The City of God

creator of a lie, but because man was made upright, that he might not live according to himself, but according to Him that made him⁠—in other words, that he might do His will and not his own; and not to live as he was made to live, that is a lie. For he certainly desires to be blessed even by not living so that he may be blessed. And what is a lie if this desire be not? Wherefore it is not without meaning said that all sin is a lie. For no sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man’s happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself, by living according to whom he sins?

In enunciating this proposition of ours, then, that because some live according to the flesh and others according to the spirit there have arisen two diverse and conflicting cities, we might equally well have said, “because some live according to man, others according to God.” For Paul says very plainly to the Corinthians, “For whereas there is among you envying and strife, are ye not carnal, and walk according to man?”649 So that to walk according to man and to be carnal are the same; for by “flesh,” that is, by a part of man, man is meant. For before he said that those same persons were animal whom afterwards he calls carnal, saying, “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the animal man perceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him.”650 It is to men of this kind, then, that is, to animal men, he shortly after says, “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal.”651 And this is to be interpreted by the same usage, a part being taken for the whole. For both the soul and the flesh, the component parts of man, can be used to signify the whole man; and so the animal man and the carnal man are not two different things, but one and the same thing, viz. man living according to man. In the same way it is nothing else than men that are meant either in the words, “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified”;652 or in the words, “Seventy-five souls went down into Egypt with Jacob.”653 In the one passage, “no flesh” signifies “no man”; and in the other, by “seventy-five souls” seventy-five men are meant. And the expression, “not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth,” might equally be “not in words which fleshly wisdom teacheth”; and the expression, “ye walk according to man,” might be “according to the flesh.” And this is still more apparent in the words which followed: “For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not men?” The same thing which he had before expressed by “ye are animal,” “ye are carnal,” he now expresses by “ye are men”; that is, ye live according to man, not according to God, for if you lived according to Him, you should be gods.

V

That the opinion of the Platonists regarding the nature of body and soul is not so censurable as that of the Manichaeans, but that even it is objectionable, because it ascribes the origin of vices to the nature of the flesh.

There is no need, therefore, that in our sins and vices we accuse the nature of the flesh to the injury of the Creator, for in its own kind and degree the flesh is good; but to desert the Creator good, and live according to the created good, is not good, whether a man choose to live according to the flesh, or according to the soul, or according to the whole human nature, which is composed of flesh and soul, and which is therefore spoken of either by the name flesh alone, or by the name soul alone. For he who extols the nature of the soul as the chief good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as if it were evil, assuredly is fleshly both in his love of the soul and hatred of the flesh; for these his feelings arise from human fancy, not from divine truth. The Platonists, indeed, are not so foolish as, with the Manichaeans, to detest our present bodies as an evil nature;654 for they attribute all the elements of which this visible and tangible world is compacted, with all their qualities, to God their Creator. Nevertheless, from the death-infected members and earthly construction of the body they believe the soul is so affected, that there are thus originated in it the diseases of desires, and fears, and joy, and sorrow, under which four perturbations, as Cicero655 calls them, or passions, as most prefer to name them with the Greeks, is included the whole viciousness of human life. But if this be so, how is it that Aeneas in Virgil, when he had heard from his father in