[I] We have already said in the preceding books that God willed to establish human beings from one man, in order that the human race might be joined together not only by likeness of nature, but also bound into one concordant unity by the bond of peace through a certain kinship of relationship; and that this race would not have died in any of its individuals, had not the two first ones—of whom one was created out of nothing, the other out of him—merited this by disobedience, by whom so great a sin was committed that human nature was thereby changed for the worse, the obligation of sin and the necessity of death being handed on even to their posterity.
Moreover, the reign of death so held dominion over human beings that it would have hurled all headlong, by a debt of punishment, even into the second death, which has no end, had not the undeserved grace of God delivered some from it. And by this it came about that, although so many and so great nations, living throughout the world by diverse rites and customs, are distinguished by a manifold variety of languages, arms, and dress, there nevertheless exist no more than two kinds of human society, which, according to our Scriptures, we may rightly call two cities.
For one is of those who will to live according to the flesh, the other of those who will to live according to the spirit, each in the peace of its own kind; and when they attain what they seek, each lives in the peace of its own kind. [II] First, then, we must see what it is to live according to the flesh, and what it is to live according to the spirit.
For whoever looks at this which we have said merely on the surface, either not recalling or too little attending to the manner in which the Holy Scriptures speak, may suppose that the Epicurean philosophers indeed live according to the flesh, because they placed the supreme good of man in the pleasure of the body—and if there are any others who in whatever way have held the good of the body to be the supreme good of man, and that whole common crowd who philosophize by no doctrine or in that manner, but, prone to lust, know not how to rejoice except in the pleasures they take through the bodily senses; but that the Stoics, on the other hand, who place the supreme good of man in the mind, live according to the spirit, for what is the mind of man but spirit?
But as the divine Scripture speaks, both are shown to live according to the flesh. For it calls flesh not only the body of an earthly and mortal living thing (as when it says: Not all flesh is the same flesh; one indeed of man, but another the flesh of beasts, another of birds, another of fishes), but it also uses the meaning of this word in many other ways; among which various modes of speech it often calls even man himself, that is, the nature of man, flesh, by that mode of speech in which the whole is signified by a part, such as: By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. For what did it wish to be understood but every man? Which a little later it says more openly: In the law no one is justified; and to the Galatians:
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law. According to this it is understood: And the Word was made flesh, that is, man; which some, not rightly receiving, supposed that a human soul was lacking in Christ. For just as a part is taken for the whole, where the words of Mary Magdalene are read in the Gospel saying: They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him, when she was speaking of Christ's flesh alone, which she thought had been carried off, buried, from the tomb: so also, by naming flesh as a part for the whole, man is understood, as in those instances which we recalled above. Since, therefore, the divine Scripture names flesh in many ways, which it would be long to search out and gather:
in order that we may be able to track down what it is to live according to the flesh (which is assuredly evil, though the nature of the flesh itself is not evil), let us diligently examine that passage of the epistle of the Apostle Paul which he wrote to the Galatians, where he says: Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are: fornications, uncleannesses, luxury, idolatry, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envies, drunkennesses, revelries, and the like; which I foretell to you, as I have foretold, that they who do such things shall not possess the kingdom of God.
This whole passage of the apostolic epistle, considered as far as shall seem sufficient for the present matter, will be able to resolve this question: what it is to live according to the flesh. For among the works of the flesh, which he said are manifest and, having enumerated them, condemned, we find not only those which pertain to the pleasure of the flesh—such as fornications, uncleannesses, luxury, drunkennesses, revelries—but also those by which the vices of the soul, alien to fleshly pleasure, are demonstrated. For who would not understand that the servitude which is rendered to idols, sorceries, enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, dissensions, heresies, envies, are vices of the soul rather than of the flesh?
For it can happen that on account of idolatry or the error of some heresy a man abstains from bodily pleasures; and yet even then a man, although he seems to restrain and check the lusts of the flesh, is convicted by this apostolic authority of living according to the flesh, and, in that very thing wherein he abstains from the pleasures of the flesh, is shown to do the damnable works of the flesh. Who does not have enmities in the soul? Or who would speak so as to say to his enemy, or to one whom he thinks an enemy: 'You have evil flesh,' and not rather: 'You have an evil mind against me'? Finally, just as, if anyone heard, so to speak, of 'carnalities,' he would not doubt to attribute them to the flesh, so no one doubts that animosities pertain to the soul.
