On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.5–2.14

“For a spring went up,” it says, “from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth.” From the earth, that is, of which it is said: “You are my hope, my portion in the land of the living.” When the soul was watered by such a spring, it had not yet cast out its inward parts through pride. For “the beginning of man's pride is to apostatize from God.” And since, swelling outward through pride, it began not to be watered by the inner spring, it is fittingly taunted in the words of the prophet: “Why is earth and ashes proud? For in its life it has cast out its inward parts.” For what is pride but wanting, having deserted the inner sanctuary of conscience, to seem outwardly what one is not? And so, laboring now on the earth, it needs rain from the clouds, that is, teaching from human words, so that even in this way it may grow green again from that dryness and once more become the green thing of the field. But would that it at least gladly received the rain of truth from those clouds! For on account of it our Lord deigned to take on the cloud of our flesh, and poured out the most abundant rain of the holy Gospel, promising also that if anyone drinks of his water, he will return to that inner spring, so that he will not seek rain from outside. For he says: “There shall be in him a spring of water leaping up to eternal life.” This spring, I believe, went up from the earth before sin and watered the whole face of the earth, because it was inward and did not need the help of clouds: “For God had not yet rained upon the earth, and there was no man to work it.” For when he had said, “For God had not yet rained upon the earth,” he also gave the reason why he had not yet rained: because there was no man to work it. But man began to work on the earth when, after sin, he was sent away from the happy life that he enjoyed in paradise. For so it is written: “And the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of delight, to work the earth from which he had been taken”: which we shall examine in its place. I have mentioned it now so that we may understand that for man laboring on the earth, that is, placed in the dryness of sins, divine teaching through human words is necessary, like rain from the clouds. But such knowledge will be destroyed. For now we see in an enigma, seeking nourishment as in a cloud; but then face to face, when the whole face of our earth will be watered by the inner spring of leaping water. For if we chose to understand some spring of this visible water, of which it was said, “But a spring went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth,” it is not likely that, when so many perennial springs, whether of streams or of rivers, are found throughout the whole earth, only that one dried up which watered the whole face of the earth.

Under these few words, then, the whole creation has been made known to us before the soul's sin. For by the name of heaven and earth the whole visible creation is signified; and by the name of day, all time; and by the name of the green things and the grass of the field, the invisible creation; and by the name of the spring going up and watering the whole face of the earth, the flood of truth satisfying the soul before sin. But this day, by whose name we said all time is signified, suggests to us that not only the visible but also the invisible creation can experience time: which is made plain to us in the case of the soul, which, by the great variety of its affections, and by the very fall by which it became wretched, and by the restoration by which it returns again to happiness, is shown to be capable of change in time. And so it was not said only, “When the day was made on which God made heaven and earth,” by which names the visible creation is indicated; but there was added also “the green thing and the grass of the field,” by which name we said the invisible creation is signified, on account of vigor and life, such as the soul is. And so it was said, “When the day was made on which God made heaven and earth and every green thing and the grass of the field,” so that we might understand that not only the visible but also the invisible creation belongs to time, on account of its changeableness; because God alone, who is before times, is unchangeable.

Now, after the introduction of the whole creation, visible as well as invisible, and of the universal benefit of the divine spring toward the invisible creation, let us see what is made known about man in particular, which concerns us most. First, the statement that God formed man from the slime of the earth usually raises the question what kind of slime that was, or what matter is signified by the name of slime. The enemies of the Old Books, who look at everything carnally and therefore always err, also bitingly find fault with this, that God formed man from slime. For they say: “Why did God make man from slime? Did he lack a better, heavenly matter from which to make man, that he formed him so fragile and mortal out of earthly filth?” They do not understand, first, in how many senses either earth or water is used in the Scriptures; for slime is a mixture of water and earth. For we say that the human body began to be wasting, fragile, and destined for death after sin. In our body these people shrink from nothing but the mortality which we deserved by condemnation. But what is wonderful or difficult for God, even if he made man from the slime of this earth, in making his body such that it would not be subject to corruption, if man had kept God's commandment and refused to sin? For if we say that the beauty of heaven itself was made from nothing, or from formless matter, because we believe in an almighty craftsman, what wonder is it if a body made from slime of whatever kind could be made by the almighty craftsman such that no trouble and no want would torment man before sin, and that it would waste away by no corruption? So it is superfluous to ask from what God made man's body, if indeed the formation of the body is spoken of here. For I have learned that some of our people understand it so. They say that after it was said, “God formed man from the slime of the earth,” the words “to his image and likeness” were not added because here the formation of the body is spoken of; whereas the inner man was signified when it was said, “God made man to the image and likeness of God.” But even if we understand that here too man is meant as made of body and soul, so that this passage sets out not the beginning of some new work but a more careful going-over of what was briefly introduced above—if, I say, we understand man in this place as made of body and soul, it is not absurd that this very mixture received the name of slime. For just as water gathers, glues, and holds earth together when slime is made by mixing with it, so the soul, by giving life to the matter of the body, shapes it into a harmonious unity and does not allow it to slip away and dissolve.

