Come now, let us see where there may be, as it were, a certain boundary of the outer and the inner man. For whatever we have in our soul in common with the beast is rightly still said to belong to the outer man, but with a certain life of its own added, by which the frame of the body and all the senses flourish, with which it is equipped for perceiving external things. When the images of these senses, fixed in the memory, are revisited by recollecting, the matter is still carried on as pertaining to the outer man. And in all these things we differ nothing from the beast, except that in the figure of the body we are not prone but upright.
In which matter we are admonished by Him who made us not to be, in our better part—that is, in the soul—like the beasts, from which we differ by the uprightness of the body. It is not that we should cast our soul down onto those things which are lofty among bodies; for to seek the rest of the will even in such things is to prostrate the soul. But just as the body is naturally erect toward those things which are lofty among bodies—that is, toward the heavenly things—so the soul, which is a spiritual substance, is to be raised toward those things which are lofty among spiritual things, not by the elation of pride, but by the piety of righteousness. Now beasts too can perceive corporeal things externally through the senses of the body, and can recall those things fixed in the memory, and in them seek what is profitable and flee what is harmful.
But to note these things, and to retain them not only as naturally seized but also as deliberately committed to the memory, and by recollecting and thinking to impress again upon the mind those things now on the point of slipping into forgetfulness—so that just as thought is formed from what the memory bears, so also what is in the memory may be strengthened by thought—and to compose even feigned visions by taking from here and there whatever has been recalled and, as it were, stitching them together, and to examine how, in this kind of thing, the things that are probable may be distinguished from the true (not spiritual things, but these very corporeal ones)—these and things of this kind, although they are carried on and turned over among sensible things and among those things which the mind has drawn from them through the sense of the body, are nevertheless not devoid of reason, nor common to men and beasts.
But it belongs to a more sublime reason to judge of these corporeal things according to incorporeal and everlasting reasons which, unless they were above the human mind, would assuredly not be unchangeable; and yet, unless something of ours were joined to them, we could not judge of corporeal things according to them. Now we judge of corporeal things by the reason of dimensions and figures, which the mind knows to remain unchangeably.
But that part of ours which is so engaged in the action of handling corporeal and temporal things that it is not common to us with the beast is indeed rational; yet it is, as it were, drawn from that rational substance of our mind by which we cleave to the intelligible and unchangeable truth, and is deputed to the handling and governing of lower things. For just as among all the beasts there was not found for the man a helper like to him, unless one drawn from himself were formed into wedlock, so for our mind, by which we consult the supernal and inner truth, there is no helper suitable to the use of corporeal things—as far as suffices for the nature of man—from those parts of the soul which we have in common with the beasts.
And therefore something rational of ours, not separated so as to sever unity, but as it were derived into the assistance of fellowship, is apportioned in the office of its own work. And just as the flesh of the two in male and female is one, so one nature of the mind embraces our understanding and action, or counsel and execution, or reason and rational appetite, or however else they may be more significantly named—so that, as it was said of those: They shall be two in one flesh, so of these it may be said: 'Two in one mind.' When, therefore, we discourse about the nature of the human mind, we discourse about some one thing, nor do we double it into these two which I have mentioned except by the offices.
And so, when we seek in it a trinity, we seek it in the whole, not separating the rational action in temporal things from the contemplation of eternal things, so as to seek some third thing by which the trinity may be completed. Rather, a trinity must be found in the whole nature of the mind in such a way that, even if the action concerning temporal things be lacking—for which work a helper is necessary, on account of which something of the mind is derived for administering these lower things—the trinity may be found in the one mind nowhere divided; and, once this distribution has been made, in that alone which pertains to the contemplation of eternal things there is not only a trinity but also the image of God; but in that which is derived into the action of temporal things, even if a trinity can be found, yet the image of God cannot.
Accordingly, those do not seem to me to bring forward a probable opinion who so think that the trinity of the image of God in three persons, as concerns human nature, can be found so as to be completed in the wedlock of male and female and in their offspring—in that the man himself, as it were, intimates the person of the Father; and that which so proceeded from him as to be born intimates the person of the Son; and thus they say that the third person, as it were of the Spirit, is the woman, who so proceeded from the man as not herself to be a son or daughter, although the offspring was born of her conceiving. For the Lord said of the Holy Spirit that He proceeds from the Father, and yet He is not a Son.
