Chapter 9.—We Say that Future Blessedness is Truly Eternal, Not Through Human Reasonings, But by the Help of Faith. The Immortality of Blessedness Becomes Credible from the Incarnation of the Son of God.

12. Whether human nature can receive this, which yet it confesses to be desirable, is no small question. But if faith be present, which is in those to whom Jesus has given power to become the sons of God, then there is no question. Assuredly, of those who endeavor to discover it from human reasonings, scarcely a few, and they endued with great abilities, and abounding in leisure, and learned with the most subtle learning, have been able to attain to the investigation of the immortality of the soul alone. And even for the soul they have not found a blessed life that is stable, that is, true; since they have said that it returns to the miseries of this life even after blessedness. And they among them who are ashamed of this opinion, and have thought that the purified soul is to be placed in eternal happiness without a body, hold such opinions concerning the past eternity of the world, as to confute this opinion of theirs concerning the soul; a thing which here it is too long to demonstrate; but it has been, as I think, sufficiently explained by us in the twelfth book of the City of God.796    C. 20. But that faith promises, not by human reasoning, but by divine authority, that the whole man, who certainly consists of soul and body, shall be immortal, and on this account truly blessed. And so, when it had been said in the Gospel, that Jesus has given “power to become the sons of God to them who received Him;” and what it is to have received Him had been shortly explained by saying, “To them that believe on His name;” and it was further added in what way they are to become sons of God, viz., “Which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God;”—lest that infirmity of men which we all see and bear should despair of attaining so great excellence, it is added in the same place, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us;”797    John i. 12–14 that, on the contrary, men might be convinced of that which seemed incredible. For if He who is by nature the Son of God was made the Son of man through mercy for the sake of the sons of men,—for this is what is meant by “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” men,—how much more credible is it that the sons of men by nature should be made the sons of God by the grace of God, and should dwell in God, in whom alone and from whom alone the blessed can be made partakers of that immortality; of which that we might be convinced, the Son of God was made partaker of our mortality?

CAPUT IX.

12. Non humanis argumentationibus, sed fidei auxilio dicimus beatitudinem futuram esse vere sempiternam. Ex Filii Dei incarnatione credibilis fit immortalitas beatitudinis. Hanc utrum capiat humana natura, quam tamen desiderabilem confitetur, non parva quaestio est. Sed si fides adsit, quae inest eis quibus dedit potestatem Jesus filios Dei fieri, nulla quaestio est. Humanis quippe argumentationibus haec invenire conantes, vix pauci magno praediti ingenio, abundantes otio, doctrinisque subtilissimis eruditi, ad indagandam solius animae immortalitatem pervenire potuerunt. Cui tamen animae beatam vitam non invenerunt stabilem, id est veram: ad miserias eam quippe vitae hujus etiam post beatitudinem redire dixerunt. Et qui eorum de hac erubuerunt sententia, et animam purgatam in sempiterna beatitudine sine corpore collocandam putaverunt, talia de mundi retrorsus aeternitate sentiunt, ut hanc de anima sententiam suam ipsi redarguant: quod hic longum est demonstrare, sed in libro duodecimo de Civitate Dei, satis a nobis est, quantum arbitror, explicatum (Cap. 20). Fides autem ista totum hominem immortalem futurum, qui utique constat ex anima et corpore, et ob hoc vere beatum, non argumentatione humana, sed divina auctoritate promittit. Et ideo cum dictum esset in Evangelio, quod Jesus dederit potestatem filios Dei fieri iis qui eum receperunt; et quid sit recepisse eum, breviter fuisset expositum, dicendo, Credentibus in nomine ejus; quoque modo filii Dei fierent, esset adjunctum, Qui non ex sanguinibus, neque ex voluntate carnis, neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo nati sunt: ne ista hominum quam videmus et gestamus infirmitas tantam excellentiam desperaret, illico annexum est, Et Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis (Joan. I, 12-14); ut a contrario suaderetur quod incredibile videbatur. Si enim natura Dei Filius propter filios hominum misericordia factus est hominis filius; hoc est enim, Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis hominibus: 1024 quanto est credibilius, natura filios hominis gratia Dei filios Dei fieri, et habitare in Deo, in quo solo et de quo solo esse possunt beati participes immortalitatis ejus effecti; propter quod persuadendum Dei Filius particeps nostrae mortalitatis effectus est?