Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.17–7.8

But perhaps it is in the world that this man must necessarily grow old; and if it is not in the world, it is in God. For what he wills will necessarily come about, and those things will truly come about which he foreknew; for many things are to come according to lower causes. But if they are so in God's foreknowledge too, they will truly come about; if they are otherwise there, they will rather come about as they are there, where he who foreknows cannot be deceived. For old age is said to be in the future for a young man, yet it is not in the future if he is going to die first. And this will be as the other causes stand, whether woven into the world or reserved in God's foreknowledge. For according to certain causes of future things Hezekiah was going to die, to whom God added fifteen years of life, doing what he foreknew before the foundation of the world that he would do and kept in his will. So he did not do what was not going to be; rather, what he foreknew he would do was what was going to be. Yet those years would not rightly be called added unless they were added to something that had stood otherwise in other causes. According to certain lower causes, then, he had already ended his life; but according to those causes which are in the will and foreknowledge of God, who knew from eternity what he would do at that time (and this was truly what was going to be), he was to end his life when he did end it. For although it was granted to him when he prayed, he whose foreknowledge could not be deceived certainly foreknew that he would pray in such a way that such a prayer ought to be granted. And so what he foreknew was necessarily going to be.

Therefore, if the causes of all future things were implanted in the world when that day was made, when God created all things at once, Adam was made, when he was formed from clay, most probably already of full manhood, in no other way than he was in those causes where God made man in the works of the six days. For there it was not only that he could be made thus, but also that he must necessarily be made thus. For God no more acts against the cause which he without doubt willingly fixed beforehand than he acts against his own will. But if he did not fix all causes beforehand in creation as first established, but kept some in his own will, those which he kept in his will do not indeed depend on the necessity of those which he created; yet those which he kept in his will cannot be contrary to those which he established by his will, because God's will cannot be contrary to itself. So he established these in such a way that from them the thing of which they are the causes can come to be, but need not; while he hid those in such a way that from them must come to be what he made possible from these.

It is likewise often asked whether the body first formed for man from clay was an animal body, such as we have now, or a spiritual one, such as we shall have when we rise. For although the one will be changed into the other (“it is sown an animal body, it rises a spiritual body”), it is disputed what was made first for man, because, if an animal body was made, we shall not receive back what we lost in him, but something as much better as the spiritual is to be preferred to the animal, when we shall be equal to the angels of God. But angels can be surpassed by others even in righteousness; can they by the Lord too? Yet of him it is said, “You made him a little less than the angels.” Why, unless because of the weakness of flesh which he took from the virgin, receiving the form of a servant, in which by dying he might redeem us from servitude? But why discuss this at length? For the apostle's view on this matter is not obscure. Wishing to bring a testimony to prove that there is an animal body, he recalled and cited not so much his own body or that of any man, which was visible at present, as this very place of this Scripture, saying: “If there is an animal body, there is also a spiritual one. Thus it is also written: The first man Adam became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. But not first what is spiritual, but what is animal, afterward the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly. As was the earthly, so are the earthly; and as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of him who is from heaven.” What can be said to this? We now bear the image of the heavenly man by faith, to have in the resurrection what we believe; but the image of the earthly man we have borne from the very beginning of human generation.

Here another question arises: how are we renewed, if we are not called back through Christ to what we were before in Adam? For although many things are renewed not to their former state but to a better one, yet they are renewed from a state lower than that in which they were before. Why, then, was that son dead and came to life again, was lost and is found; why is the first robe brought out for him, if he does not receive back the immortality which Adam lost? But how did Adam lose immortality if he had an animal body? For it will be not an animal but a spiritual body when this corruptible has put on incorruption and this mortal has put on immortality. Some, pressed by these difficulties, so that both the statement holds in which an example of the animal body is given from this place, where it is said, “The first man Adam became a living soul,” and this renewal and recovery of immortality may not absurdly be said to be a return to the former state, namely to what Adam lost, have thought that man was indeed at first of an animal body, but that when he was placed in paradise he was changed, as we too shall be changed in the resurrection. The book of Genesis does not mention this; but so that both testimonies of the Scriptures might agree with each other, both what is said about the animal body and the very many things found in the holy writings about our renewal, they believed this followed as if necessarily.