In favour of the error of this opinion, then, only this one plausible argument is brought forward: that in the original creation of the woman it is sufficiently shown, according to the faith of Holy Scripture, that not everything which so proceeds from some person as to make it another person can be called a son; seeing that the person of the woman proceeded from the person of the man, and yet she was not called his daughter. The rest indeed is so absurd, nay rather so false, that it is most easily refuted. For I pass over what sort of thing it is to suppose the Holy Spirit to be the mother of the Son of God and the consort of the Father. For perhaps it might be answered that these notions give offence in carnal matters, so long as we think of bodily conceptions and births.
Yet those to whom, being pure, all things are pure, would think even these very things most chastely; whereas to the impure and unbelieving, whose mind and conscience are defiled, nothing is pure, so that even Christ, born of a virgin according to the flesh, gives offence to some of them. But nevertheless, in those highest spiritual realities, where there is nothing violable or corruptible, neither born in time nor formed out of the formless, if any such things are spoken of, to whose likeness even these lower kinds of creature, though set very far off indeed, have been made, they ought not to disturb anyone's sober prudence, lest, while he avoids an empty dread, he fall into a pernicious error.
Let the mind grow accustomed to finding, in bodily things, traces of things spiritual, so that when, thence upward, under reason's guidance, it begins to ascend, in order to arrive at that unchangeable Truth by which these things were made, it may not drag along with it to the heights what it despises in the lowest things. For no one has blushed to choose Wisdom as his wife, though the name of wife suggests to the mind that thinks of it a corruptible union in the begetting of offspring; nor is Wisdom herself of the female sex because she is expressed by a word of feminine gender in both the Greek and the Latin tongue.
[VI 6] It is not, therefore, for this reason that we reject that opinion — as though we were afraid to think of that holy and inviolable and unchangeable Charity as it were a consort of God the Father, existing from Him, yet not as offspring for the begetting of the Word by which all things were made. Rather, we reject it because divine Scripture plainly shows it to be false. For God said: Let us make man after our image and likeness; and a little later it is said: And God made man after the image of God. Assuredly, since 'our' is a plural number, it would not rightly be said if man were made after the image of one person, whether of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit; but because he was made after the image of the Trinity, therefore it was said, after our image.
But again, lest we should suppose that in the Trinity three gods are to be believed, since the same Trinity is one God, it says: And God made man after the image of God — just as if it said, after His own image. For such expressions are customary in those writings, which some, even though they profess the Catholic faith, do not carefully observe, so that they think it was said, 'God made man after the image of God,' as though it were said, 'The Father made man after the image of the Son,' thus wishing to maintain that in the Holy Scriptures the Son too was called God — as if there were lacking other most true and most manifest proofs where the Son is called not only God but even true God. For in this testimony, while they aim to resolve one difficulty, they so entangle themselves that they cannot get free.
For if the Father made man after the image of the Son, so that man is the image not of the Father but of the Son, then the Son is unlike the Father. But if pious faith teaches — as indeed it does teach — that the Son is like the Father in equality of essence, then what was made after the likeness of the Son must necessarily also have been made after the likeness of the Father. Furthermore, if the Father made man not after His own image but after the Son's, why does He not say: Let us make man after 'thy' image and likeness, but says, after ours — unless because the image of the Trinity was being made in man, so that in this way man might be the image of the one true God, since the Trinity itself is one true God? Now such expressions in the Scriptures are innumerable, but it will suffice to have brought forward these. It is thus said in the Psalms:
Salvation belongs to the Lord, and Thy blessing is upon Thy people — as though it were spoken to another, not to Him of whom it had said, Salvation belongs to the Lord. And again: By Thee, it says, shall I be rescued from temptation, and in my God I shall leap over a wall — as though it had spoken to another, By Thee shall I be rescued from temptation. And again: The peoples shall fall under Thee in the heart of the king's enemies — as if it said, in the heart of 'Thy' enemies; for it had said to that king, that is, to the Lord Jesus Christ, The peoples shall fall under Thee, whom it wished to be understood as king when it said, in the heart of the king's enemies. These occur more rarely in the writings of the New Testament, but nevertheless the Apostle says to the Romans:
Concerning His Son, he says, who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection of the dead, of Jesus Christ our Lord — as though he were speaking above of another. For what is 'the Son of God predestined by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ,' except the same Jesus Christ who was predestined the Son of God?
