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| 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.
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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,”613
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.”614
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,”615
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.616
| 616 In uno commune factum est
omnibus. | 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.”617
Those the
grace of God has, by a Mediator, delivered from the second
death.
Thus the apostle states that the
first man was made in an animal body. For, wishing to distinguish
the animal body which now is from the spiritual, which is to be in
the resurrection, he says, “It is sown in corruption, it is
raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in
glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is
sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” Then, to
prove this, he goes on, “There is a natural body, and there is a
spiritual body.” And to show what the animated body is, he
says, “Thus it was written, The first man Adam was made a living
soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”618
He wished
thus to show what the animated body is, though Scripture did not
say of the first man Adam, when his soul was created by the breath
of God, “Man was made in an animated body,” but “Man was made
a living soul.”619
By these
words, therefore, “The first man was made a living soul,” the
apostle wishes man’s animated body to be understood. But how he
wishes the spiritual body to be understood he shows when he adds,
“But the last Adam was made a quickening spirit,” plainly
referring to Christ, who has so risen from the dead that He cannot
die any more. He then goes on to say, “But that was not first
which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that
which is spiritual.” And here he much more clearly asserts that
he referred to the animal body when he said that the first man was
made a living soul, and to the spiritual when he said that the last
man was made a quickening spirit. The animal body is the first,
being such as the first Adam had, and which would not have died had
he not sinned, being such also as we now have, its nature being
changed and vitiated by sin to the extent of bringing us under the
necessity of death, and being such as even Christ condescended
first of all to assume, not indeed of necessity, but of choice; but
afterwards comes the spiritual body, which already is worn by
anticipation by Christ as our head, and will be worn by His members
in the resurrection of the dead.
Then the apostle subjoins a notable
difference between these two men, saying, “The first man is of
the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is
the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the
heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have
borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the
heavenly.”620
So he
elsewhere says, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ
have put on Christ;”621
but in very deed this shall be
accomplished when that which is animal in us by our birth shall
have become spiritual in our resurrection. For, to use his words
again,” We are saved by hope.”622
Now we bear the image of the
earthly man by the propagation of sin and death, which pass on us
by ordinary generation; but we bear the image of the heavenly by
the grace of pardon and life eternal, which regeneration confers
upon us through the Mediator of God and men, the Man Christ
Jesus. And He is the heavenly Man of Paul’s passage, because He
came from heaven to be clothed with a body of earthly mortality,
that He might clothe it with heavenly immortality. And he calls
others heavenly, because by grace they become His members, that,
together with them, He may become one Christ, as head and body.
In the same epistle he puts this yet more clearly: “Since by
man came death, by Man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made
alive,”623
—that is to
say, in a spiritual body which shall be made a quickening spirit.
Not that all who die in Adam shall be members of Christ,—for the
great majority shall be punished in eternal death,—but he uses
the word “all” in both clauses, because, as no one dies in an
animal body except in Adam, so no one is quickened a spiritual body
save in Christ. We are not, then, by any means to suppose that we
shall in the resurrection have such a body as the first man had
before he sinned, nor that the words, “As is the earthy such are
they also that are earthy,” are to be understood of that which
was brought about by sin; for we are not to think that Adam had a
spiritual body before he fell, and that, in punishment of his sin,
it was changed into an animal body. If this be thought, small
heed has been given to the words of so great a teacher, who says,
“There is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body; as it
is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul.” Was it
after sin he was made so? or was not this the primal condition of
man from which the blessed apostle selects his testimony to show
what the animal body is?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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