On Paradise

Contents

Reading pages: 1–28 · 29–46 · 47–65 · 66–77

1. 1Paradise, which Paul saw and could not describe, is beyond our power to explain, and we should leave it as Paul's secret.
2. 2God himself planted paradise, as Genesis says; the good planting is that of angels and saints.
3. 3Paradise is full of fruitful trees, like the righteous tree of Psalm 1.
4. 4Eden means delight; its river is the Spirit watering the saints in the heavenly Jerusalem.
5. 5The man placed in paradise is man according to the body, not the incorporeal image of God; he awaits the kingdom.
6. 6Paradise is the soul, in which the virtues are planted and the tree of life is wisdom from the Father.
7. 7We should not fault the tree of knowledge, any more than venomous creatures or obscure Scriptures, simply because we do not understand them.
8. 8The tree of knowledge serves the whole, as gall serves the body: without knowledge of evil we could not know the excellence of the good.
9. 9The devil was in paradise by God's permission, and God turns his malice to the good of the saints, as with Job, Joseph and Abraham.
10. 10The devil cannot shut the saints out of heaven; he may tempt but cannot overthrow unless we slip by our own will.
11. 11Ambrose reports the interpretation of an earlier writer: the serpent is pleasure, the woman sense, and the man mind; the wise and foolish virgins represent sense kept whole or corrupted.
12. 12Paradise is the fruitful soul; Adam is the mind and Eve the senses, and the soul has been given aids against danger.
13. 13The spring that waters paradise is Christ, the fountain of life, flowing in the soul and watering its virtues.
14. 14The spring divided into four rivers is wisdom, the source of the four cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice.
15. 15The Pishon, with its gold and gems, signifies prudence, which flows widely and leads the one who has left paradise back to it.
16. 16The Gihon signifies temperance or chastity, shown in the Passover eaten with girded loins, which washes away the passions of the body.
17. 17The swift Tigris signifies fortitude, which takes the body's vices captive and overcomes every obstacle.
18. 18The Euphrates signifies justice, the mother of the virtues, which benefits others; its course is not described because justice is not a part but the whole.
19. 19The first age, from creation to the flood, was the age of prudence, with Abel, Enosh, Enoch and Noah.
20. 20The second age, of the patriarchs, was one of temperance; Isaac, the son of promise, prefigured Christ.
21. 21The third age, of the law and the prophets, was the age of fortitude, shown in the heroes of faith of Hebrews 11.
22. 22The Gospel age is the age of justice, the parent of the virtues; yet the virtues are joined, so that each of the righteous had them all.
23. 23Enosh, Enoch and Noah are the gold, carbuncle and green stone of the Pishon; paradise lies toward the East, that is, toward Christ.
24. 24God took the man into paradise to work and keep it; the man made outside paradise proved better than the woman made inside, which teaches that virtue, not place, wins grace, and that none should presume on himself.
25. 25Working and keeping paradise mean progress in virtue and guarding what is gained; Ambrose contrasts this with Philo's merely moral reading.
26. 26God's command to eat is singular and the prohibition plural, because the good makes for unity, and because God foresaw that the woman would transgress.
27. 27The Septuagint's plural solves the question; Symmachus's singular follows the law's custom of addressing Israel as one, which does not affect the argument.
28. 28Ambrose sets out three objections raised by Apelles about the tree of life, human perfection, and the fear of death.
29. 29Ambrose answers Apelles: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge stood together; God's breath and the tree of life are one gift; and even animals fear death without experiencing it.
30. 30To the objection that knowledge of good and evil is good, Ambrose replies that true knowing is doing what is right; in any case the fault lay in disobeying God's command.
31. 31Adam was not like an innocent child: even without full knowledge of good and evil he knew enough to obey, and so his sin was justly charged to him.
32. 32Even without full knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve knew by nature that God's command was to be obeyed, as Eve's own words to the serpent show.
33. 33Having learned by eating that she had sinned, Eve sinned again by drawing Adam into her sin, perhaps from fear of being expelled alone.
34. 34Knowledge of evil is not itself evil; sin comes from anger, desire or fear. Eve sinned knowingly in giving the fruit to Adam, though some excuse her as wishing not to be parted from him.
35. 35Death came not from the tree or from God but from Adam's disobedience, as a patient who ignores a good physician causes his own death.
36. 36Knowing both good and evil is good only when the knowledge is deep and put into practice; otherwise ignorance is more tolerable.
37. 37The tree of knowledge was not made in vain; like riches and beauty, gifts can harm those who misuse them, and the blame falls on the user, not the giver.
38. 38To those who reject the Old Testament because God commanded Adam knowing he would transgress, Ambrose answers that Christ likewise chose Judas, knowing he would betray him.
39. 39To pagans, Ambrose answers that Christ chose even Judas to show his will to save all; God imposes no necessity of sin, and his law is written by nature on the human heart.
40. 40Against heretics who distinguish the good God from a maker of sinful man, Ambrose shows that their own premises lead to contradiction.
41. 41God is not unjust in permitting evil, since he left remedies through repentance, and grace returns more richly to the one who recovers what he lost.
