Commentary on Romans 5.1

1. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so death passed through to all men, in whom all sinned. For until the law sin was in this world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses, over those who sinned in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one to come.” After he had taught the difference between faith and the law, and between those who are justified through faith and those who cannot hope through the law for the promises that were made to the fathers, and after he had opened the secrets of the hidden mystery, that “when we were enemies of God, we were reconciled through the death of his Son,” he now goes on to set out the reasons both why we were enemies and why this reconciliation needed the death of the Son of God; so that, seeing how much Jesus has bestowed on us, or rather how much he has endured for us, we may be held by a more deeply rooted faith toward him and by an inseparable love. For this reason, then, even though he does not lay it fully open, he nevertheless points out to us the reason of another secret too, when he says: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death,” and so on.

But before we come to the explanation of the whole passage, a few things must be said about what seems to be a defect in the wording that follows. For where it says, “Therefore, just as,” it seems necessary that some completion should be added, so that it would say, “so also this or that,” as he himself writes in a number of other places; for example, when he says: “For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” Here, however, when he has said: “Just as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so death passed through to all men, in whom all sinned,” he did not go on to say, for example: So also through one man righteousness entered into this world, and through righteousness life, and so life passed through to all men, in which all were made alive. For the sense of the passage seemed to require this, according to what he says elsewhere. For what he says elsewhere, “For just as in Adam all die,” does not differ much from what he says here, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed through to all men, in whom all sinned”; and again what he said, “so also in Christ all will be made alive,” differs not at all from the sense which we said above is lacking in the wording and left to the reader’s understanding.

But it seems to me that Paul, who says that “our sufficiency is from God, who also made us fit ministers of the New Testament,” and who again says, “Or do you seek a proof of Christ who speaks in me?”, did not suffer this through a failure of eloquence, but foresaw some benefit in it. Even if the things we said are lacking in the wording and must be understood had to be understood, nevertheless, on account of the more careless, who might perhaps grow slack if they heard that, just as death passed through to all men through sin, so also life passed through to all men through Christ, he judged that these things ought not to be said openly and publicly. At the same time he also shows that, even if righteousness entered into this world through one man, and through righteousness life, and so passed through to all men, this nevertheless does not happen at once in the present, nor does it befall the idle, but those who with much labor and sweat have been able to seek what is hidden, to knock at what is shut, to long for what is concealed. Indeed, in the passage which we brought forward because it resembles these words, that is, “For just as in Adam all die,” he did not say, “so also in Christ all have been made alive,” or “are made alive,” but “will be made alive,” to show that the present time is a time of labor and work, in which merits are acquired through good conduct, and that the future is the time in which those who die with Christ in the present life will be made alive; as the same Apostle says elsewhere: “For if we die with him, we shall also live with him.” And for this reason in the present passage too he refrains from following through and completing in words what is understood from the sense and the sequence.

Another will perhaps say that what seems to be lacking, according to the order of the wording, in what we have discussed above is supplied, late indeed, but in what follows, where he says: “But not as the trespass, so also the gift. For if through the trespass of one many died, much more the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man Jesus Christ has abounded to many”; and he maintains that by these words what seemed to be lacking above has been completed; and that it makes little difference that there he said sin passed through to all men, while here he says that the gift and grace of Jesus Christ abounded to many, since “all men” may be understood as “many,” and it does not seem absurd that “many” should be understood as “all”; especially since in what follows he says more plainly: “As through the trespass of one, for all men to condemnation, so also through the righteousness of one, for all men to justification of life.” And to show more clearly that “all men” and “many men” are the same, he added: “For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many will be made righteous.” And those he had called “all men” above, here, in the same sense, he named “many.” Unless someone says that the Apostle, wishing rather to blend and obscure what he had opened above, so as not, as we said, to make his hearers slack and loose, named “many” here those whom before he had called “all,” so that he might draw what he said about “all” to those alone who have obtained the gift of Christ, who are nevertheless not few but many. For it is the apostle Paul’s custom, when he has disclosed something about the kindness of God and his ineffable goodness, to hold out some threat to the more remiss; as when, discussing the end of all things with the Corinthians, he says: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive”; and a little later: “Then the end, when he has handed over the kingdom to God and the Father,” and so on. Afraid that because of these words someone might despise the riches of God’s goodness and patience and long-suffering, and by his hardness and impenitent heart store up wrath for himself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, he added, after what he had said about the end: “Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. Awake, you righteous, and do not sin. For some have no knowledge; I say this to your shame.” He acts, then, as a prudent steward of the word: when he comes to the passages in which God’s goodness must be spoken of, he sets these things out more covertly and obscurely because of the slower sort, lest perhaps, as we said, they despise the riches of his goodness and patience and long-suffering and store up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath, into which all must fall who have stored up for themselves deeds of this kind. You too will see after this what is to happen.