As for what is written, “And he breathed into him the breath of life, and man was made into a living soul”: if until then he was only a body, we ought to understand in this place that the soul was joined to the body. Either it had already been made but was, as it were, in the mouth of God, that is, in his truth or wisdom—from which it nevertheless did not withdraw, as though separated by place, when it was breathed in, for God is not contained by place but is present everywhere; or the soul was made at the moment when God breathed the breath of life into the thing he had formed, so that the breathing signifies the very working of God by which he made the soul in man by the Spirit of his power. But if the man who had been made was already body and soul, sensation was added to the soul itself by that breathing, when man was made into a living soul: not that the breathing was turned into a living soul, but that it worked upon the living soul. Still, we should not yet understand the man who was made into a living soul as spiritual, but as still animal. For he was made spiritual when, set in paradise, that is, in the happy life, he also received a commandment of perfection, so that he might be made perfect by the word of God. And so, after he sinned by departing from God's commandment and was sent out of paradise, he remained in this state: he was animal. And therefore all of us who were born of him after sin first live the animal life, until we attain the spiritual Adam, that is, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did no sin; and, re-created and given life by him, we are restored to paradise, where that thief deserved to be with him on the very day on which he ended this life. For so the Apostle says: “But it is not the spiritual that comes first, but the animal, as it is written: The first Adam was made into a living soul, the last Adam into a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:44–46). So we ought to understand this place in such a way that, because it was said, “He breathed into him the breath of life, and man was made into a living soul,” we do not believe that a part, as it were, of the nature of God was turned into the soul of man, and are not forced to say that the nature of God is changeable. In this error above all the truth presses hard on these Manichees. For since pride is the mother of all heretics, they have dared to say that the soul is the nature of God. And so they are pressed by us when we say to them: “Then the nature of God errs and is wretched, and is corrupted by the stain of vices, and sins; or even, as you say, it is defiled by the filth of the contrary nature”—and the other such things that it is impious to believe about the nature of God. For that the soul was made by almighty God, and therefore is not a part of God or the nature of God, is plainly written in another place, where the prophet says, “And he who formed the spirit for all, he made all things”; and in another place, “Who formed the spirit of man within him.” So these testimonies plainly prove that the spirit of man was made. Now in the Scriptures “the spirit of man” means the rational power of the soul itself, by which it differs from the beasts and by the law of nature rules over them. Of it the Apostle says: “No one knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him.” I cite these lest, if it were proved by these testimonies that the soul was made, there should still be some who would say that the spirit of man was not made, and would suppose it to be the nature of God, and say that a part of God was turned into it when God's breathing took place. Sound doctrine rejects this likewise, because the spirit of man too, when at one time it errs and at another is wise and prudent, cries out that it is changeable—which it is in no way lawful to believe of the nature of God. And there can be no greater sign of pride than for a human soul to say that it is what God is, while it still groans under such great burdens of vices and miseries.

Now let us look at man's happiness itself, which is signified by the name of paradise. For since people's pleasant rest is usually found in groves, and for our bodily senses the light rises from the east, and the sky rises up, which is a body higher and more excellent than our body, therefore by these words too the spiritual delights which the happy life holds are figuratively set out, and paradise is planted in the east. Let us understand, then, that our spiritual joys are signified by every tree beautiful to the sight of the understanding and good for the food that does not perish, on which happy souls feed; for the Lord too says, “Work for the food that does not perish”—such as is every rational principle, which is the food of the soul. “In the east”: the light of wisdom; “in Eden,” that is, in immortal and intelligible delights. For this word is said to signify delights, or pleasure, or a banquet, if it is translated from Hebrew into Latin. But it has been set down untranslated, so that it seems to signify some place and makes the expression more figurative. By every tree brought forth from the earth we understand all spiritual joy, which rises above the earth and is not entangled and buried in the snares of earthly desires. The tree of life planted in the middle of paradise signifies that wisdom by which the soul must understand that it has been set in a kind of midpoint of things: although it has all bodily nature subject to it, it must understand that the nature of God is above it, and turn neither to the right, by claiming for itself what it is not, nor to the left, by despising through negligence what it is. This is the tree of life planted in the middle of paradise. By the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, likewise, the soul's middle position itself and its ordered integrity are signified; for that tree too was planted in the middle of paradise. And it is called the tree of discerning good and evil because, if the soul, which ought to stretch out to the things that are ahead, that is, to God, and to forget the things that are behind, that is, bodily pleasures, should desert God and turn toward itself and wish to enjoy its own power as if without God, it swells with pride, which is the beginning of all sin. And when punishment has followed this sin, it learns by experience what difference there is between the good it deserted and the evil into which it fell. And this will be for it to have tasted of the fruit of the tree of discerning good and evil. So it is commanded to eat of every tree that is in paradise, but not to eat of the tree in which is the discerning of good and evil; that is, not to enjoy it in such a way that, as if by eating, it violates and corrupts the ordered integrity of its own nature.

