Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 37 part 18/28

For we must not suppose that Elijah is already such as the saints will be, when at the close of the day's labour they are to receive the denarius together; nor yet such as those men are who have not yet departed out of this life — the life from which he nonetheless passed away not by death but by translation. Therefore he already possesses something better than he could possess in this life, although he does not yet possess that which, from this life rightly lived, he is to possess at the end; for God has provided some better thing concerning us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. But if anyone supposes that Elijah could not have merited this, had he taken a wife and begotten sons — for he is believed not to have had them —

because Scripture did not say so, although it also said nothing of his celibacy — what will such a one answer concerning Enoch, who, having begotten sons, pleased God and was not put to death but was translated? Why, then, could not Adam and Eve also, if living righteously they had chastely begotten children, have given place to them by translation and not by death, as these succeeded them? For if Enoch and Elijah, having died in Adam and bearing in their flesh the propagation of death — which debt they are believed one day to return to this life to discharge, and, when what has so long been deferred is done, to die — are nonetheless now in another life, where, before the resurrection of the flesh, before the animal body is changed into a spiritual one, they fail neither through sickness nor through old age:

how much more justly and more credibly would it have been granted to those first human beings — who lived without any sin of their own or of their parents — that they might give place to their begotten children by passing into some better state, whence, when the age was ended, together with all the posterity of the saints, they would be changed into the angelic form, far more happily, not through the death of the flesh but through the power of God! And so I do not see for what other help the woman was made for the man, if the purpose of begetting be taken away; and why it should be taken away I am equally at a loss to know.

For whence does faithful and pious virginity have great merit and great honour before God, unless because already in this present time of abstaining from the embrace — since from all the nations there is a most abundant supply for filling up the number of the saints — the lust for receiving a filthy pleasure claims not for itself that which the need of providing offspring no longer requires? Finally, the weakness of either sex, inclining toward the ruin of shamefulness, is rightly received into the honourableness of marriage, so that what for the healthy could be a duty may for the sick be a remedy. For it is not the case that, because incontinence is an evil, therefore marriage — even that by which the incontinent are joined — is not a good;

nay rather, it is not that this good is blameworthy on account of that evil, but that that evil is venial on account of this good; since that which marriage possesses as good, and whereby marriages are good, can never be a sin. Now this good is threefold: fidelity, offspring, and sacrament. In fidelity, care is taken that there be no lying with another man or another woman outside the marriage bond; in offspring, that the child be lovingly received, kindly nourished, and religiously brought up; in the sacrament, that the marriage be not dissolved, and that neither the man dismissed nor the woman dismissed be joined to another, even for the sake of offspring. This is, as it were, the rule of marriage, whereby either the fruitfulness of nature is adorned, or the depravity of incontinence is governed.

Wherefore, since we have discussed these matters sufficiently in the book on the good of marriage which we recently published — where we also distinguished both widowed continence and virginal excellence according to the dignity of their several grades — our pen need not be occupied here any longer. For now we are inquiring for what help the woman was made for the man, if it was not permitted them to be united to one another for the begetting of children in paradise. For those who hold this opinion perhaps think that all sexual union is a sin. For it is difficult that, while men perversely avoid vices, they should not run headlong into their contraries.

For just as one shrinking from avarice becomes prodigal, or one shrinking from luxury becomes miserly, or one whose slothfulness you have rebuked becomes restless, or the sluggard whose restlessness you have reproved, or one who upon being reproved has begun to hate his own boldness flees to timidity, or one who strives not to be timid becomes rash, as though the restraining bond had been broken — since they measure faults not by reason but by opinion: so, while men know not what in adulteries and fornications is condemned by divine law, they detest even conjugal union undertaken for the purpose of procreation.

Those who do not do this, but nevertheless hold that the fruitfulness of the flesh was divinely given on account of the succession of mortality, likewise think that those first human beings could not have had union except in order that, being destined to die on account of the sin they had committed, they might seek successors by begetting; nor do they consider that, if successors could rightly be sought for those about to die, much more rightly could companions be sought for those about to live on. For once the earth was filled with the human race, rightly would offspring be sought only such as would succeed those who died; but that the earth might be filled through two human beings, how could they themselves fulfil the duty of fellowship except by begetting?

