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Letter CLXIV.
(a.d. 414.)
To My Lord Evodius Most Blessed, My
Brother and Partner in the Episcopal Office, Augustin Sends
Greeting in the Lord.
1. The question which you have proposed to me from
the epistle of the Apostle Peter is one which, as I think you are
aware, is wont to perplex me most seriously, namely, how the words
which you have quoted are to be understood on the supposition that
they were spoken concerning hell? I therefore refer this question
back to yourself, that if either you yourself be able, or can find
any other person who is able to do so, you may remove and terminate
my perplexities on the subject. If the Lord grant to me ability to
understand the words before you do, and it be in my power to impart
what I receive from Him to you, I will not withhold it from a
friend so truly loved. In the meantime, I will communicate to you
the things in the passage which occasion difficulty to me, that,
keeping in view these remarks on the words of the apostle, you may
either exercise your own thoughts on them, or consult any one whom
you find competent to pronounce an opinion.
2. After having said that “Christ was put to
death in the flesh, and quickened in the spirit,” the apostle
immediately went on to say: “in which also He went and preached
unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were unbelieving,2673
when once
the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark
was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by
water;” thereafter he added the words: “which baptism also now
by a like figure has saved you.”2674
This, therefore, is felt by me to
be difficult. If the Lord when He died preached in hell to spirits
in prison, why were those who continued unbelieving while the ark
was a preparing the only ones counted worthy of this favour,
namely, the Lord’s descending into hell? For in the ages between
the time of Noah and the passion of Christ, there died many
thousands of so many nations whom He might have found in hell. I do
not, of course, speak here of those who in that period of time had
believed in God, as, e.g. the prophets and patriarchs of
Abraham’s line, or, going farther back, Noah himself and his
house, who had been saved by water (excepting perhaps the one son,
who afterwards was rejected), and, in addition to these, all others
outside of the posterity of Jacob who were believers in God, such
as Job, the citizens of Nineveh, and any others, whether mentioned
in Scripture or existing unknown to us in the vast human family at
any time. I speak only of those many thousands of men who, ignorant
of God and devoted to the worship of devils or of idols, had passed
out of this life from the time of Noah to the passion of Christ.
How was it that Christ, finding these in hell, did not preach to
them, but preached only to those who were unbelieving in the days
of Noah when the ark was a preparing? Or if he preached to all, why
has Peter mentioned only these, and passed over the innumerable
multitude of others?
Chap. II.
3.—It is established beyond question that the
Lord, after He had been put to death in the flesh, “descended
into hell;” for it is impossible to gainsay either that utterance
of prophecy, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell,”2675
—an utterance which Peter himself
expounds in the Acts of the Apostles, lest any one should venture
to put upon it another interpretation,—or the words of the same
apostle, in which he affirms that the Lord “loosed the pains of
hell, in which it was not possible for Him to be holden.”2676
| 2676 Acts ii. 24; 27, in which the words rendered
by Augustin “inferni dolores” are:
τὰς ὠδῖνας τοῦ θανάτου. | Who,
therefore, except an infidel, will deny that Christ was in hell? As
to the difficulty which is found in reconciling the statement that
the pains of hell were loosed by Him, with the fact that He had
never begun to be in these pains as in bonds, and did not so loose
them as if He had broken off chains by which He had been bound,
this is easily removed when we understand that they were loosed in
the same way as the snares of huntsmen may be loosed to prevent
their holding, not because they have taken hold. It may also be
understood as teaching us to believe Him to have loosed those pains
which could not possibly hold Him, but which were holding those to
whom He had resolved to grant deliverance.
