To Florus 6.36

The Manichaeans are surely pierced through, both for believing natural sin and for denying flesh’s resurrection. ‘But now,’ he says, ‘Christ has risen from the dead, the firstfruits of those who sleep. Since death came through a human being, resurrection of the dead also comes through a human being’ (1 Corinthians 15:20–21) (Romans 9:11). Here the apostle speaks not of the general resurrection, which even criminals and impious people will experience, but only of those to be transferred into glory. He indicates blessed resurrection by the unqualified name ‘resurrection,’ passing over the ungodly’s rising as though, compared with it, it were no resurrection at all.

Here, then, as I said, the apostle stresses not simply resurrection, common to good and evil people, but blessed resurrection. Resurrection and the blessedness of resurrection are not the same thing, just as resurrection and the misery of resurrection are not the same. Yet because eternal blessedness does not exist without resurrection, its name also indicates the happiness that makes being raised no cause for regret.

For example, someone praising industry, strength, and diverse pursuits may wish to describe them briefly under the heading of life: calling one person’s life learned, another’s elegant, another’s energetic. This certainly does not remove the distinction, as though life were identical with industry, elegance, or strength. Living is one thing, striving another; nevertheless you cannot strive unless you live. Likewise resurrection is not identical with blessedness—there is a miserable raising of ashes—but you will not reign unless you first rise.

Bodily death and bodily resurrection therefore stand opposite each other. If every death were penal, every resurrection would also be a reward. But the resurrection of all who are assigned to eternal fire is penal; therefore death too need not be punishment, but is natural. Just as bodily death does not in every case make dying regrettable, resurrection does not in every case make returning to life delightful. The good in the latter lies in the reward of those rising, and the bitterness in the former in the burning of those punished; both follow according to deserts.

It is therefore clear that the apostle discusses not natural death but the death of criminals, made unhappy by perpetual punishment; not common resurrection but the resurrection made blessed by everlasting glory. Where he discusses persons he does not prejudice created natures. He always preserves the distinctions and broad boundaries of natures and wills, sometimes combining terms without letting confusion destroy the particular character of things.

‘Death through a human being, and resurrection of the dead through a human being’: he does not announce here that death was created by a human, but appeared in a human. Likewise he does not say resurrection was effected by a human—that is, by Christ as human—but in a human. So the same teacher says to the Philippians: ‘He became obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also exalted him and gave him the name above every name’ (Philippians 2:8–9).

The apostle Peter’s assertion agrees: ‘People of Israel, listen: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God among you, you killed through the hands of the wicked. God raised him, releasing the pains of the underworld.’ Again: ‘God raised this Jesus, of whom we are all witnesses’ (Acts 2:22–24, 32). There it belonged to humanity to undergo death without injury to divinity, and to divinity to raise that man from the dead. Yet what God is declared to do, Christ himself also does in the person of the Word. For he had said: ‘I have power to lay down my life, and power to take it up’ (John 10:18). Although the Son is one person, a proper distinction attributes one thing to flesh, another to divinity.

Death through a human, then, and resurrection of the dead through a human: manifested, not created. Both were established by God. But death’s condition became evident in Adam, and resurrection’s firstfruits in Christ’s person. Here, where the apostle says, ‘Death through a human,’ if you mean through his will, it concerns no nature; if through nature, it concerns no fault. He placed two human beings opposite one another, one associated with death, the other with resurrection, refusing to subordinate the second to the first.

It follows: ‘As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ’ (1 Corinthians 15:22). Does ‘All will be made alive in Christ’ include the ungodly, or refer only to believers? If to the ungodly, because everyone is made alive in Christ, no one is punished. If to believers, then not everyone is made alive in Christ’s faith, but only believers, although absolutely everyone is raised by the same power through which they were created.

If he speaks of bodily death—‘All die in Adam’—this name indicates no guilt, since Christ too is found to have died in that same Adam. The reality of resurrection would not have followed unless the reality of death came first. The apostle therefore pronounces that all die in Adam. If this death indicates nothing other than bodily dissolution, it plainly concerns no natural sin and prejudices no innocent people: they are said to die in Adam, in whom Christ also died.

But if you want ‘All die in Adam’ to concern sin of the soul—not mere death, but guilty and miserable death, followed by the punishment assigned to crimes—then neither Christ nor the saints could be in that Gehenna. It therefore prejudices no innocent people either, who possess no voluntary evil just as they possess no voluntary good, but have only this: they were made by God. We consecrate them through baptism’s rite, so that the one who made them good by creating them may make them better by renewing and adopting them. Thus the apostle’s saying, ‘As all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ,’ is as far from the suspicion of Manichaean inherited sin as Christ is from sin: he possessed no iniquity, yet lacked nothing of human nature.