City of God (Penguin Classics) (95 page)
Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
1.
The disobedience of the first man would have involved all mankind in the second, everlasting, death, had not God’s grace rescued many
I
HAVE
already stated in the foregoing books
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that God chose to make a single individual the starting-point of all mankind, and that his purpose in this was that the human race should not merely be united in a society by natural likeness, but should also be bound together by a kind of tie of kinship to form a harmonious unity, linked together by the ‘bond of peace’. And this race would not have been destined for death, in respect of its individual members, had not the two first human beings (of whom one was created from no one, and the other from him) incurred death as the reward of disobedience: and so heinous was their sin that man’s nature suffered a change for the worse; and bondage to sin and inevitable death was the legacy handed on to their posterity.
Now the reign of death has held mankind in such utter subjection that they would all be driven headlong into that second death, which has no ending, as their well-deserved punishment, if some were not rescued from it by the undeserved grace of God. The result is that although there are many great peoples throughout the world, living under different customs in religion and morality and distinguished by a complex variety of languages, arms, and dress, it is still true that there have come into being only two main divisions, as we may call them, in human society: and we are justified in following the lead of our Scriptures
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and calling them two cities. There is, in fact, one city of men who choose to live by the standard of the flesh, another of those who choose to live by the standard of the spirit. The citizens of each of these desire their own kind of peace, and when they achieve their aim, that is the kind of peace in which they live.
2.
The carnal life depends on defects of the mind as much as of the body
We need to examine first what is meant by living ‘by the rule of the flesh’ and ‘by the rule of the spirit’. For a superficial inspection of my statement may lead to misconception, if it is not carefully borne in mind how the holy Scriptures use the expressions. It may be thought that the Epicurean
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philosophers certainly live ‘by the rule of the flesh’, since they place the Highest Good of man in physical pleasure,
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and that the same is true of other philosophers who have in various ways held that the good of the body is man’s Highest Good; and that it is also true of people in general, who are not attached to any philosophical doctrine, who hold no sort of theory, but, having a natural propensity towards sensuality, have no acquaintance with any delight except that derived from the pleasure they experience in physical sensations. On the other hand, it may be supposed that the Stoics
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live ‘by the rule of the spirit’, because they place man’s highest good in the mind;
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and what is man’s mind, but spirit? But in fact both of these groups live ‘by the rule of the flesh’, as divine Scripture uses the expression.
For Scripture does not confine the application of the term ‘flesh’ to the body of an earthly and mortal living being, as it is used, for example, in, ‘All flesh is not the same; there is one kind belonging to man, another to animals, another to birds, another to fish.’
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There are, in fact, many other ways in which it uses the noun, to describe different things; and among these different usages is its employment to denote man himself, that is, the essential nature of man, an example of the figure of speech known as ‘part for whole’. For example, ‘All flesh will not be justified by the works of the Law.’
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Obviously this can only be intended to mean ‘every man’. This is
made explicit a little later, ‘No man is justified by the Law’,
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and in the epistle to the Galatians, ‘Knowing, however, that a man is not justified as a result of works of the Law.’
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It is on these lines that we interpret this passage, ‘And the Word became flesh’.
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that is, ‘became man’. Some people have misunderstood it and therefore have supposed that Christ had no human soul. But we have the part implied by the whole in the passage in the Gospel where Mary Magdalen’s words are quoted, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him’,
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for she was speaking only about the flesh of Christ, which, she thought, had been taken from the tomb where it was buried; and similarly we have the ‘whole from part’ figure when ‘flesh’ is mentioned, and ‘man’ is meant, as in the text quoted above.
Thus the inspired Scripture uses the term ‘flesh’ in many ways, and it would be tedious to collect and scrutinize them all. Our present purpose is to track down the meaning of ‘living by the rule of the flesh’ (which is clearly a bad thing, though the natural substance of flesh is not an evil in itself); and to enable us to achieve this purpose, let us carefully examine the passage in St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians where he says,
It is obvious what the works of the flesh are: such things as fornication, impurity, lust, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, quarrelsomeness, jealousy, animosity, dissension, party intrigue, envy, drunkenness, drunken orgies, and so on. I warned you before, and I warn you again, that those who behave in such ways will never have a place in God’s kingdom.
