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I and the Father are one—to show that there is for him a unity of majesty and divinity with the Father. But he also commanded us to be one, and poured into us a likeness of his nature and unity by the adoption of grace, saying: Father, as I and thou are one, so let these also be one in us. Therefore where he commands the good, he commands as to one, saying: you shall eat; for unity cannot transgress. But where he says of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that it is not to be tasted, he says as it were to many: you shall not eat; for what is prohibitory is commanded as if to many. Yet I think otherwise, and what is to come is in him. Now in the word of God I find it.
He commanded that of every tree it should be tasted by Adam alone, whom he knew would keep the command; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that it should not be tasted he now says not in the singular but in the plural; for he knew that the woman would transgress, and therefore by the plural he showed that they would not keep it, because the judgment of the many is divided. And as far as the rendering of the seventy men is concerned, what was troubling is resolved. But because Symmachus put both in the singular, we understand that this followed, because in the law too, when God addresses the people, he speaks in the singular, as you have: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
Nor does the interpretation of Symmachus prejudice me, who could not see the unity of Father and Son, even if at times both Aquila and he himself confessed it in their rendering. Nor let anyone, from the fact that God addresses in the singular a people that would transgress the divine commandments, think this to be contrary to our former discourse, because the people of the Jews violated even precepts given in the singular. For the law is spiritual, and therefore God addressed the people in the divine oracle, the one thing in his speech, the other in his predestination. And finally he says: Thou shalt not boil a lamb in its mother's milk.
Henceforth the series of heavenly precepts would seem easy, were it not that very many stir up a question, to which it behooves us to reply, lest by a malicious interpretation they lead astray simple minds. For very many, whose author is Apelles, as you have in his thirty-eighth volume, put forward these questions: How does the tree of life seem to work more toward life than the breathing-in of God? Then: If God did not make man perfect, but each one by his own industry takes to himself the perfection of virtue, does it not seem that man acquires more for himself than God bestowed on him? A third they object: and if man had not tasted death, surely he could not know that which he had not tasted. Therefore if he had not tasted, he did not know:
if he did not know, he could not fear. In vain therefore did God set death before them as a terror, which men did not fear. Let us learn, then, that where there is the tree of life, there too God brought forth the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For you have that he brought forth the tree of life in the midst of paradise. He says... for it is understood that he brought it forth in the midst. Therefore in the midst of paradise was both life and the cause of death. Understand that man did not make life, but by either working or keeping the commandments of God he was able to find it. But there was a life, as the apostle said, hidden with Christ in God.
Man therefore was either in the shadow of life because of the figure—since this our life which now is on earth is a shadow—or he was in a certain pledge of life, because he had the breathing-in of God; he had therefore a pledge of immortality, but, placed in the shadow of life, he could not by any common touch and sight see and grasp the life hidden with Christ in God, even though not yet a sinner, yet not of an uncorrupted and inviolable nature, inasmuch as he afterward fell by sin, but by no means as yet a sinner. In short, he was in the shadow of life; but those who are sinners are in the shadow of death. For the people of sinners, as Isaiah teaches, sat in the shadow of death, upon whom a light arose through the grace of God, not by the merit of their own virtue.
Therefore between the breathing-in of God and the food of the tree of life there is no distinction, nor can man say that he is able to acquire more for himself than was conferred on him by the divine bounty. Would that we could hold fast what we received! For our labor profits to this end, that we may take up again the things that were bestowed. As for that third point which was put forward—that he who had not tasted death could not fear death—it readily finds its resolution from the use of common nature. For it is implanted in nature in all living beings that they dread as harmful even things they have not yet experienced as harming them. For whence comes to doves at their very birth the terror at the sight of the hawk? Whence are wolves dreadful to sheep, kites to chicks?
