On Paradise 1–28

As we set about speaking of paradise, no small agitation seems to strike us in our desire to investigate and explain what paradise is, where it is, and what it is like; especially since the Apostle does not know whether he was in the body or out of the body, yet says that he was caught up to the third heaven. And again he says: "I know such a man, whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows, that he was caught up into paradise and heard unutterable words, which it is not lawful for a man to speak. On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except in my weaknesses. For if I wish to boast, I shall not be a fool, for I speak the truth." If, then, paradise is such that Paul alone, or scarcely someone like Paul, could see it while still living, and yet he cannot remember whether he saw it in the body or out of the body, and heard words that he was forbidden to make known, how then shall we be able to explain where paradise lies, when we could not see it and, had we been able to see it, would still be forbidden to make it known to others? At the same time, since Paul was afraid of being exalted by the height of his revelations, how much more must we take care not to make known too eagerly a thing whose very revelation is exposed to danger! We must not, therefore, think this paradise a cheap thing; and so let us leave it as Paul's secret.

Yet since we read in Genesis that paradise was planted by God toward the east, and that the man whom God had formed was placed there, we can now find the author of this paradise. For who could fashion paradise except almighty God, who spoke and things were made, never needing the things he wished to bring into being? He himself, then, planted paradise, of which Wisdom says: "Every plant which my Father has not planted will be rooted up." Good is the planting of the angels, good that of the saints; for the saints are said to be under the fig tree and the vine in that future time of peace, and in them there is a type of the angels.

So paradise is a place with very many trees, but fruit-bearing trees, trees full of sap and strength, of which it is said: "All the trees of the forests will rejoice"; trees always flourishing with the green of merits, like that tree which is planted by the streams of water, whose leaf will not fall, because all its fruit abounds in it. This, then, is paradise.

The place in which it is planted is called "delight". Hence holy David says: "You will give them drink from the torrent of your delight." For you have read that a spring goes out from Eden which waters paradise. These trees, then, planted in paradise, are watered as if by a flood of the torrent of the Spirit, of which he says elsewhere too: "The rushing of the river gladdens the city of God." That city is the Jerusalem above, which is free, in which the various merits of the saints have sprung up.

In this paradise, then, God placed the man whom he had formed. Understand now that he placed there not the man who is according to the image of God, but the one who is according to the body; for what is incorporeal is not in a place. He placed him in paradise as he placed the sun in heaven, awaiting the kingdom of heaven, just as the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God.

If, then, paradise is where the shrubs had sprung up, paradise seems to be the soul, which multiplies the seed it has received, in which every virtue is planted, in which was also the tree of life, that is, wisdom, as Solomon said that wisdom did not spring from the earth but from the Father; for she is the radiance of eternal light and the outflow of the glory of the Almighty.

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was also in paradise. For you have it thus: that God brought forth a tree beautiful to see and good for food, and the tree of life in paradise, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Later we shall see whether this tree too was beautiful to see and good for food like the rest; that will be discussed more fittingly in the place where we find that the man who tasted of it was deceived. Meanwhile we have nothing that we ought to find fault with now, even if we cannot know the reason. For in this creation of the world, too, if some things seem difficult to understand and beyond the grasp of our minds, we must not condemn them by a rash judgment, such as the creation of serpents and of some venomous animal, since as men we cannot yet understand and know for what reason each thing was made. So too in the divine Scriptures let us not readily find fault with anything we cannot understand; for there are very many things that must not be measured by our minds but judged by the height of the divine plan and word.

Suppose, without prejudice to what I shall argue later, that this tree of the knowledge of good and evil displeases you because, after the men tasted of it, they understood that they were naked. Yet I shall tell you that, for the completion of the divine work, this tree too sprang up in paradise and was permitted by God so that we might know the surpassing excellence of the good. For how, if there were no knowledge of good and evil, should we learn any distinction between good and evil? For we would not judge what was evil to be evil unless there were knowledge of the good (and there could be no knowledge of the good unless there were also the good), nor again would we know that what was good was good unless there were knowledge of evil. Take an example from the very constitution of the human body. It has a certain bitterness of gall, which, if you look at the whole, is found useful for a man's health. So what we think evil is often not evil in every respect but useful to the whole. For as gall is in a part of the body and yet benefits the whole body, so God, knowing that the knowledge of good and evil would benefit all, placed it in a part so that it might benefit the whole.