And what he says, “For until the law sin was in this world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law,” seems to show this: that until the law, that is, until Christ came, who takes away the sin of the world, sin was in the world. And it is plain that sin cannot be imputed where there is no law to convict the sinner. But death, which had entered through sin, reigned until Moses, that is, as long as the law remained, over those who sinned according to the likeness of the sin of Adam, through whom death itself gained entrance; and Adam is a type of the one to come, not according to his transgression, but according to this, that just as through him death, so through the last Adam life entered into this world; and as through him condemnation came to all men, so also through Christ justification came to all men. Let this be said about the sequence of the apostolic passage itself. Let us now see what the inner understanding also contains.

But first I think I should give this warning: it seems to me that the apostle Paul, especially in the passages now in hand, speaks in a certain way like a faithful and prudent servant who is led by a great king, his lord, into the royal treasuries and is shown various great chambers whose entrances are many and uncertain, so that he is shown in by one way and out by another; sometimes, from different entrances, one comes into a single room, as we often see palaces built on earth. This faithful servant who is being led round is also shown the treasury of the king’s silver, and another of gold, and of precious stones and pearls and various necklaces; the place of the royal purple too, and another of the diadems; and the queen’s bedchambers set in many different apartments are shown him as well; and yet each of these is not unlocked with the doors standing fully open, but half open, so that he recognizes indeed the lord’s treasures and the royal wealth, yet does not know each thing clearly and perfectly. After this, this servant, who has been held so faithful that the king and lord made known to him the greatness of his wealth, is sent to gather an army for the king, to hold a levy, to test the soldiers. Because he is faithful, so as to invite more to enlist and to gather a larger army for the king, he will be compelled to bring out in part what he has seen; and again, because he is prudent and knows that the king’s secret must be hidden, he will use hints rather than reports, so that the king’s power is not concealed, while the arrangement of the order, adornment, and furnishing of the palace remains hidden. So, as I said, the apostle Paul too seems to me to act in these discourses, not only because, as he himself says, he knows in part and understands in part, but also on account of us, who cannot grasp even what he knows in part: he tempers his discourse, touching on and half opening the chamber of each mystery in single or scarcely two words; and now, having gone in by one entrance, he goes out by another; now, having gone in from another, he hurries to another chamber; so that if you look for him to come out by the entrance by which he went in, you do not find him.

Having first set these things in order in our mind and soul concerning what Paul writes, let us now turn, as far as we are able, to examine and look at the things in hand. And first let us see how “through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death.” For someone may perhaps ask whether the woman sinned before Adam, of whom it is said that “being deceived, she fell into transgression”; and again whether the serpent sinned before her. For he sinned when he said to the woman: “Why has God said that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?” And again he sinned when, though God had said that “on whatever day you eat of it, you shall die the death,” he said to the woman: “You shall not die the death; but God knew that on whatever day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” If, then, the woman sinned before Adam, and the serpent before the woman, and the Apostle says in another place that “Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived,” how will sin be seen to have entered through one man, and not rather through one woman? For the beginning of sin came from the woman, and before the woman from the serpent, or the devil, of whom it is said in the Gospel that “he was a murderer from the beginning.” But see that in these things the Apostle has kept the order of nature; and therefore, since he was speaking of the sin from which death passed through to all men, he ascribes the succession of human posterity, which succumbed to this death coming from sin, not to the woman but to the man. For posterity is named not from the woman but from the man, as the Apostle himself says elsewhere: “For man is not from woman, but woman from man”; and again: “For as woman is from man, so also man is not from woman but through woman.” And for this reason mortal posterity and bodily succession are assigned rather to the man as their author, and not to the woman.