But if in those living beings which are irrational there is a certain natural terror of some opposing kind of animal, so that even irrational creatures receive a sense of fleeing from death, how much more in the first man—surely most full of reason—ought there to have been a certain natural notion of death to be avoided! Again they raise other questions in this manner: it is not always evil not to obey a precept. For if the precept is good, the obedience is honorable; but if the precept is wicked, not to obey is useful. Therefore it is not always evil not to obey a precept, but not to obey a good precept is wicked. But the tree, productive of the knowledge of good and evil, is good, since God too knows good and evil. And finally he says:
Behold, Adam is become as one of us. If therefore it is good to have the knowledge of good and evil, and it is a good thing which even God has, it seems that he who forbids it to men forbids it not rightly—and this they propose. But if they would understand what it is to know, what force this word has, if they would understand it as they ought—for the Lord knew who are his (he knew, surely, those who out of many are made one, in whom he dwells and in whom he walks)—to know, surely, would consist not in bare and perfunctory knowledge, but in the working of those things which ought to be done. But man ought to have obeyed the commandment; and by not obeying he transgressed.
Therefore he who did not obey erred, because transgression is sin. But even if they wish to lessen the force of 'knowledge,' so as to think that the perfunctory knowledge of good and evil was forbidden, in that case too there is the fault of transgression in not having obeyed the commandment, because the Lord God thought that even a tumultuary knowledge of good and evil should be checked. Another question: he who does not know good and evil differs in nothing from an infant, and there is no fault in infants before a just judge. But the just Maker of the world would never have called an infant into fault, on the ground that he had not known good and evil, because an infant is without any crime of transgression and fault.
But since we have said above that there is a twofold understanding of the knowledge of good and evil, if we take the perfunctory knowledge, it is surely false that he who did not know good and evil differs in nothing from an infant; but if it is false that he differs in nothing from an infant, then Adam is not an infant. If he is not an infant, then surely sin is ascribed to him as to one who is not an infant. If sin is ascribed, punishment follows the sin, because he is found worthy of punishment who could not avoid the sin. It can also happen that even he who does not have the knowledge of good and evil is not an infant, since before the child knew good and evil, he did not believe in malice. And again you have:
For before the child shall know to call father and mother, he shall receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria. Perfect therefore is he who works good, even if he has not attained the knowledge of good and evil, just as many, before they know the law, are themselves a law to themselves. What of the fact that the apostle, before he learned 'thou shalt not covet,' did not know that concupiscence was evil? Indeed he himself says: I had not known sin but by the law; for I had not known concupiscence, unless the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. In which respect even a child can be perfect by the right of nature, before he knows that concupiscence is a crime or commits the crime of concupiscence.
Therefore according to the perfunctory knowledge God willed that man should know what is evil, lest, as if imperfect, he should be unable to avoid it. But by not obeying the commandment we incur fault; therefore we confess the fault. But again, if we speak of the high and deep knowledge of good and evil, which deep knowledge indeed makes one perfect, the infant is not at once perfect; yet he who could not attain to the high and deep knowledge is not rightly condemned as one who is not an infant. Again they sow questions. He who does not know, he says, good and evil, knows not even this, that it is evil not to keep the commandment, nor does he know that very good which is to obey the commandment. And therefore, because he did not know, he says, he who did not obey was worthy of pardon, not of condemnation.
This question indeed finds its resolution from the things we mentioned before. For man was able to consider, from those things which God had previously conferred on him—that he received the breathing-in of God, that he was placed in the paradise of delight—that the highest obedience was to be rendered to his Author. And therefore, even if he did not know the force of good and evil, yet because the Author of such great things had said that of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil it was not to be tasted, he ought to have kept faith with his Instructor; for it was not expertise that was required of him, but faith. He understood, surely, that God surpasses all; therefore he ought to have regarded the person of him who commanded. Even if he did not understand the force and quality of the commands, yet he knew that reverence was to be rendered to the Instructor.
He had in his nature this notion, even though he did not have judgment of good and evil. And finally the woman too says to the serpent: Of every tree of paradise we shall eat, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise God said: You shall not eat of it. So therefore she knew that the commandment was to be obeyed, so that she said: Of every fruit we shall eat, which the Lord had commanded, but of the tree which is in the midst of paradise she says it was commanded by God that it should not be tasted, lest they should die the death. Therefore she who knew that obedience was to be rendered to the commandment surely knew that to transgress was evil, and therefore, having justly transgressed, she is condemned. Receive another point:
If the taking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was so productive that both good and evil were recognized—which the Scripture seems to show, when it says that when both had eaten, their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked, that is, the eyes of the heart were opened and they knew that it was shameful to go about naked—then without doubt, when the woman tasted of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, she sinned and knew that she had sinned. She therefore who had known that she had sinned ought not even to have invited the man into fellowship of sin. But by enticing the man and giving him what she herself had tasted, she did not avoid sin, but repeated it.
