Note: Hervé of Bourg-Dieu (Bergidolensis) (c. 1080–1150) was a Benedictine monk and biblical commentator.
[On Romans 8:5–8]
For those who are according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but those who are according to the spirit sense the things of the spirit. For the prudence of the flesh is death, but the prudence of the spirit is life and peace. Because the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be. Moreover, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Truly, justification is fulfilled in those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit. For those who are according to the flesh—that is, those who consent to the flesh and, by following the appetite of the flesh, lead their lives—mind the things of the flesh; that is, they know carnal things and are curious about carnal matters, and temporal and earthly things, which pertain to the flesh or to carnal life, seem delightful and pleasant to them. Therefore, such people are not justified.
But those who are according to the spirit—that is, those who consent to the Holy Spirit and agree with Him spiritually, living spiritually—sense the things of the spirit; they perceive divine and spiritual goods inwardly and are filled with spiritual sweetness. Therefore, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in them through charity.
Truly, those who mind the things of the flesh are not justified, but rather those who sense the things of the spirit. For the end of things indicates this: since the wisdom of the flesh generates death, and the wisdom of the spirit generates life. For punishment or reward clearly declare both that those who die were not justified, and that those who have attained life have fulfilled righteousness.
[On the Nature of Carnal vs. Spiritual Prudence]
For the prudence of the flesh is eternal death; but the prudence of the spirit is life and peace. For the prudence of the flesh consists in: covering the heart with schemes, veiling one's meaning with words, presenting false things as true, demonstrating true things as false. Indeed, this prudence is learned by young men through practice; it is taught to boys at a price. Those who know it grow proud, despising others; those who do not know it, being subject and timid, admire it in others—because this same duplicity, cloaked under the name of fairness, is loved, while perversity of mind is called urbanity. This prudence commands its followers to seek the heights of honors, to rejoice in the vanity of attained temporal glory, to repay evils inflicted by others many times over, to yield to no one resisting when strength permits, and when the possibility of power is lacking, to simulate with deceitful goodness whatever it cannot accomplish through malice.
Rightly, therefore, is such prudence called the death of the soul.
But the prudence of the spirit—that is, the wisdom of the just—consists in: feigning nothing through ostentation, opening one's meaning with words, loving truths as they are, avoiding falsehoods, bestowing goods freely, tolerating evils more willingly than inflicting them, seeking no revenge for injury, considering it gain to suffer reproaches for the sake of truth. And this prudence is the life of the soul and peace—not only in the future age, but even in the present.
Now, the definition of prudence is usually explained as consisting in the pursuit of goods and the avoidance of evils. For the same nature of the soul possesses both the prudence of the flesh when it pursues lower things, and the prudence of the spirit when it chooses higher things—just as the nature of water both freezes with cold and melts with heat.
[On Jewish Carnal Worship vs. Spiritual Worship]
Through the prudence of the flesh, the Jews worshipped God for this reason: that they might fare well according to the flesh; and therefore, according to the soul, they were dead. But through the prudence of the spirit, the just worship God freely—that is, because He Himself is good, not because He gives other goods which He gives even to the wicked. And therefore, through this spiritual prudence, they live even now in soul and have peace, agreeing with the divine will and loving their neighbors, nor avenging themselves when they have been wronged. Much more, however, in the future will they have eternal life and the peace of perpetual tranquility.
And on the contrary, those who are prudent in a carnal manner—that is, those who desire temporal goods and fear temporal evils, or who cunningly avenge their injuries, and who trust more in natural reasonings than in divine judgments—will suffer eternal death of soul and body. And truly, through such prudence, both soul and body die.
[On the Hostility of Carnal Wisdom to God]
Because the wisdom of the flesh—that which intends carnal things and diligently pursues carnal matters—is hostile to God, since it does not establish Him as its end. For "whoever wishes to be a friend of this world is established as an enemy of God" (James 4:4). It is hostile to God because it thinks the Lord can do nothing beyond what is seen in the natures of things; it is hostile to God because it does not obey His will. For it is not subject to the law of God. And to act against the law is to be an enemy of God—not because one can harm God in any way, but because whoever resists the will of God harms himself.
