Thus the face of the earth is renewed through the grace of the New Testament, indeed in great multitude. That saying too which is written in Ecclesiastes: And let the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return to God who gave it, favours neither opinion against the other, but stands between the two. For when those men say that from this it is proved that the soul is given not by parents but by God—since, when the dust is turned into its own earth, that is, the flesh which was made from dust, the spirit returns to God who gave it—the others answer them: Assuredly it is so.
For the spirit returns to God, who gave it to the first man, when He breathed into his face, once the dust—that is, the human body—was turned into its own earth, whence it was first made. Nor was the spirit to return to the parents, although it was created from that one spirit which was given to the first man; just as the flesh itself, after death, does not return to the parents from whom it is certainly known to have been propagated. Therefore, just as the flesh does not return to the men from whom it was created, but to the earth from which it was formed for the first man, so too the spirit does not return to the men through whom it was transmitted, but to God, by whom it was given to that first flesh.
By this testimony we are indeed sufficiently reminded that God made the soul out of nothing, the soul which He gave to the first man, not out of any already-made creature as the body was made from the earth; and therefore, when it returns, it has nowhere to return except to the Author who gave it, not to that creature out of which it was made, as the body returns to the earth. For there is no creature out of which it was made, since it was made out of nothing, and on this account, whatever returns, returns to the Maker by whom it was made out of nothing. For not all return, since there are those of whom it is said: A spirit that goes and does not return. Wherefore it is indeed difficult to gather together all the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures on this matter:
for even if it could be done, so that they were not only recounted but even thoroughly discussed, it would run into great length of discourse; yet nonetheless, unless something be brought forward as certain as those things which are brought forward as certain, by which it is shown that God made the soul or that He gave it to the first man, I do not know in what way this question may be resolved by the testimony of the divine word. For if it had been written that God similarly breathed into the face of the woman when she was formed, and she was made a living soul, then indeed very much light would be added, whereby we should believe that to each formed flesh of man a soul is given not from the parents; yet still one would await what should properly be held concerning the offspring, since the customary manner of man arising from man is familiar to us.
But the first woman was made otherwise, and therefore it might still be said that the soul was on that account not given to Eve from Adam by divine act, because she did not arise from him as offspring. If, however, Scripture were to record concerning the man who was first born of them that his soul was not drawn from the parents but given from above, then this, even with Scripture silent about the rest, would have to be understood of all the others as well. Now therefore let us also consider this, whether that which is written confirms neither opinion but can be accommodated to both, namely: Through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed unto all men, in whom all sinned; and a little later:
As through the offence of one, judgement came upon all men unto condemnation, so also through the righteousness of one, it came upon all men unto justification of life. For as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one many shall be constituted righteous. For from these words of the Apostle those who defend the propagation of souls strive to establish their opinion thus: If, they say, sin or the sinner can be understood according to the flesh alone, we are not compelled by these words to believe that the soul comes from the parents; but if, although through the enticement of the flesh, yet nonetheless it is only the soul that sins, how is that to be taken which was said: in whom all sinned, unless the soul too, like the flesh, was propagated from Adam?
Or how were they made sinners through his disobedience, if they were in him only according to the flesh and not also according to the soul? For care must be taken lest either God seem to be the author of sin, if He gives a soul to flesh in which it must needs sin, or lest there be able to be some soul—apart from Christ's own—for whose deliverance from sin the grace of Christ is not necessary, because it did not sin in Adam, if it was said that all sinned in him only according to the flesh, which was created from him, and not also according to the soul:
which is so contrary to the faith of the Church that parents run, even with their little ones and infants, to receive the grace of holy baptism; and if in them there is loosed this bond of sin which is only of the flesh and not also of the soul, it is rightly asked what harm it would do them if at that age they departed from the body without baptism. For if by this sacrament provision is made for their body and not also for their soul, then even the dead ought to be baptized;
but since we see that the Church universally holds this, that provision be made and succour be given to the living, lest, once they are dead, nothing can be done that would profit them, we do not see what else can be understood, except that each little one is nothing other than Adam both in body and in soul, and therefore Christ's grace is necessary to him. For that age has in itself done nothing either of good or of evil; accordingly the soul there is most innocent, if it has not been propagated from Adam. Whence anyone who, holding that opinion about the soul, could demonstrate how it can justly go into condemnation if it depart from the body without baptism, would be a marvel. For most truly and most truthfully it is written:
The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; yet nonetheless I think that flesh without soul can lust for nothing—a thing which no one, learned or unlearned, would doubt. And on this account the cause of this same carnal concupiscence is not in the soul alone, but much less is it in the flesh alone. For it comes to be from both: from the soul, namely, because without it no delight is felt, but from the flesh, because without it no carnal delight is felt. Therefore, when the Apostle speaks of the flesh lusting against the spirit, he means, beyond doubt, the carnal delight which the spirit has of the flesh and with the flesh, against the delight which it has alone.