For surely, if you truly look at reason, she ought not to have drawn him whom she loved into a partnership of punishment, but rather to have recalled him, even though unknowing, from that which she herself had known to be sin; although this woman seems, knowing that after her fault she could not remain in paradise, to have feared lest she alone be cast out of paradise. In short, after the fault they both hid themselves. Knowing therefore that she must be excluded, she did not wish to be deprived of the partnership of the man whom she loved. Receive again: it is not the knowledge of evil that is evil, but when the act fulfills the malice. For not at once does he who knows evil do that which is evil, but he who works what he knows to be evil. But the incitement to working what is evil is wont to be either anger or desire.
Nor is it at once necessary that one having knowledge of evil should do what he knows to be wicked, unless he is overcome by either anger or desire. Whence what we have said: the incitement to sinning is either wrath or desire, or very often fear—though from fear arises desire, while each one wishes to avoid what he dreads. And therefore we have rightly set anger and desire as the two incitements of the remaining vices. Let us consider, then, whether Eve was incited to vice by these goads. But she was neither angry with her husband nor overcome by desire; at least in the second instance she errs, in giving the man to eat what she had already tasted. First desire had been the author of error, that she herself should eat, and was the cause of the subsequent sin.
For what she had already tasted she could not desire, and by tasting she had attained the knowledge of evil. Therefore she ought not to have passed on to the man the evil which she had perceived, nor to have made her own spouse a transgressor of the divine commandment. Knowingly therefore and wittingly she sinned, and knowingly she drew the man into her error; otherwise the word concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will be found false, if even after she had eaten of that tree she could not have the knowledge of evil. But if the word is true, she surely could not have had the cause of desire, although very many think she is to be excused on this ground, that loving her husband she feared to be separated from him, and they put forward this as the cause of desire, that she wished to be with her husband.
Again another question creeps in: whence came death to Adam, whether from the nature of such a tree or rather from God. If we ascribe this to the nature of the tree, the fruit of this tree seems to prevail over the life-giving breathing-in of God, since the one whom the breathing-in had given life, the fruit of this tree drew to death. Or if we record that God is the worker of death, they say that we accuse him on a twofold opinion: either that he is so harsh that he was unwilling to pardon when he could pardon, or, if he could not pardon, that he seems weak. Let us see, then, how this is to be dissolved. Unless I am mistaken, the cause of death was disobedience, and therefore man himself is the cause of death to himself, not having God as the author of his death.
For if a physician prescribes for a sick man the things which seem to him to be guarded against, and that man does not think he ought to abstain from what is forbidden, the physician is not the cause of death to him, but surely he himself is the author of his own death. And so God, like a good physician, forbade lest Adam should taste harmful things. Again receive: to know the good is better than not to know, and for him who knows the good it is fitting to know what is evil, that he may know to beware of what is evil, and that, being prudent, he may undertake the caution of keeping. But again it is not enough to know this alone, what is evil, lest, when you know the evil, you begin to be defrauded of the knowledge of the good.
It is therefore more excellent that we should know both, so that, because we know the good, we may flee what is evil, and from our knowledge of evil may set the grace of the good before it. But you ought to know both in such a way that you know it deeply and put into practice what you know, and that the deed agrees with your knowledge. Otherwise Scripture declares more tolerable the man who is ignorant of both than the one who knows both only superficially. For it is a burden to know what you can neither carry out nor avoid; it is a burden to have knowledge without the use and work of deep understanding. It harms a physician's reputation to know what helps and what harms a sick man, unless he uses that knowledge as he ought; and therefore knowledge is not good unless you use it as you should. Now consider further:
Not in vain was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil brought forth in the midst of paradise; for had it been brought forth for any and every man, the prohibition would have been superfluous. But it was made neither in vain nor for any other than the man who received the commandment, that he might use it not alone, but together with the rest. For if you examine many things, you will find very many, indeed countless ones, which can harm the man who knows not how to use them. You will not find even riches themselves fruitful, if a rich man, possessing the means of generosity, refuses nourishment to the poor and shuts out the needy person bereft of help; if he extorts what belongs to others because he prevails in power. Beauty itself and a more pleasing form of body often draws one into vice more than ugliness does.