But to make what we say still clearer, we will add what the same Apostle wrote to the Hebrews: “But Levi too, who received tithes, was tithed …” [the scan has lost text here] … of Adam, while he was still in paradise; and all men were expelled from paradise with him or in him when he himself was driven out of it; and through him the death that had come to him from his transgression passed through in consequence to those also who were in his loins. And therefore the Apostle rightly says: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” Not, then, from the serpent, which had sinned before the woman, nor from the woman, who fell into transgression before the man, but through Adam, from whom all mortals take their origin, is sin said to have entered, and through sin death.

But this, to be sure, is the one man through whom sin entered, and through sin death, whom the Apostle himself elsewhere calls “the first man, from the earth, earthly,” and the second … [the scan has lost text here] … when he exhorts us to cast off the image of the earthly and bear the image of the heavenly; that is, that by living according to the word of God we may be renewed and reformed according to the inner man to the image of God who created him. This man, who is already being reformed to the image of God, is neither earthly nor in this world, but his conduct is said to be in heaven; and therefore, according to him who said, “But you are not of this world,” death cannot pass through to him. But of him who is still in this world and earthly and bears the image of the earthly, it is said that through him sin entered this world, and through sin death. But if sin and death have their dwelling in this world, it is certain that those who through Christ or with Christ have died to this world, and, raised with him, have also been counted worthy to sit with him in the heavenly places, having their conduct no longer in this world but in heaven, are strangers to death and sin. Hence it is shown by the same reasoning that every man is first “from the earth, earthly,” as the same Apostle says elsewhere, when he bears the image of the earthly and walks according to the image of the earthly, thinks of the flesh and minds the things of the flesh; and only seldom does it happen that he turns to the Lord and is led by the Spirit of God and … [the scan has lost text here] … the life-giving Spirit.

Inquire, to be sure, since he said that sin entered through one man into this world, and it is certain that by “world” he here means this earthly place in which men dwell, whether sin entered into no other place, and is not found in those places where “the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” are named. And consider this too for yourself: whence sin entered into this world, or where it was before it entered here; or whether it existed at all, or whether it existed before him to whom it is said: “Until iniquities were found in you; and for this I cast you down to the earth.” But it is not safe for us to discuss these things further, since we see that the Apostle touched on them in scarcely single words.

“Through one man,” then, “sin entered into this world.” But “world,” as we said, is to be understood either as the place in which men dwell, or as the earthly and bodily life, in which death has its place; to which world, that is, to the earthly life, the saints say they are crucified and dead. “And through sin,” he says, “death”: without doubt that death of which the prophet also says that “the soul that sins, it shall die”; of which death one may rightly call this bodily death the shadow. For wherever that one goes, this one must follow, as a shadow follows a body. And if someone objects that the Savior did not sin, nor was there in him the death of the soul through sin, and yet he underwent bodily death, we shall answer him that, just as the Savior, though he himself did not sin, is nevertheless said to have been made sin for our salvation through the assumption of flesh, so also, though he owed this death to no one and was not liable to it, nevertheless for our salvation he undertook it, as a shadow of that dispensation which he had undertaken, of which we spoke above, willingly, not by necessity; as he himself said: “I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again.”

But let us see how death passed through to all men, “in whom,” he says, “all sinned.” The Apostle has pronounced with an absolute sentence that the death of sin passed through to all men, in that in which all sinned; as also elsewhere: “For all,” he says, “have sinned and lack the glory of God.” And therefore, even if you name that righteous man Abel, he cannot be excused. “For all have sinned.” For why did he offer “after some days,” and offer his sacrifice from the firstborn after Cain, and not before him, and not at once? Even if you name Enos, who “hoped to call upon the name of the Lord”: why did he hope, and why does he not call upon it at once, but put it off and delay? Even if you name Enoch: it is not written that he pleased God until he begot Methuselah. And Methuselah is interpreted “sending out of death.” From this it is shown that this death which passed through to all men passed through to him also; but at length he perceived that death was within him, and turning to the Lord he sent it away from himself and cast it off through repentance; and therefore he is said to have begotten Methuselah, because he had cast off from himself the death that had beset him. Rightly, then, because he was no longer liable to death, but had cast it away from himself and put it to flight, it is said that God translated him so that he should not see death. And if you inquire more closely about Noah too, you will find that only in his five hundredth year is it written of him that “Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord God,” and that “he was righteous in his generation,” and that “he pleased God”; which, if he had deserved it earlier, divine Scripture would never, I think, have passed over in silence. And if anyone is willing to consider that he drank wine and was drunk and uncovered, he will find from all these things that the Apostle not unjustly says, “in whom all sinned,” even though Noah awoke from his wine. And what shall I say of Abraham, to whom it is said: “Go out from your land and from your kindred and from your father’s house”? This certainly would not have been said if it had been possible to please God in his father’s house. But there is no need to enumerate each of the saints in these matters at great peril, since the sentence of the Apostle suffices, which says that death passed through to all men, and that of him who said: “No one is clean from filth, even if his life has been one day.”