Why then does the teacher of the nations, in faith and truth, call all these and the like the works of the flesh, unless because, by that mode of speech in which the whole is signified by a part, he wishes man himself to be understood by the name of flesh? [III] But if anyone says that the flesh is the cause of whatever vices there be in evil morals, on the ground that the soul, affected by the flesh, lives thus, assuredly he does not diligently consider the whole nature of man. For the corruptible body indeed weighs down the soul. Whence also the same apostle, treating of this corruptible body, of which he had said a little before: Though our outer man is corrupted:
We know, he says, that if our earthly house of this habitation be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, longing to be clothed over with our habitation which is from heaven; if so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For while we are in this dwelling, we groan, being burdened; wherein we would not be unclothed, but clothed over, that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. We are then weighed down by the corruptible body; and, knowing the cause of this very weighing-down to be not the nature and substance of the body, but its corruption, we would not be despoiled of the body, but clothed with its immortality. For then indeed it will be, but because it will not be corruptible, it will not weigh down.
So the corruptible body now weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that ponders many things. Nevertheless, because they think that all the evils of the soul have befallen it from the body, they are in error. For although Virgil seems to unfold the Platonic opinion in elegant verses, saying: A fiery vigor and a heavenly origin is in those seeds, so far as noxious bodies do not clog them and earthly limbs and dying members dull them; and, wishing all those most well-known four perturbations of the soul—desire and fear, gladness and sorrow, as it were the origins of all sins and vices—to be understood to befall from the body, he adds and says:
Hence they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, nor do they look up to the airs, shut up in darkness and a blind prison: yet our faith holds otherwise. For the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin, but its punishment; nor did the corruptible flesh make the soul sinful, but the sinful soul made the flesh corruptible. From which corruption of the flesh, although there arise certain incitements to vices and vicious desires themselves, yet not all the vices of an evil life are to be attributed to the flesh, lest we clear of them all the devil, who has no flesh.
For although the devil cannot be called a fornicator or a drunkard, or anything of this kind of evil which pertains to the pleasures of the flesh—although he is even the hidden persuader and instigator of such sins—yet he is most exceedingly proud and envious. And this viciousness so possessed him that on account of it he was destined to eternal punishment in the prisons of this murky air. But these vices, which hold the primacy in the devil, the apostle attributes to the flesh, which it is certain the devil does not have. For he says that enmities, contentions, jealousies, animosities, envies are works of the flesh; of all which evils the head and origin is pride, which reigns in the devil without flesh. But who is more hostile to the saints than he?
Who is found more contentious against them, more animose and more jealous and envious? But since he has all these without flesh, in what way are they works of the flesh, unless because they are works of man, whom, as I said, he calls by the name of flesh? For it was not by having flesh, which the devil does not have, but by living according to himself, that is, according to man, that man became like the devil; because he too willed to live according to himself, when he did not stand in the truth, so that he spoke a lie not from God's but from his own store, he who is not only a liar but also the father of the lie. For he was the first to lie, and from him, from whom sin began, the lie began to be.
[IV] When therefore man lives according to man, not according to God, he is like the devil; because the angel too ought to have lived not according to the angel, but according to God, that he might stand in the truth and speak the truth from God, not a lie from himself. For concerning man too the same apostle says in another place: But if the truth of God has abounded in my lie. He called the lie ours, the truth God's. When, therefore, man lives according to the truth, he lives not according to himself, but according to God. For it is God who said: I am the truth. But when he lives according to himself, that is, according to man, not according to God, assuredly he lives according to a lie;
not that man himself is a lie, since his author and creator is God, who is by no means the author and creator of a lie, but because man was so made upright that he should live not according to himself, but according to Him by whom he was made, that is, that he should do His will rather than his own: not to live in the manner in which he was made to live—this is a lie. For he wills to be blessed even by not living in such a way that he can be blessed. What is more a lie than that will? Hence it can not be said in vain that every sin is a lie. For sin is not committed except by that will by which we will that it may be well with us, or will not that it may be ill with us.