Finally, you find the serpent in paradise, certainly not brought into being without God's will. In the figure of the serpent is the devil; for that the devil was in paradise the prophet Ezekiel also teaches, who says of the prince of Tyre: "You were made in the delight of paradise"; and we take the prince of Tyre as a figure of the devil. Shall we accuse God on this account too, because we cannot grasp the treasures of his depth and knowledge, hidden and concealed in Christ, except those he has deigned to reveal? Yet he has revealed this, that we may know that even the devil's wickedness is of benefit to men for salvation; not that the devil wishes to benefit them, but that the Lord turns his wickedness, even as he resists, to our salvation. So his wickedness made the virtue and patience of the holy man Job more illustrious. His wickedness exercised Job's righteousness, so that he might contend and conquer and the crown might follow the victory; for no one is crowned except one who has contended lawfully. Joseph's chastity too would never have come to our memory had not his master's wife, stirred by the fiery darts of the devil, tempted his affection, and finally sought his death, so that the chastity of the man who despised death for chastity's sake might be the more illustrious. Do you want to know God's counsel? It is by the devil's prompting, of course, that murders seem to be prepared for righteous men, and the slaughter of sons to be carried out. Yet the Lord tested Abraham also by this means, demanding that the same man sacrifice his son to him. By this test Abraham was proved faithful to the Lord, since not even pity for a beloved son called him back from the obedience of devotion. So too, then, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in paradise, which was beautiful to see and good for food, seemed so in appearance; for it was not good for food in use, since eating of it seems to have harmed men. So there is what harms individuals and benefits the whole: as the devil harmed Judas, but apart from him crowned all the apostles, who overcame the temptations of his wickedness.

So we must neither doubt nor find fault that the devil was in paradise, since he could not close the way to the saints so that none could ascend; nor did he, as an owner, snatch from the righteous the dwelling of their sojourn. Granted that he turned some idle and vicious people away from dwelling in the heavenly possession: it is far more majestic and far more beautiful that he will be shut out by the prayers of the saints, when that is fulfilled: "I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven." So let us not fear him, who is so weak that he himself will fall to the earth. He received leave to tempt, but he did not receive the power to overthrow, unless a weak disposition, which does not know how to summon help to itself, slips of its own accord. And so we need to learn by what fraud he tempted the first man, what he thought must be tempted in man, in what order and by what art, so that we can be on our guard.

Most people, however, who hold that the devil was not in paradise (though we have read that he stood in heaven with the angels), may take the interpretation of this reading according to their own wish, so as not to seem to be offended in this discourse. For there was one before us who recorded that the transgression was committed by man through pleasure and sense, taking the figure of the serpent as a figure of delight, and placing in the figure of the woman the sense of the soul and mind, which the Greeks call αἴσθησις; and he asserted that, when sense was deceived, the mind, which the Greeks call νοῦς, became, according to the history, a transgressor. So in Greek he rightly took νοῦς as the figure of the man, αἴσθησις of the woman. That is why some have interpreted Adam as the earthly νοῦς. And the Lord in the Gospel set those virgins awaiting the bridegroom's coming with lit or extinguished torches for the senses, either whole, of the wise, or corrupted, of the foolish. For if Eve, that is, the sense of the first woman, had had lit torches, she would never have entangled us in the snares of her transgression, nor would she have fallen from that immortality of virtue.

Paradise, then, is a fertile land, that is, a fruitful soul, planted in Eden, that is, in a certain delight or well-tilled land, in which the soul finds its delight. There is also the mind (νοῦς), as Adam, and there is sense, as Eve. And so that you may have nothing to blame on the weakness of nature or on a condition liable to the dangers it must bear, consider what aids this soul has.

There was a spring that watered paradise. What spring, if not the Lord Jesus Christ, the fount of eternal life, as the Father is? For it is written: "For with you is the fountain of life"; and again: "Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Both a spring and a river are read of, which waters the fruitful tree of paradise, which bears fruit for eternal life. This, then, is the spring, as you have read (for "a spring," it says, "goes out from Eden", that is, the spring is in your soul; hence Solomon too says, "Drink water from your own vessels and from the springs of your own wells"); this is the spring which goes out from that well-tilled soul full of delight; this is the spring which waters paradise, that is, the virtues of the soul sprouting with the highest merit.

