it follows for them that they must say that those gods—whom they wish to be worshipped by us as our parents and founders—are nothing else than the forgers of our fetters and prisons, and not our establishers, but our shutters-up and binders into wretched workhouses and most heavy chains. Either, therefore, let the Platonists cease to threaten penalties of souls from these bodies, or let them not proclaim to us as gods to be worshipped those whose operation in us they exhort us to flee and escape, as far as we can—though both are utterly false. For neither do souls thus pay penalties when they are rolled back again into this life, and of all living things, whether in heaven or on earth, there is no founder save Him by whom heaven and earth were made.
For if there is no cause for living in this body except for the paying of punishments, how does the same Plato say that the world could not otherwise have been made most beautiful and best, unless it were filled with the kinds of all animals, that is, both immortal and mortal? But if our establishment, by which we were founded even as mortals, is a divine gift, how is it a punishment to return to these bodies, that is, to divine benefits? And if God, as Plato constantly recalls, contained in His eternal intelligence the species of the whole world, and likewise of all animals, how did He not Himself found them all? Or would He be unwilling to be the craftsman of some, the art of producing which His unspeakable and unspeakably praiseworthy mind possessed? CHAPTER 28.
That in the first man arose all the fullness of the human race, in which God foresaw which part was to be honored with reward and which to be condemned with punishment. Deservedly, therefore, does true religion acknowledge and proclaim as the founder of the whole universe Him whom it acknowledges as the founder also of all animals, that is, of both souls and bodies. Among which earthly creatures, the chief one, made by Him in His own image, for that cause which I have stated and perhaps for some other greater cause that lies hidden, man was made one, but was not left alone. For nothing is so discordant by vice, nor so social by nature, as this race.
Nor could human nature speak more aptly against the vice of discord—whether for guarding against its arising, or for healing it once it had arisen—than by the recollection of that one parent, whom God therefore willed to create as one, that from him a multitude might be propagated, so that by this admonition a concordant unity might be preserved even among the many. And as for the fact that the woman was made for him from his side, here too it is sufficiently signified how dear the conjunction of husband and wife ought to be. These works of God are unusual precisely because they are the first. But those who do not believe these things ought to believe that no miracles were ever done; for not even these, if they were begotten by the usual course of nature, would be called miracles.
But what, under so great a governance of divine providence—although the cause of it may lie hidden—is begotten in vain? A certain sacred psalm says: 'Come and see the works of the Lord, what wonders He hath set upon the earth.' Why, then, the woman was made from the man's side, and what this, as it were the first wonder, prefigured, will be told in another place, as far as God shall aid me. Now, since this book is to be closed, let us reckon that in this first man, who was first made, there had already arisen in the human race—not indeed according to evidence, yet according to God's foreknowledge—societies as it were of two cities.
For from him there were to be men, some to be associated with the evil angels in punishment, others with the good angels in reward, by the hidden, yet nevertheless just, judgment of God. For since it is written: 'All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth,' neither can His grace be unjust, nor His justice cruel. BOOK 13. CHAPTER 1. On the fall of the first men, through which mortality was contracted. The most difficult questions concerning the rise of our world and the beginning of the human race having been dispatched, now the order of matters demands the discussion we have undertaken concerning the fall of the first man—nay rather, of the first men—and concerning the origin and propagation of human death.
For God had not founded men in the manner in which He founded the angels, so that even if they sinned they could by no means die; but in such a way that, when they had discharged the office of obedience, angelic immortality and blessed eternity would follow without the intervention of death; while, on the other hand, death would strike the disobedient by a most just condemnation—as we have already said in the previous book. CHAPTER 2. On that death which can befall the soul that will in some manner always live, and on that to which the body is liable. But concerning the very kind of death I see that I must discuss a little more diligently. For although the human soul is truly said to be immortal, yet it too has a certain death of its own. For it is therefore called immortal because in some slight manner it does not cease to live and to perceive;
but the body is therefore mortal, because it can be deserted by all life, nor does it of itself live in any degree. The death of the soul, then, occurs when God deserts it, as the death of the body occurs when the soul deserts it. Therefore the death of both, that is, of the whole man, occurs when the soul, deserted by God, deserts the body. For thus neither does it itself live from God, nor the body from it. And this death of the whole man is followed by that which the authority of the divine oracles calls the second death. This the Savior signified, where He says: 'Fear Him who has power to destroy both body and soul in hell.' And since this does not happen until the soul has been so coupled to the body that they are separated by no severance:
it can seem strange in what way the body is said to be slain by that death by which the soul is not deserted, but the animated and sentient body is tormented. For in that last and everlasting punishment, of which a more diligent discussion must be made in its own place, the death of the soul is rightly so called, because it does not live from God; but in what manner is it the death of the body, since the body lives from the soul? For not otherwise can the body itself perceive the bodily torments which are to be after the resurrection. Or is it because life of whatever sort is some good, while pain is an evil, that therefore the body is not even to 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 unless 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 live or not live from God. For the life in the bodies of the ungodly is the life not of their souls but of their bodies; which life their souls, even though dead—that is, by God's deserting them—can confer upon them, while their own life, however slight, by which they are also immortal, does not cease. But in that last condemnation, although man does not cease to perceive, yet, because the perception itself is neither sweet with pleasure nor wholesome with rest, but penal with pain, it is not undeservedly called death rather than life. And it is called the second death because it is after that first one, by which the severance of cohering natures is effected, whether of God and the soul, or of the soul and the body.
