Two Souls or One

And now, in my opinion, the subject of human temptations must not be passed over in silence. They take their rise sometimes from flesh and blood, or from the wisdom of flesh and blood, which is said to be hostile to God. As for the claim some people make, that each of us has, as it were, two souls, I will settle that after I have explained the nature of the temptations said to be stronger than any that come from human beings — the ones we endure from rulers and authorities, from the world‑rulers of this darkness and from the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, or the ones we are put under by wicked spirits and unclean demons. [a]

In looking into this subject we must, I think, ask by an orderly method of reasoning whether there is in us human beings — who are made up of soul and body and living spirit — some further element that has an impulse of its own and stirs up a movement toward evil. For some are in the habit of putting the question this way. Are there, as some say, two souls living side by side within us, the one more divine and heavenly, the other lower? Or is it rather that, because we are lodged in bodily frames which by their own proper nature are dead and altogether without life — since it is from us, that is, from our souls, that the material body gets its life, the body being contrary and hostile to the spirit — we are drawn on and enticed into the practice of the evils the body enjoys? Or, thirdly, is it as some of the Greek philosophers held: that our soul is one in substance and yet consists of several parts, one part of it called rational and another irrational, and that the part called irrational is divided again into two drives, craving and anger?

These, then, are the three opinions about the soul that we have set out above, and we have found each of them held by someone. But the one we mentioned as being adopted by certain Greek philosophers, that the soul has three parts, I do not observe to be much confirmed by the authority of holy Scripture; while for the remaining two a considerable number of passages are found in the holy Scriptures that seem capable of being applied to them.

Now of these opinions let us first discuss the one maintained by some, that there is in us a good and heavenly soul and another that is earthly and lower. The better soul, they say, is planted in us from heaven — the kind that gave Jacob the prize for supplanting his brother Esau while he was still in the womb, that in Jeremiah’s case was made holy from birth, and that in John’s was filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb. The soul they call lower is produced, they allege, along with the body itself out of the seed of the body, and for that reason they say it cannot live or continue apart from the body. That is also why, they say, it is frequently called flesh. [f]

For the words “the flesh craves against the Spirit” they take to apply not to the flesh but to this soul, which is properly the soul of the flesh. From these words they go on to try to make good the statement in Leviticus: “The soul of all flesh is its blood.” Since it is the spreading of the blood through the whole flesh that produces life in the flesh, they assert that this soul, which is said to be the soul of all flesh, is contained in the blood. And the statement that the flesh struggles against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and the further statement that “the soul of all flesh is its blood,” are, according to these writers, simply another name for the wisdom of the flesh — a kind of material spirit, which is not subject to the law of God and cannot be, because it has earthly wishes and bodily desires. It is with respect to this, they think, that the apostle said: “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and taking me captive to the law of sin that is in my members.”

Suppose someone objected to them that these words were spoken about the nature of the body — which, in keeping with what its own nature is, is indeed dead, but is said to have a sense, or a wisdom, that is hostile to God, or that struggles against the spirit. Or suppose someone said that in a certain degree the flesh itself has a voice, one that cries out against having to bear hunger or thirst or cold, or any discomfort arising either from abundance or from poverty. They would try to weaken and blunt the force of such arguments by showing that there are many other disturbances of the soul which take their origin in no way from the flesh, and which the spirit nevertheless struggles against — ambition, greed, rivalry, envy, pride, and others like these. And seeing that the human mind or spirit carries on a kind of contest with these, they lay down as the cause of all these evils nothing other than this bodily soul, as it were, which we have spoken of above, and which is generated from the seed and passed on from the parents.

They are also accustomed to bring forward, in support of their assertion, the declaration of the apostle: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: sexual immorality, uncleanness, indecency, idolatry, potions and spells, hatred, quarrels, rivalries, fits of anger, wrangling, dissensions, heresies, sects, envyings, drunkenness, wild parties, and things like these.” They assert that none of these come from the habits or the pleasures of the flesh in such a way that movements of this kind could be regarded as residing in a substance that has no soul — that is, in flesh. The declaration, moreover, “Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to the flesh,” would seem to have to be understood as though there were one kind of wisdom, fleshly and material, and another according to the spirit; and the first of these could not even be called wisdom unless there were a soul of the flesh, which is wise in respect of what is called fleshly wisdom.

