On the Making of Man 14–17

That the mind is not in a part of the body; in which there is also a distinction between the movements of the body and of the soul. But we have wandered far from our subject. For the argument set out to show that the mind is not bound to any one part of the body but touches the whole equally, producing its movement in a way suited to the nature of the part it is acting on. There are cases, though, in which the mind even follows the natural impulses, becoming as it were their servant. For often the nature of the body leads the way, implanting either the sense of what pains or the desire for what delights, so that it supplies the first beginnings, producing an appetite for food or, in general, an impulse toward some pleasure, while the mind takes up such impulses and by its own ingenuity helps to procure for the body the means of getting what it longs for. This is not so in all, but only in those of a more slavish disposition, who have enslaved reason to the impulses of nature and, with the alliance of the mind, flatter in a servile way what is pleasant to the senses. In the more perfect it is not so; for the mind leads, choosing what is profitable by reason and not by passion, and the nature follows in the steps of the leader. And since the argument found three differences in the vital power, one that is nourished without sense, another that is nourished and grows but has no share in rational activity, and the rational and perfect one, which extends through every power, so that it is present in those others too and has the advantage of the intellectual, let no one suppose from this that three souls are joined together in the human compound, each seen within its own bounds, so as to think human nature a conglomerate of many souls. Rather, the true and perfect soul is one in nature, the intellectual and immaterial soul, which is mingled with the material nature through the senses. And everything material, lying in change and alteration, will move toward growth if it shares in the animating power; but if it falls away from the vital activity it will turn its movement into corruption. Neither, then, does sense exist without material substance, nor does the activity of the intellectual power take place without sense.

That the rational soul is properly a soul, while the others are called souls only by sharing the name; in which there is also the point that the power of the mind extends through the whole body, touching each part suitably. If some created things have the nourishing activity, and others again are governed by the power of sense, while the former do not share in sense nor the latter in the intellectual nature, and someone suspects a plurality of souls on this account, such a person will not be laying down the difference of souls according to the distinguishing account. For everything conceived among existing things, if it is perfectly what it is, is also properly called by the name it bears; but what is not in every respect that which it is named has the name to no purpose. For example, if someone shows real bread, we say that the name is properly applied to the thing. But if someone set beside the natural loaf one made of stone, which had the same shape, equal size, and likeness of colour, so as to seem in most respects the same as the prototype, but lacked the ability to be food, we should say on this account that the stone had obtained the name of bread not properly but by misuse. And all things that by the same reasoning are not wholly what they are called have their name by misuse. So, then, since the soul has its perfection in the intellectual and rational, everything that is not this may share the name of soul, but is not really a soul, but a kind of vital activity classed under the name of soul. That is why the one who gave the law on each matter gave the nature of the irrational creatures, too, as not far removed from this vegetative life, for man’s use, to be like vegetables to those who partake of them. For “you shall eat all flesh,” he says, “as the green herbs.” For it seems to have only a small advantage, in its activity of sense, over what is nourished and grows without it. Let this teach the lovers of the flesh not to let their understanding run much after what appears to the senses, but to occupy themselves with the advantages of the soul, since the true soul is seen in these, while sense is found equally in the irrational creatures. But the course of the argument has turned aside to another point. For what was set before our contemplation was not that the activity of the mind is more honourable than the material part of our existence among the things conceived in man, but that the mind is not contained in any one part of us, but is equally in all and through all, neither enclosing them from outside nor held within them. For these things are properly said of jars or other bodies placed inside one another. But the communion of the mind with the bodily has an ineffable and inconceivable connection: it is neither within (for the incorporeal is not held in a body), nor surrounding from outside (for incorporeal things do not enclose anything); but in a way that is impossible to explain or understand the mind, approaching the nature and touching it, is seen both in it and about it, neither seated within it nor enfolding it, but in a way that cannot be spoken or conceived, except that when the nature prospers in its own order the mind too becomes active, and if some fault befalls the nature, the movement of the understanding also limps in that respect.