Of the first death, then, the death of the body, it can be said that it is good to the good, evil to the evil; but the second is without doubt, as it is the death of no good men, so good to none. CHAPTER 3. Whether death, which through the sin of the first men passed upon all men, is also in the saints a punishment of sin. But a question not to be dissembled arises: whether in very truth death, by which the soul and body are separated, is good to the good; for if it is so, how can it be maintained that it is also itself a punishment of sin? For the first men, had they not sinned, would assuredly not have suffered it. How, then, can that be good to the good which could not befall any save the evil? And again, if it could befall none save the evil, it ought not to be good to the good, but rather no death at all.
For why should there be any punishment where there is nothing to be punished? Wherefore it must be confessed that the first men were indeed so constituted that, if they had not sinned, they would have experienced no kind of death; but that those same first sinners were so chastised with death, that whatever sprang from their stock should also be held liable to the same punishment. For nothing else was born of them than what they themselves had been. For, by reason of the greatness of that fault, condemnation changed the nature for the worse, so that what preceded as a punishment in the first sinning men should follow also by nature in the rest who were born. For man is not from man as man is from dust. For dust was the material for making man; man,
however, is the parent for begetting man. Accordingly, what earth is, that flesh is not, although flesh was made from earth; but what the parent man is, that also the offspring man is. In the first man, therefore, through the woman, the whole human race that was to pass into posterity existed, when that conjugal pair received the divine sentence of their condemnation; and what man became—not when he was created, but when he sinned and was punished—this he begat, at least so far as pertains to the origin of sin and death. For he was not reduced by sin or punishment to that infantile dullness and 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, being in honor, did not understand; he was compared to the senseless beasts, and was made like unto them'; except that we discern infants to be even weaker in the use and movement of their members and in the sense of seeking and avoiding than are the tenderest young of other animals; as though the power of man raises itself so much the more excellently above the rest of living creatures, the more it has, as it were, deferred its onset—like an arrow when the bow is drawn—by being pulled back). Not, therefore, to these infantile rudiments was the first man cast down or driven by unlawful presumption and just condemnation;
but human nature was vitiated and changed in him to this extent: that he suffered in his members a reluctant disobedience of lust, and was bound by the necessity of dying, and so begat children liable to sin and death—that very thing which he had become by vice and punishment. And if infants are loosed from this bond of sin through the grace of Christ the Mediator, they can suffer only this death, which separates the soul from the body; but, being freed from the obligation of sin, they do not pass over into that second death, penal without end. CHAPTER 4. Why death, that is, the punishment of sin, is not taken away from those who through the grace of regeneration have been absolved from sin.
But if anyone is moved as to why they suffer even this very death, if it too is a punishment of sin, when their guilt is abolished through grace: this question has already been treated and resolved in another of our works, which we wrote on the baptism of little ones; where it was said that the experiencing of separation from the body is left to the soul for this reason, that, even though the bond of crime has now been removed, if immortality of the body immediately followed the sacrament of regeneration, faith itself would be enervated, which is then faith when that is awaited in hope which is not yet seen in fact. And by the strength and struggle of faith—at least in the more mature ages—even the fear of death had to be overcome, which shone forth most especially in the holy martyrs;
of which struggle there would assuredly be no victory, no glory (because there could be no struggle at all), if after the laver of regeneration the saints could no longer suffer bodily death. But who, in the case of little ones to be baptized, would not rather run to the grace of Christ for this very reason, that they might not be loosed from the body? And thus faith would not be proved by an invisible reward, but would no longer even be faith, seeking and taking forthwith the recompense of its own work. But now, by the greater and more marvelous grace of the Savior, the punishment of sin has been converted into the uses of righteousness. For then it was said to man: 'Thou shalt die, if thou sin'; now it is said to the martyr: 'Die, lest thou sin.' Then it was said: 'If ye transgress the commandment, ye shall die the death'; now it is said:
'If ye refuse death, ye shall transgress the commandment.' What then was to be feared, that one might not sin, is now to be undertaken, lest one sin. Thus, through the unspeakable mercy of God, even the punishment of vices passes over into the arms of virtue, and the very penalty 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 in the case of the holy martyrs, to whom one of two things is set before them by the persecutor: either to forsake the faith or to suffer death. For the righteous prefer, by believing, to suffer what 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 was brought about through the fault of the former that punishment should come; it is brought about through the punishment of the latter that fault should not come—not because death has become some good, which before was an evil; but God bestowed so great a grace upon faith, that death, which is agreed to be the contrary of life, became the instrument through which one might pass over to life. CHAPTER 5. That, just as the unrighteous use the law badly, which is good, so the righteous use death well, which is evil. When the Apostle wished to show how greatly sin, with grace not coming to aid, would avail to do harm, he did not hesitate to call even the very law, by which sin is forbidden, the strength of sin. 'The sting of death,' he says, 'is sin, but the strength of sin is the law.' Most truly indeed.
