Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer: 

In the sections called "Human Life as in Death," "Sin and Death," and "Resurrection and Life," Augustine discusses the way that human beings, while they seem to be alive, are really dying. You could read this as an attack on Aristotle, who believed that the soul (psyche in Greek) was the force of living in the organic body. Augustine is saying to Aristotle: "psyche is not able to really keep the body alive because the body will eventually die. Therefore there is something wrong with the psyche. You, Aristotle, thought that the psyche couldn't keep the body alive forever because of the organic matter of the body that you thought was imperfect. But I don't think it's the fault of the matter of the body. The fault is not with the body, but with the psyche. What is wrong with psyche is what I call sin. The psyche is no longer able to keep the body alive the way it should be alive, which is to live forever." So, Augustine thinks that something more than psyche will be required to keep the body alive forever. He calls it "spirit", which in Latin is "spiritus," and he says that it is more than "soul", which in Latin is "anima" (a word that translates the Greek word psyche). The spirit can keep the body alive forever, but its power to do so is not "natural." According to Augustine, when Adam was created, he was like us, with a psyche that was able to keep his body alive forever. But after he sinned, his psyche lost that power, and therefore his body died. But the psyche cannot recover its power any more. It has to be replaced with the "spirit." What are the powers of the spirit according to Augustine? How is it possible for spirit to keep the body alive forever?