Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.25–11.14

Finally Tertullian, because he believed the soul to be a body for no other reason than that he could not think of it as bodiless, and so feared that it would be nothing if it were not a body, could not think otherwise of God either; yet, being sharp, he is sometimes overcome by the truth he sees, against his own opinion. For what truer thing could he have said than what he says in one place: “Everything bodily is passible”? He ought, then, to have changed the view he had stated a little earlier, that God too is a body. For I do not think he was so foolish as to believe that even God's nature is passible, so that Christ would be believed passible and changeable no longer in the flesh only, nor in flesh and soul, but in the very Word through whom all things were made: which be far from a Christian heart. Likewise, when he gave the soul even an airy and bright color, he came to the senses, with which he tried to furnish it limb by limb like a body, and he says: “This will be the inner man, the other the outer, one person twofold; the inner too having its own eyes and ears, by which the people ought to have heard and seen the Lord, having also the other limbs, which it uses in thoughts and employs in dreams.” See with what ears and what eyes the people ought to have heard and seen God: those which the soul employs in dreams; though if anyone saw Tertullian himself in dreams, he would never say that he had been seen by him and had spoken with him, whom he himself had not seen in return. Finally, if the soul sees itself in dreams, when, the limbs of its body lying in one place, it wanders through the various images which it sees, who has ever seen it in dreams of an airy and bright color, unless perhaps as he sees the other things which he similarly sees falsely? For he can see this too. But far be it from him to believe, when he wakes up, that it is such; otherwise, when he sees himself otherwise, which is more frequent, either his soul will have been changed, or then too it is not the substance of the soul that is seen, but a bodiless image of a body, which is formed in a wonderful way as in thought. For what Ethiopian has not almost always seen himself black in dreams, or, if he saw himself in another color, did not rather wonder, if memory was with him? But whether he would ever have seen himself in an airy and bright color, I do not know, if he had never read or heard this. What of the fact that men are led by such visions and want to lay down for us from the Scriptures that such a thing is not the soul but God himself, as he was shown figuratively to the spirits of the saints, as he is also set forth in allegorical speech? For those visions are like such sayings. And so they err, setting up in their hearts idols of a vain opinion and not understanding that the saints judged of such visions of theirs as they would judge if they read or heard such things said by God in figures: as the seven ears of grain and the seven cows are seven years, as the sheet tied by four corners, like a dish full of various animals, is the whole world with all the nations; so all the rest, and much more, which are signified of bodiless things not by things but by images.

Yet Tertullian did not want the soul to grow in substance like the body, stating also the reason for his fear: “lest it be said also to decrease in substance,” he says, “and so be believed also to be going to fail.” And yet, because he stretches it locally through the body, he finds no way out concerning its growth, since he wants it to become equal from a tiny seed to the size of the body, and he says: “But its force, in which the natural endowments sown in it are kept, is gradually drawn out with the flesh, the measure of the substance with which it was breathed in from the beginning being preserved.” This we would perhaps not understand if he did not make plain what he was saying by using a comparison. “Take,” he says, “a certain weight of gold or silver, a mass still rough: its shape is compact and for the time smaller than it will be, yet containing within the line of its measure all that is by nature gold or silver. Then, when the mass is beaten out into a sheet, it is made greater than at its beginning by the spreading of the fixed weight, not by addition, while it is extended, not while it is increased. Although in this way too it is increased while it is extended; for it may be increased in shape, though not in state. Then too the very brightness of the gold or silver is brought out, which was indeed there before in the mass, but dimmer, yet not absent. Then too other and other shapes come, according to the ease of the material, as the worker has drawn it out, contributing nothing to its measure but form. So too the growths of the soul are to be reckoned not substantial but drawn forth.” Who would believe that, with such a mind, he could be so eloquent? But these things are to be trembled at, not laughed at. For would he be forced into this if he could think of something which both exists and is not a body? And what is more absurd than to think that a mass of any metal can grow in one part, while it is beaten, unless it decreases in another, or be increased in breadth unless it is lessened in thickness? Or that there is any body which, the quantity of its nature remaining, grows on every side without becoming thinner? How, then, will the soul fill from that drop of seed the size of the body it animates, if it too is a body, whose substance grows by no addition? How, I say, will it fill the flesh it gives life to, unless it becomes thinner in proportion as what it animates is larger? He feared, evidently, that it would fail by lessening if it grew, and did not fear that it would fail by thinning when it grew. But why should I dwell longer, when my discourse is running on at greater length than the need of finishing requires, and my view is now well enough known, both what I hold as certain and on what point I still doubt, and why I doubt? So let this volume too now be concluded, so that we may then see what follows.