4. But who these were it is presumptuous for us to
define. For if we say that all who were found there were then
delivered without exception, who will not rejoice if we can prove
this? Especially will men rejoice for the sake of some who are
intimately known to us by their literary labours, whose eloquence
and talent we admire,—not only the poets and orators who in many
parts of their writings have held up to contempt and ridicule these
same false gods of the nations, and have even occasionally
confessed the one true God, although along with the rest they
observed superstitious rites, but also those who have uttered the
same, not in poetry or rhetoric, but as philosophers: and for the
sake of many more of whom we have no literary remains, but in
regard to whom we have learned from the writings of these others
that their lives were to a certain extent praiseworthy, so that
(with the exception of their service of God, in which they erred,
worshipping the vanities which had been set up as objects of public
worship, and serving the creature rather than the Creator) they may
be justly held up as models in all the other virtues of frugality,
self-denial, chastity, sobriety, braving of death in their
country’s defence, and faith kept inviolate not only to
fellow-citizens, but also to enemies. All these things, indeed,
when they are practised with a view not to the great end of right
and true piety, but to the empty pride of human praise and glory,
become in a sense worthless and unprofitable; nevertheless, as
indications of a certain disposition of mind, they please us so
much that we would desire those in whom they exist, either by
special preference or along with the others, to be freed from the
pains of hell, were not the verdict of human feeling different from
that of the justice of the Creator.
5. These things being so, if the Saviour
delivered all from that place, and, to quote the terms of the
question in your letter, “emptied hell, so that now from that
time forward the last judgment was to be expected,” the following
things occasion not unreasonable perplexity on this subject, and
are wont to present themselves to me in the meantime when I think
on it. First, by what authoritative statements can this opinion be
confirmed? For the words of Scripture, that “the pains of hell
were loosed” by the death of Christ, do not establish this,
seeing that this statement may be understood as referring to
Himself, and meaning that he so far loosed (that is, made
ineffectual) the pains of hell that He Himself was not held by
them, especially since it is added that it was “impossible for
Him to be holden of them.” Or if any one [objecting to this
interpretation] ask the reason why He chose to descend into hell,
where those pains were which could not possibly hold Him who was,
as Scripture says, “free among the dead,”2677
in whom the prince and captain of
death found nothing which deserved punishment, the words that
“the pains of hell were loosed” may be understood as referring
not to the case of all, but only of some whom He judged worthy of
that deliverance; so that neither is He supposed to have descended
thither in vain, without the purpose of bringing benefit to any of
those who were there held in prison, nor is it a necessary
inference that what divine mercy and justice granted to some must
be supposed to have been granted to all.
Chap. III.
6. As to the first man, the father of mankind,
it is agreed by almost the entire Church that the Lord loosed him
from that prison; a tenet which must be believed to have been
accepted not without reason,—from whatever source it was handed
down to the Church,—although the authority of the canonical
Scriptures cannot be brought forward as speaking expressly in its
support,2678
| 2678 We give the original of this important
sentence:—“De illo quidem primo homine patre generis humani,
quod eum inde solverit Ecclesia fere tota consentit: quod eam non
inaniter credidisse credendum est, undecumque hoc traditum sit,
etiamsi canonicarum Scripturarum hinc expressa non proferatur
auctoritas.” | though
this seems to be the opinion which is more than any other borne out
by these words in the book of Wisdom.2679
Some add to this [tradition] that
the same favour was bestowed on the holy men of antiquity,—on
Abel, Seth, Noah and his house, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the
other patriarchs and prophets, they also being loosed from those
pains at the time when the Lord descended into hell.
