For not, as it seemed to Plato, do they out of forgetfulness desire bodies; but rather, because they remember what was promised them by Him who deceives no one, who gave them assurance even concerning the integrity of their very hairs, they wait, with longing and with patience, for the resurrection of the bodies in which they suffered many hard things, but in which they shall thereafter feel nothing of the kind. For if they did not hate their flesh when by spiritual right they restrained it as it resisted their mind through weakness, how much more will they love it when it too shall be spiritual!
For just as the spirit serving the flesh is not unfittingly 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 that which is written: 'It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body,' but because it will be subjected to the spirit with a supreme and wonderful ease of obedience, even to the fulfilling of the wholly secure will of indissoluble immortality, with every sense of trouble, all corruptibility and sluggishness removed.
For not only will it not be such as it now is in any best state of health, but not even such as it was in the first men before sin, who, although they would not have died unless they had sinned, nevertheless used food as men do, bearing bodies not yet spiritual but still natural and earthly.
Although these bodies would not grow old with age so as to be brought by necessity to death (which condition was granted them by the wondrous grace of God from the tree of life, which was in the midst of Paradise together with the forbidden tree), yet they took other foods besides the one tree which had been forbidden—not because that tree was evil, but for the sake of commending the good of pure and simple obedience, which is a great virtue in the rational creature set under the Lord its Creator. For where no evil was touched, surely, if the forbidden thing were touched, the only sin was disobedience. Therefore it was provided by the other things which they took, that their natural bodies should feel no trouble of hunger or thirst;
but from the tree of life they tasted for this reason: that death might not creep upon them from any source, nor that, worn out by old age, they should perish when the spans of time had run their course—as though the other things were for nourishment, but that one for a sacrament; so that it may be understood that the tree of life was in the bodily Paradise just as, in the spiritual—that is, the intelligible—Paradise, is the Wisdom of God, of which it is written: 'It is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon it.' CHAPTER XXI. On the Paradise in which the first men dwelt, that something spiritual may rightly be understood by its signification, while preserving the truth of the historical narrative concerning a bodily place.
Hence some refer the whole of that Paradise itself—where, by the truth of Holy Scripture, the first men, the parents of the human race, are narrated to have been—to intelligible things, and turn those trees and fruit-bearing woods into virtues and ways of life; as though those things had not been visible and bodily, but had been so spoken or written for the sake of signifying intelligible things. As if Paradise could not therefore have been bodily, because it can also be understood spiritually; just as if there had therefore not been two women, Hagar and Sarah, and from them the two sons of Abraham, one of the bondwoman, the other of the free, because the apostle says that the two testaments were figured in them;
or that therefore water did not flow 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.' Therefore no one 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 disciplines; the fruits of the trees as the morals 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 the commandment transgressed. For God established a penalty for sinners well indeed, since justly; but man does not experience it to his own good.
These things can also be understood in the Church, so that we may better take them as prophetic signs going before of things to come: namely, Paradise as the Church itself, as is read of 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, that is, Christ; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as the proper choice of the will. For man cannot use himself except to his ruin, having despised the divine will, and thus learns what the difference is, whether he cleaves to the good common to all, or delights in his own.
For he who loves himself is given over to himself, so that, filled thereby with fears and griefs, he sings in the psalm—if indeed he feels his own evils: 'My soul is troubled within me'; and, when now corrected, may say: 'My strength, I will keep it to Thee.' These things, and whatever else can be more fittingly said concerning the spiritual understanding of Paradise, let them be said, with no one forbidding, provided nonetheless that the truth of that history, commended by a most faithful narrative of things done, be believed. CHAPTER XXII. On the bodies of the saints after the resurrection, which will be so spiritual that the flesh shall not be turned into spirit.
The bodies of the just, therefore, which are to be in the resurrection, will need neither any tree to keep them from dying through any disease or the wasting of old age, nor any other bodily nourishments by which any trouble of hunger and thirst might be avoided; since they will be clothed with the certain 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, in order to suit themselves to men by a certain humanity of their ministry.