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A consideration of this whole passage of Paul’s letter sufficient for the requirements of the present topic will enable us to answer the question of what is meant by ‘living by the rule of the flesh’. For among the ‘works of the flesh’ which he said were obvious, and which he listed and condemned, we find not only those concerned with sensual pleasure, like fornication, impurity, lust, drunkenness and drunken orgies, but also those which show faults of the mind, which have nothing to do with sensual indulgence. For anyone can see that devotion to idols, sorcery, enmity, quarrelsomeness, jealousy, animosity, party intrigue, envy – all these are faults of the mind, not of the body. Indeed, it may happen that a man refrains from sensual
indulgence because of devotion to an idol, or because of the erroneous teaching of some sect; and yet even then, though such a man seems to restrain and suppress his carnal desires, he is convicted, on the authority of the Apostle, of living by the rule of the flesh; and it is the very fact of his abstention from fleshly indulgence that proves that he is engaged in ‘the works of the flesh’.
Can anyone feel enmity except in the mind? Would anyone, speaking to an enemy, real or supposed, express himself by saying, ‘Your flesh is set against me’, rather than ‘Your mind’? Finally, if anyone heard of ‘carnalities’ (if there is such a word) he would undoubtedly attribute them to the carnal nature; and by the same token, no one doubts that animosities are concerned with the
animus
, with the mind. It follows that the reason why ‘the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth’
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gives the name of ‘works of the flesh’ to those and similar failings is simply that he intends the word ‘flesh’ to be taken as meaning ‘man’ by the ‘part for whole’ figure of speech.
3.
The cause of sin arises in the soul, not in the flesh; and the corruption resulting from sin is not a sin but a punishment
Now it may be asserted that the flesh is the cause of every kind of moral failing, on the ground that the bad behaviour of the soul is due to the influence of the flesh. But this contention shows a failure to consider man’s nature carefully and in its entirety. For ‘the corruptible body weighs down the soul.’
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Hence also the Apostle, when treating of this corruptible body, first says, ‘Our outer man is decaying.’
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and later goes on thus:
We know that if the earthly house we inhabit disintegrates, we have a building given by God, a house not made by human hands, eternal, in heaven. For in this body we do indeed sigh – as we long for our heavenly dwelling to be put on over it, hoping that when we have put it on, we shall not find ourselves naked. For we, who are in this present dwelling, feel its weight, and sigh; not that we desire to be stripped of our body; rather we desire to have the other clothing put on over it, so that what is mortal may be absorbed by life.
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And so we are weighed down by the corruptible body; and yet we know that the cause of our being weighed down is not the true nature and substance of our body but its corruption; and therefore we do not
wish to be stripped of it, but to be clothed with the immortality of the body. For then there will still be a body, but it will not be corruptible, and therefore not a burden. Consequently, in this present life, ‘the corruptible body weighs down the soul, and the earthly habitation depresses the mind as it meditates on many questions.’ However, those who imagine that all the ills of the soul derive from the body are mistaken.
True, Virgil is apparently expounding Platonic teaching
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in glorious poetry when he says,
Of those seeds heaven is the source, and fiery
The energy within them, did not bodies
Hamper and thwart them, and these earthly limbs
And dying members dull them.
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And he will have it that the body is to be taken as the source of all four of the most familiar emotional disturbances of the mind: desire and fear, joy and grief, which may be called the origins of all sins and moral failings.
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Thus he adds these lines,
Hence come desire and fear, gladness and sorrow;
They look not up to heaven, but are confined
In darkness, in the sightless dungeon’s gloom.
However, our belief is something very different. For the corruption of the body, which weighs down the soul, is not the cause of the first sin, but its punishment. And it was not the corruptible flesh that made the soul sinful; it was the sinful soul that made the flesh corruptible.
No doubt this corruption of the flesh results in some incitements to wrongdoing and in actual vicious longings; yet we must not attribute to the flesh all the faults of a wicked life, which would mean that we absolve the Devil of all those faults, since he has no flesh. Certainly, we cannot accuse the Devil of fornication or drunkenness or any other such wickedness connected with carnal indulgence, although he is the hidden persuader and instigator of such sins. Nevertheless, he is proud and envious in the highest degree; and this moral corruption has so mastered him that he is destined because of it to eternal punishment in the prison of this murky air of ours.
Now those vices, which are predominant in the Devil, are attributed to the flesh by the Apostle, although it is certain that the Devil is without flesh. For St Paul says that enmity, quarrelsomeness, jealousy
ousy, animosity, and envy are ‘works of the flesh’;
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and the fountain-head of all these evils is pride; and pride reigns in the Devil, although he is without flesh. For who is a greater enemy than he is to the saints? Who is found to quarrel with them more bitterly, to show more animosity, jealousy, and envy towards them? Yet he displays all these faults, without having flesh. So how can they be ‘the works of the flesh’ except in that they are the works of man, to whom, as I have said, the Apostle applies the term ‘flesh’?
