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| It is the Works of the Flesh, Not the Substance of the Flesh, Which St. Paul Always Condemns.
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Chapter
XLVI.—It is the Works of the Flesh, Not the Substance of the
Flesh, Which St. Paul Always Condemns.
You may notice that the apostle everywhere condemns the
works of the flesh in such a way as to appear to condemn the flesh;
but no one can suppose him to have any such view as this, since he goes
on to suggest another sense, even though somewhat resembling it. For
when he actually declares that “they who are in the flesh cannot
please God,” he immediately recalls the statement from an
heretical sense to a sound one, by adding, “But ye are not in the
flesh, but in the Spirit.”7589
Now, by
denying them to be in the flesh who yet obviously were in the flesh, he
showed that they were not living amidst the works of the flesh, and
therefore that they who could not please God were not those who were in
the flesh, but only those who were living after the flesh; whereas they
pleased God, who, although existing in the flesh, were yet walking
after the Spirit. And, again, he says that “the body is
dead;” but it is “because of sin,” even as “the
Spirit is life because of righteousness.”7590
When, however, he thus sets life in opposition to the death which is
constituted in the flesh, he unquestionably promises the life of
righteousness to the same state for which he determined the death of
sin. But unmeaning is this opposition which he makes between the
“life” and the “death,” if the life is not
there where that very thing is to which he opposes it—even the
death which is to be extirpated of course from the body. Now, if
life thus extirpates death from the body, it can accomplish this only
by penetrating thither where that is which it is excluding. But why am
I resorting to knotty arguments,7591
when the
apostle treats the subject with perfect plainness? “For
if,” says he, “the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from
the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also
quicken your mortal bodies, because of His Spirit that dwelleth in
you;”7592
so that even if a
person were to assume that the soul is “the mortal body,”
he would (since he cannot possibly deny that the flesh is this also) be
constrained to acknowledge a restoration even of the flesh, in
consequence of its participation in the selfsame state. From the
following words, moreover, you may learn that it is the works of the
flesh which are condemned, and not the flesh itself: “Therefore,
brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the
flesh: for if ye live after the flesh ye shall die; but if ye, through
the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall
live.”7593
Now (that I may
answer each point separately), since salvation is promised to those who
are living in the flesh, but walking after the Spirit, it is no longer
the flesh which is an adversary to salvation, but the working of the
flesh. When, however, this operativeness of the flesh is done
away with, which is the cause of death, the flesh is shown to be safe,
since it is freed from the cause of death. “For the law,”
says he, “of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free
from the law of sin and death,”7594
—that, surely, which he previously
mentioned as dwelling in our members.7595
| 7595 Rom. vii. 17, 20, 23. |
Our members, therefore, will no longer be subject to the law of death,
because they cease to serve that of sin, from both which they
have been set free. “For what the law could not do, in that it
was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh, and through7596
| 7596 Per delinquentiam: see
the De Carne Christi, xvi. | sin condemned sin
in the flesh,”7597
—not the flesh
in sin, for the house is not to be condemned with its inhabitant. He
said, indeed, that “sin dwelleth in our body.”7598
But the condemnation of sin is the acquittal
of the flesh, just as its non-condemnation subjugates it to the law of
sin and death. In like manner, he called “the carnal mind”
first “death,”7599
and afterwards
“enmity against God;”7600
but he never
predicated this of the flesh itself. But to what then, you will say,
must the carnal mind be ascribed, if it be not to the carnal
substance itself? I will allow your objection, if you will prove to me
that the flesh has any discernment of its own. If, however, it has no
conception of anything without the soul, you must understand that the
carnal mind must be referred to the soul, although ascribed sometimes
to the flesh, on the ground that it is ministered to for the flesh and
through the flesh. And therefore (the apostle) says that “sin
dwelleth in the flesh,” because the soul by which sin is provoked
has its temporary lodging in the flesh, which is doomed indeed to
death, not however on its own account, but on account of sin. For he
says in another passage also: “How is it that you conduct
yourselves as if you were even now living in the world?”7601
where he is not writing to dead persons, but
to those who ought to have ceased to live after the ways of the
world.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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