A contemplation of the divine saying, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness”; in which it is examined what the meaning of the image is, and whether what is subject to passion and mortality is made like the blessed and passionless, and how there is male and female in the image when these are not in the prototype. But let us take up again the divine word, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness.” How small and unworthy of the grandeur of man are the fancies of some outside the faith, who magnify the human, as they thought, by comparing it with this world! For they say that man is a little world, composed of the same elements as the universe. Those who by the pomp of this name bestow such praise on human nature have not noticed that they are dignifying man with the properties of the gnat and the mouse. For in these too there is a blending of these four elements, since a larger or smaller share of each of these elements is certainly seen in every living thing, without which nothing that shares in sense can by nature exist. What great thing is it, then, for man to be thought a stamp and likeness of the world, when the heaven passes away, the earth is altered, and all that is contained in them passes away with the passing of what contains them? In what, then, according to the teaching of the Church, does the greatness of man consist? Not in his likeness to the created world, but in his having come to be according to the image of the nature of the Creator. What, then, is the meaning of the image, you will perhaps say? How is the incorporeal made like the body? How is the temporal made like the eternal, what is altered by change like the unalterable, what is subject to passion and corruption like the passionless and incorruptible, what always dwells and is reared with evil like what is unmixed with all evil? For there is a great gap between what is conceived in the archetype and what has come to be according to the image. For the image, if it has the likeness to the prototype, is properly called by that name; but if the imitation strays from what lies before it, such a thing is something else and not its image. How, then, is man, this mortal, passionate, short-lived thing, the image of the pure, undefiled, and ever-existing nature? The true account of this only the very Truth could know clearly; but we, as far as we are able, tracking down the truth by conjectures and surmises, form these views about what is sought. Neither does the divine word lie when it says that man came to be according to the image of God, nor is the pitiable wretchedness of human nature like the blessedness of the passionless life. For if anyone compared our state with God, one of two things would have to be admitted: either that the divine is subject to passion, or that the human is free from passion, so that the account of likeness might be found to hold for both on equal terms. But if neither is the divine subject to passion nor is our state outside passion, then some other account remains by which we say that the divine word is true which says that man came to be in the image of God. We must take up the divine Scripture itself again, then, to see whether the writing gives us some guidance toward what is sought. After saying, “Let us make man according to our image,” and for what purposes “let us make,” it adds this statement: “And God made man; according to the image of God he made him; male and female he made them.” It has already been said earlier that this statement was proclaimed beforehand to overthrow heretical impiety, so that, taught that the only-begotten God made man according to the image of God, we may by no reasoning separate the Godhead of the Father and the Son, since Holy Scripture equally names each of them God, both the one who made man and the one according to whose image he came to be. But let the discussion of these things be left aside, and let us turn our inquiry to the matter in hand: how the divine is blessed and the human is wretched, and yet Scripture calls the latter like the former. We must examine the words carefully, then. For we shall find that what came to be according to the image is one thing, and what is now shown in wretchedness is another. “God made man,” it says; “according to the image of God he made him.” The creation of what came to be according to the image is complete. Then it makes a resumption of the account of the making, and says, “Male and female he made them.” For I think it is known to everyone that this is understood as outside the prototype: for “in Christ Jesus,” as the Apostle says, “there is neither male nor female.” Yet the word says that man was divided into these. The making of our nature, then, is twofold: one part made like the divine, the other divided according to this difference. For the word hints at something of this kind by the arrangement of what is written, first saying, “God made man; according to the image of God he made him,” and then adding to what was said, “male and female he made them,” which is foreign to what is conceived of God. For I think that by these words a great and lofty doctrine is handed down by divine Scripture. The doctrine is this. Of two things that stand furthest apart from each other, the divine and incorporeal nature and the irrational and brutish life, the human is in the middle. For in the human compound one can see a share of each of these: of the divine, the rational and intelligent element, which does not admit the difference of male and female; of the irrational, the bodily constitution and formation divided into male and female. For each of these is certainly in everyone who shares in human life. But the intellectual comes first, as we have learned from him who recounted the making of man in order, while the communion and kinship with the irrational is something added to man afterward. For first he says that “God made man according to the image of God,” showing by these words, as the Apostle says, that