On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.15–2.25

But we must carefully consider how that serpent persuaded them to sin; for this concerns our salvation most of all, since these things were written precisely so that we may now beware of such things. When the woman, on being asked, had answered what they had been commanded, he said: “You shall not die the death; for God knew that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” We see from these words that the sin was urged on them through pride; for that is the force of the words, “You will be like gods.” So too with the words, “For God knew that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened”: what is understood here, except that they were persuaded to refuse to be under God, and rather to be in their own power without the Lord, so as not to keep his law—as though he begrudged them governing themselves without needing his inner light, using their own foresight, as if their own eyes, to discern good and evil, which he had forbidden? This, then, is what they were persuaded to: to love their own power too much, and, wishing to be equal with God, to misuse that middle position, by which they were subject to God and had bodies subject to themselves—the fruit, as it were, of the tree set in the middle of paradise—that is, to use it against the law of God; and so to lose what they had received, while they tried to usurp what they had not received. For human nature did not receive the gift of being happy by its own power without God ruling it; for only God can be happy by his own power, with no one ruling him. “And the woman saw,” it says, “that the tree was good for food, and that it was good for the eyes to see and to know.” How did she see, if their eyes were closed? But this was said so that we might understand that the eyes opened after they took of the fruit were those by which they saw themselves naked and were displeasing to themselves, that is, the eyes of cunning, to which simplicity is displeasing. For when anyone has fallen from that inmost and most hidden light of truth, pride has nothing by which it wishes to please except fraudulent pretenses. From this hypocrisy too is born, in which those who have been able to cheat and deceive whomever they wished think themselves very clever. For the woman gave to her husband, and they ate, and their eyes were opened—the eyes already spoken of; and then they saw that they were naked, but with perverse eyes, to which that simplicity signified by the name of nakedness seemed something to blush at. And so, that they might no longer be simple, they made themselves aprons of fig leaves, as if covering their private parts, that is, hiding the simplicity at which cunning pride now blushed. The fig leaves signify a certain itching—if this can rightly be said of incorporeal things—which the mind suffers in marvelous ways from the desire and delight of lying. Hence too in Latin those who love to joke are called “salty”; and in jokes, of course, pretense holds the first place.

So when God walked in paradise toward evening, that is, when he was now coming to judge them—while it was still before their punishment, he walked in paradise, that is, the presence of God was, as it were, moving among them, since they themselves no longer stood firm in his commandment; and rightly toward evening, that is, when the sun was now setting for them, that is, when that inner light of truth was being taken from them—they heard his voice and hid from his sight. Who hides from the sight of God except one who, having deserted him, now begins to love what is his own? For they already had the coverings of falsehood; and whoever speaks a lie speaks from what is his own (John 8:44). And so they are said to hide at the tree that was in the middle of paradise, that is, at themselves, who had been set in the middle of things, below God and above bodies. So they hid themselves at themselves, so as to be thrown into confusion by wretched errors, having left the light of truth, which they themselves were not. For the human soul can share in the truth; but the truth itself is the unchangeable God above it. So whoever has turned away from that truth and turned toward himself, and exults not in God as his ruler and illuminer but in his own motions as if they were free, is darkened by falsehood, since whoever speaks a lie speaks from what is his own; and so he is troubled, and makes plain that word of the prophet in which it was said, “My soul is troubled toward myself.” And so now Adam is questioned—not because God did not know where he was, but to compel him to confess his sin; for the Lord Jesus Christ too was not ignorant of the many things he asked. He answered that, on hearing his voice, he had hidden because he was naked. Now he answered in most wretched error, as if he could displease God by being naked, just as God himself had made him. It is characteristic of error to suppose that whatever displeases someone also displeases God. But what the Lord said is to be understood in a lofty sense: “Who told you that you were naked, unless you ate of that tree of which I had told you that of it alone you should not eat?” For he was naked of pretense, but clothed with divine light. Turned away from it and turned toward himself, which is what eating of that tree signifies, he saw his nakedness and was displeasing to himself, because he had nothing of his own.