Therefore, just as here, when we hear 'the Son of God in the power of Jesus Christ,' or 'the Son of God according to the Spirit of sanctification of Jesus Christ,' or 'the Son of God by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ' — although it could have been said in the customary way, 'in His own power,' or 'according to the Spirit of His own sanctification,' or 'by the resurrection of His dead' or 'of His own dead' — we are not compelled to understand another person, but one and the same, namely the Son of God our Lord Jesus Christ; so likewise, when we hear, God made man after the image of God, although it could more customarily have been said, after His own image, we are nevertheless not compelled to understand another person in the Trinity, but that same one and identical Trinity which is one God, after whose image man was made.
Since these things are so, if we were to take this image of the Trinity to be not in one man but in three human beings — father, mother, and son — then man was not made after the image of God before a wife was made for him and before they had propagated a son, since there was as yet no trinity. Or will someone say: 'There already was a trinity, because, though not yet in its own proper form, yet in original nature both the woman was in the side of the man and the son in the loins of the father'? Why then, when Scripture had said: God made man after the image of God, did it go on to say: He made him male and female; He made them, and blessed them (or, if it is to be punctuated thus:
And God made man, so that then may be added, after the image of God He made him, and the third clause be: male and female He made them — for some have feared to say, He made him male and female, lest something monstrous be understood, such as those whom they call hermaphrodites, although even so it can without falsehood be understood as both in the singular number, on account of what was said: Two in one flesh)? Why then, as I had begun to say, in the nature of man made after the image of God, does Scripture mention nothing besides male and female? For to complete the image of the Trinity it ought to have added the son as well, even though as yet established in the loins of the father, just as the woman was in the side.
Or perhaps the woman had already been made, and Scripture had bound up in a brief summary what it would afterwards explain more carefully as to how it was made; and for this reason the son could not be mentioned, because he had not yet been born? As if the Spirit could not have embraced this too in that same brevity, intending afterwards in its own place to relate the son as born, just as it afterwards related in its own place that the woman was taken from the man's side — and yet here did not fail to name her.
[VII 9] We ought not, therefore, so to understand man as made after the image of the supreme Trinity — that is, after the image of God — that this same image is to be understood in three human beings; especially since the Apostle says that the man is the image of God, and on that account removes from him the covering of the head which he admonishes must be applied to the woman, speaking thus: A 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. What then shall we say to this? If the woman fulfils the image of the Trinity in her own person, why is the man still called the image after she has been drawn from his side? Or if even one human person out of three can be called the image of God — just as in the supreme Trinity itself each single person is God — why is the woman also not the image of God?
For it is on this account that she is commanded to veil her head, whereas the man is forbidden to do so because he is the image of God. But we must see how what the Apostle says — that not the woman but the man is the image of God — is not contrary to what is written in Genesis: God made man after the image of God; He made him male and female; He made them, and blessed them. For it says that human nature itself was made after the image of God, which is completed by both sexes, and it does not separate the woman from the understanding of the image of God. For after saying that God made man after the image of God, it says, He made him male and female — or at least, by another punctuation, male and female He made them.
How then have we heard through the Apostle that the man is the image of God, and is therefore forbidden to veil his head, but that the woman is not, and is therefore commanded to do this — unless, I believe, it be what I have already said when I was treating of the nature of the human mind: that the woman together with her husband is the image of God, so that the whole of that substance is one image; but when she is assigned as a helper, which pertains to her alone, she is not the image of God; whereas what pertains to the man alone is the image of God as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him into one?