in such a one there is no male and female. Then he adds the properties of human nature: “male and female he made them.” What, then, do we learn from this? And let no one be indignant with me for bringing the argument to the point in hand from a distance. God is in his own nature whatever good can be grasped in thought; or rather, being beyond every good that is conceived and comprehended, he creates human life for no other reason than that he is good. Being such, and having set out for this reason on the creation of human nature, he would not have shown the power of his goodness by halves, giving some of what belongs to him and grudging a share in the rest; rather, the perfect form of goodness lies in this, both in bringing man from non-being into being and in making him lack nothing of the good things. But since the list of particular goods is long, it is not easy to set it out in number. For this reason the word gathered them all together and signified them in a comprehensive phrase, by saying that man came to be according to the image of God. For this is the same as saying that he made human nature a sharer in every good. For if the divine is the fullness of goods, and this is its image, then the image has its likeness to the archetype in being full of every good. In us, then, there is the form of every beauty, every virtue and wisdom, and everything that is conceived as better. And one among all these is to be free from necessity and not yoked to any natural domination, but to have one’s will, by its own authority, directed to what seems good. For virtue is something without a master and voluntary; what is compelled and forced cannot be virtue. Since, then, the image bears the stamp of the prototypal beauty in all respects, if it did not have a difference in some respect, it would no longer be a likeness at all, but would be shown to be the very same thing in every respect, without any variation. In what, then, do we see the difference between the divine itself and what has been made like the divine? In this: that the one exists uncreated, while the other has come into existence through creation. And the difference of this property in turn has produced a sequence of other properties. For it is agreed in every way and altogether that the uncreated nature is unchangeable and always the same, while the created cannot exist without alteration. For the very passage from non-being into being is a kind of motion and alteration of what was not, changed into being by the divine will. And as the Gospel calls the stamp on the coin the image of Caesar, from which we learn that in its outward form there is a likeness of what is portrayed to Caesar, but in the material there is a difference, so too in the present argument, considering instead of a stamp the things seen in the divine and the human nature, in which the likeness lies, we find the difference in the underlying subject, which is seen in the uncreated and the created. Since, then, the one is always the same, while the other, having come into being through creation, began its existence from alteration and has a kinship with such change, for this reason he who knows all things before their genesis, as the prophecy says, following, or rather perceiving beforehand by his power of foreknowledge, the direction in which the movement of human choice would incline by its sovereignty and self-determination, since he saw what would be, devised in addition for the image the difference of male and female, which no longer looks to the divine archetype but, as has been said, has been made akin to the more irrational nature. The cause of such a further device only those who were eyewitnesses of the truth and ministers of the word could know. But we, as far as is possible, picturing the truth by conjectures and images, set out what has come to mind not as a definite pronouncement, but will offer it to the fair-minded among our hearers in the form of an exercise. What, then, is it that we have thought about these things? When the word says that God made man, by the indefiniteness of the expression it indicates all humanity. For the creature is not yet named Adam here, as the history says in what follows; the name given to the man created is not that of a particular man but that of the universal. By the universal name of the nature, then, we are led to suppose something of this kind: that by divine foreknowledge and power all humanity is included in the first making. For we must think that nothing is indefinite to God among the things made by him, but that each existing thing has some limit and measure, measured out by the wisdom of the Maker. Just as a particular man is bounded by the size of his body, and the measure of his existence is the magnitude that coincides with the surface of the body, so I think that the whole fullness of humanity was encompassed, as in one body, by the God of all by his power of foreknowledge; and that this is what the word teaches when it says, “And God made man; according to the image of God he made him.” For the image is not in a part of the nature, nor is the grace in some one of those seen in it; rather, such a power extends equally to the whole race. A sign of this is that mind is seated in all alike: all have the power of understanding and deliberating, and all the other things through which the divine nature is portrayed in what has come to be according to it. The man who was manifested at the first making of the world and the one who will come to be at the consummation of all are alike: they bear the divine image equally in themselves. That is why the whole was named one man, because to the power of God nothing is past and nothing future, but even what is expected is held, equally with the present, by the all-embracing activity. The whole nature, then, extending from the first to the last, is one image of Him who is; but the difference of the race into male and female was added last to what was formed, for this reason, as I think.