7. But, for my part, I cannot see how Abraham, into whose bosom
also the pious beggar in the parable was received, can be
understood to have been in these pains; those who are able can
perhaps explain this. But I suppose every one must see it to be
absurd to imagine that only two, namely, Abraham and Lazarus, were
in that bosom of wondrous repose before the Lord descended into
hell, and that with reference to these two alone it was said to the
rich man, “Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so
that they which would pass from hence to you cannot, neither can
they pass to us that would pass from thence.”2680
Moreover, if there were more than
two there, who will dare to say that the patriarchs and prophets
were not there, to whose righteousness and piety so signal
testimony is borne in the word of God? What benefit was conferred
in that case on them by Him who loosed the pains of hell, in which
they were not held, I do not yet understand, especially as I have
not been able to find anywhere in Scripture the name of hell used
in a good sense. And if this use of the term is nowhere found in
the divine Scriptures, assuredly the bosom of Abraham, that is, the
abode of a certain secluded rest, is not to be believed to be a
part of hell. Nay, from these words themselves of the great Master
in which He says that Abraham said, “Between us and you there is
a great gulf fixed,” it is, as I think, sufficiently evident that
the bosom of that glorious felicity was not any integral part of
hell. For what is that great gulf but a chasm completely separating
those places between which it not only is, but is fixed? Wherefore,
if sacred Scripture had said, without naming hell and its pains,
that Christ when He died went to that bosom of Abraham, I wonder if
any one would have dared to say that He “descended into
hell.”
8. But seeing that plain scriptural
testimonies make mention of hell and its pains, no reason can be
alleged for believing that He who is the Saviour went thither,
except that He might save from its pains; but whether He did save
all whom He found held in them, or some whom He judged worthy of
that favour, I still ask: that He was, however, in hell, and that
He conferred this benefit on persons subjected to these pains, I do
not doubt. Wherefore, I have not yet found what benefit He, when He
descended into hell, conferred upon those righteous ones who were
in Abraham’s bosom, from whom I see that, so far as regarded the
beatific presence of His Godhead, He never withdrew Himself; since
even on that very day on which He died, He promised that the thief
should be with Him in paradise at the time when He was about to
descend to loose the pains of hell. Most certainly, therefore, He
was, before that time, both in paradise and the bosom of Abraham in
His beatific wisdom, and in hell in His condemning power; for since
the Godhead is confined by no limits, where is He not present? At
the same time, however, so far as regarded the created nature, in
assuming which at a certain point of time, He, while continuing to
be God, became man—that is to say, so far as regarded His soul,
He was in hell: this is plainly declared in these words of
Scripture, which were both sent before in prophecy and fully
expounded by apostolical interpretation: “Thou wilt not leave my
soul in hell.”2681
9. I know that some think that at the death of
Christ a resurrection such as is promised to us at the end of the
world was granted to the righteous, founding this on the statement
in Scripture that, in the earthquake by which at the moment of His
death the rocks were rent and the graves were opened, many bodies
of the saints arose and were seen with Him in the Holy City after
He rose. Certainly, if these did not fall asleep again, their
bodies being a second time laid in the grave, it would be necessary
to see in what sense Christ can be understood to be “the first
begotten from the dead,”2682
if so many preceded Him in the
resurrection. And if it be said, in answer to this, that the
statement is made by anticipation, so that the graves indeed are to
be supposed to have been opened by that earthquake at the time when
Christ was hanging on the cross, but that the bodies of the saints
did not rise then, but only after Christ had risen before
them,—although on this hypothesis of anticipation in the
narrative, the addition of these words would not hinder us from
still believing, on the one hand, that Christ was without doubt
“the first begotten from the dead,” and on the other, that to
these saints permission was given, when He went before them, to
rise to an eternal state of incorruption and immortality,there
still remains a difficulty, namely, how in that case Peter could
have spoken as he did, saying what was without doubt perfectly
true, when he affirmed that in the prophecy quoted above the words,
that “His flesh should not see corruption,” referred not to
David but to Christ, and added concerning David, “He is buried,
and his sepulchre is with us to this day,”2683
—a statement which would have had
no force as an argument unless the body of David was still
undisturbed in the sepulchre; for of course the sepulchre might
still have been there even had the saint’s body been raised up
immediately after his death, and had thus not seen corruption. But
it seems hard that David should not be
included in this resurrection of
the saints, if eternal life was given to them, since it is so
frequently, so clearly, and with such honourable mention of his
name, declared that Christ was to be of David’s seed. Moreover,
these words in the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning the ancient
believers, “God having provided some better thing for us, that
they without us should not be made perfect,”2684
will be endangered, if these
believers have been already established in that incorruptible
resurrection-state which is promised to us when we are to be made
perfect at the end of the world.
