Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
24.
The meaning of God’s breathing into the first man, and the Lord’s breathing on the disciples
There is another passage which has been thoughtlessly explained by some interpreters. This is the passage where we read, ‘God breathed into his face the breath (
spiritus
) of life, and man was made into a living soul.’
89
They assume this to mean not that man was then first given his soul (
anima
), but that the soul was already in him, and now it was brought to life by the Holy Spirit (
Spiritus
).
90
They are influenced by the fact that, after the Lord Jesus had risen from the dead, he breathed on his disciples and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’
91
Hence they imagine that something of the sort happened on the first occasion, as if the evangelist had gone on to say here also, ‘and they were made into a living soul.’ If indeed this had been said,
we should have taken it to mean that the Spirit of God is, in a sense, the life of souls, and without that Spirit rational souls are to be reckoned as dead, although their presence gives to bodies the semblance of life. But this was not what happened when man was created, as is clearly shown by the biblical evidence, in these words, ‘And God fashioned dust from the earth into a man.’
92
Some interpreters have thought that this passage needed clearer explanation and have therefore put it thus: ‘And God devised a man from the mud of the earth.’ For the preceding passage was, ‘But a spring went up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground’,
93
and they imagined that this implied mud, that being a mixture of earth and water. For the very next statement is, ‘And God fashioned dust from the earth into a man.’ This is the reading of the Greek manuscripts, of which the Latin Bible is a translation. It is of no importance whether the translation ‘fashioned’ (
formavit
) or ‘devised’ (
finxit
) is preferred, to represent the Greek
eplasen;
though ‘devised’ is a more literal rendering. But those who preferred ‘fashioned’ had decided that it was desirable to avoid the ambiguity of ‘devised’, since that word is employed in general Latin usage to describe the composition of something false with intent to deceive.
And so this man, formed from the dust of the earth or from mud (for the dust was moistened) – or, to use the express words of Scripture, this ‘dust from the earth’ – became an animal body, according to the Apostle’s teaching, when he received a soul. ‘And this man was made into a living soul’, that is, this dust, when fashioned, was then made into a living soul.
But, they say, he already had a soul. Otherwise, he would not have been called a man, since man is not merely a body or merely a soul, but a being constituted by body and soul together. This is indeed true, for the soul is not the whole man; it is the better part of man, and the body is not the whole man; it is the lower part of him. It is the conjunction of the two parts that is entitled to the name of ‘man’; and yet those parts taken separately are not deprived of that appellation even when we speak of them by themselves. For there is no law (as we may call it) of ordinary speech to prohibit such a statement as, ‘The man has died, and is now at rest, or under punishment’, when in fact this can be said only of his soul; or, ‘The man is buried in such and such a place’, although this can only be understood as meaning his body.
They may, perhaps, be ready with the retort that this is not the
normal form of expression in holy Scripture. But the truth is that Scripture supports our contention on this point, to the extent of employing the term ‘man’ to designate the separate constituents, even during a man’s life, when the two elements are conjoined. That is to say, it calls the soul ‘the inner man’ and the body ‘the outer man’,
94
as if there were two men, whereas the two elements together make up one man. We must, in fact, understand what is meant by speaking of ‘man made in the likeness of God’, and ‘man who is earth, and destined to return into earth’. The former refers to the rational soul, as God implanted it in man (in his body, that is) by breathing on him – ‘by inspiration’ might be a more suitable phrase. While the latter statement applies to man’s body, as devised by God out of dust, the thing which was given a soul so that it should become an animal body, that man should be made into a living soul.
Hence, by the act in which the Lord breathed on the disciples and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’,
95
he surely intended it to be understood that the Holy Spirit is the spirit (or breath) not only of the Father but also of the only-begotten Son himself. The Spirit of the Father and the Son is one and the same, and with the Spirit, the Father and the Son form the Trinity, the Holy Spirit being not created but creator. For that material breath which came from the physical mouth of Christ was not the substance and natural being of the Holy Spirit; rather it was a sign to enable us to understand, as I said, that the Holy Spirit is common to the Father and the Son, because they have not separate spirits, but one spirit belongs to both.
