Church does. Augustine was certainly inclined to favor it; but in 14,24 below he will at least try
BookX 409 babies while they are still alive and help them while still alive,13 because when they have died nothing can be done that will do them any good. So we do not see (what else can be understood in this passage but that every single tiny tot is nothing but Adam in both body and soul, and for that reason in need of the grace pf Christ. That age, of course, has in itself done nothing either good or bad; Wcordingly the soul there is totally innocent, if it has not been propagated from
Adam. So anyone holding this opinion about the soul, who can demonstrate how it can with any justice go unto condemnation if it departs from the body without baptism, is indeed to be greatly admired.14
What is meant byflesh and spirit lusting against each other
12. 20. It is certainly as true and trustworthy as can be, the text that runs: The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against theflesh (Gal 5:17); but still everyone, l think, would agree, educated and uneducated, that the flesh cannot lust after anything without the soul. And thus the cause of fleshly lust is not to be found in the soul alone, but much less in the flesh alone. 15 It arises, after all, from both; from the soul, that is, because without it no enjoyment can be felt, and from the flesh because without it there cannot be felt any specifically fleshly enjoy ment. And so what the apostle is calling flesh lusting against spirit is undoubt edly fleshly enjoyment, which the spirit has from the flesh and with the flesh, lusting against the enjoyment which the spirit has alone. The sort it has alone, if I am not mistaken, is that kind of desire, unmixed with the pleasure of the flesh or with a passion for fleshly things, with which the soul is longing andfaintingfor the courts of the Lord (Ps 84:2). Alone it also has that about which it is told: You have lusted after Wisdom; keep the commandments, and the Lord will grant her to you (Sir 1:26).
After all, when the spirit orders the body's limbs to serve this kind of desire which it is stirred by on its own, when a book is picked up, for example, when something is being written, being read, being discussed, being listened to, when finally bread is being broken for the hungry and the other works of mercy and humanity are being performed, the flesh is rendering obedience, not stirring up lust. When it is with these and similar good desires, with which the soul alone can be said to lust, that it confronts something in which the selfsame soul takes
13. Much neater in the Latin: ut cum viventibus curraturet viventibus succurratur. 14. Anyone, that is, rejecting as erroneous the doctrine of traducianism, as in fact the Catholic Church does. Augustine was certainly inclined to favor it; but in 14,24 below he will at least try out some arguments against it. 15. 1t is worth noting here that he is treating "spirit" and "soul" as synonymous, which of course he has been doing throughout in his references to scriptural texts. But here in particular, as in similar Pauline contexts, it will involve him in misinterpreting the apostle in a neo-Platonist direction; because what Paul in fact treats as synonymous are "soul" and "flesh."