Then, in the manner of pride, he does not accuse himself of consenting to the woman, but pours his fault back on the woman; and so, subtly, as if from the cunning which he had wretchedly conceived, he wanted his sin to be laid to God himself. For he did not say, “The woman gave to me,” but added, “The woman whom you gave me.” Nothing is so familiar to sinners as wanting to attribute to God whatever they are accused of; and this comes from that vein of pride: since man sinned by wanting to be equal to God, that is, to be free from his dominion, as God is free from all dominion, being the Lord of all, and since he could not be his equal in majesty, now, fallen and lying in his sin, he tries to make God equal to himself. Or rather he wants to show that God sinned and that he himself is innocent. And the woman, when questioned, refers the fault to the serpent—as if either the man had received a wife in order to obey her, and not rather to make her obey him, or she could not have kept God's commandment rather than admit the words of the serpent. Now the serpent is not questioned but receives the punishment first, because he can neither confess his sin nor has he anything at all with which to excuse himself. The condemnation of the devil spoken of here is not the one reserved for the last judgment, of which the Lord speaks when he says, “Go into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels”; but it is that punishment of his because of which we must beware of him. For his punishment is that he has in his power those who despise God's commandments. That is what is set out in the words by which sentence is passed on him; and the punishment is the greater because he rejoices in this so unhappy power, he who before he fell used to rejoice in the lofty truth in which he did not stand. And therefore even cattle are set above him—not in power, but in the preservation of their nature; because cattle have not lost any heavenly happiness, which they never had, but live out their life in the nature they received. So it is said to him: “On your breast and belly you shall crawl.” This is indeed observed in the snake too, and from that visible animal the expression is applied figuratively to this invisible enemy of ours. For by the name of breast pride is signified, because there the impulse of the mind holds sway; and by the name of belly carnal desire, because this part of the body is felt to be softer. And because it is by these things that he creeps up on those whom he wishes to deceive, it was said, “On your breast and belly you shall crawl.”

“And you shall eat earth,” it says, “all the days of your life”: that is, all the days in which you exercise this power, before that last punishment of the judgment; for this seems to be his life, in which he rejoices and glories. “You shall eat earth” can be understood in two ways: either those whom you have deceived by earthly desire, that is, sinners, who are signified by the name of earth, will belong to you; or else the third kind of temptation, which is curiosity, is figured by these words. For one who eats earth penetrates deep and dark things, yet temporal and earthly ones. Enmity is set not between him and the man, but between him and the woman. Is it because he does not deceive and tempt men? But it is plain that he does deceive them. Or is it because he did not deceive Adam himself, but his woman? But is he for that reason not the enemy of the one whom that deception reached through his woman—especially since it is now said of the future, “I will put enmity between you and the woman”? And if it were because he did not afterward deceive Adam, neither did he afterward deceive Eve herself. Why then is it said so, except that it is plainly shown here that we cannot be tempted by the devil except through that animal part which shows, as it were, the image or example of the woman within the one human being, of which we have already said much above? As for enmity being set also between the seed of the devil and the seed of the woman: by the devil's seed is signified perverse suggestion; by the woman's seed, the fruit of good work, by which she resists perverse suggestion. And so he watches the woman's foot, so that if ever delight slips into what is unlawful, he may then seize it; and she watches his head, to shut him out at the very beginning of evil persuasion.

About the woman's punishment there is no question: plainly she has multiplied pains and sighs in the calamities of this life. And her bearing children in pains, although it is fulfilled also in this visible woman, nevertheless calls our consideration back to that more hidden one. For among cattle too the females bear young with pain, and in them this is a condition of mortality rather than a punishment of sin. So it may be that in human females too this is the condition of mortal bodies. But the great punishment is that they came from that immortality to this mortality of bodies. Yet there is a great mystery in this sentence: that no abstinence from carnal will takes place without pain at its beginning, until habit is bent toward the better part. When that has come about, a son, as it were, is born; that is, the disposition has been made ready for good work through good habit. That this habit might be born, there was a painful struggle against bad habit. And as for what was said after the childbirth, “Your turning shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you”: do not many, indeed almost all, women give birth while their husbands are absent, and not turn to them after the birth? And women who are proud and rule their husbands—do they lose this fault after childbirth, so that their husbands rule them? On the contrary, they think a kind of dignity has been added to them because they become mothers, and they often grow prouder. What then does it mean that, after it was said, “In pains you shall bear children,” there was added, “and your turning shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you,” except that that part of the soul which is held by carnal joys, when, wishing to overcome some bad habit, it has suffered difficulty and pain and so given birth to a good habit, now obeys reason as its husband more cautiously and carefully; and, taught as it were by its very pains, turns to reason and gladly serves its command, so as not to slide again into some ruinous habit? So these things which seem to be curses are commandments, if we do not read spiritual things carnally. For the law is spiritual.

