The City of God, Volume IIAugustine, of Hippo, Saint
ReligionChristian
The City of God, Volume II
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint
Apologetics -- Early works to 1800; Kingdom of God -- Early works to 1800
First, we must see what it is to live after the flesh, and what to live
after the spirit. For any one who either does not recollect, or does
not sufficiently weigh, the language of sacred Scripture, may, on first
hearing what we have said, suppose that the Epicurean philosophers
live after the flesh, because they place man's highest good in bodily
pleasure; and that those others do so who have been of opinion that in
some form or other bodily good is man's supreme good; and that the mass
of men do so who, without dogmatizing or philosophizing on the subject,
are so prone to lust that they cannot delight in any pleasure save
such as they receive from bodily sensations: and he may suppose that
the Stoics, who place the supreme good of men in the soul, live after
the spirit; for what is man's soul, if not spirit? But in the sense of
the divine Scripture both are proved to live after the flesh. For by
flesh it means not only the body of a terrestrial and mortal animal, as
when it says, "All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind
of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, another
of birds,"[2] but it uses this word in many other significations; and
among these various usages, a frequent one is to use flesh for man
himself, the nature of man taking the part for the whole, as in the
words, "By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified;"[3]
for what does he mean here by "no flesh" but "no man?" And this,
indeed, he shortly after says more plainly: "No man shall be justified
by the law;"[4] and in the Epistle to the Galatians, "Knowing that a
man is not justified by the works of the law." And so we understand
the words, "And the Word was made flesh,"[5]--that is, man, which some
not accepting in its right sense, have supposed that Christ had not a
human soul.[6] For as the whole is used for the part in the words of
Mary Magdalene in the Gospel, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know
not where they have laid Him,"[7] by which she meant only the flesh
of Christ, which she supposed had been taken from the tomb where it
had been buried, so the part is used for the whole, flesh being named,
while man is referred to, as in the quotations above cited.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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