“And they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and they were not ashamed. Now the serpent was the most prudent of all the beasts that are upon the earth, which the Lord God had made. And the serpent said to the woman, ‘Why is it that God said, You shall not eat from every tree of paradise?’ And the woman said to the serpent, ‘Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we shall eat; but of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of paradise God said, You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ And the serpent said to the woman, ‘You shall not die the death; for God knew that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.’ And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasing to the eyes to look upon, and beautiful to know. And taking of its fruit she ate, and she gave also to her husband with her, and they ate. And the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves girdles. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in paradise toward evening, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God in the midst of the trees of paradise. And the Lord God called Adam and said to him, ‘Adam, where are you?’ And he said to him, ‘I heard your voice as you walked in paradise, and I was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself.’ And he said to him, ‘Who told you that you were naked, unless you have eaten of the tree of which alone I had commanded you not to eat?’ And Adam said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.’ And the Lord God said to the woman, ‘Why have you done this?’ And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’ And the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, you are cursed above all cattle and above all the beasts that are upon the earth. Upon your breast and your belly you shall go, and earth you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. She will watch for your head, and you will watch for her heel.’ And to the woman he said, ‘I will greatly multiply your sorrows and your groaning. In sorrows you shall bear children, and your turning shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you.’ But to Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate 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 for 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 earth you shall go.’ And Adam called the name of his wife ‘Life,’ because she is the mother of all the living. And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin and clothed them. And the Lord God said, ‘Behold, Adam has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. And now, lest at some time he stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and eat, and live for ever’— and the Lord God sent him out of the paradise of delight to till the earth from which he was taken. And he cast Adam out and placed him opposite the paradise of delight; and he stationed the Cherubim and the flaming sword which turns, to guard the way to the tree of life.” Before we treat the text of this passage of Scripture in order, I think I should give a reminder of what I remember having said already elsewhere in this work: what we must strive for is that what the writer himself narrates as having been done be defended according to the proper sense of the letter. But if, in the words of God or of any person taken up into the prophetic office, something is said that cannot be understood literally except absurdly, then without doubt it must be taken as said figuratively for the sake of some meaning; yet that it was said, we may not doubt. For this is required by the trustworthiness of the narrator and by the undertaking of the expositor. “So they were both naked”: it is true; the bodies of the two human beings living in paradise were entirely naked. “And they were not ashamed”: for what should they be ashamed of, when they had not yet felt any law in their members warring against the law of their mind? That penalty of sin followed them after they had committed the transgression, when disobedience usurped what was forbidden and justice punished what was committed. Before this happened, they were naked, as was said, and were not abashed; there was no movement in the body that called for modesty; they thought nothing needed to be veiled, because they had felt nothing that needed to be reined in. How they would have propagated children has already been discussed earlier; yet it must not be believed that it would have been in the way in which they did propagate after the foretold punishment followed the committing of the crime, when, before they died, death, already conceived in the body of disobedient human beings, stirred up the tumult of disobedient members by a most just requital. Adam and Eve were not yet such when they were both naked and were not abashed.

Now the serpent there was indeed the most prudent, but of all the beasts that were upon the earth, which the Lord God had made. For “most prudent,” or, as more Latin manuscripts have it, “most wise,” is said by a transferred use of the word, not in its proper sense, in which wisdom is usually taken in a good sense, whether of God or of angels or of the rational soul; just as if we were to call bees and ants “wise” because of works that seem to imitate wisdom. And yet this serpent can be called the wisest of all the beasts not by its own irrational soul but by a spirit not its own, namely the devil's. For however much the transgressing angels have been cast down from the heavenly seats in consequence of their perversity and pride, they are still by nature more excellent than all the beasts because of the eminence of reason. What wonder, then, if the devil, by his own prompting, filling the serpent and mingling his spirit with it in the way in which the soothsayers of demons are usually filled, had made it the wisest of all the beasts that live according to a living and irrational soul? For by a misuse of the name, wisdom is spoken of in a bad sense, just as cunning is spoken of in a good sense, although properly and more commonly, at least in the Latin language, people are called wise in praise, while the cunning are understood to be ill-minded. Hence some, as we find in very many manuscripts, rendering not the word but rather the sense for the sake of Latin usage, preferred to call this serpent “more cunning” than all the beasts rather than “wiser.” What the idiom of Hebrew has, whether there people can properly and not by misuse be called and understood to be wise in a bad sense, let those who know it well see to that. We, however, clearly read in another passage of the holy Scriptures of people who are wise for evil, not for good; and the Lord says that the children of this world are wiser than the children of light in providing for themselves for the future, though by fraud, not by right.