For it is not to be believed that the angels ate in mere phantasm, when men received them in hospitality, although to those who did not know whether they were angels they seemed to eat with a need like ours. Hence it is that the angel says in the book of Tobit: 'You saw me eat, but you saw it with your own sight'; that is, you supposed that I took food out of the necessity of refreshing the body, as you do. But if perhaps something more credible can be argued concerning the angels, certainly the Christian faith does not doubt concerning the Savior Himself that, even after the resurrection, now indeed in spiritual flesh, but yet true flesh, He took food and drink with His disciples. For not the power, but the need, of eating and drinking 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. CHAPTER XXIII. What is to be understood concerning the natural body and the spiritual body, and who die in Adam, and who indeed are made alive in Christ. For just as these bodies, which have a living soul but not yet a life-giving spirit, are called natural 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 that they will have the substance of the flesh, yet will suffer no fleshly sluggishness or corruption, being quickened by the life-giving spirit. Then man will be no longer earthly, but heavenly—not because the body, which was made of earth, will not be the same;
but because, by a heavenly gift, it will now be such that, with its nature not lost but its quality changed, it may be fit even for inhabiting heaven. But the first man, of the earth, earthly, was made 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:
that it might not be afflicted by hunger and thirst, and was kept from the necessity of death and held in the flower of youth, not by that absolute and indissoluble immortality, but by the tree of life—it was, beyond doubt, not spiritual but natural; yet by no means about to die, unless by transgressing it had fallen into the sentence of God who foretold and threatened, and, with foods indeed not denied even outside Paradise, but forbidden the tree of life, it had been handed over to be ended by time and age—at least in that life which, in a body though natural, it could (until by the merit of obedience it became spiritual) 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 takes place, was also signified together in what God had said: 'In the day that you eat of it, you shall die the death'—it ought not therefore to seem absurd that they were not 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 corrupted, and by a most just separation from the tree of life, the necessity even of bodily death was made in them—the necessity with which we are born. On account of which the apostle does not say: 'The body indeed is about 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:
'But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Christ from the dead dwells in you, He who raised up Christ from the dead will also quicken your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwells in you.' Then, therefore, the body will be in a life-giving spirit, which now is in a living soul; and yet the apostle calls it dead, because it is already bound by the necessity of dying. But then it was so in a living soul, although not in a life-giving spirit, that it nonetheless could not rightly be called dead, because it could not have the necessity of dying except by the perpetration of sin. But when God, both by saying 'Adam, where are you?' signified the death of the soul, which took place when He forsook it, and by saying:
'You are earth, and into earth you shall go,' signified the death of the body, which befalls it when the soul departs—on this account He is to be believed to have said nothing about the second death, because He willed it to be hidden, for the sake of the dispensation of the New Testament, where the second death is most openly declared; so that first this first death, which is common to all, might be made known to have come from that sin which in one man was made common to all; but the second death is indeed not common to all, on account of those who are called according to His purpose, whom He foreknew and predestined (as the apostle says) to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He Himself might be the firstborn among many brethren—whom the grace of God, through the Mediator, has delivered from the second death.
That the first man was made in a natural body, the apostle thus speaks. For wishing to distinguish the spiritual—which is to be in the resurrection—from this which now is natural, he says: 'It is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption; it is sown in dishonor, it shall rise in glory; it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power; it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.' Then, to prove this, he says: 'If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual.' And to show what the natural body was, he says: 'So it is written: The first man was made into a living soul.'
In this way, then, he wished to show what a natural body is, although Scripture did not say of the first man, who was called Adam, when his soul was created by the breath of God: 'And man was made in a natural body,' but: 'Man was made into a living soul.' Therefore in that which is written, 'The first man was made into a living soul,' the apostle wished the natural body of man to be understood. But how the spiritual was to be understood, he showed by adding: 'The last Adam into a life-giving spirit,' without doubt signifying Christ, who has now so risen from the dead that He can thereafter in no way die. Finally he goes on and says: 'But not first that which is spiritual, but that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual.'