But if this is so, we try in vain to take paradise and those trees and their fruits first in the proper sense of events, apart from figurative signification. For who would believe that foods of that kind from the fruit of trees could have been necessary for immortal and spiritual bodies? Yet, if nothing else can be found, we would rather choose to understand paradise spiritually than either to think that man is not renewed, when Scripture mentions this so often, or to suppose that he receives back what he is not shown to have lost. Add to this that man's death itself, which many divine testimonies say he earned by sin, indicates that he would have been without death had he not sinned. How, then, was he mortal without death? Or how was he not mortal if he had an animal body?

Hence some think that he earned by sin not the death of the body but the death of the soul, which iniquity caused. For they believe that because of his animal body he would have departed from this body to rest, namely the rest which the saints who have already fallen asleep now have, and at the end of the age would have received the same members back immortally; so that the death of the body would seem to have befallen not from sin but naturally, as with the other animals. But the apostle meets them in turn and says, “The body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you.” And therefore the death of the body too is from sin. If, then, Adam had not sinned, he would not have died in body, and therefore he would have had an immortal body too. How, then, immortal, if animal?

But again, those who think his body was changed in paradise, so as to become spiritual from animal, do not see that nothing prevented him, had he not sinned, from receiving after the life of paradise, which he would have lived righteously and obediently, the same change of the body into eternal life, where he would no longer need bodily food. Why, then, must we be forced for this reason to understand paradise figuratively, not properly, because the body could not die except through sin? It is true indeed that he would not have died even in body had he not sinned; for the apostle says plainly, “The body is dead because of sin.” Yet it could be animal before sin and, after a life of righteousness, when God willed, become spiritual.

“How, then,” they say, “are we said to be renewed, if we do not receive back what the first man lost, in whom all die?” Plainly we receive it back in one way, and do not receive it back in another. We do not receive back the immortality of a spiritual body, which man did not yet have; but we receive back the righteousness from which man fell through sin. We shall be renewed, then, from the oldness of sin, not into the former animal body in which Adam was, but into something better, that is, into a spiritual body, when we are made equal to the angels of God, fit for the heavenly dwelling, where we shall not need food that perishes. We shall be renewed, then, in the spirit of our mind according to the image of him who created us, which Adam lost by sinning. And we shall be renewed also in the flesh, when this corruptible puts on incorruption, so that it may be a spiritual body, into which Adam had not yet been changed but was to be changed, had he not earned by sinning the death even of the animal body. Finally, the apostle does not say, “The body indeed is mortal because of sin,” but, “The body is dead because of sin.”

For before sin that body could be called both mortal for one reason and immortal for another; that is, mortal because it could die, immortal because it could not die. For it is one thing not to be able to die, as God created certain natures immortal; it is another to be able not to die, in which way the first man was created immortal. This was granted him from the tree of life, not from the constitution of his nature; and he was separated from that tree when he sinned, so that he who, had he not sinned, could not die, could die. He was mortal, then, by the condition of an animal body, but immortal by the gift of the Founder. For if the body was animal, it was certainly mortal, because it could die, though also immortal because it could not die. For there will be no body immortal in such a way that it cannot die at all except the spiritual one, which is promised to us in the resurrection. And therefore that animal and therefore mortal body, which through righteousness would have become spiritual and therefore immortal in every way, was made through sin not mortal, which it was before, but dead, which it need not have become had man not sinned.