And in addition to these passages they adduce the following: “Since the flesh craves against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, so that you cannot do the things you want.” Now what are these things about which he says, “that you cannot do the things you want”? It is certain, they reply, that the spirit cannot be intended, for the will of the spirit meets no hindrance. But neither can the flesh be meant, because if it has no soul of its own then it certainly cannot have a will either. It remains, then, that the will intended is the will of this soul, which is capable of having a will of its own and which is certainly opposed to the will of the spirit. And if that is so, it is established that the will of the soul is something intermediate between the flesh and the spirit, obeying and serving, beyond doubt, whichever of the two it has chosen to obey. If it yields itself up to the pleasures of the flesh, it makes people fleshly; but when it unites itself with the spirit, it produces people of the Spirit, who on that account are called spiritual. And this seems to be the meaning of the apostle in the words: “But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.”

We have accordingly to work out what this will is that stands between flesh and spirit, over and above the will said to belong to the flesh or to the spirit. For it is held as certain that everything said to be a work of the spirit comes from the will of the spirit, and everything called a work of the flesh proceeds from the will of the flesh. What else, then, besides these, is that will of the soul which receives a separate name — the will the apostle is against our carrying out when he says, “You cannot do the things you want”? By this it would seem to be intended that the soul ought to adhere to neither of the two, that is, to neither flesh nor spirit. But someone will say that, just as it is better for the soul to carry out its own will than the will of the flesh, so on the other hand it is better to do the will of the spirit than its own will. How, then, does the apostle say “that you cannot do the things you want”? Because in the contest waged between flesh and spirit the spirit is by no means certain of victory; it is plain that in very many people the flesh has the mastery.

But since the subject of discussion we have entered on is one of great depth, which has to be sifted through every one of its parts that admits of movement, let us see whether some such point as this may not be determined. Just as it is better for the soul to follow the spirit when the spirit has overcome the flesh, so also, if it seems a worse course for the soul to follow the flesh in its struggles against the spirit — the spirit meanwhile trying to recall the soul to its own influence — it may nevertheless appear a more advantageous procedure for the soul to be under the mastery of the flesh than to remain under the power of its own will. [q]

For since it is said to be neither hot nor cold, but to continue in a sort of lukewarm condition, it will find turning around a slow and somewhat difficult undertaking. If instead it clung to the flesh, then, glutted at length and filled with the very evils it suffers from the vices of the flesh, and wearied as it were by the heavy burdens of luxury and lust, it may sometimes be turned around with greater ease and speed from the filthiness of matter to a desire for heavenly things and a taste for the graces of the spirit.

And the apostle must be supposed to have said that “the Spirit craves against the flesh, and the flesh against the Spirit, so that you cannot do the things you want” — those things, undoubtedly, that are designated as lying beyond the will of the spirit and the will of the flesh — meaning, if we were to put it in other words, that it is better for a person to be either in a state of virtue or in one of wickedness than in neither of these; and that the soul, before its turning to the spirit and its being made one with it, appears, as long as it clings to the body and thinks about fleshly things, to be neither in a good condition nor in a plainly bad one, but to resemble, so to speak, an animal. It is better for it, however, if possible, to be made spiritual by clinging to the spirit; but if that cannot be done, it is more expedient for it to follow even the wickedness of the flesh than, placed under the power of its own will, to keep the standing of an irrational animal.

These points we have now discussed at greater length than we intended, in our desire to consider each individual opinion, so that no one would suppose we had overlooked the views generally brought forward by those who ask whether there is within us any other soul than this heavenly and rational one — a soul naturally opposed to it, and called either the flesh, or the wisdom of the flesh, or the soul of the flesh.