Again, what shall we say of the sentence passed on the man himself? Are the rich, perhaps, who have a very easy living and do not work on the land, to be thought to have escaped this punishment, in which it is said: “Cursed shall the earth be to you in all your works; in sadness and groaning you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the fodder of your field; in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread, until you return to the earth from which you were taken; for earth you are, and to earth you shall go”? But surely this is plain: no one escapes this sentence. For the very fact that everyone born in this life has difficulty in finding the truth because of the corruptible body—for, as Solomon says, “The body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks many things” (Wis 9:15)—these are the very labors and sorrows that man has from the earth; and the thorns and thistles are the prickings of twisted questions, or thoughts about providing for this life, which, unless they are rooted out and thrown off God's field, mostly choke the word so that it does not bear fruit in a man, as the Lord says in the Gospel. And since we are now of necessity reminded of the truth itself through these eyes and these ears, and it is hard to resist the phantasms that enter the soul through these senses, although the reminder of truth itself also enters through them—in this perplexity, then, whose face does not sweat that he may eat his bread? This we shall suffer all the days of our life, that is, of this life that is to pass away. And this was said to the one who cultivates his field, because he suffers these things until he returns to the earth from which he was taken, that is, until he ends this life. For one who cultivates this field inwardly, and attains his bread, though with labor, can bear this labor until the end of this life; but after this life he need not bear it. But one who perhaps has not cultivated his field, and has let it be overrun with thorns, has in this life the curse of his earth in all his works, and after this life will have either the fire of purgation or eternal punishment. So no one escapes this sentence; but we must act so that it is felt in this life only.

And who would not be struck by the fact that after the sin and the sentence of God the judge, Adam calls his woman Life, because she is the mother of the living, after she had deserved death and was destined to bear mortal offspring—unless Scripture has in view those offspring at whose birth in pains her turning will be to her husband and he will rule over her? Of these offspring we spoke above. For it is in this way that she is life and mother of the living. For life that is in sins is usually called death in the Scriptures, as the Apostle says that the widow who lives in pleasures is dead (1 Tim 5:6); and we read that sin itself is signified by the name of a dead body, where it is said, “He who is washed after touching a dead body and touches it again, what does he gain by his washing? So also he who fasts over his sins and goes again and does the same things.” For he put the dead body for sin, and abstinence and fasting from sin for a baptism, that is, a cleansing from the dead body; and returning to sin again for touching the dead body again. Why then should not that animal part of ours, which ought to obey reason as its husband, be called life, when through reason itself it has conceived from the word of life the burden of right living; and when, by the childbirth of abstinence, though with pains and groans, resisting bad habit, it has borne good habit for right actions, why should it not be called mother of the living, that is, of right actions, whose opposites are sins, which, as we have shown, can be signified by the name of the dead? For that death which all of us born of Adam began to owe to nature, which God threatened when he gave the commandment that the fruit of the tree should not be eaten—that death is figured in the garments of skin. For they themselves made aprons of fig leaves, and God made them garments of skin: that is, they themselves desired the lust of lying, having left the face of truth, and God changed their bodies into this mortality of flesh, where lying hearts lie hidden. For we must not believe that thoughts could lie hidden in those heavenly bodies as they lie hidden in these bodies; but just as some motions of minds appear in the face, and especially in the eyes, so in that clearness and simplicity of the heavenly bodies I think that no motions of the mind whatever lie hidden. And so those will deserve that dwelling and the change into angelic form who even in this life, though they could hide lies under garments of skin, nevertheless hate them and shun them with a most burning love of truth, and conceal only what those who hear cannot bear, but tell no lies. For the time will come when nothing will even be concealed: for there is nothing hidden that will not be made known (Matt 10:26). They remained in paradise, although already under the sentence of God condemning them, until it came to the garments of skin, that is, to the mortality of this life. For by what greater sign could the death we feel in the body be signified than by skins, which are usually stripped from dead cattle? So since man, against the commandment, desired to be God, not by lawful imitation but by unlawful pride, he was cast down to the mortality of beasts. That is why the divine law mocks him in this way by the mouth of God; by this mockery we are warned to beware of pride as much as we can.