42. 42The command about eating concerns spiritual food: the bread of angels, which is to do God's will, and Christ the living bread.
43. 43"You shall die the death" is not redundant: Ambrose distinguishes living by life, dying by death, dying by life, and living by death.
44. 44To live by life is the life of virtue; to die by death is the death of body and soul; to die by life is to live in sin; and to live by death is the martyr's way.
45. 45Ambrose distinguishes further kinds of life and death: dying to sin and living to God, the life of animals, the life of the dead before God, and the death of baptism that is life.
46. 46Scripture did not call Adam alone good; only after the woman was made did God see all that he had made as very good.
47. 47Though the woman led the man into sin, she was added for the good of the whole, for the propagation of the race God wished to save, and from her line came Christ.
48. 48The woman was made from Adam's rib to show the one nature of the human race; she is a good helper in generation, like the earth that nourishes seed.
49. 49God brought the wild beasts and birds to Adam, who could gather the tame cattle himself, so that Adam might see that all nature consists of male and female and that he needed a wife.
50. 50Adam's sleep figures the mind's turning toward the world in entering marriage; the woman was "built" because man and woman together make a complete house.
51. 51Many take paradise as the soul, the man as the mind, the beasts and birds as passions and idle thoughts; only sense was found as a helper like the mind.
52. 52God gave man dominion and sense to judge all things, but man, frail in judgment, should have obeyed; having claimed judgment for himself, he bears the penalty of judging wrongly.
53. 53Placed opposite paradise to keep its memory, man may be caught up to it, as Paul was, by ascending from the bodily to the spiritual, as the penitent thief entered it with Christ.
54. 54The serpent's wisdom is either pleasure or the devil, who out of envy at man's hope of heaven attacked Adam through the woman, who had learned the command only from Adam.
55. 55The devil tempts in many ways: by false wisdom, by feigned friendship, and by open struggle, which Paul resisted like a good athlete.
56. 56The serpent twisted God's command, and the woman added "nor touch it"; nothing may be added to or taken from God's commands, and Ambrose thinks the fault began with the woman.
57. 57God neither commanded nor forbade touching the tree: we should not touch evil, yet it helps to know things before we take them, as with bitter medicine.
58. 58As a catechumen must test what heretical teachers such as Photinus, Arius and Sabellius read to him, so Scripture must be handled carefully; Adam and Eve should first have examined the tree.
59. 59Some think the tree was forbidden only if eaten alone, as theriac is made harmless by mixing; Ambrose notes the woman's words against this, but does not deny that Adam had some virtue, as children have an innocence Christ praised.
60. 60Ambrose holds the tree was forbidden entirely, since knowledge of good and evil is useless to the imperfect, as Paul's struggle with sin shows; God foresaw the whole race in Adam.
61. 61The devil's promises were lies, except that their eyes were opened, a truth that harmed; his promise "you will be like gods" was the beginning of idolatry.
62. 62Eve judged the fruit good without tasting it; Scripture passes over how Adam was deceived, since he fell through his wife.
63. 63Their eyes were opened to see that they had lost not clothing but the covering of virtue and simplicity, and they covered themselves with the leaves of worldly pleasures.
64. 64The fig leaves stand for the sinner's choice of leaves rather than fruit; Adam lacked the fruit of the Spirit.
65. 65The sinner covers himself with fig leaves of excuses, blaming the devil, the flesh, or others, or citing the sins of the saints while ignoring Scripture's fruit.
66. 66A merely bodily interpretation of the law is like barren leaves; spiritual interpretation is a fruitful fig tree.
67. 67Adam girded his loins with useless leaves instead of chastity; after Christ came, we are girded with the divine word.
68. 68God's walking in the evening is his presence in the Scriptures, heard by the sinner who comes late to shame and tries to hide in his conscience from the God who searches hearts.
69. 69God speaks not with a bodily voice but by a higher power that the faithful hear and the ungodly do not understand.
70. 70"Where are you?" is not a question about place but a rebuke about Adam's state; that God calls is a sign that he will heal those who hide in shame.
71. 71Eve's confession made her fault pardonable and her sentence healing, unlike Cain, who lied to God and was left to the devil's judgment.
72. 72Because Eve confessed, her sentence, to turn to and serve her husband, was mild and beneficial; it prefigures the church's service to Christ, and service in charity is a blessing.
73. 73The serpent stands for bodily delight, the woman for sense, the man for mind; they are condemned in the order in which sin spreads from delight to mind.
74. 74The serpent's going on its belly and eating dust figures delight and gluttony; God foretold rather than imposed its fate, and we should feed our souls on God's word, not on earthly things.
75. 75Unlike the serpent, Adam is to eat earth "in sorrow"; godly sorrow leads to repentance and salvation, as the groaning Hebrews in Egypt received spiritual food.
76. 76Earth, grass and bread mark stages from wickedness through progress to perfection; Paul reached the bread, Christ living in him.
77. 77Not man but the serpent is cursed; the earth is cursed in our works, bearing thorns unless tilled, and by labour we eat bread and reap what we sow.