And He is the heavenly Man of Paul's passage, because He came from heaven to be clothed with a body Of earthly mortality, that He might clothe it with heavenly immortality.And he calls others heavenly, because by grace they become His members, that, together with them, He may become one Christ, as head and body.In the same epistle he puts this yet more clearly: "Since by man came death, by Man came also the resurrection of the dead.For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,"(7)--that is to say, in a spiritual body which shall be made a quickening spirit.Not that all who die in Adam shall be members of Christ,--for the great majority shall be punished in eternal death,--but he uses the word "all" in both Clauses, because, as no one dies in an animal body except in Adam, so no one is quickened a spiritual body save in Christ.We are not, then, by any means to suppose that we shall in the resurrection have such a body as the first man had before he sinned, nor that the words, "As is the earthy such are they also that are earthy,"are to be understood of that which was brought about by sin; for we are not to think that Adam had a spiritual body before he fell, and that, in punishment of his sin, it was changed into an animal body.If this be thought, small heed has been given to the words of so great a teacher, who says."There is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body; as it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul." Was it after sin he was made so? or was not this the primal condition of man from which the blessed apostle selects his testimony to show what the animal body is CHAP.24.--HOW WE MUST UNDERSTAND THAT BREATHING OF GOD BY WHICH "THEFIRST MAN
WAS MADE A LIVING SOUL," AND THAT ALSO BY WHICH THE LORD CONVEYED HISSPIRIT TO HIS
DISCIPLES WHENHE SAID,"RECEIVE YE THE HOLY GHOST."Some have hastily supposed from the words, "God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul,(1)" that a soul was not then first given to man, but that the soul already given was quickened by the Holy Ghost.They are encouraged in this supposition by the fact that the Lord Jesus after His resurrection breathed on His disciples, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit."(2) From this they suppose that the same thing was effected in either case, as if the evangelist had gone on to say, And they became living souls.But if he had made this addition, we should only understand that the Spirit is in some way the life of souls, and that without Him reasonable souls must be accounted dead, though their bodies seem to live before our eyes.But that this was not what happened when man was created, the very words of the narrative sufficiently show:
"And God made man dust of the earth;" which some have thought to render more clearly by the words, "And God formed man of the clay of the earth." For it had before been said that "there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground,"(3) in order that the reference to clay, formed of this moisture and dust, might be understood.For on this verse there immediately follows the announcement, "And God created man dust of the earth;" so those Greek manuscripts have it from which this passage has been translated into Latin.But whether one prefers to read "created" or "formed," where the Greek reads eplasen, is of little importance;yet "formed" is the better rendering.But those who preferred "created" thought they thus avoided the ambiguity arising from the fact, that in the Latin language the usage obtains that those are said to form a thing who frame some feigned and fictitious thing.
This man, then, who was created of the dust of the earth, or of the moistened dust or clay,--this "dust of the earth" (that Imay use the express words of Scripture) was made, as the apostle teaches, an animated body when he received a soul.This man, he says, "was made a living soul;" that is, this fashioned dust was made a living soul.
They say, Already he had a soul, else he would not be called a man;for man is not a body alone, nor a soul alone, but a being composed of both.This, indeed, is true, that the soul is not the whole man, but the better part of man; the body not the whole, but the inferior part of man; and that then, when both are joined, they receive the name of man,which, however, they do not severally lose even when we speak of them singly.For who is prohibited from saying, in colloquial usage, "That man is dead, and is now at rest or in torment," though this can be spoken only of the soul; or "He is buried in such and such a place," though this refers only to the body? Will they say that Scripture follows no such usage? On the contrary, it so thoroughly adopts it, that even while a man is alive, and body and soul are united, it calls each of them singly by the name "man," speaking of the soul as the "inward man," and of the body as the "outward man,"(4) as if there were two men, though both together are indeed but one.I But we must understand in what sense man is said to be in the image of God, and is yet dust, and to return to the dust.
The former is spoken of the rational soul, which God by His breathing, or, to speak more appropriately, by His inspiration, conveyed to man, that is, to his body; but the latter refers to his body, which God formed of the dust, and to which a soul was given, that it might become a living body, that is, that man might become a living soul.
