Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II:
City of God: Chapter 3

Chapter 3.—Whether Bodily Suffering Necessarily Terminates in the Destruction of the Flesh.

But, say they, there is no body which can suffer and cannot also die.  How do we know this?  For who can say with certainty that the devils do not suffer in their bodies, when they own that they are grievously tormented?  And if it is replied that there is no earthly body—that is to say, no solid and perceptible body, or, in one word, no flesh—which can suffer and cannot die, is not this to tell us only what men have gathered from experience and their bodily senses?  For they indeed have no acquaintance with any flesh but that which is mortal; and this is their whole argument, that what they have had no experience of they judge quite impossible.  For we cannot call it reasoning to make pain a presumption of death, while, in fact, it is rather a sign of life.  For though it be a question whether that which suffers can continue to live for ever, yet it is certain that everything which suffers pain does live, and that pain can exist only in a living subject.  It is necessary, therefore, that he who is pained be living, not necessary that pain kill him; for every pain does not kill even those mortal bodies of ours which are destined to die.  And that any pain kills them is caused by the circumstance that the soul is so connected with the body that it succumbs to great pain and withdraws; for the structure of our members and vital parts is so infirm that it cannot bear up against that violence which causes great or extreme agony.  But in the life to come this connection of soul and body is of such a kind, that as it is dissolved by no lapse of time, so neither is it burst asunder by any pain.  And so, although it be true that in this world there is no flesh which can suffer pain and yet cannot die, yet in the world to come there shall be flesh such as now there is not, as there will also be death such as now there is not.  For death will not be abolished, but will be eternal, since the soul will neither be able to enjoy God and live, nor to die and escape the pains of the body.  The first death drives the soul from the body against her will:  the second death holds the soul in the body against her will.  The two have this in common, that the soul suffers against her will what her own body inflicts.

Our opponents, too, make much of this, that in this world there is no flesh which can suffer pain and cannot die; while they make nothing of the fact that there is something which is greater than the body.  For the spirit, whose presence animates and rules the body, can both suffer pain and cannot die.  Here then is something which, though it can feel pain, is immortal.  And this capacity, which we now see in the spirit of all, shall be hereafter in the bodies of the damned.  Moreover, if we attend to the matter a little more closely, we see that what is called bodily pain is rather to be referred to the soul.  For it is the soul not the body, which is pained, even when the pain originates with the body,—the soul feeling pain at the point where the body is hurt.  As then we speak of bodies feeling and living, though the feeling and life of the body are from the soul, so also we speak of bodies being pained, though no pain can be suffered by the body apart from the soul.  The soul, then, is pained with the body in that part where something occurs to hurt it; and it is pained alone, though it be in the body, when some invisible cause distresses it, while the body is safe and sound.  Even when not associated with the body it is pained; for certainly that rich man was suffering in hell when he cried, “I am tormented in this flame.” 1496   But as for the body, it suffers no pain when it is soulless; and even when animate it can suffer only by the soul’s suffering.  If, therefore, we might draw a just presumption from the existence of pain to that of death, and conclude that where pain can be felt death can occur, death would rather be the property of the soul, for to it pain more peculiarly belongs.  But, seeing that that which suffers most cannot die, what ground is there for supposing that those bodies, because destined to suffer, are therefore, destined to die?  The Platonists indeed maintained that these earthly bodies and dying members gave rise to the fears, desires, griefs, and joys of the soul.  “Hence,” says Virgil (i.e., from these earthly bodies and dying members),

“Hence wild desires and grovelling fears,

And human laughter, human tears.” 1497

But in the fourteenth book of this work 1498 we have proved that, according to the Platonists’ own theory, souls, even when purged from all pollution of the body, are yet pos p. 454 sessed by a monstrous desire to return again into their bodies.  But where desire can exist, certainly pain also can exist; for desire frustrated, either by missing what it aims at or losing what it had attained, is turned into pain.  And therefore, if the soul, which is either the only or the chief sufferer, has yet a kind of immortality of its own, it is inconsequent to say that because the bodies of the damned shall suffer pain, therefore they shall die.  In fine, if the body causes the soul to suffer, why can the body not cause death as well as suffering, unless because it does not follow that what causes pain causes death as well?  And why then is it incredible that these fires can cause pain but not death to those bodies we speak of, just as the bodies themselves cause pain, but not therefore death, to the souls?  Pain is therefore no necessary presumption of death.

Footnotes

Luke 16.24.

Æneid, vi. 733.

Ch. 3, 5, 6.