Or is anyone so blind in mind that he does not perceive how great an ornament to the earth the human race is, even when only a few live rightly and laudably, and how much the order of the commonwealth avails in restraining even sinners within the bond of a certain earthly peace? For men are not so depraved that even such as these do not surpass the beasts and the birds; and who is not delighted to consider this lowest part of the world, adorned by the several kinds of all these according to the lot of their place? But who would be so witless as to think that it could have been less adorned, had it been filled by the righteous who did not die? For because the celestial city of the angels is most numerous, it does not therefore follow that men would not rightly be joined in marriage unless they died.

Indeed, foreknowing that this perfect number was to be associated with the angels at the resurrection of the saints, the Lord says: In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage; for they shall not begin to die, but shall be equal to the angels of God. But here, since the earth was to be filled with human beings, and since it behoved it to be filled from one man for the sake of the closer bond of kinship and the tie of unity most to be commended, for what other reason, according to that very purpose, was the female sex sought as a helper, except that the woman's nature, like the fruitfulness of the earth, might assist the man in sowing the human race?

Although it is more honourable and better to believe that the animal body of those human beings established in paradise, not yet condemned by the law of death, was at that time so constituted that they did not have the appetite of carnal pleasure such as these bodies now have, which are already derived from the propagation of death. For nothing was left undone in them when they had eaten of the forbidden tree, seeing that God had said, not 'if you eat of it, you shall surely die,' but: In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die — so that that very day might work in them that which the Apostle bewails, saying: I delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. For it would not have sufficed him to say: 'Who shall deliver me from this mortal body?' but, he says, 'from the body of this death.' Just as also that other saying: The body indeed, he says, is dead because of sin; nor does he there say 'mortal,' but 'dead' — although assuredly it is also mortal, because it is about to die. We must not believe that those bodies were of such a kind; but although animal, not yet spiritual, they were nonetheless not dead — that is, such that it was necessary for them to die: which came about on that day on which they had touched the tree against the prohibition.

Just as in these very bodies of ours a certain health, according to its measure, is spoken of, which, if it be so disturbed that a lethal disease already devours the vitals, so that upon inspecting it the physicians pronounce death to be imminent, the body is then indeed likewise called mortal, but in a different sense than when it was healthy — although even then without doubt it was one day to die: so those human beings, bearing indeed animal bodies, yet not bodies about to die unless they should sin, but rather destined to receive the angelic form and heavenly quality — as soon as they transgressed the commandment, in their members, as it were like some lethal sickness, death itself was conceived, and it changed that quality by which they so ruled over the body that they did not say:

I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind — because, even if the body was not yet spiritual but animal, it was nonetheless not yet of this death, in which and with which we are born. For what else have we begun, I will not say when born, but altogether when even conceived, than a certain sickness whereby we are of necessity destined to die? For it is not so necessary that a man die of the very disease who has become dropsical or consumptive or leprous, as that he die who has begun to have this body, in which all men are by nature children of wrath, because he came to have it only through the penalty of sin.

Since these things are so, why should we not believe that those human beings, before sin, could command their genital members for the begetting of children just as they commanded the rest, which the soul moves in any work whatever without any trouble and, as it were, without the itch of pleasure? For if the omnipotent Creator, ineffably to be praised — who is great even in his least works — granted to the bees that they should so effect the generation of their offspring as they do the form of the wax and the liquid of the honey, why should it seem incredible that he made for the first human beings such bodies that, had they not sinned and thereby forthwith conceived a certain disease whereby they would die, they might have commanded, by that same nod of the will, the members by which offspring arises, just as they command the feet when one walks —

so that there would be neither sowing with heat nor bearing with pain. But now, by transgressing the commandment, they came to merit having in their members the movement of that law which wars against the law of the mind — the law of the death that was conceived — which movement marriage orders, which continence restrains and bridles, so that, as from sin punishment came about, so from punishment merit might come about.