"And the spring," it says, "is divided into four heads. The name of the first is Pishon; this is the one that encircles the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; there is carbuncle and the green stone. And the name of the second is Gihon; this is the one that encircles all Ethiopia. And the third river is the Tigris; this is the one that flows toward the Assyrians. And the fourth river is the Euphrates." These, then, are the four rivers: the Pishon (so called among the Hebrews, but the Ganges among the Greeks), which flows toward India; the Gihon, the Nile, which encircles the land of Egypt or Ethiopia. Mesopotamia is so called because the Tigris and the Euphrates enclose it, since it lies between these two rivers, as the name itself and the common opinion of people even far away have expressed. But how is the wisdom of God called a spring? It is a spring according to the Gospel, which says: "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink"; it is a spring according to the prophet too, who says: "Come and eat of my bread and drink the wine I have mixed for you." As, then, wisdom is the spring of life, the spring of spiritual grace, so it is the spring of the other virtues that direct us on the course of eternal life. From this soul, then, which is cultivated, not from the uncultivated one, this spring goes out to water paradise, that is, certain thickets of various virtues, of which there are four heads into which this wisdom is divided. What are the four heads of the virtues if not one of prudence, another of temperance, the third of fortitude, the fourth of justice? These even the wise men of this world took from our writers and transferred into the writings of their own books. So, as wisdom is the spring, these four rivers are streams of the virtues flowing from that spring.

The Pishon, then, is prudence, and so it has good gold, the shining carbuncle and the green stone. For we often take gold to stand for the discoveries of the prudent; hence the Lord too says through the prophet, "I gave them gold and silver", and David says of the prudent: "If you sleep among the allotted portions, the wings of a dove covered with silver, and her hinder parts with the gleam of gold", because one who has held fast to the Old and New Testaments can advance by the richness of discussion into the very secrets of God's wisdom. This, then, one may call good gold, not the coined gold which is corruptible and earthly. It also has, it says, the shining carbuncle, in which a little spark of our soul lives. And it has the green stone, which seems to display by the look of its colour something green and living. For trees that live are green, whereas whatever dies dries up; the earth is green while it blooms, and the seeds are green as they break forth. And rightly is this river Pishon put in first place, which among the Hebrews is called Pheison, that is, "change of mouth", because it flows around more than one nation and also flows through Lydia. For prudence is not something narrow but rich in benefits, profiting many. That is why it comes first: so that if anyone has gone out of paradise, a river of prudence, as it were, may receive him, so that he may not soon dry up, but by it may easily return to paradise. This river is visited by many men and is said to have the greatest beauty and fertility. And so prudence is understood under its figure, which brought very many fruits at the coming of the saving Lord. And it flows to the ends of the earth, because through wisdom all men were redeemed. Hence it is said: "Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world."

The second river is the Gihon, beside which the law was given to the Israelites while they were settled in Egypt, that they should depart from Egypt and eat the lamb with their loins girded, which is a mark of temperance; for those who celebrate the Lord's Passover must be chaste and sanctified. And so beside this river the observance of the law was first established, because this name signifies a certain chasm of the earth. As, then, a chasm swallows up the earth and whatever refuse or filth is in it, so chastity usually does away with all the passions of the body; and rightly was the first ordinance of observance established there, because through the law the sin of the flesh is swallowed up. Fittingly, then, the Gihon, in which there is a figure of chastity, is said to encircle the land of Ethiopia, so as to wash the lowly body and quench the fire of the vilest flesh; for Ethiopia, in Latin translation, signifies "lowly" and "vile". And what is lowlier than our body, what so like Ethiopia, since it too is black with a certain darkness of sins?

The third river is the Tigris, which flows toward the Assyrians, to whom transgressing Israel was led captive. This river is said to be swifter than all others, and on its banks live the Assyrians, that is, "those who direct"; for this is what the name signifies. So whoever by fortitude of soul takes captive the transgressing vices of the body, directing himself to things above, is reckoned like this river. And so fortitude too flows from that spring which is in paradise. Fortitude pierces through all obstacles with a swift course, and its course does not stick on any barriers of hindrance.

