Chapter XLV.—The Old Man and the New Man of St. Paul Explained.

But in their blindness they again impale themselves on the point of the old and the new man. When the apostle enjoins us “to put off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and to be renewed in the spirit of our mind; and to put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness,”296    Eph. iv. 22–24. (they maintain) that by here also making a distinction between the two substances, and applying the old one to the flesh and the new one to the spirit, he ascribes to the old man—that is to say, the flesh—a permanent corruption.  Now, if you follow the order of the substances, the soul cannot be the new man because it comes the later of the two; nor can the flesh be the old man because it is the former. For what fraction of time was it that intervened between the creative hand of God and His afflatus? I will venture to say, that even if the soul was a good deal prior to the flesh, by the very circumstance that the soul had to wait to be itself completed, it made the other297    The flesh. really the former. For everything which gives the finishing stroke and perfection to a work, although it is subsequent in its mere order, yet has the priority in its effect. Much more is that prior, without which preceding things could have no existence.  If the flesh be the old man, when did it become so? From the beginning? But Adam was wholly a new man, and of that new man there could be no part an old man.  And from that time, ever since the blessing which was pronounced upon man’s generation,298    Gen. i. 28. the flesh and the soul have had a simultaneous birth, without any calculable difference in time; so that the two have been even generated together in the womb, as we have shown in our Treatise on the Soul.299    See ch. xxvii. Contemporaneous in the womb, they are also temporally identical in their birth. The two are no doubt produced by human parents300    We treat “homines” as a nominative, after Oehler. of two substances, but not at two different periods; rather they are so entirely one, that neither is before the other in point of time. It is more correct (to say), that we are either entirely the old man or entirely the new, for we cannot tell how we can possibly be anything else. But the apostle mentions a very clear mark of the old man. For “put off,” says he, “concerning the former conversation, the old man;”301    Eph. iv. 22. (he does) not say concerning the seniority of either substance. It is not indeed the flesh which he bids us to put off, but the works which he in another passage shows to be “works of the flesh.”302    Gal. v. 19. He brings no accusation against men’s bodies, of which he even writes as follows:  “Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor: for we are members one of another. Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil. Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands (the thing which is good), that he may have to give to him that needeth. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good for the edification of faith, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.  And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil-speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: but be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ hath forgiven you.”303    Eph. iv. 25–32. Why, therefore, do not those who suppose the flesh to be the old man, hasten their own death, in order that by laying aside the old man they may satisfy the apostle’s precepts? As for ourselves, we believe that the whole of faith is to be administered in the flesh, nay more, by the flesh, which has both a mouth for the utterance of all holy words, and a tongue to refrain from blasphemy, and a heart to avoid all irritation, and hands to labour and to give; while we also maintain that as well the old man as the new has relation to the difference of moral conduct, and not to any discrepancy of nature. And just as we acknowledge that that which according to its former conversation was “the old man” was also corrupt, and received its very name in accordance with “its deceitful lusts,” so also (do we hold) that it is “the old man in reference to its former conversation,”304    Eph. iv. 22. and not in respect of the flesh through any permanent dissolution. Moreover, it is still unimpaired in the flesh, and identical in that nature, even when it has become “the new man;” since it is of its sinful course of life, and not of its corporeal substance, that it has been divested.

CAPUT XLV.

Sed et rursus alia caecitate in duos homines impingunt, in veterem et in novum, monente Apostolo (Eph. IV), deponere nos veterem hominem qui corrumpitur per concupiscentiam seductionis; renovari autem spiritu sensus, et induere novum hominem, qui secundum Deum conditus est in justitia et religione veritatis; ut et hic ad duas substantias distinguendo, vetustatem ad carnem, novitatem ad animam, corruptionem perpetuam veteri defendat, id est carni. Porro, si secundum substantias, nec anima novus 0858B homo, quia posterior; nec caro ideo vetus, quia prior. Quantulum enim temporis inter manum Dei et adflatum; ausim dicere, etiamsi multo prior anima quam caro, eo ipso quod anima impleri se expectavit, priorem eam fecit. Omnis enim consummatio atque perfectio, etsi ordine postumat, effectu tamen anticipat. Magis illud prius est, sine quo priora non possunt. Si caro vetus homo, quando istud? a primordio? atquin Adam novus totus, et ex novo vetus nemo. Nam et exinde a benedictione geniturae, caro atque anima simul fiunt, sine calculo temporis; et quae simul in utero etiam seminantur , quod docuimus in Commentario animae, contemporant foetu, coaetant natu duos istos homines, sane ex substantia duplici, non tamen et aetate. 0858C Sic unum edunt, dum prior neuter est. Citius est, totos nos aut veteres aut novos esse: qua enim alterum possimus esse, nescimus. Sed Apostolus veterem hominem manifeste notat: Expone enim, inquit, secundum pristinam conversationem 0859A veterem hominem, non secundum alicujus substantiae senium. Neque enim carnem praecipit deponamus, sed quae et alibi carnalia ostendit; opera, non corpora accusans, de quibus et hic subjicit: Deponentes mendacium, loquimini veritatem unusquisque ad proximum suum, quoniam membra alterutrum sumus. Irascimini autem, et nolite delinquere. Sol non occidat super iracundiam vestram. Neque dederitis locum diabolo . Qui furabatur , jam non furetur, imo potius laboret, operando manibus, uti habeat impartire indigenti. Omnis sermo turpis non procedat ex ore vestro, sed qui sit optimus ad aedificationem fidei, ut gratiam audientibus praestet. Et nolite contristare Spiritum Dei Sanctum, in quo signati estis, in redemptionis die. Omnis amaritudo, et ira, et clamor, et blasphemia, et indignatio 0859B auferatur a vobis, cum omni malitia. Estote autem in alterutrum benigni, misericordes, donantes invicem, sicut et Deus vobis donavit in Christo. Igitur qui carnem veterem hominem existimant, cur non mortem sibi properant, ut, vetere homine deposito, praeceptis Apostoli occurrant? Nos enim qui totam fidem in carne administrandam credidimus, imo et per carnem, cujus est et os ad proferendum optimum quemque sermonem, et lingua ad non blasphemandum, et cor ad non indignandum, et manus ad operandum et largiendum; tam vetustatem hominis, quam novitatem, ad moralem, non ad substantialem differentiam pertinere defendimus. Atque ita, pariter agnoscimus, hominem qui secundum pristinam conversationem vetus fuerit, eumdem et corrumpi ita dictum secundum 0859C concupiscentiam seductionis, quemadmodum et veterem secundum pristinam conversationem, non secundum carnem per interitum perpetuum; caeterum, carne tam salvum quam eumdem, utpote vitiosam disciplinam, non corpulentiam exutum.