And so, whoever should doubt that the woman was made for the man out of the man, in that sex, in that form and distinction of members whereby females are known — the woman who bore Cain and Abel and all their brothers, from whom all men were to be born, among whom she also bore Seth, through whom the line came down to Abraham and to the people of Israel and the nation now most well known of all nations, and through the sons of Noah to all nations — whoever should doubt this makes everything that we believe totter, and is to be driven far from the minds of the faithful.

When, therefore, it is asked for what help that sex was made for the man, to me carefully considering all things, as far as I am able, no reason presents itself except that of offspring — that the earth might be filled through their stock, and that not procreated in the manner in which men are now procreated, when the law of sin is present in the members warring against the law of the mind, even if by God's grace it be overcome by virtue; for it must be believed that this could not have been except in the body of this death, which body is dead because of sin.

And what is more just than this penalty — that the body, that is, the soul's own servant, should not serve at every nod, just as the soul itself refused to serve its own Lord? whether God creates both from the parents, the body from the body, the soul from the soul, or in some other way makes souls — assuredly not for a work that is impossible, nor for a paltry reward: so that when the soul, made subject to God in piety, has itself, through grace, overcome that law of sin which is in the members of this body of death, which the first man received as a penalty, it may receive the heavenly reward with greater glory, demonstrating how great is the praise of obedience, which by virtue was able to overcome the penalty of another's disobedience.

But since it has been sufficiently inquired, as I judge, for what help the woman was made for the man, let us now see why it was done that all the beasts of the field and all the birds of heaven were brought to Adam, that he might give them names, and that thus, as it were, a necessity might arise of creating for him a woman out of his side, since among those animals no help like unto himself had been found. For it seems to me to have been done for the sake of some prophetic signification, yet nonetheless actually done, so that, the deed being confirmed as an event, the interpretation of the figure might be left free. For what is this very thing, that Adam gave names to the flying and land animals, but not also to the fishes and all swimming creatures?

For if human tongues be consulted, all these things are so named just as men, in speaking, imposed names upon them. Not only these things which are in the waters and on the lands, but also the earth itself and the water and the heaven, and the things that are seen in the heaven and the things that are not seen but believed, are called by different names according to the diversity of the tongues of the nations. We have indeed learned that there was at first one tongue, before the pride of that tower built after the flood divided human society into diverse sounds of signs; but whatever that tongue was, what does it profit to inquire?

Certainly Adam then spoke in that tongue, and in that tongue, if it still endures to this day, are those articulate utterances by which the first man imposed names upon the land and flying animals. Is it then in any way credible that in that same tongue the names of fishes were instituted not by man but divinely, which man should afterward learn by God's teaching? But if it had even been so done, why it had been so done would without doubt echo forth a mystical signification. Rather, it must be believed that names were imposed little by little as the kinds of fishes became known;

but then, when the cattle and beasts and birds were brought to the man, that he might impose names upon them when they had been gathered together to him and distinguished by kind — upon these very creatures he could have imposed names little by little and much more quickly than upon the fishes, had this not been so done — what was the cause, except a rational plan of signifying something that would avail for the foretelling of things to come? To which purpose the order of this narrative most especially keeps watch. Furthermore, was God ignorant that he had created nothing of such a kind in the natures of the animals that could be a like help for the man? Or was it needful that the man himself should also come to know this, and hold his wife the more commended, in that among all flesh created under heaven and living, like himself, from this air, he found nothing like unto her?

It would be strange if he could not know this except by all things being brought to him and inspected. For if he believed God, God could tell him this in the same way in which he also gave the commandment, and in which he also questioned and judged him when he sinned; but if he did not believe, then assuredly he could not even know this — whether that One in whom he did not believe had brought all things to him, or whether perhaps in some more remote parts of the earth he had hidden certain creatures like unto her which he had not shown him. And so I do not think it should be doubted that this was done for the sake of some prophetic signification, yet nonetheless actually done.