The fourth river is the Euphrates, which in Latin means fruitfulness and abundance of fruits, displaying a mark of justice, which feeds every soul. For no virtue seems to have more abundant fruits than equity and justice, which benefits others more than itself and neglects its own advantages, putting common benefits first. Many think that the Euphrates is named ἀπὸ τοῦ εὐφραίνεσθαι, that is, from "rejoicing", because the human race rejoices in nothing more than in justice and equity. And the reason why the regions through which the other rivers pass are described, but not those through which the Euphrates passes, we take to be this: its water is said to be life-giving, cherishing and increasing; hence the wise men of the Hebrews and Assyrians called it Auxen, whereas the water of the other rivers is said to be the opposite. Then, too, where there is prudence there is also malice, where there is fortitude there is wrath, where there is temperance there is usually intemperance and other vices; but where there is justice, there is the harmony of the other virtues. Therefore it is not known from the places through which it flows, that is, not from a part; for justice is not a part but, as it were, the mother of all. In these four rivers, then, the four principal virtues are expressed, which, so to speak, enclose the ages of this world.

The first age, then, from the beginning of the world until the flood, was that of prudence. In that age are counted the righteous: Abel, so called from the Lord; Enosh, that is, man made in the image of God, who hoped to call on the name of the Lord God; Enoch, whose name in Latin means "grace of God", caught up to heaven; and Noah, who himself was righteous and a kind of guidance of rest.

The second age is that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the rest of the patriarchs, in whom a chaste and pure temperance of religion shone forth. For spotless Isaac was given to Abraham as a son through the promise, displaying not so much a bodily birth as a gift of divine favour; in him went before the figure of the truly Spotless One, as the Apostle teaches, saying that the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. "He does not say, and to seeds, as of many, but as of one: and to your seed, who is Christ."

The third age is that of the law of Moses and the other prophets. "For time will fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, David and Samuel and the other prophets," of Ananias, Azarias, Misael, Daniel, Elijah, Elisha, "who through faith conquered kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, grew strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, took the camps of foreigners." Not without reason, then, is there in them the form of fortitude. For they were sawn in two, as you have further on, tempted, died by the slaughter of the sword. "They went about in goatskins, in want, distressed and afflicted with sufferings, of whom the world was not worthy, wandering in deserts, in mountains, and in caves and holes of the earth." Rightly, then, we place in them the form of fortitude.

The age according to the Gospel is a fitting figure of justice, because it is a power for salvation to everyone who believes. Indeed the Lord himself says: "Let us fulfil all righteousness." Justice is the fruitful parent of the other virtues; yet in one in whom any one of these virtues we have named is principal, the others too are present, because the virtues are joined and bound together. For certainly Abel was just; Abraham was most brave and most patient; the prophets most prudent; and Moses, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, "considered the reproach of Christ greater honour than the treasures of Egypt". And who was wiser than Daniel? Solomon too asked for wisdom and obtained it. So much has been said, then, of the four rivers of the virtues, whose drink is beneficial. And since the Pishon was said to have the good gold of the land and the carbuncle and the green stone, let us consider what this too means.

For Enosh seems to us like good gold, who prudently desired to know the name of God. Enoch, who was translated and did not see death, is a carbuncle, a stone of sweet fragrance, which holy Enoch offered to God by his works, breathing a certain grace in his deeds and ways. Noah, like the green stone, displayed the colour of life, since at the time of the flood he alone was kept in that ark as a life-giving seed for the order to come. Rightly, then, paradise, which is watered by many rivers, is toward the east, not opposite the east: that is, toward that East whose name is Dawn, that is, toward Christ, who has poured out a radiance of eternal light; and it is in Eden, that is, in delight.

"And God took the man whom he had made and placed him in paradise to work it and keep it." You see that he who already was is taken; for he was in the earth from which he was formed. So the power of God took him, breathing into him progress and growth in virtue. Then he placed him in paradise, so that you may know that being taken means being breathed upon by divine power. In this place notice that the man was made outside paradise and the woman inside paradise, so that you may notice that each one gains grace for himself not by the nobility of place or of birth, but by virtue. In fact, the man made outside paradise, that is, in a lower place, is found to be better, and she who was made in a better place, that is, in paradise, is found to be inferior; for the woman was deceived first, and she herself deceived the man. That is why the apostle Peter recalled that holy women, subject to the stronger vessel, obeyed their husbands as lords; and Paul says that Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and fell into transgression. Next we must observe that no one should readily presume on himself. For see, she who was made as a help to the man needs the man's protection, because the man is the head of the woman; while he who believed he would have his wife as a help fell through his wife. So no one should readily trust himself to another unless he has proved his virtue, nor claim much for himself if he thinks he has been taken on as a help; rather, if he finds stronger the one whom he thought he was protecting, let him borrow grace from that one, just as the apostle Peter commands husbands to give honour to their wives, saying: "Husbands, likewise, live with them according to knowledge, giving honour to the woman as to the weaker vessel, as fellow heirs of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered."

