Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 37 part 24/28

This whole utterance is figurative, and the writer's trustworthiness and the truth of the narrative owe nothing more to it than that we should not doubt that it was indeed spoken. For what is set down, namely, 'And the Lord God said to the serpent,' these are the words of the one writing; these are to be required according to their literal propriety. It is therefore true that this was said to the serpent. But now the remaining words are God's, and these are left to the free understanding of the reader, whether they ought to be taken properly or figuratively, just as we set forth at the opening of this our volume.

Accordingly, as to the fact that the serpent was not asked why it had done this, it can appear to be because it was assuredly not the serpent itself that had done this in its own nature and will, but the devil who had worked out of it, through it, and in it — the devil who by reason of the sin of his impiety and by the fire of his pride had already been consigned to everlasting punishment. Now therefore, what is said to the serpent, and refers to the one who worked through the serpent, is beyond doubt figurative; for by these words that tempter is described, such as he was to be to the human race — that human race which began then to be propagated, when this sentence was pronounced against the devil as against the serpent.

How these words are to be understood, with their figures explained, we have discussed as best we could both here and in those two books on Genesis published against the Manichaeans; and if we shall at some other time be able to do so more carefully and more fittingly, God will be at hand to help us accomplish it. Yet now our purpose must not be turned aside into anything other than what we have undertaken, since nothing compels it. 'And to the woman He said: Multiplying I will multiply your sorrows and your groaning; in sorrows you shall bring forth children, and your turning shall be toward your husband, and he shall rule over you.' These words of God against the woman also are much more suitably understood figuratively and prophetically. And yet.

Because the woman had not yet given birth, and the pain and groaning of childbearing come only from the body of death — which was conceived by that transgression of the precept, while the members were indeed even then animal, yet, had man not sinned, they would surely not have been destined to die, but to live in some happier state, until after a life well spent they might deserve to be changed for the better (as we have already intimated above in several places) — this penalty is referred also to the literal propriety of the letter, except that, as for what is said, 'and your turning shall be toward your husband, and he shall rule over you,' it must be considered how this can be taken properly. For it is not fitting to believe that the woman was made otherwise even before the sin than that the man should rule over her and that she herself should turn toward him by serving.

But it can rightly be taken that what is here signified is that servitude which is of a certain condition rather than of love, so that even this kind of servitude, by which men afterwards began to be slaves to men, is found to have arisen from the penalty of sin. The Apostle indeed said, 'Through charity serve one another'; but he would by no means say, 'Rule over one another.' Spouses, then, can serve one another through charity; but the Apostle does not permit the woman to rule over the man. For God's sentence assigned this rather to the man, and it was not nature but fault that made the woman deserve to have the man as her lord — which nevertheless, unless it be observed, will corrupt nature yet more and increase the fault. He therefore said also to her husband:

'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which alone I had commanded you not to eat, cursed is the earth in your works; in sorrows you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you, and you shall eat the grass of the 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 the earth you shall go.' Who does not know that these are the labors of the human race upon the earth? And that they would not exist, if the happiness that had been in paradise were retained, is surely not to be doubted; and therefore let there be no reluctance to take these words also, first of all, in their proper sense. Yet the signification of the prophecy must nonetheless be preserved and awaited, which especially the intention of God as He speaks has in view here.

For it was not without purpose that Adam himself, too, by some marvelous instinct then called the name of his wife 'Life,' adding also: 'because she is the mother of all the living.' For these words also are to be understood not as those of the writer narrating or affirming, but as the words of the first man himself, so that he said, 'because she is the mother of all the living,' as though giving the reason for the name he had imposed, why he called her 'Life.' 'And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife tunics of skins, and clothed them.' This too was done for the sake of signification, yet was truly done — just as those things which were said for the sake of signification were nonetheless truly said.

