City of God

Then the apostle subjoins a notable difference between these two men, saying, “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” So he elsewhere says, “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ;” but in very deed this shall be accomplished when that which is animal in us by our birth shall have become spiritual in our resurrection.

For, to use his words again, We are saved by hope. Now we bear the image of the earthly man by the propagation of sin and death, which pass on us by ordinary generation; but we bear the image of the heavenly by the grace of pardon and life eternal, which regeneration confers upon us through the Mediator of God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. 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,” — 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?