Christian piety in the African Church.
4 1 0 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis delight in the wake of the flesh, that is when the flesh is said to lust against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.
2 1 . The phrase theflesh is lusting, you see, means that the soul is doing that in its wake, and here the word "flesh" is being used in much the same way as one talks about the ears hearing and the eyes seeing; can anybody, I mean to say, be unaware that it is rather the soul which hears with the ears and sees with the eyes? That is how we also talk when we say, "Your hand has relieved the man," when something to relieve his distress has been given with an outstretched hand. Why, it is even said about the eye of faith, of which the function is to believe precisely what cannot be seen by the flesh: Allflesh shall see the salvation of God (Is 40:5; Lk 3:6). This is really being said, of course, about the soul by which the flesh lives, since even devoutly to look on Christ, that is, on the form with which he clothed himself for our sakes, by means of this flesh of ours, 16 is not a matter of the lust of the flesh but of the service it provides, in case anyone should wish to take allflesh shall see the salvation of God in that crude sense. How much more suitably, then, is the flesh said to lust when the soul, as well as animating the flesh with "soulish"17 life, also covets or lusts after things in its wake. lt is not in its power not to lust or covet like this as long as sin is there in the members, that is to say, a certain violent allurement of the flesh in the body of this death (Rom 7:24), which arises from the punishment of that sin we trace our roots back to, in the wake of which we are all, before grace, children of wrath (Eph 2:3).
It is against this sin that those who "are constituted under grace" do battle, not in order to eliminate it from their bodies, as long as they are mortal in such a way as by rights to be called dead, l8 but to prevent it reigning in them. Now it does not reign as long as obedience is not rendered to its desires, those, that is, which lust against the spirit in the wake of the flesh. Did the apostle say, after all, "Do not let sin be there in your mortal bodies"? He knew well enough that the attraction of sin, which he calls sin, is there as the result of our nature being distorted by that first transgression. No, but Do not let sin reign, he said, in your mortal bodiesfor you to obey its desires, and do not offeryour members to sin as weapons ofiniq uity (Rom 6:12-13).
Question of the involvement of infants in original sin
13, 22. In accordance with this opinion we are guilty neither of the absurdity of saying that the flesh can lust without the soul, nor of agreeing with the
16. This does rather suggest that icons or statues of Christ were already a common feature of Christian piety in the African Church. 17. "Soulish"; animalis from anima. For more detailed notes on this important linguistic point see Books V1.19.30, notes 23 and 25; and 1X,3,5, note 6, above; and X1.18,24, note 21 below. 18. See Rom 8:10.