For this — which I have often said and am not too weary to say more often — is to be required of a narrator of things properly done, namely that he narrate that those things were done which were done, and that those things were said which were said. But just as in deeds one inquires both what was done and what it signifies, so in words one inquires both what was said and what it signifies. For whether what is narrated to have been said was said figuratively or properly, it must nevertheless not be thought that the saying itself was figurative. 'And God said: Behold, Adam has become as one of us in knowing good and evil.' Since this, however and in whatever manner it was said, God nevertheless said, what He says is to be understood no otherwise:

'one of us' — unless the plural number be taken on account of the Trinity, just as it had been said, 'Let us make man,' and just as the Lord also says concerning Himself and the Father: 'We will come to him and make our dwelling with him.' It is therefore turned back upon the head of the proud one, to what an outcome he had desired what was suggested by the serpent: 'and you shall be as gods.' 'Behold,' He says, 'Adam has become as one of us.' For these are the words of God, not so much insulting this man as deterring the rest, lest they be thus proud — those for whose sake these things have been written down. 'He has become,' He says, 'as one of us in knowing good and evil.'

What else is to be understood but that an example is set forth for instilling fear — namely that he not only did not become such as he wished to become, but did not even preserve that which he had been made? 'And now,' God says, 'lest at some time he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and eat and live forever.' 'And the Lord God sent him away from the paradise of delight, to till the earth from which he was taken.' The earlier words are God's; but this deed followed on account of those very words. For, alienated from that life — not only the life he would have received with the angels had he kept the precept, but also from that life which he was leading in paradise in a certain happy state of the body — he surely had to be separated from the tree of life.

Whether it was that that happy state of the body itself subsisted for him from a visible thing by an invisible power, or that in it there was also a visible sacrament of invisible wisdom, he certainly had to be alienated from thence, either as now about to die or even as one excommunicated — just as also in this paradise, that is, the Church, men are wont by ecclesiastical discipline to be removed from the visible sacraments of the altar. 'And He cast out Adam and set him over against the paradise of delight.' This too was done for the sake of signifying, yet was truly done, so that over against the paradise, by which the blessed life was signified also spiritually, the sinner should dwell — in misery, of course. 'And He stationed the Cherubim and a flaming sword, which turns, to guard the way of the tree of life.'

It is to be believed that this too was accomplished through the heavenly powers even in the visible paradise, so that through angelic ministry there was there a certain fiery guard; yet that it was not done in vain, but because it signifies something also concerning the spiritual paradise, is surely not to be doubted. However, I am not unaware that it has seemed to some that those human beings, by haste, anticipated the appetite for the knowledge of good and evil and wished to grasp at an unripe time what was more opportunely reserved for them if deferred; and that the tempter did this so that, by plucking prematurely what was not yet suited to such as they, they might offend God and, being shut out, condemned, and estranged, be alienated from the usefulness of that thing — a thing which, if in its own time, as God willed, they had approached, they could have enjoyed to their profit.

This view, if perhaps they be willing to take that tree not in its proper sense, as a real tree with real fruit, but figuratively, may have some outcome acceptable to sound faith and truth. It has also seemed to some that those two first human beings stole their nuptials and were joined in intercourse before He who had created them had united them; and that this was what was signified by the name of the tree, from which they had been forbidden, until at the opportune time they should be joined. As though indeed they are to be believed to have been made at such an age that the maturity of puberty had to be awaited, or that what was done then was not lawful, though it might be done at the first moment it could be done — whereas, when it could not be done, it would surely not be done!

unless perhaps the bride had to be handed over by her father, and the solemnity of vows had to be awaited, and the festivity of the banquet, and the assessment of the dowry, and the writing of the marriage tablets. This is ridiculous — besides the fact that it departs from the propriety of things done, which we undertook to maintain and, as far as God has willed to grant, have maintained. That other point moves me more: if Adam was already spiritual, though in mind, not in body, how could he have believed what was said through the serpent — that God had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of that tree for this reason, that He knew they would become as gods, if they did so, on account of their discernment of good and evil, as though the Creator had begrudged His creature only this good? It would be marvelous if a man endowed with a spiritual mind could have believed this.

Or was it because he himself could not believe this that the woman was added — she who was of small understanding and perhaps lived as yet according to the sense of the flesh, not according to the spirit of the mind? And is this why the Apostle does not attribute to her the image of God? For thus he says: 'The man indeed ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man.' Not that the mind of the woman cannot receive the same image, since he tells us that in that grace there is neither male nor female; but because perhaps she had not yet perceived that which comes about in the knowledge of God, and, with the man ruling and dispensing, was gradually to have perceived it. For it was not without purpose either that the Apostle said: 'For Adam was formed first, then Eve.'