But this death of sin which passed through to all, when it had come to Jesus and tried to pierce him with its sting (for “the sting of death is sin”), was driven back and broken. For he was life, and death was necessarily banished by life; and then it is said to it: “Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O death, is your victory?” For because it had conquered all, here it is said to it: “Where, O death, is your victory?”

And that he did not say sin entered into all men, but into the world, while he said death passed, not into the world but into all men, and not that it entered but that it passed through: I do not think Paul used this difference in vain. I think he says that sin entered into those who are called the world, that is, the earthly, and nowhere sets down its going out; but into those whom he wishes now to be understood as men he says sin passed through, that is, it was indeed there, but was driven out through the repentance of conversion, and passed through, and did not remain in them any longer. Hence it appears that in the letters of Paul not even one syllable should be thought empty of mysteries.

Let us now see how it is said: “For until the law sin was in this world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” In this place, according to the comparison we set out above, Paul seems to me to have gone in by one entrance and gone out by another. For who can follow him through that entrance by which most people think he went in, so as to understand him to say of the law of Moses that until the law sin was in this world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law? As if before the law there had been no sin, and no one had sinned, and sin had not been reckoned to anyone before the law of Moses was given, when we read that sin was reckoned both to Cain and to Lamech, and (not to go through them one by one) that God was so provoked by men’s sins that he brought a flood on the world and said: “I will blot out all flesh that is on the earth”; and again a rain of fire and a flame of sulphur laid waste the Sodomites. How, then, can it be said that in these, or in sins of this kind, there was no sin, or how will it be denied that sin was reckoned when there were such punishments? And therefore we must look for the more hidden entrance by which Paul went out, in what he says: “For until the law sin was in this world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” We find him saying later in this letter as follows: “For apart from the law sin was dead; and I was once alive apart from the law.” In this the sense of both passages seems to me one and the same. For what was lacking in the wording here he supplied there: in “For until the law sin was in this world,” the word “dead” is lacking, which he expressed more plainly there. If, then, we join that word here too, and say: “For until the law sin was dead in this world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law,” see that the sense can stand whole.

But we have often said this too, that in this letter Paul discusses many laws, but most often the natural law, which is especially found in this place. “For until the natural law sin is dead.” So at a certain time of life, when someone begins to be capable of reason and to distinguish between just and unjust, fair and unfair, then sin, which before was held within the man as if dead, is said to revive, because there is now within him a law that forbids and reason that shows it must not be done. But to make what we say more readily understood, let us use a plain example. It is written: “Whoever strikes his father or mother shall die the death”; and: “Whoever curses his father or mother shall die the death.” So if a little child of about four or five years, in a temper, strikes his father or mother with a stick, as often happens, as far as the precept of the commandment goes he deserves death. But because the natural law is not yet in him, to teach him that he ought not to do injury to his father or mother, and he does not know that in this the crime of impiety is committed, what he does is indeed a kind of sin, since he strikes his father or mother, or curses them; but the sin is dead in him, because through the absence of the natural law, which is not yet in him, the sin cannot be reckoned to him. For there is not yet in him enough reason to teach him that what he does ought not to be done; and therefore even by his parents it is not only not counted as a fault, but is received with delight and pleasure. And in this way, consistently, as I think, can be understood what the Apostle says: “For until the law sin was in this world,” understood: dead; “but sin is not imputed when there is no law.” According to this exposition it is fitting also to understand what the Apostle says: “I was once alive apart from the law.” For how is Paul found ever to have lived without the law of Moses, when he says of himself that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, circumcised on the eighth day, and was in the observance of the law of Moses immediately from birth? But it is clear that he once lived without the natural law, that is, in childhood, before he became capable of reason. For in that age the distinction between just and unjust was not yet in him, nor was the testing of right and wrong open to him.