“Behold, Adam has become like one of us in the knowledge of discerning good and evil.” This ambiguous expression makes a figure. For “has become like one of us” can be understood in two ways: either “one of us” as if he too were God, which belongs to the mockery—as one says “one of the senators,” meaning of course a senator; or else it was said “of us” because he too would have been a god, though by the gift of his Creator, not by nature, if he had been willing to remain under his power—as one says “of the consuls,” or “ex-consul,” of one who is no longer consul. But in what respect has he become like one of us? In the knowledge of discerning good and evil, of course: so that he might learn by experience, while he feels evil, what God knows by wisdom; and that he might learn by his punishment that the power of the Almighty, which he refused to bear while happy and consenting, cannot be escaped. “And then, lest Adam stretch out his hand to the tree of life and live forever, God sent him out of paradise.” It was well said, “sent out,” not “shut out,” so that he might seem to be pushed by the very weight of his sins as into a place fitting for him. This is what usually happens to a wicked man when he has begun to live among the good, if he refuses to change for the better: he is driven from that company of the good by the weight of his bad habit, and they do not shut him out against his will, but let him go as he wishes. As for the statement, “Lest Adam stretch out his hand to the tree of life,” this too is an ambiguous expression. For we speak this way when we say, “I warn you lest you do again what you did,” wishing of course that he not do it; and again thus: “I warn you, lest perhaps you may be good,” wishing of course that he be good; that is, I warn you, not despairing that you can be good. So the Apostle speaks when he says: “Lest perhaps God may give them repentance to know the truth.” So it may seem that man was sent into the labors of this life so that he might someday stretch out his hand to the tree of life and live forever. And the stretching out of the hand well signifies the cross, through which eternal life is recovered. But even if we understand “lest he stretch out his hand and live forever” in the other way, it is no unjust punishment that after sin the approach to wisdom was closed, until by God's mercy, in the measures of time, he who was dead comes to life again, and he who was lost is found. So he was sent out of the paradise of delight to work the earth from which he had been taken; that is, to labor in this body, and there, if he could, to lay up for himself the merit of returning. And he dwelt over against paradise in misery, which is indeed the contrary of the happy life. For I think the happy life is signified by the name of paradise.

And God placed the Cherubim and the flaming sword that turns—which could be called by one word “turning”—to guard the way of the tree of life. As those who have interpreted the Hebrew words in the Scriptures would have it, Cherubim is said to mean in Latin “fullness of knowledge.” By the flaming turning sword temporal punishments are understood, since times turn in their revolving. And it is called flaming because every tribulation burns in some way. But it is one thing to be burned to destruction and another to be burned to purification. For the Apostle too says: “Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn?” (2 Cor 11:29). But this feeling purified him rather, because it came from love. And the tribulations which the just suffer belong to this flaming sword: “For gold and silver are tested in fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation” (Sir 2:5). And again: “The furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the trial of tribulation tests just men.” Since, then, “whom God loves he corrects, and he scourges every son whom he receives” (Heb 12:6), as the Apostle says, “knowing that tribulation works patience, and patience proof,” we both read and hear, and must believe, that the fullness of knowledge and the flaming sword guard the tree of life. So no one can reach the tree of life except by these two, that is, by the endurance of troubles and by the fullness of knowledge. But the endurance of troubles must be undergone in this life by almost all who strive toward the tree of life, while the fullness of knowledge seems to come to fewer; so that, as it were, not all who reach the tree of life come by the fullness of knowledge, although all feel the endurance of troubles, that is, the flaming turning sword. But if we attend to what the Apostle says, “But love is the fullness of the law,” and see that this same love is contained in that twofold commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” on which two commandments the whole Law and the Prophets hang, we understand without doubt that one comes to the tree of life not only through the flaming turning sword, that is, through the endurance of temporal troubles, but also through the fullness of knowledge, that is, through love; for “if I do not have love,” he says, “I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2).