For the spirit alone has, unless I am mistaken, that desire which is not mingled with any pleasure of the flesh or craving of carnal things, whereby the soul desires and faints for the courts of the Lord; the spirit alone has also that of which it is said to it: You have desired wisdom: keep the commandment, and the Lord will bestow it upon you. For when the spirit commands the members of the body to serve this desire, by which alone it is kindled—as when a book is taken up, when something is written, read, discussed, heard, when finally bread is broken for the hungry and the other offices of humanity and mercy are rendered—the flesh renders obedience, it does not stir up concupiscence.
When to these and suchlike good desires, by which the soul alone lusts, something is opposed which delights that same soul according to the flesh, then the flesh is said to lust against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. For flesh is thus spoken of in respect of what the soul does according to it, when he says: the flesh lusts, just as it is said: the ear hears and the eye sees—for who does not know that it is rather the soul that both hears through the ear and sees through the eye? So too we speak when we say: your hand succours a man, when something is given with the hand extended, whereby someone is succoured. But if of the very eye of faith also, to which it belongs to believe those things that are not seen through the flesh, it was said:
All flesh shall see the salvation of God—this can only be understood of the soul, by which the flesh lives, since even to behold Christ devoutly through our flesh itself, that is, the form which He put on for our sake, pertains not to concupiscence but to the ministry of the flesh—lest perchance someone should wish to take in such a way that which was said: All flesh shall see the salvation of God:
how much more fittingly is the flesh said to lust, when the soul not only supplies animal life to the flesh, but even according to that same flesh lusts after something which it is not in its power not to lust after, so long as sin dwells in the members—that is, a certain violent enticement of the flesh in the body of this death, coming from the punishment of that sin whence we draw our origin, according to which all before grace are children of wrath. Against this sin those set under grace do battle, not that it may not be in their body, so long as it is thus mortal that it may rightly even be called dead, but that it may not reign. And it does not reign when its desires—that is, those things which are lusted after according to the flesh against the spirit—are not obeyed.
Accordingly, did the Apostle say: Let there be no sin in your mortal body—for indeed he knew that the delight of sin, which he calls sin, dwells within, our nature having been corrupted, namely, by the first transgression—but he says: Let not sin reign in your mortal body, to obey its desires, neither yield your members as weapons of iniquity unto sin. According to this opinion we neither say the most absurd thing, that the flesh lusts without a soul, nor do we agree with the Manichaeans, who, since they saw that the flesh could not lust without a soul, supposed the flesh to have some other soul of its own, from another nature contrary to God, whence it might lust against the spirit.
Nor are we compelled to say that Christ's grace is not necessary to some soul, when it is said to us: What did the soul of an infant deserve, that it should be pernicious to it to depart from the body without having received the sacrament of Christian baptism, if it neither committed any sin of its own nor is from that soul which first sinned in Adam? For we are not now dealing with older boys, to whom indeed some are unwilling to attribute their own sin except from the point of the fourteenth year, when they have begun to reach puberty. This we might rightly believe, if there were no sins except those committed with the genital members. But who would dare to affirm that thefts, lies, and perjuries are not sins, except one who wishes to commit such things with impunity?