Chap. IV.
10. You perceive, therefore, how intricate is
the question why Peter chose to mention, as persons to whom, when
shut up in prison, the gospel was preached, those only who were
unbelieving in the days of Noah when the ark was a preparing—and
also the difficulties which prevent me from pronouncing any
definite opinion on the subject. An additional reason for my
hesitation is, that after the apostle had said, “Which baptism
now by a like figure saves you (not the putting away of the filth
of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God) by
the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is on the right hand of God,
having swallowed up death that we might be made heirs of eternal
life; and having gone into heaven, angels, and authorities, and
powers being made subject to Him,” he added: “Forasmuch then as
Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise
with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath
ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time
in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God;” after
which he continues: “For the time past of our life may suffice us
to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in
lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and
abominable idolatries: wherein they think it strange that ye run
not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you; who
shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and the
dead.” After these words he subjoins: “For for this cause was
the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be
judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in
the Spirit.”2685
11. Who can be otherwise than perplexed by words so
profound as these? He saith, “The gospel was preached to the
dead;” and if by the “dead” we understand persons who have
departed from the body, I suppose he must mean those described
above as “unbelieving in the days of Noah,” or certainly all
those whom Christ found in hell. What, then, is meant by the words,
“That they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but
live according to God in the spirit”? For how can they be judged
in the flesh, which if they be in hell they no longer have, and
which if they have been loosed from the pains of hell they have not
yet resumed? For even if “hell was,” as you put in your
question, “emptied,” it is not to be believed that all who were
then there have risen again in the flesh, or those who, arising,
again appeared with the Lord resumed the flesh for this purpose,
that they might be in it judged according to men; but how this
could be taken as true in the case of those who were unbelieving in
the days of Noah I do not see, for Scripture does not affirm that
they were made to live in the flesh, nor can it be believed that
the end for which they were loosed from the pains of hell was that
they who were delivered from these might resume their flesh in
order to suffer punishment. What, then, is meant by the words,
“That they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but
live according to God in the spirit?” Can it mean that to those
whom Christ found in hell this was granted, that by the gospel they
were quickened in the spirit, although at the future resurrection
they must be judged in the flesh, that they may pass, through some
punishment in the flesh, into the kingdom of God? If this be what
is meant, why were only the unbelievers of the time of Noah (and
not also all others whom Christ found in hell when He went thither)
quickened in spirit by the preaching of the gospel, to be
afterwards judged in the flesh with a punishment of limited
duration? But if we take this as applying to all, the question
still remains why Peter mentioned none but those who were
unbelieving in the days of Noah.
12. I find, moreover, a difficulty in the reason
alleged by those who attempt to give an explanation of this matter.
They say that all those who were found in hell when Christ
descended thither had never heard the gospel, and that that place
of punishment or imprisonment was emptied of all these, because the
gospel was not published to the whole world in their lifetime, and
they had sufficient excuse for not believing that which had never
been proclaimed to them; but that thenceforth, men despising the
gospel when it was in all nations fully published and spread abroad
would be inexcusable, and therefore after the prison was then
emptied there still remains a just judgment, in which those who are
contumacious and unbelieving shall be punished even with eternal
fire. Those who hold this opinion do not consider that the same
excuse is available for all those who have, even after Christ’s
resurrection, departed this life before the gospel came to them.
For even after the Lord came back from hell, it was not the case
that no one was from that time forward permitted
to go to hell without having heard the
gospel, seeing that multitudes throughout the world died before the
proclamation of its tidings came to them, all of whom are entitled
to plead the excuse which is alleged to have been taken away from
those of whom it is said, that because they had not before heard
the gospel, the Lord when He descended into hell proclaimed it to
them.