For how does the apostle call our body dead, when he was speaking of the living, unless because the very condition of dying, from the sin of the parents, has clung to the offspring? For this body too is animal, as the first man's was; but this one, within the very kind of animal body, is much worse; for it has the necessity of dying, which that one did not have. For although it still remained for that body to be changed and, made spiritual, to receive full immortality, where it would not need corruptible food, yet if man lived righteously his body would be changed into a spiritual condition, it would not go into death. But in us, even when we live righteously, the body is going to die. Because of this necessity coming from that first man's sin, the apostle called our body not mortal but dead, because we all die in Adam. He likewise says, “As the truth is in Jesus, put off, according to your former way of life, the old man, who is corrupted according to the lusts of deceit,” that is, what Adam became through sin. See, then, what follows: “But be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who was created according to God in righteousness and holiness of truth.” See what Adam lost through sin!

In this, then, we are renewed according to what Adam lost, that is, according to the spirit of our mind; but according to the body, which is sown animal and will rise spiritual, we shall be renewed into something better, which Adam not yet was. The apostle likewise says, “Stripping off the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him.” This image, impressed in the spirit of the mind, Adam lost through sin, and we receive it back through the grace of righteousness; not the spiritual and immortal body, in which he not yet was, and in which all the saints will be when they rise from the dead; for this is the reward of that merit which he lost. Accordingly, that first robe is either righteousness itself, from which he fell, or, if it signifies the garment of bodily immortality, he lost this too in this sense, that because of sin he could not attain it. For a man is said to have lost a wife or to have lost an honor who did not receive what he hoped for because he offended the one from whom he hoped for it.

According to this view, then, Adam had an animal body not only before paradise but also when placed in paradise, although in the inner man he was spiritual according to the image of him who created him. This he lost by sinning, and earned also the death of the body, he who by not sinning would have earned the change into a spiritual body as well. For if he lived in an animal way inwardly too, we cannot be said to be renewed to what he was. For to those to whom it is said, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” it is said so that they may become spiritual; and if he was not so even in his mind, how are we renewed to what man never was? The apostles and all the righteous certainly still had an animal body, yet they lived spiritually within, renewed, that is, in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created them; but they were not therefore no longer able to sin, if they consented to iniquity. For the apostle shows that even spiritual men can fall in the temptation of sin, when he says, “Brothers, even if a man is overtaken in some fault, you who are spiritual instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted.” This is said so that it may not seem impossible to anyone that Adam sinned if he was spiritual in mind though animal in body. This being so, we still affirm nothing prematurely, but wait rather to see whether the rest of Scripture also does not hinder this understanding.

There follows a very difficult question about the soul, on which many have labored and left us something to labor on. Whether because I have not been able to read everything by all those who, on this matter, have been able to reach something clear and not at all doubtful in accordance with the truth of our Scriptures, or because the question is so great that even those who truly solve it are not easily understood by such as I am, I confess that no one has yet persuaded me so that I hold a view about the soul such that I think nothing more needs to be sought. Whether I shall now find and define anything certain, I do not know. But what I can, if the Lord helps my effort, I shall take care to set out in the following book.

“And God formed man as dust from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” We had set these words of Scripture before us for consideration at the beginning of the previous book too, and we discussed the making of man himself, and above all his body, as far as we thought sufficient, according to what seemed right in the light of the Scriptures. But because the question of the human soul is no small one, we thought it should be put off to this book, not knowing how far the Lord would help us, who desire to speak rightly, yet knowing this: that unless he helped us, we would not speak rightly. To speak rightly is to speak truthfully and fittingly: refuting nothing boldly and affirming nothing rashly while it is still doubtful whether a thing is true or false, whether for Christian faith or for Christian knowledge, but asserting without hesitation what can be taught either by the plainest reasoning about things or by the surest authority of the Scriptures. And first let us look at what is written: “He blew” or “he breathed upon his face the breath of life.” For some manuscripts have “he breathed” or “he breathed into his face.” But since the Greek manuscripts have ἐνεφύσησεν, there is no doubt that “he blew” or “he breathed upon” is the right rendering. Now in the previous discussion we were asking about the hands of God when man was thought of as formed from mud. What, then, is to be said now about what is written, “God breathed upon,” except that, just as he did not form him with bodily hands, so he did not breathe with throat or lips? And yet with this word, I think, Scripture has helped us very much in a most difficult question.