Let us now see what answer is usually returned to these statements by those who maintain that there is in us one movement and one life, proceeding from one and the same soul, and that both its salvation and its ruin are ascribed to itself as the result of its own actions. And in the first place, let us notice what sort of disturbances of the soul these are that we undergo when we feel ourselves inwardly drawn in different directions — when a kind of contest of thoughts arises in our hearts, and certain likelihoods are suggested to us, in keeping with which we lean now to this side and now to that, and by which we are sometimes convicted of being wrong and sometimes give our approval to what we have done. [t]

It is nothing remarkable, however, to say of wicked spirits that they have a shifting and conflicting judgment, one out of harmony with itself, since such is found to be the case in all people, whenever, in deliberating on an uncertain outcome, counsel is taken, and people consider and consult about what is to be chosen as the better and more useful course. It is not surprising, therefore, that if two likelihoods meet and suggest opposite views, they should drag the mind in contrary directions.

For example, if a man is led by reflection to believe and to fear God, it cannot in that case be said that the flesh contends against the Spirit; rather, amid the uncertainty of what may be true and advantageous, the mind is drawn in opposite directions. So also, when it is supposed that the flesh provokes a man to the indulgence of lust, but better counsels oppose allurements of that kind, we are not to suppose that it is one life resisting another. It is the tendency of the nature of the body, which is eager to empty out and clear the places filled with seminal fluid — just as, in like manner, we are not to suppose that it is any opposing power, or the life of another soul, that stirs up within us the appetite of thirst and impels us to drink, or that makes us feel hunger and drives us to satisfy it. But as it is by the natural movements of the body that food and drink are either desired or refused, so also the natural seed, gathered together over time in the various vessels, has an eager desire to be expelled and thrown off; and it is so far from never being removed except at the prompting of some exciting cause that it is even emitted, at times, of its own accord.

So when it is said that “the flesh struggles against the Spirit,” these people understand the expression to mean that habit, or necessity, or the delights of the flesh rouse a man and withdraw him from divine and spiritual things. For because of the necessity of the body drawing us off, we are not allowed the leisure for divine things, the things that are advantageous forever. So again, the soul, devoting itself to divine and spiritual pursuits and being united to the spirit, is said to fight against the flesh by not permitting it to be relaxed by indulgence and made unsteady through the influence of the pleasures it naturally delights in.

In this way, too, they claim to understand the words “the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God” — not that the flesh really has a soul, or a wisdom of its own. But as we are accustomed to say, by a stretch of language, that the earth is thirsty and wants to drink in water, where this use of the word “wants” is not the proper one but a borrowed one; or as if we were to say again that this house wants to be rebuilt, and many other similar expressions — so also is the wisdom of the flesh to be understood, and the expression that “the flesh craves against the Spirit.” They generally connect with these the words: “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” For what cries out to the Lord is not, properly speaking, the blood that was shed; the blood is said to cry out improperly, vengeance being demanded on the man who had shed it. The declaration of the apostle also, “I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind,” they so understand as if he had said this: that a man who wants to devote himself to the word of God is distracted and divided and impeded by his bodily necessities and habits, which are ingrained in the body like a sort of law, so that he cannot devote himself vigorously to the study of wisdom and be enabled to see the divine mysteries.

With respect, however, to heresies and envyings and quarrels, or other vices, being ranked among the works of the flesh, they so understand the passage that the mind, rendered coarser in feeling by yielding itself to the passions of the body, and oppressed by the mass of its vices, and having no refined or spiritual feeling left, is said to be made flesh, and derives its name from that in which it shows the greater effort and purpose. [x]

They also make this further inquiry: “Who will be found, or who will be said to be, the maker of this evil sense, the sense called the sense of the flesh?” — because they defend the opinion that there is no other maker of soul and flesh than God. And if we were to assert that the good God created anything in his own creation that was hostile to himself, it would appear to be a manifest absurdity. If, then, it is written that “fleshly wisdom is hostile to God,” and if this is declared to be a result of creation, God himself will appear to have formed a nature hostile to himself, one that cannot be subject to him or to his law, as though it were some animal of which such qualities were asserted.

And if this view is admitted, in what respect will it appear to differ from that of those who maintain that souls of different natures are created, souls destined by their natures either to be lost or to be saved? But this is the opinion of the heretics alone, who, not being able to maintain the justice of God on grounds of reverence, make up impious inventions of this kind. And now we have brought forward, to the best of our ability and in the person of each of the parties, what might be advanced by way of argument regarding the several views; and let the reader choose out of them for himself the one he thinks ought to be preferred.