13. This objection may perhaps be met by
saying that those also who since the Lord’s resurrection have
died or are now dying without the gospel having been proclaimed to
them, may have heard it or may now hear it where they are, in hell,
so that there they may believe what ought to be believed concerning
the truth of Christ, and may also have that pardon and salvation
which those to whom Christ preached obtained; for the fact that
Christ ascended again from hell is no reason why the report
concerning Him should have perished from recollection there, for
from this earth also He has gone ascending into heaven, and yet by
the publication of His gospel those who believe in Him shall be
saved; moreover, He was exalted, and received a name that is above
every name, for this end, that in His name every knee should bow,
not only of things in heaven and on earth, but also of things under
the earth.2686
But if we
accept this opinion, according to which we are warranted in
supposing that men who did not believe while they were in life can
in hell believe in Christ, who can bear the contradictions both of
reason and faith which must follow? In the first place, if this
were true, we should seem to have no reason for mourning over those
who have departed from the body without that grace, and there would
be no ground for being solicitous and using urgent exhortation that
men would accept the grace of God before they die, lest they should
be punished with eternal death. If, again, it be alleged that in
hell those only believe to no purpose and in vain who refused to
accept here on earth the gospel preached to them, but that
believing will profit those who never despised a gospel which they
never had it in their power to hear another still more absurd
consequence is involved, namely, that forasmuch as all men shall
certainly die, and ought to come to hell wholly free from the guilt
of having despised the gospel; since otherwise it can be of no use
to them to believe it when they come there, the gospel ought not to
be preached on earth, a sentiment not less foolish than
profane.
Chap. V.
14. Wherefore let us most firmly hold that which
faith, resting on authority established beyond all question,
maintains: “that Christ died according to the Scriptures,” and
that “He was buried,” and that “He rose again the third day
according to the Scriptures,” and all other things which have
been written concerning Him in records fully demonstrated to be
true. Among these doctrines we include the doctrine that He was in
hell, and, having loosed the pains of hell, in which it was
impossible for Him to be holden, from which also He is with good
ground believed to have loosed and delivered whom He would, He took
again to Himself that body which He had left on the cross, and
which had been laid in the tomb. These things, I say, let us firmly
hold; but as to the question propounded by you from the words of
the Apostle Peter, since you now perceive the difficulties which I
find in it, and since other difficulties may possibly be found if
the subject be more carefully studied, let us continue to
investigate it, whether by applying our own thoughts to the
subject, or by asking the opinion of any one whom it may be
becoming and possible to consult.
15. Consider, however, I pray you, whether all that
the Apostle Peter says concerning spirits shut up in prison, who
were unbelieving in the days of Noah, may not after all have been
written without any reference to hell, but rather to those times
the typical character of which he has transferred to the present
time. For that transaction had been typical of future events, so
that those who do not believe the gospel in our age, when the
Church is being built up in all nations, may be understood to be
like those who did not believe in that age while the ark was a
preparing; also, that those who have believed and are saved by
baptism may be compared to those who at that time, being in the
ark, were saved by water; wherefore he says, “So baptism by a
like figure saves you.” Let us therefore interpret the rest of
the statements concerning them that believed not so as to harmonise
with the analogy of the figure, and refuse to entertain the thought
that the gospel was once preached, or is even to this hour being
preached in hell in order to make men believe and be delivered from
its pains, as if a Church had been established there as well as on
earth.
