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.2.Those persons, then, who possess the earnest of the Spirit, and who arenot enslaved by the lusts of the flesh, but are subject to the Spirit, andwho in all things walk according to the light of reason, does the apostleproperly term  spiritual, because the Spirit of God dwells in them.Now,spiritual men shall not be incorporeal spirits; but our substance, that is, the1068union of flesh and spirit, receiving the Spirit of God, makes up thespiritual man.But those who do indeed reject the Spirit s counsel, and arethe slaves of fleshly lusts, and lead lives contrary to reason, and who,without restraint, plunge headlong into their own desires, having no longingafter the Divine Spirit, do live after the manner of swine and of dogs; thesemen, [I say], does the apostle very properly term  carnal, because theyhave no thought of anything else except carnal things.3.For the same reason, too, do the prophets compare them to irrationalanimals, on account of the irrationality of their conduct, saying,  Theyhave become as horses raging for the females; each one of them neighingafter his neighbor s wife. And again,  Man, when he was in honor, wasmade like unto cattle. This denotes that, for his own fault, he is likened tocattle, by rivaling their irrational life.And we also, as the custom is, dodesignate men of this stamp as cattle and irrational beasts.4.Now the law has figuratively predicted all these, delineating man by the[various] animals: whatsoever of these, says [the Scripture], have a doublehoof and ruminate, it proclaims as clean; but whatsoever of them do notpossess one or other of these [properties], it sets aside by themselves asunclean.Who then are the clean? Those who make their way by faithsteadily towards the Father and the Son; for this is denoted by thesteadiness of those which divide the hoof; and they meditate day and nightupon the words of God, that they may be adorned with good works: forthis is the meaning of the ruminants.The unclean, however, are thosewhich do neither divide the hoof nor ruminate; that is, those persons whohave neither faith in God, nor do meditate on His words: and such is theabomination of the Gentiles.But as to those animals which do indeed chewthe cud, but have not the double hoof, and are themselves unclean, we havein them a figurative description of the Jews, who certainly have the wordsof God in their mouth, but who do not fix their rooted steadfastness in theFather and in the Son; wherefore they are an unstable generation.For thoseanimals which have the hoof all in one piece easily slip; but those whichhave it divided are more sure-footed, their cleft hoofs succeeding each otheras they advance, and the one hoof supporting the other.In like manner,too, those are unclean which have the double hoof but do not ruminate:this is plainly an indication of all heretics, and of those who do notmeditate on the words of God, neither are adorned with works of1069righteousness; to whom also the Lord says,  Why call ye Me Lord, Lord,and do not the things which I say to you? For men of this stamp doindeed say that they believe in the Father and the Son, but they nevermeditate as they should upon the things of God, neither are they adornedwith works of righteousness; but, as I have already observed, they haveadopted the lives of swine and of dogs, giving themselves over tofilthiness, to gluttony, and recklessness of all sorts.Justly, therefore, didthe apostle call all such  carnal and  animal,  [all those, namely], whothrough their own unbelief and luxury do not receive the Divine Spirit, andin their various phases east out from themselves the life-giving Word, andwalk stupidly after their own lusts: the prophets, too, spake of them asbeasts of burden and wild beasts; custom likewise has viewed them in thelight of cattle and irrational creatures; and the law has pronounced themunclean.CHAPTER 9SHOWING HOW THAT PASSAGE OF THE APOSTLE WHICH THEHERETICS PERVERT, SHOULD BE UNDERSTOOD; VIZ.,  FLESHAND BLOOD SHALL NOT POSSESS THE KINGDOM OF GOD.1.Among the other [truths] proclaimed by the apostle, there is also thisone,  That flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. This is[the passage] which is adduced by all the heretics in support of their folly,with an attempt to annoy us, and to point out that the handiwork of Godis not saved.They do not take this fact into consideration, that there arethree things out of which, as I have shown, the complete man is composed flesh, soul, and spirit.One of these does indeed preserve and fashion[the man]  this is the spirit; while as to another it is united and formed that is the flesh; then [comes] that which is between these two  thatis the soul, which sometimes indeed, when it follows the spirit, is raisedup by it, but sometimes it sympathizes with the flesh, and falls into carnallusts.Those then, as many as they be, who have not that which saves andforms [us] into life [eternal], shall be, and shall be called, [mere] flesh andblood; for these are they who have not the Spirit of God in themselves.Wherefore men of this stamp are spoken of by the Lord as  dead; for,1070says He,  Let the dead bury their dead, because they have not the Spiritwhich quickens man.2.On the other hand, as many as fear God and trust in His Son s advent,and who through faith do establish the Spirit of God in their hearts, such men as these shall be properly called both  pure, and  spiritual,and  those living to God, because they possess the Spirit of the Father,who purifies man, and raises him up to the life of God.For as the Lord hastestified that  the flesh is weak, so [does He also say] that  the spirit iswilling. For this latter is capable of working out its own suggestions.If,therefore, any one admix the ready inclination of the Spirit to be, as itwere, a stimulus to the infirmity of the flesh, it inevitably follows thatwhat is strong will prevail over the weak, so that the weakness of the fleshwill be absorbed by the strength of the Spirit; and that the man in whomthis takes place cannot in that case be carnal, but Spiritual, because of thefellowship of the Spirit.Thus it is, therefore, that the martyrs bear theirwitness, and despise death, not after the infirmity of the flesh, but becauseof the readiness of the Spirit.For when the infirmity of the flesh isabsorbed, it exhibits the Spirit as powerful; and again, when the Spiritabsorbs the weakness [of the flesh], it possesses the flesh as an inheritancein itself, and from both of these is formed a living man,  living, indeed,because he partakes of the Spirit, but man, because of the substance offlesh.3 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]