'And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, fell into transgression' — that is, so that through her the man too transgressed. For he calls even the man himself a transgressor, where he says, 'after the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a figure of Him who was to come'; yet he denies that he was deceived. For, when questioned, Adam did not say, 'The woman whom you gave to be with me deceived me, and I ate,' but 'She herself gave me of the tree, and I ate'; whereas she said, 'The serpent deceived me.' So Solomon, a man of such great wisdom — is it by any means to be believed that he thought there was any usefulness in the worship of idols?

But he was not strong enough to resist the love of women that drew him to this evil, doing what he knew ought not to be done, lest he should sadden those deadly delights by which he was perishing and dissolving. So too Adam, after the woman, having been deceived, had eaten of the forbidden tree and given to him, that they might eat together, was unwilling to sadden her, whom he believed capable of wasting away without his consolation, if she were estranged from his mind, and of perishing utterly in that discord — not, indeed, overcome by concupiscence of the flesh, which he had not yet felt in the law of the members resisting the law of his mind, but by a certain friendly benevolence, by which it very often happens that God is offended, lest a man be made an enemy out of a friend:

and that he ought not to have done this, the just outcome of the divine sentence made clear. Therefore in some other manner he too was deceived; but by that serpentine guile, by which the woman was seduced, I judge that he could in no way have been seduced. Now the Apostle properly called this 'seduction,' by which what was being urged, though it was false, was thought true — namely, that God had forbidden them to touch that tree for this reason, because He knew that if they touched it they would become as it were gods, as though He begrudged divinity to those whom He had made men. But even if some desire of experiencing solicited the man on account of some elevation of mind —

that elevation which could not lie hidden from God, the searcher of the inward parts, when he saw that the woman, having received that food, had not died, according to those things which we treated above — yet I do not judge that he, if he was already endowed with a spiritual mind, could in any way have believed that God had forbidden them from that food of that tree out of envy. But why say more? That sin was made persuasive, in such wise as could be persuasive to such persons; and it was written down, in such wise as it behooved to be read by all, even though these things were understood by few, as it behooved. THE TWELFTH BOOK.

From the very beginning of Holy Scripture, which is entitled Genesis, down to the point where the first man was sent away from paradise, we have in eleven books, whether by asserting and defending what is certain to us, or by inquiring, judging, and doubting about uncertain matters — as far as we could and in the way that we could — discussed and written, not so much prescribing to each reader what he should think about obscure things, as showing that we ourselves needed instruction in the matters wherein we doubted, and removing from the reader the rashness of affirming, where we were not able to furnish the firmness of knowledge.

But this twelfth book, now freed from that care by which the text of the sacred writings, to be examined, occupied us, will treat more freely and at greater length the question of paradise, lest we be thought to have avoided what the Apostle seems to intimate concerning paradise in the third heaven, where he says: 'I know a man in Christ fourteen years ago — whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knows — caught up in this manner even to the third heaven. And I know such a man — whether in the body or out of the body I know not, God knows — that he was caught up into paradise and heard ineffable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.'

In these words it is customarily asked, first, what he means by 'the third heaven,' then, whether he meant paradise to be understood there, or whether, after he was caught up into the third heaven, he was caught up also into paradise — wherever paradise may be — so that being caught up into the third heaven was not the same thing as being caught up into paradise, but first into the third heaven and afterwards from there into paradise.

And this is so ambiguous that it does not seem to me that it can be resolved, unless someone should find something — not from the present words of the Apostle, but perhaps from other passages of the Scriptures or by clear reasoning — by which he might show either that paradise is in the third heaven or that it is not; since even what the third heaven itself is does not appear plainly, whether it is to be understood among corporeal things or perhaps among spiritual ones. It could indeed be said that a man could be caught up with his body only into some corporeal place; but because he also set this down in such a way as to say that he did not know whether he was caught up in the body or out of the body, who would dare to say that he knows what the Apostle said he did not know?

Yet if neither can a spirit without a body be caught up to corporeal places, nor a body to spiritual ones, this very doubt of his as it were compels us to understand — since no one doubts that he wrote these things about himself — that that into which he was caught up was of such a kind that it could not be discerned or distinguished whether it was corporeal or spiritual. For when, whether in dreams or in ecstasy, images of bodies are represented, they are not at all distinguished from bodies, except when a man, restored to the senses of his body, recognizes that he was among those images which he was not drawing in through the senses of the body.

