Annotation XXXV

”Is not the soul more than food, and the body more than raiment?” — Matthew 6:25

Whether no creature is incorporeal.

Hilary, in the fifth canon, in the exposition of this passage, writes that no creature is incorporeal, in these words: “There is nothing which is not, in substance and in creation, corporeal; and the elements of all things — whether in heaven or on earth, whether of visible or invisible things — have been formed [as bodies]. For the kinds of souls too — whether of those possessing bodies, or of those exiled from bodies — nevertheless obtain a corporeal substance of their own nature, because everything created must be in some [place].”

Claudianus [Mamertus], bishop of Vienne, refutes this opinion, in the second book On the State of the Soul, saying: “Hilary of Poitiers, among several of his lofty disputations, thinking something amiss, discoursed these two things contrary to the truth: one, that he said nothing created is incorporeal; the other, that Christ felt nothing of pain in the Passion — and if his passion was not real, our redemption too could not be real. But since the blessed Hilary abolished the fault of this opinion by the virtue of [his] confession [of faith], he so bears the pen of rebuke that he suffers no loss of [his] merits. Wherefore it is fitting that trust be given to the expositors of the divine Scriptures, so long as they accord with it in the tenor of truth.”

But as for what Claudianus condemns in Hilary, I find that it so pleased the ancients that it was received among the catholic rules and the synodical sanctions.

Among the works of Augustine, in the book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas — said to be by Gennadius — in chapter eleven there is read an ecclesiastical canon in these words: “Nothing is to be believed incorporeal and invisible by nature, except God alone — that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Every creature is corporeal; the angels and all the heavenly Virtues are corporeal, although they do not subsist in flesh.”

John Cassian, writing on this matter, in the thirteenth chapter of the seventh Conference, says: “Although we may declare that certain natures are spiritual — such as the angels, archangels, and the other Virtues, and our very soul, or certainly this subtle air — yet they are by no means to be reckoned incorporeal. For they have, according to themselves, a body by which they subsist, though far more tenuous than our bodies — according to the Apostle’s saying: ‘And [there are] heavenly bodies and earthly bodies’; and again, ‘It is sown an animal body, it rises a spiritual body.’ By which it is manifestly gathered that nothing is incorporeal, except God alone.” Jerome seems at times to allude to this opinion; for when, on the tenth chapter of Matthew, he had said that the soul is incorporeal, he straightway added, “I mean, in comparison with the grosser substance of our body” — by that form of speech indicating that the soul is incorporeal not simply, but [only] in comparison with our body.

Tertullian, in the book On the Soul, chapter two, speaks thus: “The corporeality of the soul shines out in the Gospel. For in the underworld the soul of a certain [man] grieves, and is punished in the flame, and is tormented in [its] tongue, and implores from the finger of a happier soul the solace of dew. Do you think that outcome — of the poor man rejoicing and the rich man mourning — [only] a figure? And what is the name ‘Lazarus’ doing there, if the matter is not in reality [true]? But even if it is to be believed a figure, it will [still] be a testimony of the truth. For if the soul had no body, the image of the soul would not receive the image of a body; nor would Scripture lie about corporeal members, if they did not exist. Therefore, if the soul perceived anything of torment or of solace in the fire, or in Abraham’s bosom, the corporeality of the soul will be proved. For incorporeality suffers nothing, having nothing through which it can suffer; or if it has [something], this will be a body. For insofar as everything corporeal is passible, to that same extent everything passible is corporeal.”¹

But since St. Augustine, in the tenth book On Genesis according to the Letter, disapproves this opinion in Tertullian, and all the scholastic theologians reject the same, it may be believed that those ancient theologians, when they declared the soul corporeal, did not think it to be a body by its own nature and in itself, but with regard had to God — in comparison with whom there is nothing that can be called altogether incorporeal, as God [is]: seeing that he neither needs a body, nor is circumscribed by place, nor enclosed by bounds, but is everywhere and fills all things. But creatures, however spiritual they be, are applied to certain bodies (which they animate) or to corporeal places (in which they exist). Read Annotation 142 of the preceding book.