Here he declared much more openly that he had hinted at the natural body in that which is written, that the first man was made into a living soul, but the spiritual in that which he says: 'The last Adam into a life-giving spirit.' For the natural body is first, such as the first Adam had, although not about to die unless he had sinned; such as we too now have, his nature thus far changed and corrupted, in so far as in him, after he had sinned, it was so wrought that he should now have the necessity of dying; such a body Christ also, for our sake, first deigned to have—not indeed by necessity, but by power;
but afterward the spiritual, such as has already preceded in Christ as in our Head, but is to follow in His members at the last resurrection of the dead. The apostle then adds the most evident difference of these two men, saying: 'The first man is of the earth, earthly; the second man is from heaven, heavenly. Such as the earthly is, such also are they that are earthly; and such as the heavenly is, such also are they that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of Him who is from heaven.' This the apostle so set down that now indeed it may come to pass in us according to the sacrament of regeneration, as he says elsewhere: 'As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ';
but in actual fact it will then be perfected, when that which is natural in us by being born shall have become spiritual by rising again. For, to use his very words again: 'We are saved by hope.' Now we have put on the image of the earthly man by the propagation of transgression and death, which generation brought upon us; but we put on the image of the heavenly man by the grace of pardon and of perpetual life, which regeneration bestows on us—only through the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus; whom he would have understood as the heavenly man, because He came from heaven that He might be clothed with the body of earthly mortality, which He might clothe with heavenly immortality.
But He calls others also heavenly, because by grace they become His members, so that with them there may be one Christ, as head and body. This he puts more evidently in the same epistle: 'By man came death, and by man the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive'—now assuredly in a spiritual body which shall be in a life-giving spirit; not because all who die in Adam will be members of Christ (for of those, far more will be punished in the second death forever), but it was said 'all' and 'all' for this reason: that as no one dies in a natural body except in Adam, so no one is made alive in a spiritual body except in Christ.
Accordingly, we must by no means suppose that at the resurrection we shall have such a body as the first man had before sin; nor is that saying, 'As is the earthly, such are they also that are earthly,' to be understood according to what came about through the admission of sin. For we must not imagine that before he sinned he had a spiritual body, and that by the merit of sin it was changed into an animal one. To suppose this is to pay too little heed to the words of so great a teacher, who says: 'If there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual; so also it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul.' Was this perhaps brought about after sin, when this is the first condition of man, from which the most blessed Paul took up this testimony of the law in order to demonstrate the animal body?