That this is said of the natural law he shows plainly in what follows, when he says: “But when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” By this he declares that the sins of that age existed indeed, but were held dead, because they will not be reckoned as fault. But when I began, he says, to know what must be done, what must be guarded against and avoided, and to receive the commandment of the law that was strong within me, then sin revived in me, which before seemed dead through the absence of the law; and “I,” he says, “died,” for sin now began to be reckoned to me.

But Basilides, not noticing that it must be understood of the natural law, dragged the apostolic word to foolish and impious fables, and tries to build from this saying of the Apostle the doctrine of metensomatosis, that is, that souls are poured over into one body after another. “For the Apostle said,” he says, “‘I was once alive apart from the law’: that is, before I came into this body I lived in that kind of body which is not under law, namely that of a beast or a bird.” But he did not look at what follows, that is: “But when the commandment came, sin revived.” For he did not say that he came to the commandment, but that the commandment came to him; and he did not say that sin had not been in him, but that it had been dead and revived. In this he certainly shows that he was speaking of both states within one and the same life of his. But let Basilides, and any who think as he does, be left in their impiety. Let us rather attend to the Apostle’s sense according to the piety of the church’s teaching.

And this very thing too he says, “Sin was in this world,” and not “in men,” although in the world there are cattle and other animals and trees and whatever this world consists of, and yet sin is not believed to be in them; let us inquire what it means. It seems to me that here the Apostle means those men who are already capable of reason and obey the natural laws, but called that age which has not yet arrived at the capacity of reason not so much “men” as “the world,” because they are indeed parts of the world, but have not yet come to the point of expressing in themselves, through the capacity of reason, the image of God to which man is said to have been made.

But I should also like (unless it seems more curious than is right) to inquire whether, according to those who wish the law of Moses to be understood in these words, through his saying, “But sin is not imputed when there is no law,” the devil and his angels too might seem to be acquitted, if where there is no law sin is not imputed. And how, before the law of Moses, was the serpent condemned, or did death enter the world through the devil’s envy? How, too, will what the apostle Jude says in the catholic letter be explained? For he says this: “And the angels who did not keep their own rule, but left their own dwelling, he has kept under darkness, bound with everlasting chains, for the judgment of the great day.” From all these things it is more and more clear that the Apostle says this about that law which each one, whether of men or of angels, carries naturally within himself by a certain divine dispensation or gift; whose force and power is so great that it convicts even angels and makes an exception for no person of any rank; and it is this law that did what the apostle Jude says above, that the angels who did not keep their own rule but left their own dwelling are kept, bound with everlasting chains, for the judgment of the great day. It is the very law which drags the devil and his angels too into the eternal fire which has been prepared for them. And just as it is certain that neither would those angels be kept bound with everlasting chains for judgment, nor would these be sent into the eternal fire prepared for them, except that they did not keep the law laid down for them by God, and they would not come to judgment unless they had committed something against the law; so it seems certain that, if they had kept the law laid down for them, neither would these have fallen into eternal fire, nor those under the everlasting chains of darkness.

It remains for us to discuss, as far as we can, how it is said: “But death reigned from Adam until Moses over those who sinned in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one to come.” The Apostle now mentions death for the third time. First he says that through sin death entered into this world; secondly, “to all men,” he says, “death passed through”; and now, “Death reigned,” he says, “from Adam until Moses.” And knowing that there are certain differences in each of these, he has indicated when it entered and when it reigned. It entered, he says, when the first man transgressed. And he said how it entered: “Through sin,” he says. And now he marks the time of its reign, from Adam until Moses; but how it passed through to all men he does not show.

