Marriage and Virginity (continued)
a good God, but it has itself done wrong and thereby become bad. Even after being freed from the guilt of this evil by forgiveness, it still has to battle against its defect by means of continence, so that it will not take lightly what it has done. It is unthinkable, however, that there should be any defect in those who reign in that peace that is to come, especially when for those making progress in this battle not only do their sins daily grow fewer, but so too do those bodily desires. The fight consists in not consenting to them, and sin is the result of consenting to them.
21. The fact that the flesh has desires opposed to the spirit, and good does not dwell in our flesh, and the law in our bodies rebels against the law of our mind, does not mean that there is an amalgamation of two natures, created from opposing elements, but that one nature is divided against itself as a consequence of sin. We were not like that in Adam, before nature disdained and offended its maker by listening to and following its seducer. That is not what life was like for humanity when it was first created, but it was a punishment for sin incurred later. Those who through Jesus Christ have been freed of the guilt by grace now struggle with its punishment. Although they are free their salvation is not yet complete, but they have now received a guarantee of salvation. Those, however, who have not been freed are both guilty of sins and subject to punishment. After this life the guilty will still have eternal punishment for their sins, while those who have been freed will have neither guilt nor eternal punishment. Spirit and body will continue to exist forever, essentially good things that the good and unchanging God created good, but subject to change. They will continue to exist changed for the better, never again to be changed for the worse, with all evil totally eliminated, whether the evil people commit unjustly or the evil they suffer justly. When these two evils pass away forever, one of them the evil of the wickedness committed in the first place, the other the evil of the unhappiness that results afterward, human beings will possess a will that is upright and free of all wickedness. There it will be clear and obvious to everyone—what is now believed by many of the faithful but understood by few—that evil is not itself a substance but, like an injury to the body, it comes into existence when the substance injures itself and is infected by disease, and it ceases to exist when health is restored to it.†13 When, therefore, all the evil, which came from us, has been destroyed in us, and the goodness in us has been increased and perfected to the peak of the supreme happiness of incorruptibility and immortality, what will our two substances be like then? Even now in this state of corruption and mortality, when the corruptible body still weighs down the soul (Wis
9:15) and, as the apostle says, The body is dead because of sin (Rom 8:10), he gives that testimony in support of our flesh, that is, the inferior and material part of us, with the words I quoted just above: No one ever hates his own flesh; and he immediately adds, but nourishes and nurtures it, just as Christ does the Church (Eph 5:29).
The Flesh Is Not Evil
9, 22. What error, then—or, better, what utter madness—has possessed the Manichees, for them to class our flesh as belonging to some kind of mythical nation of darkness? They would have it to have been inherently evil always, without any beginning, despite the fact that the teacher of the truth exhorts husbands to love their wives on the model of their love for their own flesh, and exhorts them also to do it on the model of Christ's love for the Church? That whole passage in the apostle's letter is very much to the point here and needs to be quoted.
Husbands, he says, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for it, in order to make it holy, cleansing it by washing with water in the word, so that he would obtain for himself a glorious Church, with no spot or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and unstained. So, he says, husbands too should love their wives like their own bodies.
Whoever loves his wife loves himself (Eph 5:25-28). He then adds what we have already quoted: No one ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and nurtures it, just as Christ does the Church (Eph 5:29). What does that foul and unholy madness say to this? What do you say to this, you Manichees, who try to derive from the apostle's writings a doctrine of two uncreated natures, one good and the other bad, and who refuse to listen to the writings of the apostle that would correct this sacrilegious perversion for you. As you read, the flesh has desires opposed to those of the spirit (Gal 5:17), and goodness does not dwell in my body (Rom 7:18), read also, No one ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and nurtures it, just as Christ does the Church (Eph 5:29). As you read, but I see another law in my body that rebels against the law of my mind (Rom 7:23), read also, As Christ loved the Church, so too husbands should love their wives like their own bodies (Eph 5:25, 28). Do not be cunning about the evidence of holy scripture in the first of those texts, and deaf to it in the second, and you will be correct about both. If you accept the second as you should, you will also try to achieve true understanding of the first.