The river that went out from Eden, that is, from delights and pleasure and banquets—the river signified by the prophet in the Psalms when he says, “You will give them drink from the torrent of your pleasure,” for Eden is what in Latin is called pleasure—is divided into four parts and signifies four virtues: prudence, fortitude, temperance, justice. Now the Phison is said to be the Ganges, and the Geon the Nile, which can also be noticed in the prophet Jeremiah; now they are called by other names, just as the river now called the Tiber was formerly called the Albula. The Tigris and the Euphrates keep the same names even now; yet by these names, as I said, spiritual virtues are signified, as the interpretation of the names themselves also teaches, if one examines the Hebrew or Syriac language. Just so, Jerusalem, although it is a visible and earthly place, nevertheless signifies spiritually the city of peace; and Sion, although it is a mountain on the earth, nevertheless signifies contemplation, and this name is often carried over in the allegories of the Scriptures to the understanding of spiritual things; and the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, as the Lord says, and was wounded on the road and left by robbers injured and half dead, certainly compels us to understand these places spiritually, although according to the history they are found on earth. Prudence, then, signifies the very contemplation of truth, remote from every human mouth because it is ineffable: if you try to utter it, you are in labor with it rather than giving birth to it; for there the Apostle too heard ineffable words which it is not lawful for a man to speak. This prudence, then, goes around the land that has gold, and carbuncle, and the leek-green stone: that is, the discipline of living, which shines as though refined from all earthly filth, like the finest gold; and truth, which no falsehood overcomes, as the glow of the carbuncle is not overcome by night; and eternal life, which is signified by the greenness of the leek-green stone, because of its vigor that does not wither. The river that goes around the land of Ethiopia, very hot and burning, signifies fortitude, eager and unwearied in the heat of action. The third, the Tigris, goes against the Assyrians and signifies temperance, which resists lust, the great opponent of the counsels of prudence; that is why in the Scriptures the Assyrians are often put in the place of adversaries. Of the fourth river it was not said against what it goes or what land it goes around: for justice belongs to all the parts of the soul, because it is the very order and equity of the soul, by which these three are joined together in harmony—first prudence, second fortitude, third temperance—and in this whole joining and ordering is justice.

That man was set in paradise to work and to guard it: that work, being praiseworthy, was not laborious. For work in paradise is one thing, and work on the earth, to which he was condemned after sin, another. From the addition “and to guard it” it was signified what sort of work that was. For in the tranquillity of the happy life, where there is no death, the whole work is to guard what you hold. He also receives the commandment which we have already discussed above. Since this commandment ends in such a way that it does not speak to one person—for it says, “But on the day you eat, you shall die the death”—Scripture begins to explain how woman was made. And she is said to have been made as a helper for the man, so that by spiritual union she might bring forth spiritual offspring, that is, good works of divine praise, while he rules and she obeys; he is ruled by wisdom, she by the man. “For the head of the man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man.” And therefore it is said: “It is not good for the man to be alone.” For something still remained to be done: that not only should the soul rule the body, since the body holds the place of a servant, but also that manly reason should subject to itself its animal part, by which helper it would command the body. As an example of this the woman was made, whom the order of things subjects to the man, so that what appears more evidently in two human beings, that is, in the male and the female, could also be observed in one human being: that the inner mind, like manly reason, should hold in subjection the soul's appetite, by which we act through the members of the body, and should by a just law set a limit on its helper, as the husband ought to rule the wife and not allow her to rule over the husband; where that happens, the household is perverse and wretched. First, then, God showed man how much better he was than the cattle and all irrational living things; and this is what is signified by the statement that all living things were brought to him so that he might see what he would call them and give them names. For from this it is plain that by reason itself man is better than the cattle, because only reason, which judges them, can distinguish them and tell them apart by name. But this is an easy reasoning, for man quickly understands that he is better than the cattle; the difficult reasoning is that by which he understands that within himself there is one thing, rational, which rules, and another, animal, which is ruled.