Nor have we undertaken in this work to search out prophetic enigmas, but to commend the trustworthiness of the events according to the proper sense of history — so that what may seem impossible to the vain and unbelieving, or may seem to conflict with the very authority of Holy Scripture as by a contrary testimony, this I may, according to my strength, so far as God helps, by discussion demonstrate to be neither impossible nor contrary; and that which indeed appears possible and has no semblance of contradiction, but may nonetheless seem to certain persons as it were superfluous or even foolish, this very thing I may show by argument to have been done not, as it were, in the natural or customary order of events, so that — the most trustworthy authority of the Holy Scriptures being set before our hearts, since it cannot be foolish — it may be believed to be mystical, although its exposition or investigation we have either already set forth elsewhere or defer to another time.

What, then, does this also mean, that the woman was made for the man out of his side? Granted, let us believe that it behoved to be so done for the sake of commending the force of that very union. But did the same reason or necessity also demand that it be done to him while sleeping, so that finally, a bone having been drawn out, flesh should be supplied in its place? For could not the flesh itself have been drawn out, that from it the woman might more fittingly be formed, seeing that she is the inferior sex? Or indeed, could God, who made the very man out of the dust, build a rib into a woman by adding so many things, and yet not build flesh or muscle? Or if a rib had now to be drawn out, why was not another rib put back in its place?

Why, moreover, is it not said 'he fashioned' or 'he made,' as in all the works above, but 'the Lord God,' it says, 'built' that rib — not as a human body, but as a house? It must not therefore be doubted that, since these things were done and cannot be foolish, they were done to signify something — the fruit of the age to come, which God, foreknowing from the very beginning of the human race, was mercifully proclaiming in his very works, so that, revealed at a certain time to his own, whether through the successions of men or through his own Spirit or the ministry of angels, and set down in writing, they might bear witness both to things to be promised in the future and to things to be recognized when fulfilled: which will appear more and more in what follows.

Let us see, therefore — which is what we have undertaken in this work — how these things can be taken, not according to the prefiguration of things to come, but according to the proper, not allegorical, signification of the events. And God fashioned, it says, moreover out of the earth all the beasts of the field and all the birds of heaven: concerning which we have already discussed what has been seen, and as much as has been seen. And he brought them all to Adam, that he might see what he would call them. In what manner God brought these to Adam — lest we understand it in a carnal sense — that which we treated in the previous book concerning the twofold work of divine providence ought to help us.

For it must not be believed that this was done in the way that hunters or fowlers track down and drive to the nets whatever animals they catch; nor that some voice of command came forth from a cloud to them in those words which rational souls are wont, upon hearing, to understand and obey. For beasts and birds did not receive this that they should be able so to do;

yet in their own kind they obey God, not by the rational choice of the will, but as He moves all things at their fitting times — He Himself being not moved in time — through angelic ministries, which receive in His Word what ought to be done and at what time; and while He is not moved in time, they themselves are moved in time, so that in those things which are subject to them they may carry out His commands. For every living soul — not only the rational, as in men, but also the irrational, as in cattle and birds and fishes — is moved by things seen. But the rational soul either consents or does not consent to the things seen by the choice of the will; the irrational, however, has not this judgment, yet in its own kind and nature, being touched by something seen, is driven on.

Nor is it in the power of any soul what things seen should come to it, whether into the bodily senses or into the spirit itself within — by which things seen the appetite of any living creature is moved. And so, when these things seen are supplied from above through the obedience of the angels, the command of God reaches not only to men, nor only to birds and cattle, but also to those things which lie hidden beneath the waters — as to the great fish which swallowed Jonah — nor only to these larger creatures, but even to the little worm; for we read that this too was divinely commanded to gnaw the root of the gourd beneath whose shade the prophet had rested.

For if God has so granted to man, so constituting him, that even while bearing the flesh of sin he is able not only to subject to his own uses cattle and beasts of burden, nor only domestic birds, but even freely flying creatures of any kind, and even savage wild beasts, both to capture and to tame and wondrously to command them by the power of reason, not of the body — since, capturing their appetites and pains, and little by little enticing, restraining, and relaxing, he moderates them, strips them of their wild habit, and clothes them, as it were, with human manners:

how much more can the angels do this, who, by God's command — in His very immutable truth, which they eternally behold, being perceived — moving themselves through time, and the bodies subjected to them through time and place with wondrous agility, are able to effect both the things seen by which it may be moved, and the appetite of carnal need, for every living soul, so that, not knowing whither it is needful for it to go, it may be led thither! Now, therefore, let us see how the very formation of the woman — which was also mystically called a 'building' — was accomplished. For the nature of the woman was indeed created, though out of the male which already existed, and not by any movement of natures already in being. But the angels can create no nature whatever;

for the sole Creator of any nature whatever, whether great or least, is God alone — that is, the Trinity itself, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. In another way, then, it is asked how Adam was put to sleep and how his rib was drawn from the frame of the body without any sensation of pain. For these things perhaps may be said to have been able to come about through angels; but to form or build the rib into a woman was so far beyond any but God — by whom the whole of nature subsists — that I would not believe even that supplement of flesh in the man's body, which came into the place of that rib, to have been made by angels, any more than the man himself out of the dust of the earth: not that there is no work of angels toward something being created, but that they are not therefore creators.

For we do not call farmers the creators of crops and trees. For neither is he who plants anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. To this increase pertains also, in the human body, the fact that, the bone being removed, the place was supplied with flesh — by that work of God, namely, whereby He furnishes natures that they may exist, whereby He also created the very angels. And so it is the work of the farmer to lead water when he irrigates; but it is not his work that the water should flow down the slopes, but the work of Him who ordered all things in measure and number and weight. Likewise it is the work of the farmer to pluck a shoot from a tree and commit it to the earth;

but it is not his work that it should drink in sap and send forth a shoot, that it should fix one part in its soil whereby it steadies the root, and thrust another part into the air whereby it nourishes its strength and spreads its branches — but the work of Him who gives the increase. The physician also applies nourishment to a sick body and medicine to a wounded one: first, not from things which he created, but which he found already created by the work of the Creator; then, he was able to prepare food or drink and administer it, to form a poultice and apply it, smeared with medicine. Can he, moreover, out of those things which he applies, work and create strength or flesh? Nature does this by an inner movement most hidden from us.

Yet if God should withdraw from it that innermost operation whereby He furnishes and makes it, forthwith, as if extinguished, nothing will remain. Wherefore, since God administers the whole of His creation by a certain twofold work of providence — of which we spoke in the previous book — both in natural and in voluntary movements, no angel can create a nature any more than he can create himself. But the angelic will, obediently made subject to God and executing His command, can by natural movements minister, as it were, material out of the subject things, so that, according to those principal reasons in the Word of God (not created) or according to those causally created in the works of the first six days, something may be created in time — after the manner of farming or of healing.

What ministry, therefore, the angels rendered to God in that formation of the woman, who would dare to affirm? Yet most certainly I would say that that supplement of flesh in the place of the rib, and the very body and soul of the woman, and the conformation of her members, all her inner organs, all her senses, and whatever there was whereby she was both a creature and a human being and a woman, was made by none but that work of God — that work which God performs not through angels, but through Himself. And He did not perform it and then let it go, but so works continuously that neither the nature of any other things nor of the angels themselves would subsist, if He did not work.

But since animate and sentient flesh — so far as we have been able to experience the nature of things according to human capacity — we do not know to be born except either from these material elements, as it were, that is, water and earth; or from shrubs or the fruits of trees, or even from the flesh of animals, like the innumerable kinds of worms or reptiles; or else certainly from the sexual union of parents — and we know of no flesh born from the flesh of any living creature so like unto it that it should be distinguished by sex alone — we seek among the things of this creation a likeness whereby the woman was made from the man's side, and we cannot find it, for no other reason than that we know how men labour on this earth;

But in what manner the angels may in some way till this world, we certainly do not know. For surely, if apart from any human industry the course of nature were to produce the various kinds of shrubs, we would know nothing except that trees and herbs are born from the earth and from their own seeds falling likewise from them into the ground; would there ever become known to us what grafting can accomplish, so that wood of one kind might bear on its own root fruits foreign to it, yet fruits now made its own through a coalescing union? These things we have learned through the labor of farmers, though they were in no way themselves the creators of the trees, but rather furnished a certain service and ministry of their own to the course of nature that God creates. For nothing whatever would come to be through their labor, if in this the innermost reason of nature, which is God's own work, did not hold it.