Chapter 23.—What We are to
Understand by the Animal and Spiritual Body; Or of Those Who Die in
Adam, And of Those Who are Made Alive in Christ.
For as those bodies of ours, that
have a living soul, though not as yet a quickening spirit, are
called soul-informed bodies, and yet are not souls but bodies, so
also those bodies are called spiritual,—yet God forbid we should
therefore suppose them to be spirits and not bodies,—which, being
quickened by the Spirit, have the substance, but not the
unwieldiness and corruption of flesh. Man will then be not
earthly but heavenly,—not because the body will not be that very
body which was made of earth, but because by its heavenly endowment
it will be a fit inhabitant of heaven, and this not by losing its
nature, but by changing its quality. The first man, of the earth
earthy, was made a living soul, not a quickening spirit,—which
rank was reserved for him as the reward of obedience. And
therefore his body, which required meat and drink to satisfy hunger
and thirst, and which had no absolute and indestructible
immortality, but by means of the tree of life warded off the
necessity of dying, and was thus maintained in the flower of
youth,—this body, I say, was doubtless not spiritual, but animal; and yet it would not have died but that it provoked God’s threatened vengeance by offending. And though sustenance was not denied him even outside Paradise, yet, being forbidden the tree of life, he was delivered over to the wasting of time, at least in respect of that life which, had he not sinned, he might have retained perpetually in Paradise, though only in an animal body, till such time as it became spiritual in acknowledgment of his obedience.
Wherefore, although we understand
that this manifest death, which consists in the separation of soul
and body, was also signified by God when He said, “In the day
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” it ought not on that account to
seem absurd that they were not dismissed from the body on that very
day on which they took the forbidden and death-bringing fruit. For certainly on that very day their nature was altered for the worse and vitiated, and by their most just banishment from the tree of life they were involved in the necessity even of bodily death, in which necessity we are born. And therefore the apostle does not say, “The body indeed is doomed to die on account of sin,” but he says, “The body indeed is dead because of sin.” Then he adds, “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Then accordingly shall the body become a quickening spirit which is now a living soul; and yet the apostle calls it “dead,” because already it lies under the necessity of dying. But in Paradise it was so made a living soul, though not a quickening spirit, that it could not properly be called dead, for, save through the commission of sin, it could not come under the power of death. Now, since God by the words, “Adam, where art thou?” pointed to the death of the soul, which results when He abandons it, and since in the words, “Earth thou art, and unto earth shalt thou return,” He signified the death of the body, which results when the soul departs from it, we are led, therefore, to believe that He said nothing of the second death, wishing it to be kept hidden, and reserving it for the New Testament dispensation, in which it is most plainly revealed. And this He did in order that, first of all, it might be evident that this first death, which is common to all, was the result of that sin which in one man became common to all. But the second death is not common to all, those being excepted who were “called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did pre
destinate to be conformed to
the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many
brethren.” Those the
grace of God has, by a Mediator, delivered from the second
death.