City of God 13.24–14.4

Chapter 24. How we are to take both that breathing of God by which the first man was made a living soul, and that which the Lord did when he said to his disciples, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Hence it has also seemed to some, not considering carefully enough, that in what we read, “God breathed into his face the breath of life, and man was made a living soul,” it was not then that a soul was given to the first man, but that the one already in him was given life by the Holy Spirit. For they are moved by the fact that the Lord Jesus, after he rose from the dead, breathed on his disciples, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” From this they think something of the same kind was done as was done then, as though here too the evangelist had gone on to say, “And they became living souls.” If this had indeed been said, we would understand that the Spirit of God is a kind of life of souls, without which rational souls must be counted dead, although bodies seem to live by their presence. 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 it should be translated more plainly, have said: “And God fashioned man from the slime of the earth,” since it had been said above, “But a spring came up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth,” so that from this slime seemed to be meant, that is, earth mixed with moisture. For where this is said, there follows at once, “And God formed man dust from the earth,” as the Greek manuscripts have it, from which the Scripture itself was translated into Latin. But whether one chooses to say “formed” or “fashioned,” for what in Greek is eplasen, makes no difference to the matter; yet “fashioned” is the more proper word. But those who preferred to say “formed” thought an ambiguity should be avoided, because in the Latin language usage has rather established that those are said to “fashion” who put something together by lying pretense. This man, then, formed from the dust or slime of the earth (for it was moist dust), this, I say, to 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 formed dust was made a living soul.

He already had a soul, they say, otherwise he would not be called man, since man is not the body alone or the soul alone, but one who consists of both soul and body. This is indeed 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; but when both are joined together, it has the name of man; which, however, each does not lose even when we speak of them singly. For who is forbidden by a kind of rule of daily speech to say, “That man has died and is now at rest,” or “in torments,” when this can be said of the soul alone; and, “That man was buried in this or that place,” when this can be understood only of the body alone? Or will they say that divine Scripture is not accustomed to speak so? On the contrary, it testifies to us in this matter in such a way that even when these two are joined and a man lives, it still calls each by the name of man, calling the soul the inner man and the body the outer man, as though they were two men, when both together are one man. But we must understand in what respect man is said to be in the image of God, and in what respect man is earth and will go to earth. The former is said according to the rational soul, such as God put into man, that is, into man's body, by breathing, or, if it is more fittingly said, by inspiring; the latter according to the body, such as the man whom God fashioned from dust, to whom a soul was given so that he might become an animal body, that is, man a living soul.

Therefore, in what the Lord did when he breathed, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” he certainly meant it to be understood that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit not only of the Father but also of the only-begotten himself. For the same Spirit is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son, with whom the Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not creature but 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 said, that the Holy Spirit is common to the Father and the Son, since they do not each have one, but there is one Spirit of both. Now this Spirit is always called in the holy Scriptures by the Greek word pneuma, as Jesus called him in this place too, when he gave him to the disciples, signifying him by the breath of his bodily mouth; and in all the places of the divine oracles I have never found him named otherwise. But here, where we 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, the usual word for the Holy Spirit, but pnoē, a word read more often of the creature than of the Creator; hence some Latin writers too, for the sake of the difference, have preferred to render this word not “spirit” but “breath.” For this is also the word in the Greek in that place in Isaiah where God says, “I have made every breath,” beyond doubt meaning every soul. So what in Greek is called pnoē our translators have rendered sometimes “breath,” sometimes “spirit,” sometimes “inspiration” or “aspiration,” even when it is said of God; but pneuma never otherwise than “spirit,” whether of man (of which the apostle says, “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him?”), or of a beast (as it is written in Solomon's book, “Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward into heaven and the spirit of the beast goes downward into 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, spirit of the storm”), or no longer the created but the Creator, as is he of whom 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 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 plainly commended, and where we read, “God is spirit,” and in very many other places of the sacred writings. For in all these testimonies of the Scriptures, as far as the Greeks are concerned, we see written not pnoē but pneuma; as far as the Latins are concerned, not “breath” but “spirit.” Therefore, in what is written, “He inspired,” or, if it is to be said more properly, “He breathed into his face the breath of life,” even if the Greek had put not pnoē, as is read there, but pneuma, it would not follow even so that we would be forced to understand the Creator Spirit, who in the Trinity is properly called the Holy Spirit; since it is plain, as has been said, that pneuma is commonly said not only of the Creator but also of the creature.