Nor indeed should we suppose that the devil chose the serpent for himself as the one through which to tempt and persuade to sin; but since there was in him, because of his perverse and envious will, the desire to deceive, he could do it only through that animal through which he was permitted to be able to do it. For the will to harm can come from a person's own depraved mind; but the power comes only from God, and this by a hidden and profound justice, since there is no iniquity with God.

If, then, it is asked why God permitted the man to be tempted whom he foreknew would consent to the tempter, I cannot penetrate the depth of his counsel, and I confess that this is far beyond my powers. There may be some more hidden reason, reserved for those who are better and holier, by his grace rather than by their merits. Yet, so far as he grants me to understand or permits me to say, it does not seem to me that it would have been greatly to the man's praise if he could live well only because no one persuaded him to live badly; since he had it both in his nature to be able and in his power to will not to consent to the persuader, with the help, however, of him who resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Why, then, should God not permit him to be tempted whom he foreknew would consent, since he was going to do it by his own will through fault and was to be set in order by God's equity through punishment, so that in this way too he might show to the proud soul, for the instruction of the saints to come, how rightly he himself uses the wills of souls, even evil ones, when they use good natures perversely?

Nor should it be thought that this tempter would have overthrown the man had there not first been in the man's soul a certain exaltation that needed to be checked, so that through the humiliation of sin he might learn how falsely he had presumed about himself. For it is most truly said, “Before a fall the heart is exalted, and before glory it is humbled.” And perhaps it is this man's voice in the psalm: “I said in my abundance, I shall not be moved for ever.” Then, having learned by experience what evil there is in proud presumption on one's own power and what good in the help of God's grace, he says, “Lord, in your will you gave strength to my beauty; but you turned away your face, and I became troubled.” But whether that was said of this man or of another, still the soul that exalts itself and trusts too much in its own strength, as it were, had to be shown, even by the experience of punishment, how badly a created nature fares if it departs from the one who made it. For hereby above all is it commended what a good God is, since it is well with no one who departs from him; because those who rejoice in deadly pleasures cannot be without fear of pain, and those who, in a greater stupor of pride, do not feel the evil of their desertion at all appear plainly more wretched to others who know how to discern these things; so that, if they will not accept the medicine for avoiding such things, they may serve as an example by which such things can be avoided. For as the apostle James says, “Each one is tempted by his own desire, being drawn away and enticed. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is completed, brings forth death.” Hence, once the swelling of pride is healed, one rises again, if the will that was lacking before the experience, so as to remain with God, is at least present after the experience, so as to return to God.

Some are troubled about this temptation of the first man, that God permitted it to happen, as though they did not now see the whole human race tempted without ceasing by the snares of the devil. Why does God permit this also? Is it not because virtue is proved and exercised, and the palm is more glorious for having been tempted and not consented than for having been unable to be tempted? For even those who forsake the Creator and go after the tempter tempt more and more those who remain in the word of God, and they offer them an example of what to avoid against desire and strike into them a godly fear against pride. Hence the apostle says, “Considering yourself, lest you too be tempted.” For it is remarkable how constantly, through all the divine Scriptures, that humility is commended by which we are subject to the Creator, lest we presume on our own strength as though we did not need his help. Since, then, the just make progress even through the unjust and the godly through the ungodly, it is idle to say, “God should not create those whom he foreknew would be evil.” For why should he not create those whom he foreknew would benefit the good, so that they may be born useful for exercising and admonishing the good wills of others, and be justly punished for their own evil will?

