On First Principles 3.4.1–3.4.5

Now I think we should not be silent about human temptations either, which arise at times from flesh and blood, or from the wisdom of flesh and blood, which is said to be hostile to God. And whether what some say is true, that there are two souls in each person, [we must consider,] now that we have set out the temptations that are said to be more than human, that is, those which we wage against principalities and powers and against the rulers of the darkness of this world and the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, or which are carried on for us against evil spirits and unclean demons. In this matter I think we must consequently inquire whether in us, that is, in human beings, who consist of soul and body and vital spirit, there is also something else which has its own incitement and motion provoking to evil. For some are accustomed to raise a question of this kind: whether there are, as it were, two souls in us, one more divine and heavenly and the other lower; or whether, from the very fact that we cleave to bodies (which bodies by their own nature are dead and wholly lifeless, since the material body is given life by us, that is, by souls, and the body is certainly contrary and hostile to the spirit), we are drawn and provoked to those evils which are pleasing to the body; or else, third, as some of the Greeks have thought, that our soul, though one in substance, is nevertheless made up of several parts, one part being called rational and the other irrational, and the part they call irrational being divided again into two affections, desire and anger. These, then, are the opinions about the soul which we have found held by some. Of these, the one we said seemed good to certain Greek philosophers, that the soul is threefold, I do not see to be much confirmed by the authority of divine Scripture; but for the other two that remain some passages can be found which might seem to fit them from the divine writings.

Of these let us first discuss what some are accustomed to maintain, that there is in us one soul that is good and heavenly and another that is lower and earthly; and that the better one is implanted from heaven, such as the one which in Jacob, while he was still in the womb, won the palm of victory in supplanting his brother Esau, and which in Jeremiah is sanctified from the womb, and in John is filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb. The lower one, they say, comes from bodily seed, and they assert that it is sown together with the body; hence they deny that it can live or subsist apart from the body, and for this reason they say it is often called flesh. For what is written, "The flesh lusts against the spirit," they take as said not of the flesh but of this soul, which is properly the soul of the flesh. From these words they also try to confirm what is written in Leviticus thus: "The soul of all flesh is its blood." For since the blood, spread through the whole flesh, gives life to the flesh, they say that this soul, which is called the soul of all flesh, is in the blood. And this very thing that is said, that the flesh fights against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and what is said, "The soul of all flesh is its blood," they say is called by another name the wisdom of the flesh, which is a kind of material spirit that is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be, because it has earthly wills and bodily desires. Of this, they think, the apostle also spoke when he says: "But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which is in my members." If anyone objects to them that this is said of the nature of the body, which according to the property of its own nature is indeed dead, but is said to have a sense or wisdom that is hostile to God or wars against the spirit, as if one were to say that it is in a manner the voice of the flesh itself, crying out not to be hungry, not to be thirsty, not to be cold, and not to want to suffer any discomfort at all whether from abundance or from want, they will try to refute and attack this by showing that there are very many other passions of the soul that draw their origin in no way from the flesh, and yet the spirit opposes them, such as ambition, avarice, rivalry, envy, pride and the like. Seeing that the human mind or spirit has a kind of battle with these, they therefore place the cause of all these evils in nothing other than this soul of which we spoke above, a bodily soul, as it were, and generated by transmission from the seed. They are accustomed also to add in support of their assertion the testimony of the apostle where he says: "Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are sexual immorality, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, rivalries, anger, quarrels, dissensions, heresies, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like," saying that not all these things draw their origin from the use or pleasure of the flesh, so that all these motions should be thought to arise from that substance which has no soul, that is, the flesh. And the saying, "See your calling, brothers, that not many among you are wise according to the flesh," will seem to point to this: that there appears to be a certain fleshly and material wisdom of its own, and another wisdom according to the spirit; and the former cannot be called wisdom unless there is a soul of the flesh which is wise in what is called the wisdom of the flesh. To these they also add this: "If the flesh wars against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that we do not do what we wish," what are the things of which he says "so that we do not do what we wish"? It is certain, they say, that this is not said of the spirit, for the will of the spirit is not prevented; nor of the flesh, because if the flesh has no soul of its own, it will certainly have no will either. It remains, then, that it is said of the will of this soul, which can have a will of its own, which certainly opposes the will of the spirit. And if this is so, it is established that the will of this soul is something intermediate between the flesh and the spirit, serving and obeying without doubt one of the two, whichever it has chosen to obey. When it subjects itself to the pleasures of the flesh, it makes people carnal; but when it joins itself to the spirit, it makes people to be in the spirit, and for this reason to be called spiritual. This is what the apostle seems to indicate when he says, "But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit." We must ask, then, what at all this will is between the flesh and the spirit, besides the will that is said to belong to the flesh or to the spirit. For it is held for certain that all things said to be of the spirit are the will of the spirit, and whatever are called works of the flesh are the will of the flesh. What, then, besides these, is this will of the soul that is named separately, which the apostle does not want us to do when he says, "so that you do not do whatever you wish"? By this it seems to be indicated that it ought to cleave to neither of these two, that is, neither to the flesh nor to the spirit. But someone will say: as it is better for the soul to do its own will than to do the will of the flesh, so again it is better to do the will of the spirit than its own will. How, then, does the apostle say, "so that you do not do the things you wish"? Because in the fight that is waged between the flesh and the spirit, the victory of the spirit is by no means certain; for it is plain that the flesh prevails in very many people.