For since some have believed, on the basis of this word, that the soul is something of the very substance of God, that is, of the same nature as he is, thinking so because when a man breathes out he puts forth something of himself in the breath, we ought rather to be warned by this to reject this opinion, which is hostile to the catholic faith. For we believe that the nature and substance of God, which is believed in the Trinity by many and understood by few, is altogether unchangeable. But who doubts that the nature of the soul can be changed either for the worse or for the better? And therefore it is a sacrilegious opinion to believe that it and God are of one substance. For what else is this but to believe that he too is changeable? So it is to be believed and understood, and in no way doubted, as the right faith holds, that the soul is from God as a thing which he made, not as of the nature which he himself is, whether by begetting it or by putting it forth in any way whatever.

“And how,” they say, “is it written, ‘He breathed upon his face, and man became a living soul,’ if the soul is not a part of God or wholly God's substance?” On the contrary, from this very word it is clear enough that it is not so. For when a man breathes out, the soul itself moves the nature of the body that lies under it and makes the breath from that, not from itself; unless perhaps these people are so slow that they do not know that, by this alternating breath which we draw in and give back from the surrounding air, breath is also produced when we breathe out at will. And even if we were to put out something by breathing, not from this air that lies around us outside, taken in and given back, but from the nature of which our body itself consists, the nature of the body and of the soul is not the same: and this they themselves certainly agree. So even thus the substance of the soul, by which it rules and moves the body, is one thing, and the breath, which by ruling and moving it makes from the body subject to it, not from itself, to which the body is subject, is another. Since, then, the soul rules the body subject to it, and God the creation subject to him, in a far incomparable way but still alike, why not rather understand that God made the soul from the creation subject to him, in that he is said to have breathed, since the soul itself, though it does not rule its body as God rules the universe he founded, still makes breath by moving the body, not from its own substance? We could indeed say that the breath of God is not itself the soul of man, but that God by breathing made the soul in man; but lest the things he made by a word be thought better than what he made by breath, because in us too a word is better than breath, there is for the present no reason, according to the reasoning given above, why we should hesitate to call the soul itself the breath of God, provided it is understood not to be God's nature and substance, but that to breathe is the same as to make breath, and to make breath is to make a soul. With this view agrees what God says through Isaiah: “For a spirit shall go forth from me, and every breath I have made.” For what follows shows that he does not mean just any bodily breath. For when he had said, “every breath I have made,” he says, “because of sin I grieved him a little and struck him.” What then does he call breath but the soul, which was struck and grieved because of sin? What then is “every breath I have made” but “every soul I have made”?

If, then, we called God, as it were, the soul of this bodily world, so that the world itself was to him like the body of one living being, we would rightly say that he made the soul of man by breathing only as something bodily, from this air lying under him, out of his body; yet we ought not to think that what he gave by breathing he gave from himself, but from the air of his body subject to him, just as the soul makes breath from a thing similarly lying near it, that is, from the body, not from itself. But as it is, since we say not only that the body of the world is subject to God but that he is above every creature, whether bodily or spiritual, he is not to be believed to have made the soul by breathing either from himself or from the bodily elements.