Therefore it is a lie that, when it is done that it may be well with us, it is thereby rather ill with us; or when it is done that it may be better with us, it is thereby rather worse with us. Whence is this, unless because it can be well with man from God, whom by sinning he forsakes, and not from himself, according to whom by living he sins? What therefore we have said—that there have hence arisen two cities diverse and contrary to each other, in that some live according to the flesh, others according to the spirit—can also be said in this manner: that some live according to man, others according to God. For Paul says most openly to the Corinthians: For whereas there is jealousy and contention among you, are you not carnal and walk according to man?
So then, to walk according to man is to be carnal, because by the flesh, that is, by a part of man, man is understood. For those very same ones whom he had earlier called natural (animal), he afterward called carnal, speaking thus: For what man knows, he says, the things of a man, but the spirit of the man which is in him? So too the things of God no one knows but the Spirit of God. But we, he says, have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we may know the things that are given to us by God; which also we speak, not in the learned words of human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural (animal) man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him.
To such then, that is, to the natural (animal), he says a little later: And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual, but as to carnal; and both this and that in the same mode of speaking, that is, the whole by a part. For both by the soul and by the flesh, which are parts of man, the whole, which is man, can be signified; and thus the natural man is not one thing and the carnal another, but the same is both, that is, a man living according to man; just as nothing other than men is signified, whether where it is read: By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified, or where it is written: Seventy-five souls went down with Jacob into Egypt.
For there too by 'all flesh' every man, and there by 'seventy-five souls' seventy-five men are understood. And what was said: Not in the learned words of human wisdom, could have been said: 'Not in the words of carnal wisdom'; just as what was said: You walk according to man, could have been said: 'According to the flesh.' But this appeared still more in those things which he added: For when one says: I indeed am of Paul, but another: I of Apollo, are you not men? What he was saying: You are natural (animal), and: You are carnal, he expressed more plainly: You are men, which is:
'You live according to man, not according to God; for if you lived according to Him, you would be gods.' [V] There is therefore no need, in our sins and vices, to the injury of the Creator, to accuse the nature of the flesh, which in its own kind and order is good; but, having forsaken the good Creator, to live according to a created good is not good, whether one choose to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole man, who consists of soul and flesh (whence he can be signified either by the name of the soul alone or by the name of the flesh alone).
For he who praises the nature of the soul as the supreme good and accuses the nature of the flesh as an evil, assuredly both desires the soul carnally and flees the flesh carnally, since he judges this by human vanity, not by divine truth. The Platonists indeed are not so foolish as the Manichaeans, that they should detest earthly bodies as a nature of evil, since they attribute all the elements, of which this visible and tangible world is compacted, and their qualities, to God the Artificer; yet nevertheless they suppose that souls are so affected by earthly limbs and dying members, that from this arise in them the diseases of desires and fears, and of gladness or sorrow;
by which four either perturbations, as Cicero calls them, or passions, as most render the Greek word word-for-word, all the viciousness of human morals is contained. But if this is so, what of the fact that Aeneas in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in the lower world that souls would return again to bodies, marvels at this opinion, exclaiming: O father, is it to be thought that some sublime souls go hence to heaven and return again to sluggish bodies? What so dread a longing for the light seizes the wretched ones? Can this so dread a longing still be present in that most celebrated purity of souls from earthly limbs and dying members?
Does he not assert that they have been purged from all bodily plagues of this kind, as he says, when they begin again to wish to return into bodies? Whence it is gathered that, even if it were so—which is utterly most vain—that there is an unceasing, alternating in turn, cleansing and defiling of souls going and returning, it could not truly be said that all blameworthy and vicious motions of souls grow into them from earthly bodies; if indeed, according to those very men, that dread longing (as the noble speaker says) is so far from being from the body, that it compels the soul, purged from every bodily plague and set outside every body, to be itself in a body.