For who, when he has awakened from sleep, does not at once perceive that the things he was seeing were imaginary — although, while he saw them sleeping, he could not distinguish them from the corporeal sights of the waking? And yet I know it has happened to me, and I do not doubt that on this account it could or can happen to others also, that seeing in dreams I would perceive in dreams that I was seeing, and that those images, which are wont to mock our very assent, were not real bodies, but that they were presented in dreams — this I held and perceived most firmly, even while asleep. Yet I was sometimes deceived in this, that to a friend of mine, whom likewise —

I was seeing in dreams — I would try to persuade of this very thing, that those were not bodies which we were seeing, but images of dreamers, though he too assuredly appeared to me among those things just as they did; to whom nevertheless I even said this, that it was not true, what we were saying together, but that he himself too was then, while sleeping, seeing something else, and that I did not know at all whether he was seeing these things that I was. But when I strove to persuade this very one that he himself did not exist, I was in part led even to think that he did exist — to whom, assuredly, I would not be speaking, if I were in every way affected in such a way as to believe that he did not exist. Thus the soul of the sleeper, however marvelously awake, could not but be led by the images of bodies, as if they were bodies themselves.

But in ecstasy I have been able to hear of one instance — and that from a rustic scarcely able to express what he felt — who knew both that he was awake and that he was seeing something not with the eyes of the body. For, to use his own words, as far as I can recall, he said: 'My soul saw him, not my eyes; yet I did not know whether it was a body or the image of a body.' For he was not such as could discern these things, yet he was simply faithful, so that I listened to him as if I myself had seen that which he related himself to have seen.

And on this account, if Paul so saw paradise as that dish let down from heaven appeared to Peter, as whatever John wrote that he saw in the Apocalypse, as to Ezekiel that field with the bones of the dead and their resurrection, as to Isaiah God seated and in His sight the Seraphim and the altar from which the coal was taken that cleansed the prophet's lips — then it is manifest that he could have been ignorant whether he saw these things in the body or out of the body.

But if they were seen out of the body and were not bodies, it can still be asked whether they were images of bodies, or that substance which bears no likeness of body — as God is, as the very mind of man, or intelligence, or reason, as the virtues: prudence, justice, chastity, charity, piety, and whatever others there are, which by understanding and thinking we enumerate, distinguish, define, not at all beholding their outlines or colors, or how they sound, or how they smell, or what taste they have in the mouth, or what they report to those touching them as to heat or cold, softness or hardness, smoothness or roughness — but by a certain other vision, another light, another evidence of things, and that far more excellent and more certain than the rest.

Let us therefore return again to those very words of the Apostle and scrutinize them more carefully, this being first established without doubt: that the Apostle knew far more, and incomparably more amply, that which concerning incorporeal and corporeal nature we try in whatever way to know. If, then, he knew that spiritual things can be seen through the body, and corporeal things out of the body, in no way at all, why did he not, by those very things which he saw, distinguish also how he could have seen them? For if he was certain that those things were spiritual, why was he not consequently certain no less that he had seen them out of the body? But if he had known them to be corporeal, and that they could be seen only through the body, why did he not know this too?

Whence, then, does he doubt whether he saw these things in the body or out of the body, unless perhaps he thus also doubts whether those were bodies or likenesses of bodies? Therefore let us first see what there is in the context of these words about which he does not doubt, and thus, when there remains that about which he does doubt, perhaps from those things about which he does not doubt it will appear how he doubts even that. 'I know,' he says, 'a man in Christ fourteen years ago — whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knows — caught up in this manner even to the third heaven.' He knows, then, that fourteen years ago a man in Christ was caught up even to the third heaven. This he does not doubt at all, nor therefore ought we. But whether in the body or out of the body, he doubts:

and since he doubts, who of us would dare to be certain? Might it perhaps follow from this also that we should doubt whether there was a third heaven, into which he said a man was caught up? For if the thing itself was demonstrated, the third heaven was demonstrated; but if some image, made like corporeal things, was set forth, then it was not that third heaven, but that showing was so arranged that it seemed to him he ascended into the first heaven, above which he saw a second, ascending to which he again saw yet another higher, at which, when he had arrived, he could say that he had been caught up into the third heaven. But that it was the third heaven into which he was caught up, he neither doubted nor wished us to doubt.