CHAPTER 24. In what way is to be understood either that breathing of God by which the first man was made a living soul, or that which the Lord performed when He said to His disciples: 'Receive the Holy Spirit.' Hence it has also seemed to certain persons, with too little consideration, that in what is read, 'God breathed into his face the breath of life, and man was made a living soul,' a soul was not then given to the first man, but rather that the soul which already was within him was quickened by the Holy Spirit. For it moves them that the Lord Jesus, after He rose from the dead, breathed upon His disciples and said: 'Receive the Holy Spirit.' Hence they suppose something of the same sort was done then as was done here, as if here too the evangelist who followed had said:
'And they were made a living soul.' If indeed this had been said, we should understand that the life of souls in a certain sense is the Spirit of God, without whom rational souls are to be reckoned dead, although by their presence the bodies seem to live. But that it was not so done when man was created, the very words of the book sufficiently testify, which run thus: 'And God formed man, dust from the earth.' Some, thinking this should be interpreted more plainly, have said: 'And God fashioned man from the mud of the earth,' since it had been said above: 'But a spring went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth'; so that from this mud might be understood to be meant, that is, earth compounded with moisture. For where this is said, there immediately follows:
'And God formed man, dust from the earth,' as the Greek codices have it, from which Scripture itself was rendered into the Latin tongue. Now whether one chooses to say 'formed' or 'fashioned' for what is said in Greek 'eplasen,' makes no difference to the matter; yet more properly is it said 'fashioned.' But an ambiguity seemed to be avoided by those who preferred to say 'formed,' because in the Latin tongue that usage prevailed rather, that those are said 'to fashion' (fingere) who put something together with a feigning falsehood. This man, then, formed from the dust or mud of the earth (for it was moistened dust) — this man, I say, that I may speak more expressly as Scripture has spoken, this dust from the earth, the apostle teaches was made an animal body when it received a soul:
'And this man was made a living soul,' that is, this dust when formed was made a living soul. Now, they say, he already had a soul, otherwise he would not be called 'man,' since man is not body alone or soul alone, but he who consists both of soul and of body. This indeed is true, that the soul is not the whole man, but the better part of man; nor is the body the whole man, but the lower part of man; yet when both are joined together, it has the name of man; which name nevertheless the parts singly do not lose, even when we speak of them singly. For who is forbidden to say, by a certain law of everyday speech: 'That man has died and is now at rest, or in torments,' when this can be said of the soul alone; and:
'In this or that place that man was buried,' when this cannot be understood except of the body alone? Or will they say that divine Scripture is not wont thus to speak? Nay rather, it so testifies this to us, that even when these two are joined and the man lives, it nevertheless calls each part singly by the name of man, calling the soul namely the inner man, and the body the outer man, as though there were two men, when both together are one man. But it must be understood in what respect man is called the image of God, and man earth and going to return to earth. For the former is said according to the rational soul, such as God by breathing in, or, if it is said more fittingly, by inspiring, imparted to man, that is, to man's body;
but the latter according to the body, such a man as God fashioned from the dust, to whom a soul was given, that it might become an animal body, that is, man into a living soul. Wherefore, in that which the Lord did, when He breathed and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit,' He doubtless willed this to be understood, that the Holy Spirit is not only of the Father, but also the Spirit of the Only-begotten Himself. For the same is indeed the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son, with whom is the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, not a creature but the Creator.
For that bodily breath proceeding from the mouth of flesh was not the substance and nature of the Holy Spirit, but rather a sign, by which we might understand, as I have said, that the Holy Spirit is common to the Father and the Son, because there are not for them severally several spirits, but one is of them both. Now this Spirit is always called in the holy Scriptures by the Greek word 'pneuma,' as Jesus also called Him in this place, when He gave Him to the disciples, signifying Him by the breath of His bodily mouth; and in all places of the divine utterances I have never found Him named otherwise. But here, where it is read:
'And God fashioned man, dust from the earth, and breathed,' or 'inspired,' 'into his face the breath of life,' the Greek does not say 'pneuma,' which is wont to be called the Holy Spirit, but 'pnoe,' a word which is read more frequently of the creature than of the Creator; hence some Latins also, for the sake of the distinction, preferred to call this word not 'spiritus' (spirit) but 'flatus' (breath). For this is in the Greek also in that passage in Isaiah, where God says: 'I have made every breath,' signifying without doubt every soul. Therefore what is in Greek 'pnoe,' our translators have rendered sometimes 'breath,' sometimes 'spirit,' sometimes 'inspiration' or 'aspiration,' when it is said even of God;