Whence, even by their own confession, the soul is affected not only from the flesh, so that it may desire, fear, rejoice, grow sick, but it can also be agitated by these motions from itself. [VI] But it matters what the will of man is like; because if it is perverse, it will have these motions perverse; but if it is right, they will be not only blameless, but even praiseworthy. For the will is in all of them; nay, they are all nothing else than wills. For what is desire and gladness but the will in consent to those things which we will? And what is fear and sorrow but the will in dissent from those things which we do not will? But when we consent by seeking those things which we will, it is called desire; and when we consent by enjoying those things which we will, it is called gladness.
Likewise, when we dissent from that which we do not will to happen, such a will is fear; but when we dissent from that which happens against our will, such a will is sorrow. And altogether, according to the variety of the things which are sought and shunned, as the will of man is allured or offended, so it is changed and turned into these or those affections. Wherefore the man who lives according to God, not according to man, must be a lover of good; whence it follows consequently that he hates evil. And since no one is evil by nature, but whoever is evil is evil by vice: he who lives according to God owes a perfect hatred to the evil, so that he neither hates the man on account of the vice, nor loves the vice on account of the man, but hates the vice, loves the man.
For when the vice is healed, all will remain that he ought to love, and nothing that he ought to hate. [VII] For he whose purpose is to love God and to love his neighbor not according to man but according to God, as also himself: without doubt on account of this love he is said to be of a good will, which is more usually in the Holy Scriptures called charity (caritas); but it is called also love (amor) according to those same sacred writings. For the apostle says that he ought to be a lover of good who is enjoined to be chosen for governing the people; and the Lord Himself, questioning the apostle Peter, when He had said: Do you love (diligis) Me more than these? he answered: Lord, You know that I love (amo) You; and again the Lord asked, not whether he loved (amaret) with amor, but whether Peter loved (diligeret) Him with dilectio; but he answered again:
Lord, You know that I love (amo) You; and at the third questioning Jesus Himself too said not: 'Do you love (diligis) Me?' but: Do you love (amas) Me? Whereupon the evangelist follows, saying: Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time: Do you love (amas) Me? whereas the Lord had said not three times, but once: Do you love (amas) Me? but twice had said: Do you love (diligis) Me? Whence we understand that even when the Lord was saying: Do you love (diligis) Me? He was saying nothing other than: Do you love (amas) Me? But Peter did not change the word for this one thing, but even the third time said: Lord, You know all things, You know that I love (amo) You. This I have thought worth recalling, because some suppose that dilectio or charity is one thing, amor (love) another. For they say that dilectio is to be taken in the good, amor in the evil.
But it is most certain that not even the authors of secular literature themselves spoke thus. But let the philosophers see whether, or by what reasoning, they distinguish these things; their books, however, sufficiently declare that they hold amor (love) in high esteem in good things and toward God Himself. But it had to be pointed out that the Scriptures of our religion, whose authority we set before all other writings, do not say that amor is one thing, dilectio or caritas another. For we have already shown that amor is spoken of in the good. But lest anyone suppose that amor indeed is to be spoken of both in the evil and in the good, but dilectio only in the good, let him attend to what is written in the psalm: But he who loves (diligit) iniquity hates his own soul, and to that of the apostle John:
If anyone loves (dilexerit) the world, the love (dilectio) of the Father is not in him. Behold, in one place dilectio both in the good and in the evil. But amor in the evil (since in the good we have already shown it)—lest anyone demand it—let him read what is written: For men shall be lovers (amantes) of their own selves, lovers (amatores) of money. A right will therefore is good love, and a perverse will is evil love. Love then, longing to have what is loved, is desire; but having and enjoying it, it is gladness; fleeing what is adverse to it, it is fear; and, if this befall, feeling it, it is sorrow. Accordingly these are evil, if the love is evil; good, if it is good. What we say, let us prove from the Scriptures. The apostle desires to be dissolved and to be with Christ; and:
My soul has desired to long for Your judgments, or if it be said more fittingly: My soul has longed to desire Your judgments; and: The desire of wisdom leads to the kingdom. Yet this custom of speech has prevailed, that if desire (cupiditas) or concupiscence be named and it not be added of what thing it is, it can be understood only in the evil. Gladness is in the good: Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, you righteous; and: You have given gladness in my heart; and: You will fill me with gladness with Your countenance. Fear is in the good in the apostle, where he says: With fear and trembling work out your own salvation; and: Be not high-minded, but fear; and:
But I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so also your minds should be corrupted from the chastity that is in Christ. But concerning sorrow, which Cicero rather calls sickness (aegritudo), and Virgil grief (dolor), where he says: 'They grieve and rejoice,' (but I have preferred to say sorrow (tristitia), because sickness or grief is more usually said of bodies), there is a more scrupulous question, whether it can be found in the good. [VIII] For those which the Greeks call eupatheiai, but which Cicero in Latin named constancies (constantiae), the Stoics wished to be three, in place of three perturbations, in the mind of the wise man: in place of desire, will (voluntas); in place of gladness, joy (gaudium); in place of fear, caution (cautio);
but in place of sickness or grief, which we, for the sake of avoiding ambiguity, have preferred to call sorrow (tristitia), they denied that anything can be in the mind of the wise man. For will, they say, seeks the good, which the wise man does; joy is about the good obtained, which the wise man everywhere obtains; caution avoids the evil, which the wise man ought to avoid; but sorrow, since it is about the evil that has already happened, and they judge that no evil can happen to the wise man, they said that nothing in his mind can exist in its place. Thus therefore they speak, so that they deny that any but the wise man wills, rejoices, is cautious; but that the foolish man does nothing but desire, be glad, fear, be saddened;
and that those three are constancies, but these four perturbations according to Cicero, but passions according to most. In Greek those three, as I said, are called eupatheiai; but these four pathe. This manner of speech, whether it agrees with the Holy Scriptures, when I inquired as diligently as I could, I found this which the prophet says: There is no rejoicing (gaudere) for the wicked, says the Lord; as though the wicked could be glad (laetari) rather than rejoice (gaudere) over evils, because joy is properly of the good and the pious. Likewise that in the Gospel: Whatsoever you will (vultis) that men should do to you, this do you also to them, seems to be said as though no one could will (velle) anything evil or base for himself, but only desire (cupere).
Finally, on account of the custom of speech, some interpreters added 'good' and thus translated: 'Whatsoever you will that men should do good to you.' For they thought it must be guarded against, lest anyone will (velit) that dishonorable things be done to him by men—to say nothing of the baser things—certainly luxurious banquets, in which, if he too did such for them, he might think this precept fulfilled. But in the Greek Gospel, whence it was translated into Latin, it is not read 'good,' but: Whatsoever you will that men should do to you, this do you also to them; I believe for this reason, because in that which He said 'you will' (vultis), He already willed 'good' to be understood. For He did not say 'you desire' (cupitis).
Yet our speech is not always to be curbed by these proprieties, but sometimes they must be used; and when we read those to whose authority it is not lawful to be resistant, they are to be understood there, where a right sense can find no other outlet; as are those which, by way of example, we have recalled partly from the prophet, partly from the Gospel. For who does not know that the wicked exult with gladness (laetitia)? And yet: There is no rejoicing (gaudere) for the wicked, says the Lord. Whence, unless because to rejoice (gaudere) is something else, when this word is put properly and precisely? Likewise, who would deny that it is not rightly enjoined upon men that whatsoever they desire to be done to them by others, they too should do to them; lest they delight one another with the baseness of unlawful pleasure?
And yet it is a most wholesome and most true precept: Whatsoever you will that men should do to you, the same do you also to them. And whence this, unless because in this place the will (voluntas) is set down in a certain proper manner, which cannot be taken in the evil? But in the more usual manner of speech, which the habit of discourse most frequently employs, it would surely not be said: Do not will (noli velle) to speak every lie, unless there were also an evil will, from whose depravity that will is distinguished which the angels proclaimed, saying: Peace on earth to men of good will. For 'good' was added superfluously, if it cannot be but good. And what great thing would the apostle have said in the praises of charity, that it does not rejoice over iniquity, unless because malignity thus rejoices?