The spirit is always designated in the holy Scriptures by the Greek word
pneuma
, which is also the term used by Jesus in this passage, when he symbolized it by the breath of his physical mouth, in giving the Spirit to the disciples. But in the passage where it says, ‘And God fashioned dust from the earth into a man and breathed (or inspired) into his face the spirit (or breath) of life’, the Greek version does not use
pneuma
, the usual term for the Holy Spirit, but
pnoê
, a word which appears more often in relation to the created world than in connection with the Creator. Hence, to mark the distinction, some Latin versions also have preferred to translate the word by
flatus
(breath) instead of
spiritus
(spirit). This word
flatus
also occurs in the passage of Isaiah where God says, ‘I have made every breath’,
96
which undoubtedly means ‘every soul’.
Thus the Greek
pnoê
is sometimes rendered into Latin by
flatus
(breath), sometimes by
spiritus
(spirit),
inspiratio
(breathing into, inspiration),
or
aspiratio
(breathing on), even when used of God’s action. Whereas
pneuma
is invariably represented by
spiritus
. This holds good whether it is used of man (the Apostle says, ‘Among mankind, who knows the truth about a man except the spirit of the man within him?’
97
), or of an animal (for example, in the book of Solomon, ‘Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward into heaven, and the spirit of the animal goes downward into the earth?’
98
), or of the physical phenomenon which is also called wind (for this term is used in the verse of the psalm, ‘Fire, hail, snow, ice, spirit of the storm’
99
), or, lastly, of the Spirit which is not created but Creator. This last is the reference in the Lord’s saying in the Gospel, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’,
100
with the symbolism of the breath from his physical mouth; and when he says, ‘Go and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’,
101
a passage where the Trinity is emphasized with a clarity unparalleled elsewhere; and in the place where we read, ‘God is spirit’,
102
and in very many other places in holy Scripture.
Now in all these scriptural references we observe that, in the Greek text, the word is not
pnoê
but
pneuma
, and in the Latin,
spiritus
instead of
flatus
. Therefore, in the statement, ‘He
inspired’
– or, to put it more accurately, ‘he breathed’ – ‘into his face the spirit of life’, even if the Greek had
pneuma
here, instead of
pnoê
(the actual reading), it would not have followed that we were forced to refer it to the Creator Spirit, who is properly called, in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, seeing that it is established that
pneuma
is frequently used of the created as well as of the creator.
But, these interpreters allege, when the author said ‘spirit’ (
spiritus
) he would not have added ‘of life’, if he had not intended the Holy Spirit to be understood, and when he said ‘Man was made into a soul’, he would not have put in the epithet ‘living’ if he had not meant the life of the soul which is divinely imparted to it by the gift of the Spirit of God. For, they argue, since the soul lives in a manner appropriate to its own life, what was the need to add ‘living’, except to ensure that it would be understood as meaning that life which is given to the soul through the Holy Spirit? It would not have entailed much effort for them, without going to any great lengths, to read, slightly earlier in the same book, ‘Let the earth produce the living soul’,
103
at the time when the terrestrial animals were all created. It would not
have cost them much to notice, a few chapters later, but still in the same book, these words: ‘And all things which have the spirit of life, and everyone who was on the dry land died’
104
– which means that all things that lived on the earth perished in the Flood.
So we find both a ‘living soul’ and a ‘spirit of life’ even in the animals, according to the normal usage in divine Scripture. In this passage also, in the phrase, ‘all things which have the spirit of life’, the Greek word is
pnoê
, not
pneuma
. Then why do we not ask, ‘What need was there to add “living”, since the soul cannot exist without being alive? And what need to add “of life” after saying “spirit”?’ But we take it that Scripture, as usual, speaks of ‘living soul’ and ‘spirit of life’ because it intends us to take the meaning as ‘animals’, in the sense of animate bodies, obviously possessed of the bodily sense perception which comes through the possession of a soul. But when we think of the creation of man we forget the normal usage of Scripture. And yet Scripture here kept strictly to its customary language to make the point that man did indeed receive a rational soul, which (the Bible intends us to realize) was not produced from water or earth, like the soul of the other physical creatures, but created by the breath of God; but that man was nevertheless created to live in an animal body, which comes into life when a soul begins to live in it. For Scripture says of the animals in general, ‘Let the earth produce the living soul’; and it also speaks of them as having ‘the spirit of life’. In this latter phrase also the Greek word is pnoê, not
pneuma;
and it is obvious that the noun signifies not the Holy Spirit but the soul of the animals.