But childhood is full of these, although in children they do not seem punishable as in the older, because it is hoped that with the coming years, in which reason grows strong, they will be able to understand the salutary precepts better and to obey them more willingly. But now we are not dealing with boys, whose carnal and childish will, whether of body or of mind, if truth and equity should oppose it, they resist with what strength of words and deeds they can. On behalf of what? Save on behalf of the falsity and iniquity which will seem to abet them, either to obtain what allures them, or to avoid what offends them. We are speaking of infants—not because they are for the most part born of adulterers;
for the gifts of nature are not to be blamed on account of depraved morals, nor ought grain therefore not to sprout because the hand of a thief sowed it. Or shall a man's own iniquity indeed harm his very parents, if by turning themselves to God they correct it? How much less shall it harm the children, if they live rightly! But that age raises a pressing question: whose soul, since it has no sin of its own free choice of will, it is asked how it can be justified through the obedience of that one man, if it is not guilty through the disobedience of another one man. This is the voice of those who hold that the souls of men are created from human parents—not indeed except by God the Creator, but as also the bodies are.
For these too do not the parents create, but rather He who says: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. To whom it is answered that God indeed gives souls to the bodies of men one by one, to this end: that in the flesh of sin, coming from original sin, by living rightly and by subduing carnal concupiscences under the grace of God, they may procure the merit whereby they may with the body itself be transferred to a better state at the time of the resurrection and live forever in Christ with the angels; but that it is necessary that, when they are fitted in a wondrous way to earthly and mortal members—especially such as are propagated from the flesh of sin—so as first to be able to quicken them and afterwards, with the increase of age, to govern them, they should be as it were weighed down with forgetfulness.
And if this forgetfulness were in a manner indigestible, it would be attributed to the Creator; but since, little by little recovering from the torpor of this forgetfulness, the soul is able to be converted to its God, and to deserve His mercy and truth—first by the very piety of conversion, then by perseverance in keeping His commandment—what harm does it do it to be plunged for a little while, as it were, into that sleep, from which, gradually awakening into the light of understanding, for the sake of which the rational soul was made, it can through a good will choose a good life? This indeed it will not be able to do, unless the grace of God through the Mediator assist it. If a man neglect this, he will be Adam not only according to the flesh, but also according to the spirit; but if he take care, he will be Adam according to the flesh only;
but living rightly according to the spirit, he will deserve that even that which was drawn as blameworthy from Adam should be cleansed from the stain of sin, by that transformation which the resurrection promises to the saints. But before he can, through age, live according to the spirit, he has need of the sacrament of the Mediator, so that what he cannot yet do through his own faith may be done through that of those who love him. For by His sacrament the original penalty of sin is loosed even in infant age, from which, unless he be aided, even the young man will not subdue carnal concupiscence, nor, once it is subdued, will he attain the merit of eternal life, save by the gift of Him whom he strives to deserve.
Therefore, while living, even the infant ought to be baptized, lest the fellowship of the flesh of sin harm the soul—by partaking of which flesh it comes to pass that the soul of the infant can have no understanding according to the spirit. For that very affection weighs down the soul even when it is stripped of the body, unless, while it is in the body, it be expiated through the one sacrifice of the true Priest. What then, says someone, if his own people should fail to see to this, whether through unbelief or negligence? This indeed can be said also of the older ones. For they too can either die suddenly, or fall sick among those where no one will succour them so that they may be baptized.
But those, he says, have also sins of their own, of which they stand in need of remission; which if they be not remitted, no one will rightly say that they are undeservedly punished for those things which in their own life, by their own will, they committed. But that soul, to which a certain contagion has been drawn from the flesh of sin—if it is not created from that first sinful soul—can in no way be imputed to it; for it is by no sin, but by the nature by which it was so made and given to the flesh by God's giving. Why, then, shall it be estranged from eternal life, if no one should succour the infant by baptizing it? Or will it perhaps do no harm? What then does it profit him to whom succour is given, if it does no harm to him to whom none is given?
Here, what those can answer for their own cause who, according to the Holy Scriptures—whether what is found in them or what is not opposed to them—endeavour to assert that new souls, not drawn from the parents, are given to the bodies, I confess I have not yet heard nor anywhere read. Not, however, that the business of the absent is on that account to be abandoned, if anything should occur to me whereby it might seem to be helped. For they can still say that God, foreknowing how each soul would live if it lived longer in the body, procures the ministration of the saving laver for that one whose future piety He foresees—when it should come to the years capable of faith—if now, for some hidden cause, it must needs be forestalled by death.