For the prohibition increases the desire for the forbidden deed, when righteousness is not loved in such a way that the craving to sin is overcome by delight in it. But that true righteousness should be loved and delight us, nothing but divine grace can bring it about. Yet lest the law should on this account be thought an evil, because it was called the strength of sin, the same Apostle, dealing with a question of this kind in another place, says: 'Therefore the law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, worked death in me through that which is good, that the sinner, or sin, might become exceeding sinful through the commandment.'
He said 'exceeding' because transgression is also added, when, the lust for sinning having grown, even the law itself is despised. Why have we thought this worth recalling? Because, namely, just as the law is not an evil when it increases the concupiscence of those who sin, so neither is death a good when it increases the glory of those who suffer it: since the one, for the sake of iniquity, is forsaken and makes men transgressors, while the other, for the sake of truth, is undertaken and makes men martyrs. And on this account the law indeed is good, because it is a prohibition of sin; but death is evil, because it is the wages of sin. Yet just as unrighteousness makes a bad use not only of evil things but even of good, so righteousness makes a good use not only of good things but even of evil.
Hence it comes about both that the wicked use the law badly, although the law is a good, and that the good die well, although death is an evil. CHAPTER VI. Of the general evil of death, by which the union of soul and body is dissolved. Wherefore, as regards the death of the body—that is, the separation of the soul from the body—when those who are called dying undergo it, it is good for no one. For it has a harsh sensation, and the very force by which the two are torn apart, which had been joined and bound together in the living being, is contrary to nature, so long as it lingers, until all sensation, which arose from that very embrace of soul and flesh, is taken away. And sometimes a single blow of the body, or a sudden snatching away of the soul, cuts short this whole distress and, by its forestalling swiftness, does not allow it to be felt.
Yet whatever it is in the dying that, with grievous sensation, takes away sensation—when it is borne piously and faithfully, it increases the merit of patience, but does not take away the name of penalty. Thus, since by the perpetuated propagation from the first man death is without doubt the penalty of one being born, nevertheless, if it is paid out for the sake of piety and righteousness, it becomes the glory of one being reborn; and although death is the recompense of sin, sometimes it obtains that nothing be recompensed to sin. CHAPTER VII. Of the death which some of the unregenerate undergo for the confession of Christ. For whoever, even without having received the laver of regeneration, die for the confession of Christ, 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 saying made these men excepted, where He says no less generally: 'Whosoever shall confess Me before men, him will I also confess before My Father who is in heaven'; and in another place: 'He that shall lose his life for My sake, shall find it.' Hence is that which is written: 'Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.' For what is more precious than that death, by which it comes about both that all sins are forgiven and that merits are more abundantly increased?
For they are not of so great merit, who, when they could not put off death, were baptized and, with all their sins blotted out, departed from this life, as those are who, when they could have put off death, did not put it off, because they preferred to end their life by confessing Christ rather than, by denying Him, to come to His baptism. Yet if they had done so, even this would have been forgiven them in that laver—that out of fear of death they had denied Christ; in which laver even that monstrous crime was forgiven to those who had killed Christ. But how, without the abundance of the Spirit's grace—of that Spirit who breathes where He wills—could they so love Christ as not to be able to deny Him in so great a crisis of life, under so great a hope of pardon?
The death of the saints, therefore, is precious—to whom the death of Christ has been sent before and granted with so great grace that, in order to gain Him, they did not hesitate to expend their own. It has shown that what had formerly been appointed for the penalty of sin has been turned to those uses, that from it a richer fruit of righteousness might be born. Death therefore ought not on this account to be thought a good, because it has been converted to so great a usefulness, not by its own power, but by divine help—so that what was then set forth as a thing to be feared, lest sin be committed, is now set forth as a thing to be undertaken, that sin may not be committed, and what was committed may be blotted out, and the palm of righteousness due to a great victory may be rendered. CHAPTER VIII. That in the saints the undertaking of the first death for the truth is the abolition of the second death.