Therefore, when it says "the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God," let us not understand it as though this hostility could injure God. For it is hostile by resisting, not by harming. But it harms the one in whom carnal wisdom resides, because it is a vice. It harms the nature in which it inheres. Let the vice be removed, and the nature will be healed.
This carnal wisdom is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be subject. I did not say "man cannot," I did not say "the soul cannot," but I said "the flesh cannot"—that is, the vice cannot, not the nature. Just as if one were to say: "Lameness is not subject to straight walking, nor indeed can it be"—but lameness cannot. Remove the lameness, and you will see straight walking. But as long as lameness exists, it cannot. Let it not be of the flesh, and it is human.
Thus it is said: "For it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be"—as if one were to say: "Snow does not give warmth, nor indeed can it." For as long as it is snow, it does not give warmth. But let it melt and become hot, that it may give warmth; but when it does this, it is no longer snow. So too, prudence or wisdom is spoken of when the soul desires temporal goods in place of great goods. As long as such appetite inheres in the soul, it cannot be subject to the law of God—that is, it cannot fulfill what the law commands. But if it begins to desire good things and to despise temporal things, it will cease to be prudence of the flesh and will be of the spirit; it will not resist the law.
[On Those Who Are "In the Flesh"]
The wisdom of the flesh is not subject to the law. Nor do I say only this, but also this: that those who are in the flesh—that is, who acquiesce in the pleasures of the flesh—cannot please God. For they themselves are "of the flesh" who trust in the flesh, who follow their concupiscences, who dwell in these things, who delight in their pleasures, who establish a blessed and happy life in their delights. And therefore, as long as they are such, they can do nothing that pleases God.
[On Romans 8:9–11: Life in the Spirit]
"But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this one is not His. But if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit lives because of justification. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of His Spirit dwelling in you."
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh, and therefore you please God. In this present age you indeed still live, but you are not in the flesh because you do not lie in pleasure, but have surpassed carnal desires. For who would think that the statement just made—"those who are in the flesh cannot please God"—referred to those who have not yet departed from this life? Most appropriately, therefore, he added: "But you are not in the flesh." Of course, he was speaking to those still established in this life, and yet he said they are not in the flesh. Indeed, he was writing to all the elect—he spoke to the wheat, not to the chaff; to the hidden grain, not to the visible straw.
"You are not in the flesh" because you do not perform the works of the flesh by consenting to the flesh. "But you are in the spirit" because according to the inner man you delight in the law of God. And this is so—"if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you." For if you presume upon your own spirit, you are still in the flesh. Therefore, be not in the flesh in such a way that you may be in the Spirit of God. For if the Spirit of God departs, the spirit of man by its own weight rolls back into the flesh. It returns to carnal deeds, returns to secular concupiscences. So therefore exercise your free will in such a way that you implore help. "You are not in the flesh"—and this not by your own powers, far be it! Whence then? "If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you." For then you are not in the flesh, but have the Spirit of God dwelling in you.
"But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, this one is not His"—that is, he is not possessed by Christ, nor is he a member of Christ. He had said "Spirit of God," and added "Spirit of Christ," because there are not two Holy Spirits—as though one belonged to the Father and another to the Son—but rather one Spirit belongs to both Father and Son.
For just as my soul—that is, my spirit—gives life to all the members of my body, so the Spirit of Christ gives life to all the members of Christ's body—that is, to all His elect. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ—that is, if anyone is not enlivened by the Spirit of Christ, if anyone does not live by the Spirit of Christ—this one is not a member of Christ, nor Christ's possession, but the devil's.
But charity is the witness that the Spirit of Christ is in the heart which it has filled. For does he have the Spirit of Christ whose mind is scattered by hatred, inflated by pride, exasperated by anger to the point of division of mind, tortured by avarice, enfeebled by lust? Certainly not. Because the Spirit of Christ, where He dwells, makes friends to be loved and enemies to be loved, earthly things to be despised, heavenly things to be desired, the flesh to be afflicted on account of vices, the mind to be restrained from concupiscences. And this Spirit is as it were a certain title of divine possession: whoever entirely lacks this does not belong to Christ.