It is therefore hidden, and most remote from human wit, or at least from my own ingenuity, why an infant is born only to die immediately or soon; but this is so hidden that it helps neither party, about whose opinions we are now disputing. For, that opinion being exploded whereby souls are supposed to be thrust down into bodies for the merits of a life previously lived—so that it might seem to have deserved to be released sooner which had not sinned much—lest we contradict the Apostle testifying that the not-yet-born have done nothing of good or evil, neither can those who affirm the transmission of the soul show, on their own behalf, why the death of some is hastened, of others delayed; nor can those who will that new souls be given, one to each, do so.
Accordingly, those who were being pressed concerning the deaths of infants—as to why the sacrament of baptism is necessary for all, whose souls were not drawn from that one soul by whose disobedience many were made sinners—when they answer that all indeed are made sinners according to the flesh, but according to the soul only those who lived ill at that time when they could also have lived well, yet that all souls (that is, even those of infants) therefore have the sacrament of baptism as necessary, without which it is not expedient to depart from this life even at that age, because the contagion of sin from the flesh of sin, by which the soul is overwhelmed when it is engrafted into these members, will harm it after death, unless, while it is still in this very flesh, it be expiated by the sacrament of the Mediator; and that this help is divinely procured for that one whom God foreknew, if it lived here up to the years suitable for faith, would have lived piously, whom for some reason known to Himself He both willed to be born in a body and quickly withdrew from the body:
when therefore they answer these things, what can be said against them, except that we are made uncertain of the salvation of those who, having led this life well, have died in the peace of the Church—if each is to be judged not only according to that which he lived, but even according to that which he would have lived had he been able to live longer? For if the evil merits not only of past but even of future sins avail with God—from the guilt of which not even death delivers, if it should come before they were committed—and nothing was bestowed on him who was taken away, lest malice should change his understanding.
For why shall not God, foreknowing that future malice, rather judge him according to it—if, in the case of the soul of an infant about to die, lest the participated defilement from the body of sin should harm it, He therefore judged that succour must be given through baptism, because He foreknew that it would, if it lived, have lived piously and faithfully? Or can this discovery rather be refuted on the ground that it is mine, while those who confirm that they are certain of this opinion perhaps bring forward either other testimonies of the Scriptures or proofs of reasonings, whereby they may take away this ambiguity, or at least show that it is not against what they hold—that saying of the Apostle by which, with great earnestness commending the grace whereby we are made safe, he says:
As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive; and: As through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one man many shall be constituted righteous; and wishing those same many sinners to be understood not with certain ones excepted, but all, he says above concerning Adam: in whom all sinned. Whence indeed those who are wise in the matter of the souls' being from the propagation of one man believe, not absurdly, that the souls of infants cannot be set apart either from that which was said, all, or from the fact that succour is given to them through baptism—unless they be refuted by some manifest and clear reasoning which does not conflict with the Holy Scriptures, or by the authority of those Scriptures themselves.
Now therefore let us see, as far as the necessity of this undertaken work allows, what that also is which we deferred a little while ago. For it is written in the book of Wisdom: Now I was a witty child, and had received a good soul. And whereas I was more good, I came to an undefiled body. For while this testimony seems to help those who say that souls are not created from parents, but come, or descend, God sending them, again this hinders their opinion, that it says:
I received a good soul—since without doubt they believe that souls, which God sends into bodies, either flow from one fount in a manner as it were like little streams, or come to be of equal nature, and not some good or more good and others not good or less good. For whence are souls good or more good, or not good or less good, except either by their morals according to the free choice of will, or by the difference of the temperament of bodies—while some are more, others less, weighed down by the body which is corrupted and burdens the soul? But neither was there any action of each several soul whereby their morals might be distinguished before they came to bodies, nor could he say his soul was good from a body weighing it down less, who says:
I received a good soul, and whereas I was more good, I came to an undefiled body. For he said that he had come to that goodness by which he was good—namely, having received a good soul—so as even to come to an undefiled body. From elsewhere, therefore, he was good before he came to the body; but certainly not from the difference of morals, because there was no merit of a life led beforehand; not from the difference of the body, because he was good before he came to the body. Whence, then? Now, to those who assert that souls are created from the propagation of that transgressing soul, although what was said—I came to a body—does not seem to sound in their favour, yet in the rest it is not incongruously fitted, so that, when he had said:
Now I was a witty child—explaining this very thing, from what causes he was witty, he might immediately subjoin: and I received a good soul, namely, from paternal wit or bodily temperament. Then, whereas I was, he says, more good, I came to an undefiled body: which if it be understood of the maternal body, not even this, that was said—I came to a body—will contradict this opinion, since it is taken that he came from the paternal soul and body to the maternal body, undefiled, namely, either from menstrual blood—for from this the wits are said to be weighed down—or from adulterous contamination.
