The Natural Adam and the Life-Giving Christ

…a spiritual one” (1 Corinthians 15:44). For suppose someone chooses to call our body from the earth “natural.” One would reasonably not attach to it the form of a soul, but would rather turn the force of the word to the natural, that is, the fleshly, mind, just as we understand our own human wisdom to be “natural” and “earthly” (James 3:15). So too, even if it is called a natural body, one who attaches to it the form of a soul would not, I think, escape the charge of going astray. Otherwise, in what sense are some people, while still alive and still in these very bodies from the earth, called natural and others spiritual? For it is written, “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; but the spiritual man judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one” (1 Corinthians 2:14–15).

Since it followed that he should confirm his argument on this point by facts as well, he adds, “The first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45). So he called Adam natural; for this, I think, is what being made “a living soul” means: that he was not wholly free from fleshly desires. For the appetites that look and turn toward the passions of the flesh, even if they have the law to speak in their defense, would still in truth be charges against fleshly weakness, if one looks at the nature of what is done.

I mean something like this: “Marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled” (Hebrews 13:4). For the Maker of all has planted in the nature of the body a movement of appetite that stirs the living creature to the desire for children. For it was said to man, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28); and, he says, “He who formed them in the beginning made them male and female” (Matthew 19:4; Genesis 1:27). So the desire that looks only to having children is blameless; yet as far as the nature of the act goes, the passion would be fleshly, that is, natural. And so it is with the other blameless passions as well.

So the first man Adam became a living soul; but the second, the one from heaven, that is, Christ, became not a soul but rather a life-giving spirit. For God the Word, who came forth from God the Father and is God by nature, united the human to Himself and lived not a human life like ours, but a life divine, fitting for God, and wholly blameless. For “He committed no sin” (1 Peter 2:22): He kept His mind untouched by unseemly pleasures, and it could not be caught by desires for food. For even though He is seen to have taken food and drink, so that He might be believed to be truly a man like us, still He partook of them freely. For He was in the flesh for our sake, in keeping with the plan of salvation, and yet again above the flesh; for He was a life-giving spirit as God.

But our forefather Adam admitted a desire for food that was not wholly free from blame. For he had been made a living soul, and, overcome by the pleasure of food, he ate from the tree of life, although the divine law forbade him to do so (Genesis 2:17; 3:6).