Does anyone, then, desire to have children uglier rather than more beautiful, and wish his own offspring to be poor rather than rich? There are many things of this sort which are to be referred not to the imprudence of the giver, but to the error of the one who uses them ill; and therefore the user is rather to be accused than the giver. Again a question: did God know that Adam would transgress His commands, or did He not know? If He did not know, that is no proof of divine power; but if He did know, and nevertheless, knowing it, commanded things that would be neglected, still there is nothing superfluous in God's commanding. Yet, they say, He commanded in vain to the first-formed Adam what He knew he would by no means keep. But God does nothing in vain; therefore the Scripture is not from God.
For this is the objection raised by those who do not receive the Old Testament and insert these questions. But these men must be conquered by their own opinion and judgment. For since they do not reject the faith of the New Testament, they are to be refuted by its example, so that they may believe the Old; since, when the divine precepts and deeds agree with one another, it is clear that both Testaments, being of one Author, are to be believed. Let them learn, then, that the command was not superfluously, nor unjustly, prescribed even to one who would transgress. For the Lord Jesus Himself also chose Judas, whom He knew to be a traitor. And if they think he was chosen through imprudence, they detract from the divine power. But they cannot suppose this, since Scripture says that Jesus knew who it was that would betray Him.
Let these opponents of the Old Testament therefore fall silent. But since it seems we must also answer the Gentiles, in case they should perchance raise this objection—for they do not accept an example but demand a reason—let them too receive an account of why the Son of God either gave a command to one who would transgress, or chose one who would betray. The Lord Jesus had come to save all sinners; He had also to show His will toward the impious. And therefore He ought not to pass over even the one who would betray, so that all might perceive that, in the choosing even of His betrayer, He held forth a token of saving all; and in this neither Adam was wronged, in that he received a commandment, nor Judas, in that he was chosen.
For God imposed on neither of them any necessity—on the one of transgression, on the other of betrayal—since each, had he kept what he had received, could have abstained from sin. Indeed, He knew that not all the Jews would believe, and yet He said: I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Therefore the fault lies not in Him who commands, but the sin is in him who transgresses; and that which was in God showed to all that He willed to free all. Nor yet do I say that He did not know the transgression would come; rather I affirm that He did know it; but He ought not on that account to draw upon Himself the odium of the perishing betrayer, so that it should be ascribed to God that each one fell.
But now each is refuted and convicted afresh, since the one received a commandment lest he should fall, and the other was even admitted into the office of the apostolate, that he might be called back from the disposition to betray by this kindness, and at the same time that, while others are convicted, he might profit all. For sin would not subsist had there been no prohibition; and, sin not subsisting, not only would malice not exist, but perhaps neither would virtue, which, unless there had been some seeds of malice, could neither subsist nor stand out conspicuously. For what is sin but the transgression of the divine law and disobedience to the heavenly precepts?
For we do not judge of the heavenly commands by the ears of the body, but, since it was the Word of God, certain notions of good and evil sprang up within us, while we naturally understand that what is evil is to be avoided, and naturally understand that what is good has been enjoined upon us. In this, then, we seem to hear the voice of the Lord, in that He forbids some things and commands others. If anyone does not obey those things which we believe to have been once for all commanded by God, he is reckoned liable to punishment. Yet we read God's precept inscribed not, as it were, in ink upon tablets of stone, but we hold it impressed upon our hearts by the Spirit of the living God. Therefore our own understanding makes a law for itself.
