Annotatio LII

”Thou shalt return into the earth from which thou wast taken, because dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.” — Genesis 3:19

Josephus, in the first book of the Jewish Antiquities, explaining the sense of this sentence, indicates that the offense of the first parents did not bring upon them the necessity of dying, but the shortness of life, and the hastening of old age and death.¹ For thus he introduces God speaking to them: “I had indeed provided for you, that you might live a happy life and free from all evil, all things which confer to use and pleasure coming to you of their own accord; enjoying which, neither would old age quickly oppress you, and [your] long life would be prolonged as far as possible. But you have held my judgment in mockery, my command being despised — wherefore both old age shall come the sooner, and your life shall be less long.”

To the prior part of this opinion Augustine, Bishop of Kissamos, alludes, holding that Adam’s sin brought upon man not the death of the body, but only [that] of the soul.² Reproving their assertion, Augustine [of Hippo], in book 13 On the City of God, chapter 15, says:³ “It is agreed, among Christians truly holding the Catholic faith, that even this bodily death itself was inflicted on us not by the law of nature — by which God made no death for man — but deservedly for sin: since God, avenging sin, said to the man, in whom then we all were, ‘Earth thou art, and into earth thou shalt go.’” There exists also a decree of this Catholic assertion in the Acts of the African Council, chapter 76,⁴ in these words: “Whosoever shall say that Adam, the first man, was made mortal, so that, whether he sinned or sinned not, he would die in body — that is, would depart from the body — not by the merit of sin, but by the necessity of nature: let him be anathema.”