But since we have fallen into a deep discussion, in which we must examine every side that can be raised, let us see whether perhaps something of this kind can be treated in this place: that as it is better for the soul to follow the spirit when the spirit has conquered the flesh, so also, even if it seems worse for it to follow the flesh, which wars against the spirit and wishes to call the soul back to itself, it may nevertheless perhaps seem more useful for the soul to be held by the flesh than to remain in its own wills. For since, while it remains in its own wills, it is then said to be neither hot nor cold, but to continue in a kind of middle lukewarmness, it will find a slow and rather difficult conversion. But if it cleaves to the flesh, then from the very evils it suffers from the vices of the flesh, sated at last and filled, and as it were wearied by the heaviest burdens of luxury and lust, it can be turned more easily and quickly from material filth to the desire for heavenly things and to spiritual grace. And we must think the apostle said this: that the spirit fights against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit for this reason, that we may not do whatever we wish, meaning without doubt the things that are designated as outside the will of the spirit and outside the will of the flesh; as if we were to say in other words that it is better for a person to be either in virtue or in wickedness than in neither; but the soul, before it turns to the spirit and is made one with it, while it cleaves to the body and thinks of carnal things, seems to be neither in a good state nor plainly in a bad one, but to be like an animal, so to speak. It is better, if it can be, that it cleave to the spirit and become spiritual. But if this cannot be, it is more expedient for it to follow even the wickedness of the flesh than, placed in its own wills, to hold the state of an irrational animal. These things we have treated, wishing to discuss the opinions of each assertion, with a longer digression than we wished, so that we might not be thought unaware of the questions usually raised by those who ask whether there is another soul in us besides this heavenly and rational one, which is naturally opposed to it and is called the flesh, or the wisdom of the flesh, or the soul of the flesh.

Now let us see what is usually answered to these things by those who maintain that there is in us one motion and one life of one and the same soul, whose salvation or perdition is properly ascribed to it according to its own acts. And first let us see what kind of passions of the mind we suffer when we feel ourselves as it were torn into parts over each matter, when a kind of battle of thoughts takes place in our hearts, and certain probabilities are suggested to us by which we incline now to this and now to that, and by which we are now reproved and now approve ourselves. It is nothing remarkable if we say that bad characters are at variance with themselves, since this is found in all people whenever deliberation on an uncertain matter comes to be weighed, and it is considered or consulted what may be chosen more rightly or more usefully. It is no wonder, then, if two probabilities meeting each other and suggesting contrary things draw the mind in different directions. For example, if thought invites someone to faith and the fear of God, it cannot then be said that the flesh is fighting against the spirit; but while it is uncertain what is true and useful, the mind is drawn in different directions. So too, when the flesh is thought to provoke to lust, but better counsel resists such incitements, we must not think there is some other life resisting another, but the nature of the body, which, when the places of the seminal humour are filled, longs to empty them and let them flow away; just as it is not some contrary power, or the life of another soul, that must be thought to excite thirst in us and provoke us to drink, or to make us hungry and stir us to food. But as these things are sought or discharged by the natural motions of the body, so also the humour of natural seed, gathered over time in its places, longs to be expelled and cast out; and this is so far from coming about by the impulse of any other provocation that it is sometimes discharged even of its own accord. When it is said, then, that "the flesh fights against the spirit," these people understand it thus: that the use, or necessity, or pleasure of the flesh, provoking a person, draws him away and leads him off from divine and spiritual things. For, drawn away by the necessity of the body, we are not allowed to give our time to divine things that will profit us for ever. So again the soul, giving its time to divine and spiritual things and joined to the spirit, is said to fight against the flesh, when it does not allow it to grow slack with delights and to drift in pleasures, in which it naturally takes delight. In this way they also explain the saying, "The wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God": not that the flesh truly has a soul or a wisdom of its own, but as we are accustomed to say, by a loose use of words, that the earth is thirsty and wants to drink water, where we say "wants" not properly but loosely, or again that a house wants to be rebuilt, and many other things like these; so also "the wisdom of the flesh" must be taken, or the saying "the flesh lusts against the spirit." They usually add also the saying, "The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the ground." For what cries to God is not properly the blood that was shed; but blood is said loosely to cry out, while vengeance is demanded on the one who shed it. And what the apostle says, "But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind," they understand as if he had said that whoever wishes to give his time to the word of God is distracted, torn and hindered by bodily necessities and uses, which are in the body like a kind of law, so that, giving his time to wisdom, he cannot contemplate the divine mysteries more intently.

As for heresies, envies, contentions and the rest being listed among the works of the flesh, they take it thus: that the soul, when it has become coarser in perception from subjecting itself to the passions of the body, being weighed down by the mass of its vices and perceiving nothing subtle or spiritual, is said to have become flesh, and takes its name from that on which it spends more zeal or purpose. They also add this question: who will be found, or who will be called, the creator of this evil sense that is called the sense of the flesh? For they maintain that no other creator of soul and flesh is to be believed in but God. And if we say that the good God in his very creation created something hostile to himself, it will certainly seem absurd. If, then, it is written that "the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God," and this is said to have come about by creation, God himself will seem to have made a nature hostile to himself, which cannot be subject to him or to his law; that is, if the thing of which these words are said is thought to be a living being. And if this is accepted, how will it seem to differ from those who say that different natures of souls were created, which by nature are either to perish or to be saved? This certainly pleases only the heretics, who, since they cannot maintain the justice of God by pious reasoning, compose fictions of impiety of this kind. We, for our part, have set forth as well as we could, in the manner of a discussion, what could be said on each doctrine in the person of each side; let the reader choose from them which account is rather to be embraced.