For if the Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts. Human understanding, therefore, is to itself as a law of God. Again, from this they raise another question: that, corresponding to His commandment—which we said consists in man's own understanding—they accuse this very understanding, impressed upon us by God, as though it were the prescription of a divine law. He knew, they say, that the man would sin, who created him and impressed upon him these notions of good and evil—or did He not know? So that, if you say He did not know, you hold something foreign to the majesty of God;
but if you say that God, though knowing the man would sin, nevertheless impressed upon him the common notions of good and evil, so that through the admixture of evils he could not preserve perpetuity of life—then, as in the former case you would seem to signify Him not foreknowing the future, so in this case you would seem to signify Him not a good God. And from this they argue that the creature, man, was not made by God. For as we showed above that they say there is no commandment of God, so here too they say: man, then, is not the creature of God, since God did not make evil, while man received the notion of evil, in that he is commanded to abstain from evils. By this kind of reasoning they attempt to assert that one God is good, and another is the fashioner of man. To these we must reply at once according to their own opinion.
For if they will not have man made by God, because man is a sinner—and they shrink from this, lest the good God should seem to have made a sinner, since they do not think Him good who made a sinner—let them say whether they think the fashioner of man was made by God. For if that fashioner of man was made by God, as they say, how did the good God make the fashioner of evil? Surely not good. For if He who made a sinner is not good, we must beware lest it be still graver to have made the fashioner of a sinner; for the good God ought to have prohibited the birth of him who would introduce the substance of sin. But if they say the fashioner was not begotten, we must inquire whether the good God was able in any way to restrain the malice as it began, or was not able. For if He was not able, He is weak;
if He was able and did not, He is not good. Therefore, since these things do not agree among themselves, nor do the opinions of the heretics agree with one another, let us inquire whether perhaps there was some reason for which God allowed the malice of that fashioner—whether begotten or unbegotten—to enter into this world, when He could have restrained it. And so, keeping one and the same God who is both good and Maker, let us, if we can, establish that which agrees with the grace of both, and not shun the odium of their accusation who speak thus: How is God good, who not only suffered malice to enter into this world, but also permitted it to come to such great confusion? But this accusation would then have place, if it so infected the power of the soul and the secret depths of the inmost mind, that
it could by no means be done away, and the poison of incurable wounds lodged in our mind and soul. For then there would be a more fitting place for this complaint—that, though God can do all things, He yet suffered man to perish.
But since God, in mercy toward us, has reserved remedies for casting off error, and has not abolished the possibility of doing away all contagion, how is it unreasonable or unjust if He permitted our material part to be tempted by a certain trembling of human frailty, so that afterwards grace, increased as if with interest, might return through repentance of sins into the disposition of man—and that man, conscious of his own frailty, in that he had so easily trembled by straying from the order of the divine commands, should fear, as if it were the anchor of a wavering soul, to lose the heavenly commands; and, ascribing more to the divine mercy because he had recovered what was lost, should claim for himself something of grace because it returned?
Now let us consider what that reason is—what this means, that when God gave man a commandment, prescribing concerning that admirable and blessed life, lest by acting against it he should die the death, He thought fit to command concerning eating and not eating. For there are those who think that this commandment in no way befits the Creator of heaven and earth and of all things, and is in no way worthy of the dwellers in paradise, since that life is like that of the angels. And therefore we can judge that this food was not earthly and corruptible to be eaten, since they who neither drink nor eat shall be as the angels in heaven.
Since, then, there is neither reward in food—for meat does not commend us to God—nor any great danger—for it is not what enters into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes forth out of the mouth—the precept would seem, without doubt, given by so great an Author . . . unless you refer this food to that prophetic one, since for a great reward the Lord promises concerning His holy ones: Behold, they that serve Me shall eat, but ye shall be hungry. For this is the food in which eternal life is determined, of which whoever is defrauded shall die the death; inasmuch as the living and heavenly bread is the Lord Himself, who gives life to this world. Whence He Himself also says: Unless ye eat My flesh and drink My blood, ye shall not have eternal life.
There was, then, some bread of which He had prescribed to the dwellers of paradise that it should be eaten. What was it? Receive whom He names it. Man, He says, ate the bread of angels; for it is good bread, if you do the will of God. Would you know how good a bread? The Son Himself eats this bread, of which He says: My food is to do the will of My Father, who is in heaven. Again let us see for what reason the Lord God said to Adam, Ye shall die the death—what difference it makes whether someone says Ye shall die, or adds Ye shall die the death; for we ought to show that there is nothing superfluous in God's commandment. And so I judge thus: since two things, death and life, are contrary to each other, according to plain speech we say from life to live, from death to die.