But, they say, when he had said “spirit,” he would not add “of life” unless he wanted that Holy Spirit to be understood; and when he had said, “Man was made a soul,” he would not add “living” unless he meant the life of the soul which is imparted to it by God through the gift of the Spirit of God. For since the soul lives by its own manner of life, they say, what need was there to add “living,” except that that life should be understood which is given it through the Holy Spirit? What is this but to contend diligently for human conjecture and to attend carelessly to the holy Scriptures? For what great thing was it, without going further, to read a little earlier in the very same book, “Let the earth bring forth the living soul,” when all the land animals were created? Then, some things coming between, still in the very same book, what great thing was it to notice what is written, “And all that have the spirit of life, and everyone who was on the dry land, died,” when it intimated that all that lived on the earth had perished in the flood? If, then, we find both “living soul” and “spirit of life” even in cattle, as divine Scripture is accustomed to speak; and since in this place too, where we read, “All that have the spirit of life,” the Greek has said not pneuma but pnoē: why do we not say, “What need was there to add 'living,' when a soul cannot exist unless it lives?” or, “What need was there to add 'of life,' when it had said 'spirit'?” But we understand that Scripture said “living soul” and “spirit of life” in its own manner when it wanted animals, that is, animated bodies, to be understood, in which there was, through the soul, this evident sensation of the body too. But in the creation of man we forget how Scripture is accustomed to speak, though it spoke entirely in its own manner, intimating that man, even having received a rational soul, which it willed to be understood as created not, like that of other flesh, by the waters and the earth bringing it forth, but by God breathing, was yet so made that he lived in an animal body, which comes about by a soul living in it, like those animals of which it said, “Let the earth bring forth the living soul,” and which it likewise said had in themselves the spirit of life; where too in the Greek it did not say pneuma but pnoē, certainly expressing by such a name not the Holy Spirit but their soul.

But, they say, the breath of God is understood to have come out of God's mouth; and if we believe it to be the soul, it will follow that we must confess it to be of the same substance and equal to that wisdom which says, “I came out of the mouth of the Most High.” Wisdom did not say that she was breathed out of God's mouth, but that she came out of his mouth. But just as we can make a breath when we blow, 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, so almighty God could make a breath not from his own nature nor from an underlying creature, but even from nothing; and he is most fittingly said to have inspired or breathed it by putting it into the body of man: the incorporeal making the incorporeal, but the unchangeable the changeable, because the uncreated the created. But that those who want to talk about the Scriptures and do not notice the idioms of the Scriptures may know that not only what is equal and of the same nature is said to come out of the mouth of God, let them hear or read what is written with God speaking: “Because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will begin to spit you out of my mouth.”