16. Those who have inferred from the words,
“He preached to the spirits in prison,” that Peter held the
opinion which perplexes you, seem to me to have been drawn to this
interpretation by imagining that the term “spirits” could not
be applied to designate souls which were at that time still in the
bodies of men, and which, being shut up in the darkness of
ignorance, were, so to speak, “in prison,”—a prison such as
that from which the Psalmist sought deliverance in the prayer,
“Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Thy name;”2687
which is
in another place called the “shadow of death,”2688
from which
deliverance was granted, not certainly in hell, but in this world,
to those of whom it is written, “They that dwell in the land of
the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”2689
But to the
men of Noah’s time the gospel was preached in vain, because they
believed not when God’s long suffering waited for them during the
many years in which the ark was being built (for the building of
the ark was itself in a certain sense a preaching of mercy); even
as now men similar to them are unbelieving, who, to use the same
figure, are shut up in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison,
beholding in vain the Church which is being built up throughout the
world, while judgment is impending, as the flood was by which at
that time all the unbelieving perished; for the Lord says: “As it
was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son
of man; they did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were
given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark,
and the flood came and destroyed them all.”2690
But because that transaction was
also a type of a future event, that flood was a type both of
baptism to believers and of destruction to unbelievers, as in that
figure in which, not by a transaction but by words, two things are
predicted concerning Christ, when He is represented in Scripture as
a stone which was destined to be both to unbelievers a stone of
stumbling, and to believers a foundation-stone.2691
Occasionally, however, also in the
same figure, whether it be in the form of a typical event or of a
parable, two things are used to represent one, as believers were
represented both by the timbers of which the ark was built and by
the eight souls saved in the ark, and as in the gospel similitude
of the sheepfold Christ is both the shepherd and the door.2692
Chap. VI.
17. And let it not be regarded as an objection
to the interpretation now given, that the Apostle Peter says that
Christ Himself preached to men shut up in prison who were
unbelieving in the days of Noah, as if we must consider this
interpretation inconsistent with the fact that at that time Christ
had not come. For although he had not yet come in the flesh, as He
came when afterwards He “showed Himself upon earth, and conversed
with men,”2693
nevertheless he certainly came often to this earth, from the
beginning of the human race, whether to rebuke the wicked, as Cain,
and before that, Adam and his wife, when they sinned, or to comfort
the good, or to admonish both, so that some should to their
salvation believe, others should to their condemnation refuse to
believe,—coming then not in the flesh but in the spirit, speaking
by suitable manifestations of Himself to such persons and in such
manner as seemed good to Him. As to this expression, “He came in
the spirit,” surely He, as the Son of God, is a Spirit in the
essence of His Deity, for that is not corporeal; but what is at any
time done by the Son without the Holy Spirit, or without the
Father, seeing that all the works of the Trinity are
inseparable?
18. The words of Scripture which are under
consideration seem to me of themselves to make this sufficiently
plain to those who carefully attend to them: “For Christ hath
died once for our sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might
bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in
the spirit: in which also He came and preached unto the spirits in
prison, who sometime were unbelieving, when the long-suffering of
God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing.”
The order of the words is now, I suppose, carefully noted by you:
“Christ being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the
spirit;” in which spirit He came and preached also to those
spirits who had once in the days of Noah refused to believe His
word; since before He came in the flesh to die for us, which He did
once, He often came in the spirit, to whom He would, by visions
instructing them as He would, coming to them assuredly in the same
spirit in which He was quickened when He was put to death in the
flesh in His passion. Now what does His being quickened in the
spirit mean if not this, that the same flesh in which alone He had
experienced death rose from the dead by the quickening spirit?
Chap. VII.
19. For who will dare to say that Jesus was
put to death in His soul, i.e. in the spirit which belonged
to Him as man, since the only death which the soul can experience
is sin, from which He was absolutely free when for us He was put to
death in the flesh? For if the souls of all men are derived from
that one which the breath of God gave to the first man, by whom
“sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death
passed upon all men,”2694
either the soul of Christ is not
derived from the same source as other souls, because He had
absolutely no sin, either original or personal, on account of which
death could be supposed to be merited by Him, since He paid on our
behalf that which was not on His own account due by Him, in whom
the prince of this world, who had the power of death, found
nothing2695
—and
there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that He who created a soul
for the first man should create a soul for Himself; or if the soul
of Christ be derived from Adam’s soul He in assuming it to
Himself, cleansed it so that when He came into this world He was
born of the Virgin perfectly free from sin either actual or
transmitted. If, however, the souls of men are not derived from
that one soul, and it is only by the flesh that original sin is
transmitted from Adam, the Son of God created a soul for Himself,
as He creates souls for all other men, but He united it not to
sinful flesh, but to the “likeness of sinful flesh.”2696
For He
took, indeed, from the Virgin the true substance of flesh; not,
however, “sinful flesh,” for it was neither begotten nor
conceived through carnal concupiscence, but mortal, and capable of
change in the successive stages of life, as being like unto sinful
flesh in all points, sin excepted.
