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| That Adam in His Sin Forsook God Ere God Forsook Him, and that His Falling Away From God Was the First Death of the Soul.
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Chapter 15.—That Adam in His Sin
Forsook God Ere God Forsook Him, and that His Falling Away From God
Was the First Death of the Soul.
It may perhaps be supposed that
because God said, “Ye shall die the death,”595
and not “deaths,” we should
understand only that death which occurs when the soul is deserted
by God, who is its life; for it was not deserted by God, and so
deserted Him, but deserted Him, and so was deserted by Him. For
its own will was the originator of its evil, as God was the
originator of its motions towards good, both in making it when it
was not, and in remaking it when it had fallen and perished. But
though we suppose that God meant only this death, and that the
words, “In the day ye eat of it ye shall die the death,” should
be understood as meaning, “In the day ye desert me in
disobedience, I will desert you in justice,” yet assuredly in
this death the other deaths also were threatened, which were its
inevitable consequence. For in the first stirring of the
disobedient motion which was felt in the flesh of the disobedient
soul, and which caused our first parents to cover their shame, one
death indeed is experienced, that, namely, which occurs when God
forsakes the soul. (This was intimated by the words He uttered,
when the man, stupefied by fear, had hid himself, “Adam, where
art thou?”596
—words
which He used not in ignorance of inquiry, but warning him to
consider where he was, since God was not with him.) But when the
soul itself forsook the body, corrupted and decayed with age, the
other death was experienced of which God had spoken in pronouncing
man’s sentence, “Earth thou art, and unto earth shall thou
return.”597
And of
these two deaths that first death of the whole man is composed.
And this first death is finally followed by the second, unless man
be freed by grace. For the body would not return to the
earth
from which it was made, save only by the death proper to itself,
which occurs when it is forsaken of the soul, its life. And
therefore it is agreed among all Christians who truthfully hold the
catholic faith, that we are subject to the death of the body, not
by the law of nature, by which God ordained no death for man, but
by His righteous infliction on account of sin; for God, taking
vengeance on sin, said to the man, in whom we all then were,
“Dust thou art, and unto dust shall thou return.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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