And since man sees these things by a more hidden wisdom, I think that this hidden vision is signified by the name of the deep sleep which God sent upon Adam when the woman was made for him. For to see this there is no need of these bodily eyes; but the more anyone withdraws from these visible things into the inner regions of the understanding (and this is, as it were, to fall asleep), the better and more purely he sees it. For the very knowledge by which it is understood that there is in us one thing that rules by reason and another that obeys reason—that knowledge is, as it were, the making of the woman from the man's rib, to signify their union. Next, for each person to rule this part of himself rightly and to become, as it were, married within himself, so that the flesh does not lust against the spirit but is subjected to the spirit—that is, so that carnal desire does not oppose reason but rather, by obeying, ceases to be carnal—there is need of perfect wisdom. Because the contemplation of it is inward and more hidden, and most remote from every bodily sense, it can fittingly also be understood by the name of sleep. For the man is then most rightly the head of the woman when the head of the man is Christ, who is the Wisdom of God. He filled up the place of that rib with flesh, so that by this name might be suggested the affection of love by which each one loves his own soul and is not so hard as to despise it; for each one loves what he governs. Flesh is not named in this place to signify carnal desire, but rather in the way that the prophet says the heart of stone is taken away from the people and a heart of flesh is given. In this way the Apostle too says: “Not on tablets of stone, but on fleshly tablets of the heart.” For a proper expression is one thing, a figurative one another, such as this one we are now discussing. Therefore, even if according to the history the visible woman was first made by the Lord God from the body of the man, she was certainly not made so without cause, but in order to make known some secret. For was there any lack of slime from which the woman could be formed? Or, if the Lord had wished, could he not have taken a rib from the man while he was awake, without pain? So whether these things were said figuratively, or even done figuratively, they were not said or done in this way in vain; but they are plainly mysteries and sacraments, to be interpreted and understood either in the way our slender ability attempts or in some other, better way, but always according to sound faith.

So the man named his woman, as the stronger names the weaker, and said: “This now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Bone of bones, perhaps because of fortitude; and flesh of flesh, because of temperance. For these two virtues are taught to belong to the lower part of the mind, which rational prudence rules. As for the statement, “She shall be called woman, because she was taken from her man,” this origin and explanation of the name does not appear in the Latin language. For no likeness is found between the name mulier and the name vir. But in the Hebrew idiom it is said to sound as if it said: “She shall be called virago, because she was taken from her vir.” For virago, or rather virgo, has some likeness to the name vir; mulier has none; but this, as I said, is caused by the difference of languages. As for the addition, “A man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh,” I do not find how it refers to the history, except that such things commonly happen in the human race; but it is wholly a prophecy, which the Apostle recalls, saying: “For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh. This is a great mystery; but I speak in Christ and in the Church.” If the Manichees, who deceive many through the apostolic letters, read this without blindness, they would understand how the Scriptures of the Old Testament are to be taken, and would not dare with such sacrilegious voices to accuse what they do not know. That Adam and his woman were naked and were not ashamed signifies the simplicity and chastity of the soul. For the Apostle too says: “I have betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity that is in Christ.”

The serpent signifies the devil, who certainly was not simple. For when he is said to be wiser than all the beasts, his cunning is figuratively suggested. It was not said that the serpent was in paradise, but that the serpent was among the beasts which God made. For paradise signifies the happy life, as I said above, in which the serpent no longer was, because he was already the devil and had fallen from his happiness, because he did not stand in the truth. Nor should one wonder how he could speak to the woman, since she was in paradise and he was not. For either she was in paradise not according to place but rather according to the disposition of happiness; or, even if there is such a place called paradise, in which Adam and the woman dwelt bodily, must we understand the devil's approach also as bodily? Certainly not, but spiritually, as the Apostle says: “According to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of unbelief.” Does he, then, appear to them visibly, or approach those in whom he works as if through bodily places? Certainly not; but in marvelous ways he suggests whatever he can through thoughts. These suggestions are resisted by those who truly say what the Apostle also says: “For we are not ignorant of his wiles.” For how did he approach Judas when he persuaded him to betray the Lord? Was it through places, or was he seen by him with these eyes? No, but, as was said, he entered into his heart. And a man repels him if he guards paradise. For God placed man in paradise to work and to guard it; for so it is said of the Church in the Song of Songs, “A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed,” into which that persuader to perversity is certainly not admitted. Yet he deceives through the woman; for our reason cannot be led to consent to sin unless delight has been stirred in that part of the mind which ought to obey reason as its ruling husband. Even now, in each one of us, when anyone slips into sin, nothing else takes place than what happened then in those three, the serpent, the woman, and the man. For first comes the suggestion, whether through thought or through the senses of the body, by seeing, touching, hearing, tasting, or smelling. When that suggestion has been made, if our desire is not moved to sin, the cunning of the serpent will be shut out; but if it is moved, it will be as though the woman had already been persuaded. But sometimes reason manfully reins in and checks even a desire that has been stirred. When this happens, we do not slip into sin, but are crowned after some struggle. But if reason consents, and decides that what lust has stirred is to be done, man is expelled from all happy life as from paradise. For sin is already imputed, even if the deed does not follow, since the conscience is held guilty in its consent.