But in fact, comes the reply, the breath of God is to be taken as having issued from God’s mouth, and if we suppose it to be the soul, it follows that we must admit that it is of the same substance as God’s Wisdom, on an equality with that Wisdom which says, ‘I came out of the mouth of the Most High.’
105
Yes, but Wisdom did not say that it had been ‘breathed’ out of God’s mouth, but that it ‘came out’. Besides, when we breathe out, we can expel our breath without taking from our own natural substance, the substance that makes us human beings; we breathe by taking from the surrounding air, drawing it in and letting it out by inhaling and exhaling. Almighty God equally has the ability to produce a breath which was taken neither from his own natural substance nor from anything in his subject creation; he could produce it from nothing. And to say that he ‘inspired’ or ‘breathed’ this breath when he implanted it into man’s body is the
suitable way of expressing God’s action; for he is immaterial, as was the breath, but the breath was mutable, and he is immutable, the uncreated producing a created breath. And apart from this, I should like these people, who are ready to hold forth about Scripture without observing the linguistic usages of Scripture, to know that it is not only something of equal and identical nature with God that is said to come out of his mouth; and so I should like them to listen to, or to read, this passage in Scripture, where God is speaking, ‘Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I shall go on to spit you out of my mouth.’
106
So there is no reason to withhold assent from the clear statement of the Apostle on this point. He is distinguishing the animal body from the spiritual, the body in which we are now from the body in which we shall be in the future; and he says,
It is sown as an animal body: it will rise as a spiritual body. If there is such a thing as an animal body, there is also a spiritual body. This is the testimony of Scripture: ‘The first man, Adam, was made into a living soul: the last Adam into a life-giving Spirit’. But the spiritual does not come first: the animal body is first, the spiritual comes later. The first man is of the earth, earthly: the second man is from heaven. Those who are earthly are like the man of earth: those who are heavenly are like the man from heaven. And just as we have put on the likeness of the earthly man, we shall also put on the likeness of the man who is from heaven.
We have already discussed these words of the Apostle.
107
Thus the animal body, with which, the Apostle says, the first man Adam was made, was not made so as to be incapable of dying, but so as not to die, if the man had not sinned. For the body which will be incapable of death is that which will be spiritual and immortal in virtue of the presence of a life-giving spirit. In this it will be like the soul, which was created immortal. The soul, it is true, may be spoken of as dead because of sin, in that it loses one kind of life, namely the Spirit of God, which would have enabled it to live in wisdom and felicity. Still, it does not cease to live with a kind of life of its own, however wretched, since it is created immortal. The same holds good of the apostate angels; they have, in a fashion, died by sinning, because they forsook the fountain of life which is God; by drinking from that fountain they might have lived in wisdom and felicity. However, they could not die in the sense of ceasing altogether to live and feel, since they were created immortal. And so, after the last judgement, when they will be hurled into the second death, that will not mean
that they will even there be deprived of life, seeing that they will not be deprived of feeling, when they are in pain.
But men who are in the sphere of God’s grace, who are fellow-citizens of the holy angels who live in continual bliss, will be equipped with spiritual bodies in such a way that they will sin no more, nor will they die. The immortality with which they are clothed will be like that of the angels, an immortality which cannot be taken away by sin; and though the natural substance of flesh will continue, no slightest trace of carnal corruptibility or lethargy will remain.
A question then arises which demands discussion and resolution, with the help of the Lord God of Truth. If sensual desire arose in the disobedient bodies of the first human beings as a result of the sin of disobedience, when they had been forsaken by divine grace, if, in the consequence, they opened their eyes to their own nakedness, that is, they observed it with anxious curiosity, and if they covered up their shameful parts because an excitement, which resisted voluntary control, made them ashamed – if this is true, how would they have produced children if they had remained without sin, in the state in which they were created?
But this book must now come to its close; and in any case this is too important a question to be discussed in a constricted space. I shall therefore postpone it for more adequate treatment in the next book.