There is no reason, then, for us to resist the apostle when he speaks most plainly, where, distinguishing the animal body from the spiritual, that is, this in which we now are from that in which we shall be, he says: “It is sown an animal body, it will rise a spiritual body; if there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual one; thus it is also written, The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the animal, and afterward the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man is from heaven, heavenly. As was the earthly, so are those who are earthly; and as is the heavenly, so are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven.” Of all these words of the apostle we have spoken above. The animal body, then, in which the apostle says the first man Adam was made, was made not such that it could not die at all, but such that it would not die unless man sinned. For that which will be spiritual and immortal by the life-giving spirit will be quite unable to die, just as the soul was created immortal; which, though it is said to be dead by sin, lacking a certain life of its own, that is, the Spirit of God, by which it could also live wisely and happily, yet does not cease to live by a certain life of its own, though a wretched one, because it was created immortal; as also the deserting angels, though in a certain manner they died by sinning, since they forsook the fountain of life, which is God, by drinking of whom they could live wisely and happily, yet could not so die as to cease altogether to live and feel, since they were created immortal; and so they will be cast headlong into the second death after the last judgment in such a way that they will not lack life even there, since they will not lack feeling either, when they are in pains. But men who belong to the grace of God, fellow citizens of the holy angels who remain in the blessed life, will be clothed with spiritual bodies in such a way that they will neither sin any more nor die; yet clothed with such an immortality as, like that of the angels, cannot be taken away even by sin; the nature of the flesh remaining, but no fleshly corruptibility or sluggishness whatever remaining.

There follows, however, a question which must necessarily be treated and, with the help of the Lord God of truth, resolved: if the lust of the disobedient members arose in those first human beings from the sin of disobedience, when divine grace had forsaken them, whence they opened their eyes to their nakedness, that is, noticed it more curiously, and covered their shameful parts because the shameless motion resisted the choice of the will, how would they have propagated children if they had remained without transgression as they had been created? But since this book must be closed, and so great a question should not be squeezed into the narrow limits of a discourse, it is put off to the next book, where it can be arranged more conveniently.

Chapter 1. That through the disobedience of the first man all would have fallen headlong into the endlessness of the second death, had not the grace of God set many free.

We have already said in the preceding books that God willed to establish men from one man, so that the human race might be joined not only by likeness of nature but also bound, by a kind of necessity of kinship, into a harmonious unity by the bond of peace; and that this race would not have died in each of its members had not the first two, of whom one was created from nothing and the other from him, deserved this by disobedience. By them so great a sin was committed that human nature was changed for the worse by it, and the obligation of sin and the necessity of death were transmitted even to their descendants. And the reign of death over men has so prevailed that it would drive all headlong, by a deserved penalty, into the second death too, which has no end, had not the undeserved grace of God set some free from it. And so it has come about that, though there are so many and such great nations throughout the world, living with different rites and customs and distinguished by manifold variety of languages, arms, and dress, yet there have come to be no more than two kinds of human society, which, following our Scriptures, we may rightly call two cities. One consists of men who wish to live according to the flesh, the other of those who wish to live according to the spirit, each in the peace of its own kind; and when they obtain what they seek, each lives in the peace of its own kind.

Chapter 2. Of the carnal life, which is to be understood as arising not only from faults of the body but also from those of the mind.

First, then, we must see what it is to live according to the flesh and what according to the spirit. For anyone who looks at what we have said at first sight, either not recalling or not noticing how the holy Scriptures speak, may think that the Epicurean philosophers live according to the flesh, because they placed man's highest good in the pleasure of the body, and any others who have held in some way that the good of the body is man's highest good, and the whole common crowd of those who do not philosophize by any doctrine or in that way, but, inclined to lust, know no joy except from the pleasures they receive through the bodily senses; while the Stoics, who place man's highest good in the mind, live according to the spirit, since what is the mind of man but spirit? But as divine Scripture speaks, both are shown to live according to the flesh. For it calls flesh not only the body of an earthly and mortal living being (as when it says, “Not all flesh is the same flesh; there is one flesh of men, another flesh of cattle, another of birds, another of fish”), but it uses the meaning of this word in many other ways; and among these various manners of speaking it often calls man himself, that is, the nature of man, flesh, by the figure of speech that names the whole from the part, as in: “By the works of the law no flesh will be justified.” For what did he mean to be understood but every man? This he says more plainly a little later: “By the law no one is justified,” and to the Galatians: “Knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law.” In this sense is understood: “And the Word became flesh,” that is, man; which some, not taking it rightly, supposed to mean that Christ lacked a human soul. For just as the part is taken from the whole where the words of Mary Magdalene are read in the Gospel, saying, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him,” though she was speaking only of Christ's flesh, which she thought had been taken from the tomb where it was buried, so also, flesh being named, the whole man is understood from the part, as in those passages we have mentioned above.