But in this discourse I promised a consideration of the things done, which I think has been set out, and then a consideration of the prophecy, which now remains to be set out briefly. For once a kind of plain signpost has been set up by which the rest may be directed, this consideration will not, I think, detain us long. For the Apostle says that what was said is a great mystery: “For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh”; and he himself interprets it by adding, “But I speak in Christ and in the Church” (Eph 5:31–32). So what was fulfilled in history in Adam signifies Christ in prophecy, who left his Father when he said: “I came forth from the Father and have come into this world.” He did not leave him in place, because God is not contained by place, nor by turning away in sin, as apostates leave God; but by appearing to men as a man, when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. This does not signify a change in the nature of God, but the taking up of the nature of a lower person, that is, of a human one. This too is the force of the statement, “He emptied himself” (Phil 2:7): because he did not appear to men in the dignity in which he is with the Father, but accommodated himself to the weakness of those who did not yet have a pure heart, by which the Word could be seen as God with God in the beginning. What then does it mean that we said “he left the Father,” except that he left off appearing to men as he is with the Father? Likewise he also left his mother, that is, the old and carnal observance of the Synagogue, which was his mother from the seed of David according to the flesh; and he cleaved to his wife, that is, to the Church, so that they may be two in one flesh. For the Apostle says that he is the head of the Church, and the Church his body. So he too was put to sleep by the sleep of the passion, so that his wife the Church might be formed for him—the sleep of which he sings through the prophet, saying: “I slept and took my rest, and I rose up, for the Lord upheld me.” So his wife the Church was formed for him from his side, that is, from the faith of the passion and of baptism. For his side, pierced by the lance, poured out blood and water (John 19:34). And he was made, as I said above, from the seed of David according to the flesh, as the Apostle says, that is, as it were from the slime of the earth, when there was no man to work the earth, because no man worked in the Virgin from whom Christ was born. “But a spring went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth.” The face of the earth, that is, the dignity of the earth, is most rightly taken as the mother of the Lord, the Virgin Mary, whom the Holy Spirit watered, who in the Gospel is signified by the name of spring and water; so that from such slime, as it were, that man might be made who was set in paradise to work and to guard it, that is, in the will of the Father, to fulfill and keep it.

For the commandment which he received, we received in him, because every Christian not unfittingly bears the person of Christ, as the Lord himself says: “What you did to one of my least ones, you did to me.” And would that we enjoyed, as was commanded, every tree of paradise, which signifies spiritual delights—“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control,” as the Apostle says—and did not touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil planted in the middle of paradise; that is, would that we did not wish to be proud of our nature, which, as we have already said, is in the middle, and so learn by experience, through being deceived, what difference there is between the simple catholic faith and the deceits of heretics! For that is how we arrive at the discerning of good and evil. “For there must also be heresies,” he says, “so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you” (1 Cor 11:19). For that serpent, according to the prophecy, signifies the poisons of heretics, and above all of these Manichees and of whoever opposes the Old Testament. For I think nothing was foretold more plainly than that these men are to be avoided in that serpent, or rather that he is to be avoided in them. For no one promises the knowledge of good and evil more talkatively and boastfully; and they presume that they will show that discernment in man himself, as in the tree planted in the middle of paradise. And as for the words, “You will be like gods,” who says them more than these men, who, trying by their proud vanity to urge the same pride on others, affirm that the soul is by nature what God is? And to whom does the opening of carnal eyes belong more than to these men, who, having left the inner light of wisdom, compel people to worship this sun, which belongs to the eyes of the body? And all heretics in general deceive by the promise of knowledge, and find fault with those whom they find believing simply; and because they urge altogether carnal things, they try, as it were, to bring people to the opening of carnal eyes, so that the inner eye may be blinded.