It is just as we said concerning the nature of the human mind: that if as a whole it contemplates the truth, it is the image of God; and when something is apportioned from it and by a certain intention is diverted to the action of temporal things, nevertheless in that part by which it beholds and consults the truth it is the image of God; but in that part by which it is directed toward the doing of lower things it is not the image of God. And since the more it extends itself toward that which is eternal, so much the more is it thereby formed after the image of God, and is therefore not to be restrained so as to hold itself back and check itself therein — for this reason the man ought not to veil his head.
But because for that rational action which is occupied with bodily and temporal things an excessive progress into lower things is dangerous, it ought to have authority over its head, which the veil indicates, by which is signified that it is to be restrained. For the sacred and pious signification is pleasing to the holy angels. For God does not see in time, nor does anything new arise in His seeing and knowing when something is done temporally and transiently, as thereby the senses are affected, whether the carnal senses of animals and men, or even the heavenly senses of the angels.
That in this manifest distinction of the male and female sex the Apostle Paul figured the mystery of some more hidden thing can be understood from this too: that whereas in another place he says that a true widow is one left desolate without children and grandchildren, and yet that she ought to hope in the Lord and to persist in prayers night and day, here he says that the woman, seduced and made in transgression, shall be saved through the bearing of children, and added: If they continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety. As though it could really harm a good widow if either she had no children, or those she had were unwilling to persevere in good morals.
But because those things which are called good works are as it were the children of our life — according to which it is asked of what sort each one's life may be, that is, how he conducts these temporal affairs, which life the Greeks call not zoe but bios — and because these good works are wont to be especially frequented in the offices of mercy (whereas works of mercy profit nothing, whether to pagans, or to Jews who do not believe in Christ, or to any heretics or schismatics whatever, where faith and love and sober sanctification are not found), it is manifest what the Apostle wished to signify, and why figuratively and mystically, since he was speaking of the veiling of the woman's head, which, unless it be referred to some secret of the sacrament, will remain empty.
For, as not only most true reason but also the authority of the Apostle himself declares, man was made after the image of God not according to the form of the body but according to the rational mind. For that thought is basely vain which supposes God to be circumscribed and bounded by the lineaments of bodily members. Furthermore, does not the same blessed Apostle say: Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who was created according to God — and elsewhere more openly: Putting off, he says, the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is renewed unto the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created him?
If therefore we are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and it is the new man who is renewed unto the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created him, no one doubts that man was made after the image of Him who created him not according to the body, nor according to any part whatever of the soul, but according to the rational mind, where the knowledge of God can be. And it is according to this renewal that we are also made sons of God through the baptism of Christ; and putting on the new man, we assuredly put on Christ through faith. Who then is there who would exclude women from this fellowship, since they are with us fellow-heirs of grace, and in another place the same Apostle says: For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus?
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Have believing women, then, lost the sex of their body? But because they are there renewed after the image of God, where there is no sex, there was man made after the image of God, where there is no sex — that is, in the spirit of his mind. Why then ought the man not to veil his head, because he is the image and glory of God, while the woman ought to, because she is the glory of the man — as though the woman were not renewed in the spirit of her mind, which is renewed unto the knowledge of God after the image of Him who created it?
But because in the sex of her body she differs from the man, that part of reason which is turned aside to the governing of temporal things could rightly be figured by her bodily veil, so that the image of God does not remain except in that part by which the mind of man cleaves to the beholding or consulting of the eternal reasons — a part which it is manifest that not only males but also females possess. Therefore in their minds a common nature is recognized; but in their bodies the distribution of that one and the same mind is figured. [VIII] And so, as we ascend inward by certain steps of consideration through the parts of the soul, from the point where something begins to present itself which we do not have in common with the beasts, thence reason begins, where already the inner man can be recognized.
And this man himself, if through that reason to which the administration of temporal things is delegated he slides too far into outward things by immoderate progress — with his own head consenting to him, that is, with that which presides in the watch-tower of counsel, as it were the man's portion, not restraining and reining it in — then he grows old among his enemies, the demons envious of virtue, together with their prince the devil; and the vision of eternal things is withdrawn from that very head as well, together with his consort eating the forbidden thing, so that the light of his eyes is no longer with him. And thus both, stripped of that illumination of truth, and with the eyes of conscience opened to see how dishonoured and unseemly they have remained, weave together, as it were, leaves of sweet fruits but without the fruits themselves; so, without the fruit of good work, they weave good words together, that, living evilly, they may as it were by speaking well cover their own baseness.