For if we consider more carefully, even when anyone dies faithfully and laudably for the truth, death is guarded against. For some part of it is undertaken precisely so that the whole may not befall, and the second besides—which is never ended—may not be added. For the separation of the soul from the body is undertaken, lest, with God separated from the soul, the soul too be separated from the body, and so, the first death of the whole man being completed, the second, everlasting one should follow. Wherefore death indeed, as I said, when the dying suffer it and when it makes them die, is good for no one, but is laudably endured for the holding or attaining of a good; but when men are in that state who are now called dead, it is not absurdly said to be both bad to the bad and good to the good.
For the souls of the pious, separated from the body, are at rest, but those of the impious pay their penalties, until the bodies of the former revive unto eternal life, and those of the latter unto eternal death, which is called the second. CHAPTER IX. Whether the time of death, at which the sensation of life is taken away, ought to be said to be in the dying or in the dead. But that time, at which souls separated from the body are either among good things or among evil, ought 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 is past and gone, but the present life of the soul, good or bad, after it. 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 distressing sensation was in them;
and the good make good use of this evil. But how is death, once accomplished, either good or evil, seeing that it now no longer is? Furthermore, if we attend still more carefully, it will appear that that is not even death, of which we have said the grievous and distressing sensation is in the dying. For so long as they feel, they certainly still live; and if they still live, they are to be said to be before death rather than in death; because death, when it has come, takes away all sensation of the body, which, as it draws near, is distressing.
And on this account, how we may call those dying who are not yet dead but, with death imminent, are now being tossed about by the final and death-bringing affliction, is difficult to explain—although they are rightly called dying, because, when the death which now impends has arrived, they are called not dying but dead. There is therefore no one dying except one living; since, when a man is in such extremity of life as those are whom we say are giving up the ghost, surely he who has not yet been deprived of soul still lives. The same man, then, is at once both dying and living, but approaching death and departing from life; yet still in life, because the soul is in the body; but not yet in death, because it has not yet departed from the body.
But if, when it has departed, even then he will not be in death but rather after death, when shall anyone say that a man is in death? For neither will anyone be dying, if no one can be at once both dying and living. For so long as the soul is in the body, we cannot deny that the man is living. Or if he is rather to be called dying, in whose body it is now coming about that he die, and no one can be at once both living and dying, then I know not when he is living. CHAPTER X. Whether the life of mortals ought rather to be called death than life. For from the time when anyone has begun to be in this body which is to die, it is never not coming about in it that death should come. For this is what its mutability brings about throughout the whole time of this life (if indeed it ought to be called life), that death should be arrived at.
For there is no one who is not nearer to death after a year 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 taken 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 course toward death, in which no one is permitted to stand still even a little, or to go somewhat more slowly; but all are urged on by an equal motion and impelled with no differing advance. For neither did he whose life was shorter pass his day more swiftly than he whose life was longer; but although equal moments were snatched away equally from both, the one had nearer, the other farther, the goal toward which both were running with no unequal speed.
But it is one thing to have traversed a greater length of the road, another to have walked more slowly. He therefore who, up to death, passes more extended spaces 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 time when death itself begins to operate in him, that is, the subtraction of life (because, when, by subtracting, it has finished, he will then be after death, not in death): surely, from the time he begins to be in this body, he is in death. For what else is being done in single days, hours, and moments, until death, which was operating, being consumed, is completed, and there begins to be now the time after death which, while life was being subtracted, was in death?
Never therefore is a man in life, from the time when he is in this body that is 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 the whole is subtracted; but in death, because he is now dying, while life is being subtracted? For if he is not in life, what is it that is being subtracted, until its complete consumption comes about? But if he is not in death, what is the subtraction of life itself? For it is not in vain that, when life has been wholly subtracted from the body, it is then said to be 'after death,' except because it was death while it was being subtracted. For if, when it has been subtracted, the man is not in death but after death, then when, except while it is being subtracted, will he be in death? CHAPTER XI.
Whether anyone can be at once both living and dead. 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 unusual that he should be said to be at once both living and dying, since one cannot be at once both waking and sleeping: then 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, now after death. When therefore is he in death?
For then he is dying, so that, just as there are three things when we say 'before death, in death, after death,' so three single states may correspond to the three single terms: 'living, dying, and dead.' When, then, he is 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 so long as the soul is in the body, especially if sensation also be present, without doubt the man lives, who consists of soul and body, and on this account is to be said to be still before death, not in death; but when the soul has departed and taken away all sensation of the body, he is now declared to be after death and dead. Between the two, then, that by which he might be dying, or in death, perishes;
because if he still lives, he is before death; if he has ceased to live, he is now after death. Never therefore is he found to be 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 passage from the future into the past. Ought we not then to see, lest by this reasoning the death of the body be said to be nothing? For if it is, when is it, in which no one can be, and in which no one can be? Seeing that, if one is living, 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, what is it that is said to be before death or after death?