So the man was placed in paradise, the woman was made in paradise; but even then, before the woman was deceived by the serpent, she had the man's grace, since she was taken from the man (though this is a great mystery, as the Apostle said), and so she drew the source of her life from him. And so Scripture spoke of the man alone, that he placed him in paradise to work it and keep it. Working and keeping are not the same: in work there is a certain progress of virtue, in keeping a certain completion of the work is recognized, since one keeps things as already completed. These two things are required of man: that by works he seek new things and keep what he has gained; this is the general sense. But Philo, since with his Jewish disposition he did not grasp spiritual things, kept within moral matters, saying that these two things are required: work in the field and keeping of the house. And although paradise, he says, needed no farm labour, yet since the first man was to be a law for posterity, he took on even in paradise the form of a lawful labour, so as to bind us to the work and keeping of our due office and to the duty of handing on an inheritance. These two things, then, are required of you, whether morally or spiritually. The prophetic psalm also teaches you this, for it is written: "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it have laboured in vain; unless the Lord keeps the city, those who keep it have watched in vain." You see that those labour who are in the course of a work and of building, but those watch who have already received the keeping of a finished work. That is why the Lord said to the apostles, as to men already more perfect: "Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation", teaching that the gift of a perfected nature and the grace of full virtue must be kept, and that no one, even the more perfect, should be secure about himself unless he watches.

"And the Lord God commanded Adam, saying: Of every tree that is in paradise you shall eat for food; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you [plural] shall not eat; on the day you [plural] eat of it you shall die the death." Why, when he commanded that they should eat of every tree, he said in the singular, "you shall eat", but when he spoke of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he said in the plural, "you shall not eat", is no idle question. But if you attend carefully, it can be resolved by the authority of the Scriptures. For what is good is to be done, and what is good and to be done is harmonious and cohering; but what is base is discordant, disordered and divided. And so the Lord, always intending unity, gave his command according to unity. Indeed he works unity who made both one; and not only both, but he made all one; for he commanded us all to be one body and one spirit. And the Firstborn of all, being in unity with the Father, is always most closely joined to the Father, because the Word was with God. So he says: "I and the Father are one", to show that he has unity of majesty and divinity with the Father. But he also commanded us to be one, and poured into us by the adoption of grace the likeness of his nature and unity, saying: "Father, as I and you are one, so may these also be one in us." So when he commands what is good, he commands as if to one, saying, "you shall eat"; for unity cannot transgress. But when he says that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is not to be tasted, he speaks as if to many: "you shall not eat"; for what is prohibitive is commanded as to many. I, however, think otherwise, and I already find in God's very word what was going to happen. He commanded Adam alone to eat of every tree, knowing that he would keep the command; but that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not to be tasted he says no longer in the singular but in the plural; for he knew that the woman would transgress, and so by the plural he shows that they would not keep it, since the judgment of many is divided.

As far as the version of the Seventy is concerned, the difficulty is resolved. But since Symmachus put both in the singular, we understand that he followed this: that in the law too, when God addresses the people, he speaks in the singular, as you have: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord", and "You shall love the Lord your God." Nor does the interpretation of Symmachus prejudice me, since he could not see the unity of Father and Son, although at times both Aquila and he confessed it in speech. Nor should anyone think it contrary to what we said above that God, in his divine commands, addresses in the singular a people who would transgress; for the people of the Jews violated even precepts given in the singular. For the law is spiritual, and so God, by the divine oracle, addressed the people in one way in speech, in another in predestination. Indeed he says: "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk."

From here the series of heavenly commands would seem easy, were it not that very many raise a question which we must answer, lest they lead simple minds astray by malicious interpretation. For many, whose source is Apelles, as you have in the thirty-eighth book of his work, put these questions: How does the tree of life seem to do more for life than the breathing of God? Then: If God did not make man perfect, but each person by his own effort acquires for himself the perfection of virtue, does not man seem to gain more for himself than God gave him? Third, they object: if man had not tasted death, he certainly could not know what he had not tasted. So if he had not tasted it, he did not know it; if he did not know it, he could not fear it.