Chapter 12. On Giving Life to the Flesh Again
Chapter 12
1. To explain, just as the flesh is capable of receiving perishability, so is it capable of imperishability; as it is capable of death, so of life. These things displace each other; and both cannot remain in one and the same being; the one is expelled by the other; when one is present the other ceases. So if death, when it takes possession of a man, expels life from him and shows him to be dead, how much more does life, when it takes possession of man, expel death and restore him to God as a living being. For if death has killed, why, when life comes, should it not give life to man? That is what the Prophet Isaiah says, Death swallowed up when it prevailed; and again, God wiped away every tear from all faces. The pristine life was expelled because it was not given by the Spirit but by breath.
2. For the breath of life which makes man a living soul is one thing, while the Spirit who gives life and makes man spiritual is something else. That is why Isaiah said: Thus says the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who established the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk on it. He says that the breath was given in general to all people on earth, but the Spirit was given as something specific to those who walk in carnal lusts. Isaiah, therefore, distinguishes between the things mentioned when he says, For from me will proceed the Spirit, and I have made every breath. He thus assigns the Spirit specifically to God, whom in these last times he poured out on the human race through adoption; but the breath [he assigns] generally in creation, and showed it was something made. But what is made is different from the one who made it. So breath is temporal while the Spirit is eternal. And breath is vigorous for a while and continues on for some time, then it departs, leaving that [body], in which it was, breathless. The Spirit, however, envelops men from within and without. And of course, since he always continues, he will never forsake him. But it is not the spiritual that is first, says the Apostle when speaking to us, but the physical is first, and then the spiritual. That is in keeping with reason. For it was necessary first that man be fashioned; next, that what was fashioned receive the soul; then, that it receive communion of the Spirit. Wherefore, also the first Adam was made a living soul by God, the second Adam a life-giving Spirit. Therefore, as he who was made a living soul lost his life when he turned to worse things, so this same one when he returned to better things by accepting the life-giving Spirit, will find life.
3. For it is not one thing that dies and one thing that lives, just as what is lost does not differ from what is found. The Lord came in search of the very sheep that had been lost. What was it, then, that had died? It was, of course, the substance of the flesh, which had lost the breath of life and was breathless and dead. This is what the Lord came to give life to, in order that, as in Adam we all die, inasmuch as we are ensouled, so we may live in Christ, inasmuch as we are spiritual; by putting off, not God’s handiwork, but the carnal lusts and by accepting the Holy Spirit.
Thus the Apostle says in his Letter to the Colossians: Put to death therefore what is earthly in you. What these are he himself explains, immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. So, the Apostle preaches the laying aside of these things; and he says that those who do them are living as if they were only flesh and blood and cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. For their soul inclines toward what is worse, and descends to earthly lusts, and so it shares the same name as they do. Again, he tells us in the same letter that we should lay aside such things: Put off the old man with his practices. He said this not to get rid of the ancient handiwork; otherwise it would be necessary to kill ourselves and to cut ourselves off from the mode of life here below.
4. The Apostle himself, moreover, who was formed in a womb and came forth from the womb, wrote to us, and by his Letter to the Philippians he acknowledged that to live in the flesh is the fruit of work. But the Spirit’s fruit of work is the salvation of the flesh. For what other visible fruit is there of the invisible Spirit than to make the flesh grow to maturity and to make it capable of imperishability? Therefore, if to live in the flesh is the fruit of work, he did not despise the substance of the flesh when he said, Put off the old man with its deeds: but he did point out we should put off our former way of life, the kind that grows old and perishes. For that reason he adds, and put on the new man, which is being renewed unto perfect knowledge after the image of his Creator. Now, when he says, who is better renewed, he declares that the very man who was in ignorance before, namely, who was ignorant of God, is renewed by the knowledge that is about him. For the knowledge of God renews man. And when he says, after the image of his Creator, he pointed out the recapitulation of the same man who was made in the beginning after the image of God.
5. That the Apostle himself is the one that was born from the womb, namely, from the ancient substance of the flesh, he himself tells us in his Letter to the Galatians: But when he who had set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. The one who was born from the womb, as we have said, was not different from the one who proclaimed the good news of God’s Son. No, it was the same who before was in ignorance and who persecuted the Church. But when he received a revelation from heaven, and the Lord spoke with him, as we have shown in the Third Book, he announced the good news of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. For then the past ignorance was destroyed by the subsequent knowledge.
By way of illustration, the blind people whom the Lord healed lost their blindness but received the substance of the eyes intact; and in the same eyes with which they could not see before they received sight, the blindness alone had been destroyed while the substance of the eyes was saved, with the result that they were again able to see with the eyes with which before they did not see, and that they might give thanks to him who had restored their sight to them. Likewise, the one whose withered hand was healed, and absolutely all who were healed by him did not change the members which in the beginning were brought forth from the womb, but they received these very same members back sound.
6. For the Artisan of all things, the Word of God, who also in the beginning fashioned man, finding his handiwork infected by wickedness, healed it in every respect. At times he healed an individual member, just as it was fashioned in the beginning. At other times, he restored the entire man sound and whole all at once, thus preparing him, so made perfect, for himself, with a view to the resurrection. What reason did he have to heal members of the flesh and to restore them to their pristine state, if these members, which had been healed by him, were not to be saved? To be sure, if the benefit conferred by him was [only] temporal, he did not confer a very great benefit on those who were healed by him. Or, should flesh not be capable of receiving the life which flows from him, though it received healing from him? For life is brought about through healing, and imperishability through life. He, therefore, who heals also [gives] life, and he who [gives] life also surrounds his own handiwork with imperishability.