but 'pneuma' never except as 'spirit,' whether of man (of which the apostle says: 'For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man that is in him?'), or of beast (as it is written in the book of Solomon: 'Who knows whether the spirit of man ascends upward to heaven, and the spirit of the beast descends downward to the earth?'), or this bodily one, which is also called wind (for this is its name where it is sung in the psalm: 'Fire, hail, snow, ice, the spirit of the tempest'), or finally that which is not created but the Creator, such as that of which the Lord says in the gospel: 'Receive the Holy Spirit,' signifying Him by the breath of His bodily mouth, and where He says:
'Go, baptize [all] the nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,' where the Trinity itself is most excellently and most evidently commended, and where it is read: 'God is a Spirit,' and in very many other places of the sacred writings. For in all these testimonies of the Scriptures, as far as concerns the Greek, we see not 'pnoe' written, but 'pneuma'; and as far as concerns the Latin, not 'flatus' (breath), but 'spiritus' (spirit). Wherefore, in that which is written: 'He inspired,' or, if it should be said more properly, 'He breathed into his face the breath of life,' if the Greek had set down not 'pnoe,' as is read there, but 'pneuma';
even then it would not follow that we should be compelled to understand the Creator Spirit, who in the Trinity is properly called the Holy Spirit; since indeed 'pneuma,' as has been said, is manifestly wont to be said not only of the Creator but also of the creature. But, they say, when it had said 'spirit,' it would not have added 'of life,' unless it wished that Holy Spirit to be understood; and when it had said, 'man was made a soul,' it would not have added 'living,' unless it signified that life of the soul which is divinely imparted to it by the gift of the Spirit of God. For since the soul lives, they say, by the proper mode of its own life, what need was there to add 'living,' except that that life might be understood which is given to it through the Holy Spirit?
What is this but to contend diligently for a human conjecture and to attend negligently to the holy Scriptures? For what great matter was it not to go further, but to read in the very same book a little above: 'Let the earth bring forth a living soul,' when all the land animals were created? Then, after a few things interposed, in that same book what great matter was it to notice what is written: 'And all things that had the spirit of life, and everyone that was upon the dry land, died,' when it intimated that all things that lived on the earth perished by the flood? If, then, we find both 'living soul' and 'spirit of life' even in beasts, as the divine Scripture is wont to speak, and when in this place too, where it is read:
'All things that had the spirit of life,' the Greek said not 'pneuma' but 'pnoe': why do we not say: What need was there for it to add 'living,' since a soul cannot exist unless it lives? Or what need was there for it to add 'of life,' when it had said 'spirit'? But we understand that Scripture, after its own manner, spoke of 'living soul' and 'spirit of life,' when it wished animals, that is, animate bodies, to be understood, in which there was present through the soul this perceptible sense even of the body.
But in the case of man's creation we forget how Scripture is wont to speak, although it spoke entirely after its own manner, by which it intimated that man, even though he had received a rational soul — which it wished to be understood as created not, like the souls of other flesh, by waters and earth bringing them forth, but by God breathing — yet was so made that in the animal body, which is made when a soul lives in it, he might live as did those animals of which it said, 'Let the earth bring forth a living soul,' and which it likewise said had within them the spirit of life; where also in the Greek it said not 'pneuma' but 'pnoe'; certainly not the Holy Spirit, but expressing their soul by such a name.
But, they say, the breath of God is understood to have gone forth from the mouth of God; and if we should believe it to be a soul, the consequence will be that we must confess it to be of the same substance and equal to that Wisdom which says, 'I came forth from the mouth of the Most High.' Yet Wisdom did not say that she was breathed out from the mouth of God, but that she came forth from His mouth. But just as we can make a breath, not from our own nature by which we are men, but from this surrounding air which we draw in and give back by breathing in and out, when we blow:
so almighty God could make a breath, not from His own nature nor from any underlying creature, but even from nothing, which, by inserting it into the body of man, He is most fittingly said to have inspired or breathed in — He incorporeal an incorporeal thing, yet He immutable a mutable thing, since He uncreated a created thing. But nevertheless, that those persons may know who wish to speak from the Scriptures yet do not notice the modes of expression of the Scriptures, that not only that which is of equal and the same nature is said to go forth from the mouth of God, let them hear or read what is written when God speaks: 'Because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will begin to spew you out of my mouth.'