[IX 14] For the soul, loving its own power, slides away from the common universal to a private part; and by that apostatic pride which is called the beginning of sin, whereas, following God the ruler in the universality of creation, it might have been most excellently governed by His laws, it seeks something more than the universal and strives to govern it by its own law; and because there is nothing more than the universality, it is thrust down into anxiety for a part, and thus, by coveting something more, it is diminished — whence also avarice is called the root of all evils;
and the whole of that endeavour, whereby it strives to do something of its own against the laws by which the universe is administered, it carries out through its own body, which it possesses in part; and thus, delighting in bodily forms and motions, because it does not have these within itself with it, it becomes entangled with the images of them which it has fixed in the memory, and is basely defiled by fantastic fornication, referring all its offices to those ends by which it curiously seeks bodily and temporal things through the body's senses — either, with swollen pride, it aspires to be more exalted than other souls given over to the bodily senses, or it is immersed in the muddy whirlpool of carnal pleasure.
[X 15] When, therefore, with good will, the soul takes thought — whether for itself or for others — for the perceiving of those inner and higher things which are possessed not privately but in common by all who love such things, in a chaste embrace without any straitness or envy; even if it be deceived in some matter through ignorance of temporal things (since it conducts this too temporally), and does not keep the measure of acting which it ought, this is human temptation. And it is a great thing so to pass through this life, which we traverse as it were as a way of return, that temptation may not lay hold of us except such as is human. For this sin is outside the body, and is not reckoned as fornication, and is therefore most easily pardoned.
But when, for the sake of attaining those things which are perceived through the body, out of the desire of experiencing or of excelling or of handling, so as to place in these the end of its good, the soul does something, whatever it does it does basely, and it fornicates while sinning against its own body — snatching inward the deceptive images of bodily things and composing them in vain meditation, so that nothing even divine seems to it except such things — being privately avaricious it is teemed full of errors, and being privately prodigal it is emptied of its strength. Yet it would not from the outset leap forth to so base and wretched a fornication, but, as it is written: He who despises small things falls little by little.
[XI 16] For just as the serpent creeps not with open steps but by the tiniest efforts of its scales, so the slippery motion of falling away seizes the negligent little by little; and, beginning from a perverse appetite for likeness to God, it arrives at likeness to the beasts. Hence it is that, stripped of the first robe, they merited by their mortality garments of skin. For the true honour of man is the image and likeness of God, which is not preserved except toward Him from whom it is imprinted. The less, therefore, one's own is loved, the more is one made to cleave to God. But out of a desire to experience its own power, by a certain nod of its own it rushes forth toward itself as toward a midpoint.
Thus, when it wishes to be like Him who is under no one, it is by way of penalty thrust down from its very middle position to the lowest things — that is, to those things in which the beasts take delight; and thus, whereas its honour is the likeness of God, but its disgrace is the likeness of the beast: Man being placed in honour did not understand; he is compared to the senseless beasts, and is made like unto them. By what path, then, would it pass so far from the highest things to the lowest, except through its own middle? For when, love of wisdom being neglected — wisdom which ever abides in the same manner — knowledge is coveted out of the experience of changeable and temporal things, it puffs up, it does not build up;
thus the mind, overburdened as it were by its own weight, is expelled from blessedness, and through that experience of its middle position it learns by its own penalty what a difference there is between the good it deserted and the evil it committed; nor can it return, its strength poured out and lost, except by the grace of its Maker, calling it to repentance and forgiving its sins. For who shall free the unhappy soul from the body of this death, except the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord? Concerning which grace we shall discourse in its own place, when He Himself shall have granted it. [XII 17] Now, as the Lord aids us, let us carry through the consideration we have undertaken concerning that part of reason to which knowledge pertains — that is, the cognition of temporal and changeable things, necessary for the transactions of this life which must be carried on.