, and that in them alone death should be conquered and at last to be conquered in the end — namely those who shall be, or shall have been, imitators of the transgressing Adam, into whom that death of yours (since it must always be called yours) was able to pass — and not all men whatsoever, who derive their origin from Adam and Eve, the first transgressors, of a mortality not inborn in them but acquired through sin?
And what does the so copious — yet sound and salutary — doctrine of words of this great herald upon this point mean for itself, if you, a novel spirit (whom may God avert), are to be listened to? Nor will any approach lie open to you for slandering us, as though we said and felt that an equal resurrection — that is, of one and the same merit — is to be granted to all: because all, although by a different outcome, yet die by one death, since the plain word of the Apostle teaches us, saying: 'Each one in his own order.' And again: 'We shall all indeed rise again, but we shall not all be changed.' 9. Let the reader, I pray, repeat from close at hand
the things said above by us against you, where we said that our progenitors were punished by both deaths; and let him see what I have felt concerning this chapter, and let him thrust into your throat that cornerstone — set, to be sure, for you as a stone of offence and a rock of scandal. 10. Yet still hear what may rouse you to greater rabidity against us and the Church of God: 'For whether we are beside ourselves, it is to God; or whether we are sober, it is to you. For the love of Christ,' he says, 'urges us, judging this: that if one died for all, then all died, and Christ died for all, that those also who live may now live no longer to themselves,
but to Him who died for them and rose again' (2 Cor. 5:13), 'that He might have dominion over both the living and the dead' (Rom. 14:9). Be silent! No one, except through Adam — but penally — has died, nor will die; no one, except through Christ, will rise again — but one to reign, another to pay eternal penalties: 'Each one,' as the Scripture says (1 Cor. 15:23), 'in his own order'; provided only that (as we have often said, and as we together with the Apostle cry out to you) no man whatsoever, in absolutely every age, has died except Adam, and that no one will rise again in the flesh except Christ.
11. You should also remember that we hold, and have as certain in our faith concerning the two deaths — of which we have spoken above, as best we could: that the one which is according to the soul, Christ did not have. As to this, we pray that no one most madly say or feel that He was not born as all other men are, from carnal pleasure, but that a new generation was present in Him, from a virgin immaculate before the birth and after the birth, without lust. Mark, O reader!
But that other death — that is, the separation of the soul from the body — He voluntarily took upon Himself, though He owed it not; and had He not been slain by the wickedness of the Jews, it could have come to pass that, long-lived in old age (since this had once pleased Him), He might of His own accord have taken it upon Himself, dying undeservedly for us — that is, for our debt which we contracted in Adam, and for our own debts which we have added. Although that rather all the foretellings of the prophets concerning Him, and the parricidal cross to be inflicted on Him by the fury of the Jews, had to be fulfilled — of which no Christian whatsoever ought to doubt. 12. Now, away to the evil cross with that magnificence of your words, you fugitive!
No one hears you, the rabid one barking; no one follows you, the deviant, away from the Church; no one consents to one so insane. We, concerning the mortality which was given as a penalty to the human race out of the transgression of our first parents, and which runs through into nature by means of the seeds, and is to run on even to the end — until at the blast of that divine trumpet it shall be said: 'Death is swallowed up in victory; where, O death, is thy sting? where, O death, is thy strife?' (Hos. 13:14) — we, together with the whole Church of God, together with our fathers, the illustrious doctors of the Church, have sworn to this sense of the divine Scriptures, to these words. 13.
With all due reverence indeed, and with the honour owed to the holy and blessed memory of Augustine the bishop — who frightened you off from the Church with his pastoral staff, drove you away, and crushed you — these things too, by me, having read through this whole work of yours, as I premised, have been set down or applied here and there and wherever it seemed convenient, against certain chapters of your fragments, in the codices which I read; whether you will recognize it, or whoever wills, let the reader take note. 14. Nor should you laugh at the great brevity of this our little work, since concerning your so numerous books — of horrid loquacity rather than of any matters at least worthy of consideration — you ought not to boast. I would not have you here feign ignorance;
for you know that in this question which is debated between us — namely, concerning the mortality of the human race, which through the first transgressors of the divine commandment has generally run through by means of the seeds, and runs, and is to run on even to the end — which consumes your whole cause entirely, as though to be tied to a most strong stake: if the Christian and prudent reader shall observe this cause between us — nay, in you — to be extinguished, he will recognize that nothing remains to you, but absolutely nothing further, which you ought even to mutter, or now ought, in this same matter; and that, concerning your whole discourse, which you boast to be the height of eloquence, that saying applies to you more aptly and more fittingly than to him of whom it was said:
'Eloquence enough, of wisdom too little. His vast mind was ever craving things immoderate, incredible, too lofty.' But concerning your own thoughts, by which, wandering and vain, you are exalted, the prudent mouth of another age will pronounce, and everywhere will fit to you this saying: 'The mountains have laboured to bring forth — whence is born a ridiculous mouse.'