It is in fact not by the possession of flesh, which the Devil does not possess, that man has become like the Devil: it is by living by the rule of self, that is by the rule of man. For the Devil chose to live by the rule of self when he did not stand fast in the truth, so that the he that lie told was his own lie, not God’s. The Devil is not only a liar; he is ‘the father of lies’.
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He was, as we know, the first to lie, and falsehood, like sin, had its start from him.
4.
The meaning of living ‘by the standard of man’ and ‘by the standard of God’
Thus, when man lives ‘by the standard of man’ and not ‘by the standard of God’, he is like the Devil; because even an angel should not have lived by the angel’s standard, but by God’s, so as to stand firm in the truth and speak the truth that comes from God’s truth, not the lie that derives from his own falsehood. For the Apostle has this to say about man also, in another passage, ‘But if the truth of God has been abundantly displayed through my falsehood’.
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The point is that the falsehood is ours, but the truth is God’s.
So when man lives by the standard of truth he lives not by his own standard, but by God’s. For it is God who has said, ‘I am the truth.’
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By contrast, when he lives by his own standard, that is by man’s and not by God’s standard, then inevitably he lives by the standard of falsehood. Not that man himself is falsehood, since his author and creator is God, who is certainly not the author and creator of falsehood. The fact is that man was created right, on condition that he should live by the standard of his creator, not by his own, carrying out not his own will, but his creator’s. Falsehood consists in not living in the way for which he was created.
Man has undoubtedly the will to be happy, even when he pursues
happiness by living in a way which makes it impossible of attainment. What could be more of a falsehood than a will like that? Hence we can say with meaning that every sin is a falsehood. For sin only happens by an act of will; and our will is for our own welfare, or for the avoidance of misfortune. And hence the falsehood: we commit sin to promote our welfare, and it results instead in our misfortune; or we sin to increase our welfare, and the result is rather to increase our misfortune. What is the reason for this, except that well-being can only come to man from God, not from himself? And he forsakes God by sinning, and he sins by living by his own standard.
I have already said that two cities, different and mutually opposed, owe their existence to the fact that some men live by the standard of the flesh, others by the standard of the spirit. It can now be seen that we may also put it in this way: that some live by man’s standard, others by God’s. St Paul puts it very plainly when he says to the Corinthians, ‘For since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, following human standards in your behaviour?’
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Therefore, to behave according to human standards is the same as to be ‘of the flesh’, because by ‘the flesh’, a part of man, man himself is meant.
In fact, St Paul had previously employed the term ‘animal’ to the same people whom he here calls ‘carnal’. This is what he said,
For what man on earth knows the truth about a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Similarly, no one knows the truth about God except the Spirit of God. Now we have not received the spirit of this world, but the spirit which is the gift of God, so that we may understand the gifts which God has granted us. We speak of those gifts in words which we have been taught, not by human wisdom, but by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to men possessed by God’s Spirit. The ‘animal’ man does not grasp what belongs to the Spirit of God; it is all folly to him.
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It is then to such men, that is, to ‘animal’ men, that he says, somewhat later, ‘Now I, my brothers, could not speak to you as I should to men possessed by the Spirit; I could only speak as to men of the flesh.’
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Both these terms, ‘animal’ and ‘carnal’, are examples of the ‘part for whole’ figure of speech. For
anima
(the soul) and
caro
(the flesh) are parts of a man, and can stand for man in his entirety. And thus the ‘animal’ man is not something different from the ‘carnal’ man: they are identical, that is, man living by human standards. In the same way, the reference is simply to men when we read ‘No flesh
will be justified as a result of the works of the law’,
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and also when Scripture says, ‘Seventy-five souls went down to Egypt with Jacob.’
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In the first case ‘no flesh’ means ‘no man’, and in the second, ‘seventy-five souls’ means ‘seventy-five men’.
Further, in the phrase, ‘in words taught not by human wisdom’, ‘carnal wisdom’ could be substituted; and in ‘you follow human standards in your behaviour’, ‘carnal standards’ would express the same meaning. This comes out more clearly in the words that follow, ‘For when a man says, “I belong to Paul”, and another, “I belong to Apollos”, are you not merely men?’
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Paul said earlier, ‘You are “animal”’, and, ‘You are carnal.’ Now he makes his meaning plainer by saying, ‘You are men.’ That is, ‘You live by man’s standards, not God’s. If you lived by his standards, you would be gods.’