[On the Mortality of the Body and the Life of the Spirit]
"But if Christ is in you"—who indeed dwells where His Spirit is, and not elsewhere—"the body indeed is dead," not on account of earthly fragility because it was made from the dust of the earth, but on account of sin. I do not say "mortal" but "dead." For before it was to be changed into that incorruption which is promised in the resurrection of the saints, it could be mortal, although not destined to die—just as our present body can be liable to sickness, although not destined to be sick. For whose flesh is there that cannot become sick, even if by some other misfortune it perishes before falling ill?
So too, the body of the first man was already mortal even before he sinned. Which mortality would have been taken up into change unto eternal incorruption if justice—that is, obedience—had remained in man. But that mortal body was not made dead except on account of sin; because as soon as man transgressed the commandment, death itself was conceived in his members as if by some lethal disease. Which disease of death he himself transmitted to all of us, and through it we necessarily must die.
Therefore, our body is not only destined to die on account of the departure of the soul which will occur, but is also already dead on account of the weakness of flesh and blood. It indeed still has life, but nevertheless, compared with that body which it will be in the resurrection, it is found to be dead—although it still possesses a soul. The body is thus dead even now on account of sin, but the spirit already lives on account of justification. And this life has come about through faith, since "the just man lives by faith" (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17; Hebrews 10:38).
For the soul, already pious though it was impious, is said to have revived from death and to live on account of the justice of faith. And grace from the Savior has granted this to us in the meantime: that the soul already lives through justice, just as it had been dead through sin. For this was said lest men should think they have no benefit or only a small benefit from the grace of Christ because they must necessarily die in the body. For they ought to consider that the body indeed still bears the merit of sin, in that it is bound by the condition of death, but that the spirit has already begun to live on account of the justice of faith—the spirit which itself had been extinguished by a certain death of unbelief.
Therefore, he says: "Do not consider it a small gift bestowed upon you through the fact that Christ is in you, that in a body dead on account of sin, your spirit already lives on account of justice." Nor should you therefore despair concerning the life of the body itself, but believe that "if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies."
Or it may be connected thus: "Your spirit indeed already lives; but if the Spirit of God dwells in you, your body also will live, just as the body of Christ, which has already been raised, lives."
He had said: "But if Christ is in you"; he added: "And if the Spirit of peace dwells in you." Whom he had called the Spirit of Christ, this he joined as the Spirit of peace, because where Christ is, there without doubt the Holy Spirit dwells; and the Spirit of Christ and of God is one.
But because in that future resurrection the change will have not only no death—which came about on account of sin—but not even mortality, which the animal body had before sin, therefore he now says: "He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies," so that they may now be not only not dead, but not even mortal, when the animal body rises as a spiritual body, and this mortal puts on immortality, and mortality is swallowed up by life.
For when, defining the grace of the present time, he said that the body is indeed dead on account of sin—because, since it has not yet been renewed through resurrection, the merit of sin remains, that is, the necessity of death—he said that the spirit lives on account of justice, because although we are still burdened by the body of this death, nevertheless, with the renewal already begun according to the inner man, we breathe again in the justice of faith. Yet, lest human ignorance should hope for nothing concerning the resurrection of the body, even that which on account of the merit of sin he had said was dead in the present age, on account of the merit of justice he says will be made alive in the future; and not only that it be made from dead to living, but truly also from mortal to immortal.
For by the gift of God which is given to the soul—that is, the Holy Spirit—not only is the soul to which it is given saved and peaceful and holy, but the body itself also will be made alive and will be most pure in its nature. "He will make alive," he says, "your mortal bodies," not on account of your merits, but on account of His gifts—that is, on account of His Spirit dwelling in you.
[On the Four States of Human Life]
By these stages, when man is perfected, no substance is found to be evil. Nor is the law [itself evil], which shows man in what bonds of sins he lies, so that through faith, having implored the Liberator's help, he may deserve to be loosed, raised up, and most firmly established.
Therefore:
In the first state, which is before the Law, there is no struggle with the pleasures of this world.
In the second state, which is under the Law, we struggle but are conquered.
In the third state, which is under Grace, we struggle and we conquer.
In the fourth state, which is in the Resurrection, we do not struggle but rest in perfect and eternal peace, because nothing then resists us—since we do not resist God.
For that which is lower in us is subjected to us; it was not subjected before because we had deserted the higher God.
CONTINUE
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