What we must say to those who raise the difficulty: if procreation came after sin, how would souls have come to be if the first human beings had remained sinless? But before examining the matter in hand, it is perhaps better to look for the solution of the objection brought forward by those who contend with us. For they say that before sin Scripture records neither birth nor labour pains nor the impulse to procreation; but when they had been banished from paradise after sin, and the woman had been condemned to the punishment of labour pains, then Adam came to know his wife as a husband, and then procreation began. If, then, there was no marriage in paradise, nor labour pains, nor birth, they say it necessarily follows that human souls would not have come to exist in multitude unless the grace of immortality had fallen into mortality, and marriage preserved the nature through those born afterward, bringing in their offspring in place of those departing; so that sin, by entering human life, was in a way profitable. For the human race would have remained in the pair of the first-formed, had not the fear of death stirred nature to succession. But here again the true account, whatever it may be, would be clear only to those who, like Paul, have been initiated into the secrets of paradise. Ours is this. When the Sadducees once contradicted the doctrine of the resurrection, and brought forward that much-married woman who had belonged to seven brothers to establish their own doctrine, and then asked whose she would be after the resurrection, the Lord answered the argument, not only teaching the Sadducees but also revealing the mystery of the life in the resurrection to all who came after. “For in the resurrection,” he says, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage; for they can no longer die, for they are equal to the angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” And the grace of the resurrection promises us nothing else than the restoration of the fallen to their ancient state. For the grace we look for is a kind of return to the first life, bringing back into paradise the one who was cast out of it. If, then, the life of those who are restored is akin to that of the angels, it is clear that the life before the transgression was a kind of angelic life; and that is why our return to the ancient state of our life is likened to the angels. Yet, as has been said, though there is no marriage among them, the armies of the angels are in countless myriads; for so Daniel described them in his visions. In the same way, then, if no turning aside and falling away from equality of honour with the angels had come upon us through sin, we too would not have needed marriage in order to multiply. Rather, whatever the manner of increase in the nature of the angels, unspeakable and inconceivable by human conjectures, yet certainly existing, that would also have worked in human beings, made a little lower than the angels, increasing humanity to the measure determined by the counsel of its Maker. And if anyone is perplexed, asking about the manner of the genesis of human beings if man had not needed the help of marriage, we will ask him in turn about the manner of the angelic existence: how they are in countless myriads, being one substance and yet numbered as many. For we shall give a fitting answer to the one who asks, “How would man have existed without marriage?” by saying, “As the angels exist without marriage”; for that man was like them before the transgression is shown by his restoration to that state. These things having been thus clarified, we must return to our former argument: how, after the making of the image, God devised in addition for what he formed the difference of male and female. For this I say the speculation we have just gone through is useful. For he who brought all things into being and fashioned man as a whole by his own will to the divine image did not wait to see the number of souls brought to its proper fullness by gradual additions of offspring; rather, having perceived by his foreknowing activity the whole of human nature in its fullness at once, and having honoured it with an exalted lot equal to the angels, since he foresaw by his power of sight that its choice would not keep a straight course toward the good and would therefore fall away from the angelic life, so that the multitude of human souls might not be cut short by falling from that manner by which the angels were increased to their multitude, he therefore built into the nature a means of increase suited to those who had slipped into sin, implanting in humanity, instead of the angelic magnificence, the brutish and irrational manner of succession from one another. From this, it seems to me, the great David too, pitying the misery of man, lamented our nature in such words as these: “Man, being in honour, did not understand,” meaning by honour the equality of honour with the angels. “Therefore,” he says, “he was compared to the senseless cattle and became like them.” For truly he became brutish who received this flowing genesis into his nature because of his inclination toward the material.