Thus these words of this book also either rather favour those who speak of the transmission of souls, or, if these others too can interpret them in their own favour, they alternate between both. But if we should wish to take these words of the Lord according to the human creature which was assumed by the Word, there are indeed, in the same context of the reading, things which do not suit that excellence—especially this: that the very same one who speaks these things in the same book, somewhat higher up, when he was saying those very words about which we are now treating, confessed that he was congealed in blood from the seed of a man: from which manner of being born the birth of the Virgin is certainly foreign, since no Christian doubts that she did not conceive the flesh of Christ from the seed of a man. But since also in the Psalms, where he says:
They pierced my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones; but they themselves considered and looked upon me. They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots—which things properly suit that One alone—there he also said: God, my God, look upon me; why have You forsaken me?
The words of my transgressions are far from my salvation—which words, on the other hand, do not suit Him, except as transfiguring into Himself the body of our lowliness, since we are members of His body, and because in the Gospel itself the Child advanced in age and wisdom. If those things too which are read round about this sentence in the book of Wisdom can, on account of the humble form of the servant and the unity of the body of the Church with its Head, be fitted to that same Lord, what is wittier than that Child, whose wisdom at twelve years the elders marvelled at?
And what soul is better than that one, which—even if those who affirm the transmission of souls should prevail, not by contending but by proving—it will not follow that it too must be believed to have come from the propagation of that transgressor, lest through the disobedience of that man he too be constituted a sinner, through whose one obedience the many freed from that guilt are constituted righteous? And what is more undefiled than that womb of the Virgin, whose flesh, even if it came from the propagation of sin, yet did not conceive from the propagation of sin, so that not even the very body of Christ was sown in the womb of Mary by that law which, set in the members of the body of death, wars against the law of the mind?
37:791
quamsanctipatresconiugatirefrenantesnonquidemnisiquousquelicebatinconcubitumrelaxaruntnectamentantummodoquousquelicebateiusinpetumpertulerunt. proindecorpusChristiquamuisexcarnefeminaeadsumtum. est, quaedeillacarnispeccatipropagineconceptafuerat, tamen, quianonsicineaconceptumest, quomodofueratillaconcepta, necipsaeratcaropeccati, sedsimilitudocarnispeccati.
That law which the holy married patriarchs, restraining, indeed relaxed into intercourse only so far as was lawful, yet did not endure its assault only so far as was lawful. Accordingly the body of Christ, although it was assumed from the flesh of a woman who had been conceived from that propagation of the flesh of sin, nevertheless, because it was not conceived in her in the way in which she herself had been conceived, was not itself flesh of sin, but the likeness of the flesh of sin.
For He did not receive from that source the guilt of dying, which appears in the involuntary motion of the flesh—though it must be overcome by the will, that will against which the spirit lusts—but He received from that source, not what would suffice for the contagion of transgression, but what would suffice for paying a death that was not owed and for showing forth the promised resurrection: of which the one avails for us that we should not fear, the other that we should hope. Finally, if it be asked of me whence Jesus Christ received His soul, I would indeed prefer to hear this from men better and more learned than myself; yet, according to my own capacity, I would more gladly answer 'from Adam rather than of Adam.'
For if the dust taken from the earth, in which no man had laboured, was found worthy to be divinely quickened with life, how much more did the body taken from flesh, in which likewise no man had laboured, obtain a good soul—since there the man was raised up who was to fall, whereas here He descended who was to lift us up! And perhaps for this reason it is said: 'I obtained a good soul by lot'—if indeed this is to be understood of Him—because things given by lot are wont to be given from God. Or else, as must be confidently affirmed, lest that soul should be thought to have been raised to so great a height by any preceding works, so that when with it the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the name of 'lot' was added to remove all suspicion of preceding merits.