20. Therefore, whatever be the true theory
concerning the origin of souls,—and on this I feel it would be
rash for me to pronounce, meanwhile, any opinion beyond utterly
rejecting the theory which affirms that each soul is thrust into
the body which it inhabits as into a prison, where it expiates some
former actions of its own of which I know nothing, it is certain,
regarding the soul of Christ, not only that it is, according to the
nature of all souls, immortal, but also that it was neither put to
death by sin nor punished by condemnation, the only two ways in
which death can be understood as experienced by the soul; and
therefore it could not be said of Christ that with reference to the
soul He was “quickened in the spirit.” For He was quickened in
that in which He had been put to death; this, therefore, is spoken
with reference to His flesh, for His flesh received life again when
the soul returned to it, as it also had died when the soul
departed. He was therefore said to be “put to death in the
flesh,” because He experienced death only in the flesh, but
“quickened in the spirit,” because by the operation of that
Spirit in which He was wont to come and preach to whom He would,
that same flesh in which He came to men was quickened and rose from
the grave.
21. Wherefore, passing now to the words which
we find farther on concerning unbelievers, “Who shall give
account to Him who is ready to judge the quick and the dead,”
there is no necessity for our understanding the “dead” here to
be those who have departed from the body. For it may be that the
apostle intended by the word “dead” to denote unbelievers, as
being spiritually dead, like those of whom it was said, “Let the
dead bury their dead,”2697
and by the word “living” to
denote those who believe in Him, having not heard in vain the call,
“Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ
shall give thee light;”2698
of whom also the Lord said: “The
hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of
the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.”2699
On the
same principle of interpretation, also, there is nothing compelling
us to understand the immediately succeeding words of Peter—“For
this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead, that
they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live
according to God in the spirit”2700
—as describing what has been done
in hell. “For for this cause has the gospel been preached” in
this life “to the dead,” that is, to the unbelieving wicked,
“that” when they believed “they might be judged according to
men in the flesh,”—that is, by means of various afflictions and
by the death of the body itself; for which reason the same apostle
says in another place: “The time is come that judgment must begin
at the house of God,”2701
—“but live according to God in
the spirit,” since in that same spirit they had been dead while
they were held prisoners in the death of unbelief and
wickedness.
22. If this exposition of the words of Peter offend
any one, or, without offending, at least fail to satisfy any one,
let him attempt to interpret them on the supposition that they
refer to hell: and if he succeed in solving my difficulties which I
have mentioned above, so as to remove the perplexity which they
occasion, let him communicate his interpretation to me; and if this
were done, the words might possibly have been intended to be
understood in both ways, but the view which I have propounded is
not thereby shown to be false.
I wrote and sent by the deacon Asellus a
letter, which I suppose you have received, giving such answers as I
could to the questions which you sent before, excepting the one
concerning the vision of God by the bodily senses, on which a
larger treatise must be attempted. In your last note, to which this
is a reply, you propounded two questions concerning certain words
of the Apostle Peter, and concerning the soul of the Lord, both of
which I have discussed,—the former more fully, the latter
briefly.2702
| 2702 See paragraphs 19 and 20. | I beg you
not to grudge the trouble of sending me another copy of the letter
containing the question whether it is possible for the substance of
the Deity to be seen in a bodily form as limited to place; for it
has, I know not how, gone amissing here, and though long sought
for, has not been found.
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