For to this he prefixed 'I know,' and from that he began, so that what the Apostle says he knows, he alone would not believe to be true who does not believe the Apostle. He knows, then, that a man was caught up even to the third heaven. Accordingly, that into which he was caught up is truly the third heaven, not some corporeal sign — such as, when it was shown to Moses, he perceived so far that the very substance of God is one thing and the visible creature another, in which God presented Himself to human and corporeal senses, that he said: 'Show me Thyself' — nor any image of a corporeal thing, which, when John saw it in the spirit, he asked what it was, and it was answered him, either: 'It is a city,' or:

'They are peoples,' or something else, when he saw a beast, or a woman, or waters, or something of that kind; but 'I know,' he says, 'that a man was caught up even to the third heaven.' But if he had wished to call a spiritual image, like to a corporeal thing, 'heaven,' then there was likewise an image of his body, in which, being caught up, he had ascended thither. So then he would also call his own body an image of a body, just as he would call that heaven an image of heaven, and he would not care to distinguish what he knew and what he did not know — that is, that he knew a man was caught up even to the third heaven, but did not know whether in the body or out of the body — but would simply narrate the vision, calling by the names of those things the things which he saw, of which they were the likenesses.

For we too, when we narrate our dreams or some revelation in them, say: 'I saw a mountain, I saw a river, I saw three men,' and anything of that kind, assigning to those images the names which the things themselves have, of which they were the likenesses. But the Apostle says, 'This I know, that I know not.' Now if both appeared imaginatively, both are equally known or equally unknown; but if it was properly heaven — and therefore is known — how could the body of that man have appeared imaginatively? For if a corporeal heaven was being seen, why did it lie hidden whether it was seen with corporeal eyes? But if it was uncertain whether it was seen with the eyes of the body or with the spirit — and therefore it was said:

'whether in the body or out of the body I know not' — how was it not likewise uncertain whether a corporeal heaven was truly seen, or whether it was shown imaginatively? Likewise, if an incorporeal substance was being seen, not in any image of a body, but as justice, wisdom, and anything of that kind is seen, and this was heaven, then this too is manifest, that nothing of the sort can be seen with the eyes of this body. And on this account, if he knew that he had seen something of the sort, he could not doubt that he had not seen it through the body. 'I know,' he says, 'a man in Christ fourteen years ago.' Let no one who believes me doubt this; but 'whether in the body or out of the body I know not, God knows.'

What then do you know, which you distinguish from that which you do not know, lest believers be deceived? 'That the same man,' he says, 'was caught up even to the third heaven.' But that heaven was either a body or a spirit. If it was a body and was seen with corporeal eyes, why is it known to be heaven, and yet not known to have been seen in the body? But if it was a spirit, either it presented the image of a body, and it is as uncertain whether it was a body as it is uncertain whether it was seen in the body; or it was seen as wisdom is seen by the mind, without any images of bodies, and it is nonetheless certain that it could not have been seen through the body. Either, then, both are certain, or both are uncertain — or how is it certain what was seen, yet uncertain through what it was seen?

For it is manifest that an incorporeal nature could not have been seen by him through the body. But bodies, even if they could not be seen without a body, are surely not seen through the body in that same way; but far different is that mode, if there is any such. Whence it is a wonder if some most-alike phantom could deceive the Apostle, or force him to doubt, so that, if he saw a corporeal heaven not with corporeal eyes, he would say it was uncertain to him whether he saw it in the body or out of the body.

It remains, then, perhaps — since the Apostle, who took such great care to distinguish what he knew and what he did not know, could not lie — that we should understand him to have been ignorant of this very thing: whether, when he was caught up into the third heaven, he was in the body (as the soul is in the body when the body is said to live, whether of one waking, or sleeping, or in ecstasy, alienated from the senses of the body), or whether he had gone forth from the body entirely, so that the body lay dead, until, that showing being accomplished, the soul was restored to the dead members — and did not, as one sleeping, awaken, or, as one alienated in ecstasy, return anew to the senses, but, being wholly dead, came back to life.