But whether he made it from what did not exist at all, that is, from nothing, or from some thing that had already been made by him spiritually, though the soul did not yet exist, may rightly be asked. For if we do not believe that God still creates anything from nothing after he created all things together, and believe for that reason that he rested from all the works he had begun to make, once they were completed, so that whatever he made afterwards he made from these, I do not see how we are to understand that he still makes souls from nothing. Or are we to say that in those works of the first six days he made that hidden day, or, if this is rather to be believed, the spiritual and intellectual nature, namely of the angelic unity, and the world, that is, heaven and earth, and that in those natures which already existed he created the reasons of other natures to come, not the natures themselves? Otherwise, if they had already been created there as they were going to be, they would not still be going to be. If this is so, there was not yet any nature of the human soul in the things founded, and it began to exist when God made it by breathing and put it into man. But the question is not thereby removed; for it is still asked whether he created that nature which is called the soul, and which did not exist before, from nothing, as though his breath itself was not made from any underlying substance (as we said of the breath which the soul makes from its body), but the breath was made wholly from nothing when God willed to breathe, and the same became the soul of man; or whether there was already something spiritual, although this, whatever it was, was not yet the nature of a soul, and from it the breath of God was made which was to be the nature of the soul, just as the nature of the human body did not yet exist before God formed it from the mud or dust of the earth. For human flesh was not dust or mud, yet there was something from which it might be made, though it did not yet exist.

Is it credible, then, that in those first works of the six days God founded not only the causal reason of the human body to come but also the material from which it would be made, that is, the earth, from whose mud or dust it would be formed, but for the soul founded there only the reason according to which it would be made, and not also some material of its own kind from which it would be made? For if the soul were something unchangeable, we ought in no way to look for its material, so to speak; but as it is, its changeableness shows clearly enough that it is at times made ugly by vices and errors and formed by virtues and the teaching of truth, but in its own nature, by which it already is a soul; just as the flesh too, in its own nature, by which it is already flesh, is both adorned by health and disfigured by diseases and wounds. But just as the flesh, apart from the fact that it is already flesh, a nature in which it either advances so as to be beautiful or declines so as to be ugly, also had material, that is, earth, from which it was made so as to be flesh at all: so perhaps the soul too, before it was made that very nature which is called the soul, whose beauty is virtue and whose ugliness is vice, could have had some material of its own kind, spiritual, which was not yet a soul, just as the earth from which flesh was made was already something, though it was not flesh. But the earth filled the lowest part of the world before the body of man was made from it, contributing its whole being to the universe, so that, even if no flesh of any living thing were made from it, it would still by its form complete the structure and mass of the world, according to which the world is called heaven and earth.

But that spiritual material, if there was any, from which the soul was made, or if there is any from which souls are made, what is it? What name, what form, what function does it hold among things founded? Does it live or not? If it lives, what does it do? What does it contribute to the workings of the universe? Does it lead a happy life, or a wretched one, or neither? Does it give life to anything? Or is it idle even from this work, and does it rest unoccupied in some recess of the universe, without wakeful sensation and living motion? For if there was as yet no life at all, how could there be a bodiless and lifeless material of life to come? Either it is false or it is very hidden. But if it already lived, neither happily nor wretchedly, how was it rational? And if it became rational when the nature of the human soul was made from that material, then was irrational life the material of the rational, that is, the human, soul? What then would distinguish it from that of a beast? Or was it already rational in possibility but not yet in capacity? For if we see that an infant's soul, which is certainly already the soul of a man, has not yet begun to use reason, and yet we already call it rational, why not believe that in that material from which it was made even the motion of sensation was at rest, just as in this infant's soul, which is certainly already the soul of a man, the motion of reasoning is still at rest?

For if the life from which the soul of man was made was already happy, then it was made worse, and so that life is not the material of this soul, but this soul is an outflowing of that life. For when any material is formed, especially by God, it is without doubt formed for the better. But even if the human soul could be understood as an outflowing of some life made by God in some happiness, not even so should it be believed to have begun to exist in any activity of its own merits except from the time it began to lead its own life, when it was made a soul animating flesh and using its senses as messengers, and perceiving itself living in itself by its will, understanding, and memory. For if there is something from which God breathed this outflowing into the formed flesh, as if making a soul by breathing, and that something is happy, it is in no way moved or changed or loses anything when this flows out of it from which the soul is made. For it is not a body, so as to be diminished as though by exhaling.