“He should have made man such,” they say, “that he would not will to sin at all.” Look, we grant that the nature that does not will to sin at all is better; let them grant too that the nature is not evil that was made such that it could not sin if it did not will to, and that the sentence was just by which it was punished, since it sinned by will, not by necessity. Just as true reason teaches that the creature that no unlawful thing delights at all is better, so true reason teaches no less that the creature is also good that has it in its power to restrain unlawful delight, if it arises, in such a way that it rejoices not only in other lawful and rightly done deeds but also in the very restraint of the wicked delight. Since, then, this nature is good and that one better, why should God make only that one and not rather both? And so those who were ready to praise God for that one alone ought to praise him more richly for both; for that one is in the holy angels, this one in holy human beings. But those who chose for themselves the part of iniquity and depraved a praiseworthy nature by a culpable will ought not, simply because they were foreknown, to have been left uncreated. For they too have their place, which they fill in the order of things for the benefit of the saints. For God does not need the righteousness of any upright man; how much less the iniquity of the perverse!

But who, considering soberly, would say, “It would have been better not to create the one whom he foreknew could be corrected by another's iniquity than to create also the one whom he foreknew must be condemned for his own iniquity”? For this is to say, “It would be better that there not exist one who would be mercifully crowned by making good use of another's evil than that there should also exist an evil one who would be justly punished according to his desert.” For when sure reason demonstrates two goods that are not equal, but one higher and the other lower, the slow of heart, when they say, “Let both be like that,” do not understand that they are saying nothing else than, “Let only that one exist.” And so, wishing to make the kinds of good equal, they reduce their number, and by immoderately increasing one kind they remove the other. Who would listen to them if they said, “Since the sense of sight is more excellent than that of hearing, there should be four eyes and no ears”? So, if that rational creature is more excellent which is subject to God without comparison with anyone's punishment and without any pride, while another, among human beings, was created such that it cannot recognize God's benefit in itself except by seeing another's punishment, so that it may not be high-minded but fear, that is, not presume on itself but trust in God—who, understanding rightly, would say, “Let this one be like that one,” and not see that he is saying nothing else than, “Let this one not exist, but only that one”? But if this is said ignorantly and foolishly, why then should God not create even those whom he foreknew would be evil, wishing to show his wrath and to make known his power, and for this reason enduring with much patience the vessels of wrath that are fitted for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory toward the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory? For thus “let him who boasts boast only in the Lord,” when he recognizes that it is not his own doing but God's, not only that he exists but also that it is well with him only from the one from whom he has his existence. So it is quite out of place to say, “Those to whom God would grant such great kindness of his mercy should not exist, if they could not exist otherwise than if those also existed in whom he would display the justice of his vengeance.”

For why should both kinds not exist instead, since in both God's goodness and his equity are rightly proclaimed? “But if God willed it, these too would be good.” How much better did God will this: that they should be what they willed, but that the good should not be fruitless nor the evil unpunished, and that in this very thing they should be useful to others! “But he foreknew that their will would be evil.” He did foreknow it, indeed; and because his foreknowledge cannot be deceived, the evil will is therefore not his but theirs. Why, then, did he create those whom he foreknew would be such? Because, just as he foresaw what evil they would do, so also he foresaw what good he himself would do from their evil deeds. For he made them in such a way as to leave them something they themselves might do, so that whatever they chose, even culpably, they would find him working praiseworthily in their regard. For from themselves they have the evil will; but from him both their good nature and their just punishment, their due place, a help in exercise for others, and an example to make them fear.

“But,” someone says, “he could have turned even their will to good, since he is almighty.” He could indeed. Why, then, did he not do it? Because he did not will to. Why he did not will to rests with him. For we ought not to think more highly than we ought to think. Yet I think I showed sufficiently a little earlier that a rational creature is no small good, even that one which avoids evil by comparison with evil people. That kind of good creature would certainly not exist if almighty God had turned the evil wills of all to good and inflicted on no iniquity its due punishment; and so there would be only that kind which makes progress without any comparison with sin or with the punishment of the wicked. Thus, as though by increasing the number of the more excellent kind, the number of kinds of good itself would be lessened.