It seems to me, then, that in these words the Apostle describes something like the invasion of a tyrant who wished to seize the kingdom of the lawful king, and first occupied the very passes and entrances of the kingdom through the treachery of the guard; then afterwards tried to win the minds of all over to himself, and for the most part succeeded, and so claimed for himself a kingdom that was not his. While he reigned thus by tyranny, Moses is sent, a leader chosen by the lawful king, to call back the peoples occupied by him to the rights of civil government and to teach them to use the laws of the true king. Then that tyrant, that is, the death of sin, which had crept in through the treachery of the first guard, reigned over all those who turned aside to him by a transgression like that of the first one. But this leader of the lawful prince does everything he can to snatch some from the kingdom of sin and death; and at length he succeeded in converting one nation, and anyone who wished to join himself to it; and by the king’s command he first instituted sacrifices, by which, offered in fitting manner at fixed solemnities, sin was forgiven them. And so at last men began in some part to be freed from the kingdom of sin and death. For that tyrant who is called death reigned from Adam, who by his transgression first gave him entrance so that he might pass through to all men, until this Moses whom we have called a leader, who, sent by God the king of all, began to break his kingdom and to call it back under the law of the just prince.

“Death reigned,” then, “from Adam until Moses,” in the sense we set out above, not over all, but “over those who sinned in the likeness of the transgression of Adam.” For death entered into the world and passed through to all, yet did not reign over all. For it is one thing to pass through, and another to reign. For sin passed through even into the righteous and grazed them with a light contagion; but in transgressors, that is, those who subject themselves to it with their whole mind and devotion, it holds the kingdom and rules with all power. Death reigned, then, “from Adam,” who first opened by his transgression a passage for sin into this world, “until Moses,” that is, until the law. For through the law the purification of sins began to be opened, and in some part resistance began to be made to its tyranny, through victims, various expiations, sacrifices, and precepts. But since its dominion was so great that it exceeded the strength of the law, the prophets are sent to help the law. But they too, seeing clearly that the tyrant’s power was beyond their strength, pray for the coming and presence of the king himself, crying to God: “Send out your light and your truth”; and again: “Bend the heavens and come down”; and again: “Arise …” [the scan has lost text here] … “in that the law was weak through the flesh, God, sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, condemned sin in the flesh concerning sin”; and reconciled the world to God, and stripped the principalities and powers of the tyrant, triumphing over them in himself.

But we seem to have slipped into these matters by a kind of digression; let us return to our subject. The death of sin, then, reigned from Adam until Moses, that is, until the coming of Christ. For Moses is called the law, and the law, as it is written, had its place until the baptism of John, from which time Jesus began to preach the kingdom of God. And that he made an exception of certain persons over whom death reigned, when he says, “Death reigned over those who sinned in the likeness of the transgression of Adam,” does not seem to me to be said without the indication of some mystery. Perhaps, then, there were some, up to that time when men were held under the law as under a pedagogue, who did something like what Adam is described as having done in paradise: having touched the tree of knowing good and evil, having been ashamed of their nakedness, and having fallen from the dwelling of paradise. Or rather it seems it should be taken more simply, and the likeness of the transgression of Adam received without any discussion, so that by this word all who were born of Adam the transgressor seem to be indicated, and to have in themselves the likeness of his transgression, received not only from his seed but from upbringing. For all who are born in this world are not only nourished by their parents but also trained by them, and are not only sons of sinners but also their disciples. But when age has grown and the freedom of doing what one thinks has come, then a man either goes on in the way of his fathers, as is written of some kings, or else walks in the way of the Lord his God.

Indeed, something of this sort seems to me to be indicated about Abel in what is written: “But after some days Abel offered a sacrifice to God from the firstborn of the sheep and from their fat.” What he said, “after some days,” shows that in the first days of his life he was held by the training of his father’s transgression; but after those days, when he came to his senses, when, warned by the law of nature, he looked to God, he is then said to have offered a sacrifice to God. This place can therefore be explained simply in this way; or else the sacrament hidden in his saying, “in the likeness of the transgression of Adam,” stored away almost inexpressibly, can be gathered by a fine line of understanding: so that someone might hold that the death which is said to have reigned here from Adam until Moses, that is, until the end of the law and the beginning of Christ, is that death of which it is written in the prophet as in the person of the Lord saying: “From the hand of hell I will snatch them, and from death I will free them”; or else that certain persons are excepted, and designated by a more hidden mystery, who are recorded to have sinned after the likeness of the transgression of Adam, over whom alone death reigned.