Since, then, divine Scripture uses the word flesh in many ways, which it would take long to search out and collect, in order that we may be able to trace what it is to live according to the flesh (which is certainly evil, although the nature of the flesh itself is not evil), let us look carefully at that passage of the letter which the apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, where he says: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, strife, jealousies, fits of anger, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revelings, and things like these; of which I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God.” This whole passage of the apostolic letter, considered as far as seems sufficient for the present matter, will be able to resolve this question, what it is to live according to the flesh. For among the works of the flesh, which he said were manifest and which he named and condemned, we find not only those that belong to the pleasure of the flesh, such as sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, drunkenness, revelings, but also those by which faults of the mind, foreign to the pleasure of the flesh, are shown. For who would not rather understand the service paid to idols, sorceries, enmities, strife, jealousies, fits of anger, dissensions, heresies, and envyings to be faults of the mind rather than of the flesh? Since it can happen that someone abstains from the pleasures of the body for the sake of idolatry or the error of some heresy; and yet even then, though he seems to restrain and hold back the lusts of the flesh, the man is convicted by this apostolic authority of living according to the flesh, and in the very fact that he abstains from the pleasures of the flesh, he is shown to do damnable works of the flesh. Who does not have enmities in his mind? Or who would speak so as to say to his enemy, or one he thinks his enemy, “You have a bad flesh against me,” and not rather, “You have a bad mind against me”? Finally, just as anyone who heard of “carnalities,” so to speak, would not hesitate to ascribe them to the flesh, so no one doubts that “animosities” belong to the mind [animus]. Why then does the teacher of the nations in faith and truth call all these and things like them works of the flesh, unless because, by that manner of speaking by which the whole is signified by the part, he wants man himself to be understood by the name of flesh?

Chapter 3. That the cause of sin came from the soul, not from the flesh, and that the corruption contracted from sin is not sin but punishment.

But if anyone says that the flesh is the cause of all faults whatever in evil conduct, because the soul lives thus as it is affected by the flesh, he has certainly not considered carefully the whole nature of man. For “the corruptible body weighs down the soul.” Hence the same apostle too, speaking of this corruptible body, of which he had said a little before, “Though our outer man is being corrupted,” says: “We know that if our earthly house of habitation is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, longing to put on over it our dwelling that is from heaven; if indeed, having put it on, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this dwelling groan, being weighed down, because we do not wish to be stripped but to be clothed over, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” We are weighed down, then, by the corruptible body; and, knowing that the cause of this weighing down is not the nature and substance of the body but its corruption, we do not wish to be stripped of the body but to be clothed with its immortality. For then too it will exist, but because it will not be corruptible it will not weigh us down. Now, then, “the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things.” Yet those who think that all the evils of the soul have come from the body are in error.

For although Virgil seems to set forth the Platonic view in splendid verses, saying:

Fiery is their vigor and heavenly their origin, these seeds, so far as harmful bodies do not slow them, and earthly limbs and dying members dull them;

and, wishing all those well-known four disturbances of the mind, desire, fear, joy, and sadness, to be understood as the origins, as it were, of all sins and faults, and as arising from the body, adds:

Hence they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, nor do they see the open air, shut up in darkness and a blind prison;

yet our faith holds otherwise. For the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin but its punishment; nor did corruptible flesh make the soul sinful, but the sinful soul made the flesh corruptible. And though from this corruption of the flesh certain incitements to faults and vicious desires themselves arise, yet not all the faults of a wicked life are to be ascribed to the flesh, lest we clear the devil, who has no flesh, of them all. For even if the devil cannot be called a fornicator or a drunkard, or anything of that evil kind which belongs to the pleasures of the flesh, although he is the secret persuader and instigator even of such sins, he is nevertheless supremely proud and envious. This viciousness so possessed him that because of it he was destined to eternal punishment in the prisons of this murky air. And these faults, which hold the chief place in the devil, the apostle attributes to the flesh, which it is certain the devil does not have. For he says that enmities, strife, jealousies, fits of anger, and envyings are works of the flesh; and the head and origin of all these evils is pride, which reigns in the devil without flesh. And who is more hostile than he to the saints? Who is found more quarrelsome against them, more angry, more jealous and envious? Yet since he has all these without flesh, how are they works of the flesh, unless because they are works of man, whom, as I have said, he calls by the name of flesh? For it is not by having flesh, which the devil does not have, but by living according to himself, that is, according to man, that man has become like the devil; for he too willed to live according to himself when he did not stand in the truth, so that he spoke a lie not from God's store but from his own, being not only a liar but also the father of lies. For he was the first to lie, and falsehood began from him from whom sin began.

Chapter 4. What it is to live according to man, and what according to God.

When, then, man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil; because not even an angel should have lived according to an angel, but according to God, so as to stand in the truth and speak truth from God's store, not a lie from his own. For of man too the same apostle says in another place: “But if the truth of God has abounded through my lie.” He called the lie ours, the truth God's. When, therefore, man lives according to truth, he does not live according to himself but according to God. For it is God who said, “I am the truth.” But when he lives according to himself, that is, according to man, not according to God, he certainly lives according to a lie; not because man himself is a lie, since his author and creator is God, who is certainly not the author and creator of a lie, but because man was made upright so that he should live not according to himself but according to him by whom he was made, that is, do his will rather than his own: not to live in the way he was made to live, this is a lie. For he wills to be happy even while not living so that he can be. What is more of a lie than such a will? Hence it can be said not in vain that every sin is a lie. For sin happens only by that will by which we will that it be well with us or will that it not be ill with us. It is a lie, then, that when something is done so that it may be well with us, it is rather ill with us because of it; or when something is done so that it may be better with us, it is rather worse with us because of it. Whence this, except that it can be well with man from God, whom he forsakes by sinning, not from himself, living according to whom he sins?

What we said, then, that two cities different from and contrary to each other arose because some lived according to the flesh, others according to the spirit, can also be said in this way: that some live according to man, others according to God. For Paul says most plainly to the Corinthians: “For when there are jealousy and strife among you, are you not carnal and walking according to man?” What it is to walk according to man, then, is to be carnal, since from the flesh, that is, from a part of man, man is understood. For he had called the same people earlier “animal” whom he afterward called carnal, speaking thus: “For who among men,” he says, “knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. But we,” he says, “have received not the spirit of this world but the Spirit which is from God, that we may know the things freely given to us by God; which we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the animal man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him.” To such people, then, that is, the animal, he says a little later: “And I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal”; and both this and that by the same manner of speaking, that is, the whole from the part. For the whole, which is man, can be signified both by the soul and by the flesh, which are parts of man; and so the animal man is not one thing and the carnal another, but both are the same, that is, man living according to man; just as nothing but men are signified either where we read, “By the works of the law no flesh will be justified,” or where it is written, “Seventy-five souls went down with Jacob into Egypt.” For there by “all flesh” every man, and here by “seventy-five souls” seventy-five men are understood. And what was said, “Not in words taught by human wisdom,” could have been said, “Not in words of carnal wisdom”; just as what was said, “You walk according to man,” could have been said, “according to the flesh.” This appeared still more in what he added: “For when one says, I am of Paul, and another, I of Apollos, are you not men?” What he was saying, “You are animal,” and “You are carnal,” he said more expressly, “You are men,” that is, “You live according to man, not according to God; if you lived according to him, you would be gods.”