“So,” they say, “there is something in God's works that needs another's evil in order to advance to good?” Have people become so deaf and blind through some zeal for contention, I know not what, that they do not hear or see how very many are corrected when certain people are punished? For what pagan, what Jew, what heretic does not prove this daily in his own household? But when it comes to the discussion and investigation of truth, people will not attend with their minds to the work of divine providence from which there comes upon them the impulse to impose discipline, so that, even if those who are punished are not corrected, others may fear their example and the just ruin of some may serve the salvation of others. Is God, then, the author of the malice or wickedness of those by whose just punishment he provides for those for whom he has decided that provision must be made in this way? Certainly not. But though he foreknew that they would be evil by their own vices, he still did not refrain from creating them, assigning them to the benefit of those whom he created in such a kind that they could not advance to good except by comparison with the evil. For if they did not exist, they would certainly benefit nothing. Is it a small good that has been done, that there should exist those who are certainly useful to that kind? Whoever does not want that kind to exist is doing nothing else than seeing to it that he himself is not in it. “Great are the works of the Lord, sought out in all his wills!” He foresees that some will be good and creates them; he foresees that some will be evil and creates them; offering himself to the good to be enjoyed, bestowing many of his gifts also on the evil; mercifully pardoning, justly punishing, and likewise mercifully punishing, justly pardoning; fearing nothing from anyone's malice, needing nothing from anyone's righteousness; providing nothing for himself even from the works of the good, and providing for the good even by the punishments of the evil. Why, then, should he not permit the man to be tempted by that temptation by which he was to be exposed, convicted, and punished, when proud desire for its own power would give birth to what it had conceived and be confounded by its own offspring, and by a just punishment deter from the evil of pride and disobedience his descendants, for whom these things were being prepared to be written and proclaimed?

But if it is asked why the devil was permitted to tempt through a serpent in particular, whom does Scripture not remind that this was done for the sake of signifying something, Scripture of such great authority, acting in its prophesying with proofs of divinity as great as the fulfilments with which the world is now filled? Not that the devil wished to signify anything for our instruction; but since he could not approach to tempt unless he was permitted, could he do it through anything other than that through which he was permitted to approach? Whatever, then, that serpent signified must be attributed to the providence under which the devil himself has his own desire to harm, but no power except what is given him, either to overthrow and destroy the vessels of wrath or to humble or test the vessels of mercy. So we know where the nature of the serpent comes from: for the earth brought forth at the word of God all cattle, both serpents and beasts; and this whole creation, having in itself a living, irrational soul, is subject by the law of the divine order to every rational creature, whether of good or of evil will. What wonder, then, if the devil was permitted to do something through a serpent, when Christ himself permitted demons to enter swine?

A more scrupulous question is usually raised about the very nature of the devil, which certain heretics, offended by the trouble his evil will causes, try to remove entirely from the creation of the supreme and true God, giving him another principle that is opposed to God. For they are not able to understand that everything that exists, in so far as it is some substance, is both good and cannot exist except from that true God from whom every good comes; and that an evil will is moved in a disordered way, by preferring lower goods to higher ones; and that so it came about that the spirit of a rational creature, delighted with its own power because of its excellence, swelled with pride, through which it fell from the happiness of the spiritual paradise, and wasted away with envy. Yet in it this very thing is good, that it lives and gives life to a body, whether an airy body, like the spirit of the devil himself or of the demons, or an earthly one, like the soul of any human being, even a malicious and perverse one. Thus, while they will not have anything that God made sin by its own will, they say that the substance of God himself was corrupted and perverted, first by necessity and afterwards, beyond expiation, by will. But we have already said much elsewhere about the utterly insane error of these people.

In this work, however, we must ask what is to be said about the devil according to holy Scripture. First, whether from the very beginning of the world, delighted with his own power, he held aloof from that fellowship and love by which the angels who enjoy God are happy, or whether for some time he too was in the holy company of the angels, equally righteous and equally happy. For some say that his fall from the heavenly seats came about because he envied man, made in the image of God. But envy follows pride; it does not precede it. For envy is not the cause of being proud; pride is the cause of envying. Since, then, pride is the love of one's own excellence, while envy is hatred of another's happiness, it is plain enough which springs from which. For in loving his own excellence a person envies either his equals, because they are made equal with him, or his inferiors, lest they be made equal with him, or his superiors, because he is not made equal with them. So it is by being proud that someone is envious, not by being envious that he is proud.