But if, as is found in some copies, death, that is, the death which held souls in hell, is said to have reigned even over those who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, we understand that all the saints too fell under this death, if not by the law of sinning, at any rate by the law of dying; and that Christ descended into hell for this reason, not only that he himself should not be held by death, but that he might also draw out those who were held there not so much by the crime of transgression, as we said, as by the condition of dying; as it is written that many bodies of the saints who slept rose with him and entered the holy city. In this the prophet too agrees, saying of Christ: “Ascending on high, he led captivity captive.” And in this way by his resurrection he has already destroyed the kingdom of death; whence it is written that he set the captivity free. But the enemy and tyrant himself, whose kingdom he dissolved, is still to be destroyed, as the Apostle says: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” The kingdom of death has already been destroyed, and the captivity which was held under it has been led away. But because the enemy and tyrant himself is still to be destroyed at the last, at the end of the age, therefore even now we see him not so much reigning as plundering; and, driven from his kingdom, going round through deserts and trackless places seeking for himself a band of unbelievers; and for this reason the Apostle cried: “Therefore let not sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires.” But we, content to have touched in a few words on what the Apostle wished to be covered, … [the scan has lost text here; the lemma “who is a type of the one to come” is wanting].

This indeed seems ambiguous to me: whether Adam is called a type “of the one to come” from the time when the Apostle wrote these things, that is, of the age to come; or from himself, that is, from Adam, “of the one to come,” so that it is to be taken of Christ: a time which, for the Apostle writing these things, … [the scan has lost text here] … Christ came to join the Church to himself. I do not know, indeed, how anyone could fit both his transgression and his sin, and the fact that through him death passed through to all men, to a type of Christ, unless perhaps by contraries, as the same Apostle sets out in the passages above, when he says: “For as through one man death, so also through one the resurrection of the dead”; and again: “For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many will be made righteous.” But if we understand that the Apostle said Adam is a type of the one to come with reference to his own times in which he wrote, it is rather understood that, just as in this age death reigned through the one Adam and the whole human race was made mortal, so in the age to come life will reign through Christ and the whole human race will be given immortality.

Just as we said this saying is ambiguous, “who is a type of the one to come,” we find it ambiguously written to the Colossians too, where he says: “Therefore let no one judge you in food or in drink or in respect of a festival or new moons or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come.” And again the same Apostle says elsewhere: “For the law has a shadow of the good things to come.” In these there is certainly a similar doubt, whether food and drink and festival and new moons and sabbaths have the shadow of things to come in such a way that the truth of their shadow was fulfilled in the coming of Christ, or is to be fulfilled in the age to come. And when the Apostle says that the whole law has a shadow of good things to come, it is uncertain whether the truth of this shadow is to be fulfilled in the coming of Christ or in the age to come; since in another place too it is written of the things under the law that they serve as a type and shadow of heavenly things. He, then, who wishes to maintain that these things were fulfilled in the coming of Christ will confirm that the meaning of food and drink was fulfilled when Peter saw in a vision every kind of animal let down in a sheet and heard a voice: “What God has cleansed, do not call common,” which is certainly referred to the various ways of life of men; and he will say that the drink is the cup of the New Testament; he will prove the festival too, where “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,” and “we keep the festival, not with the old leaven, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Likewise he will show that new moons, that is, new months, come about through Christ, the Sun of righteousness, and his apostles. And he will teach that sabbaths are kept by not carrying the burdens of sin, but … [the scan has lost text here] … “which you have kindled for yourselves.” But the other, who transfers these types and the shadow of the law to the age to come, and holds that they are images of heavenly mysteries to be fulfilled in that heavenly Jerusalem, says about food and … [the scan has lost text here] … “until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of my Father.” And he will speak of the festival according to the prophet’s saying: “What will you do on the day of solemnity and on the festal day of the Lord?” And new moons, that is, new months, he will look for in those eternal years of which the Psalmist says: “I remembered the eternal years and meditated”; and again in the song of Deuteronomy: “Remember the eternal days”; and of the sabbath it is said: “There remains therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God.” And he will maintain that, just as each of these holds a type of the age to come, … [the scan has lost text here] … and therefore, when it had been said first of those who sinned in the likeness of the transgression of Adam, there was added: “who is a type of the one to come.”