Six Homilies on the Creation 6.1–6.5

Come, let us take up our promise again and bring the subject of paradise to its end. For if it was an unbearable evil that Adam was cast out of paradise, it will be a much greater evil if we too are cast out of the memory of paradise. Let us take up the subject, not entrusting the inquiry to ordinary words, but taking the solution of the difficulties from holy Scripture itself. For whoever thinks and judges as he pleases deceives himself; but whoever learns the solution of the difficulties from Scripture has truth itself as his teacher. Since, then, many of the faithful are perplexed when they read, and many unbelievers blaspheme out of ignorance, let us take up the subject as far as we are able, so as to give full assurance to the saints and refutation to the unbelievers, and let us entreat God together with you to supply the truth in abundance. How man was constructed, how he was shaped in body, how a soul created by God was put into his body, how he had paradise as his dwelling, has been said sufficiently before, if not as the subject deserves, at least as far as we were able. Now let us turn the discourse to our subject. The whole earth was given to Adam, but his special dwelling was paradise. He was allowed to walk outside paradise too; but what lay outside paradise was not set apart for man's dwelling, but for the irrational animals: cattle, four-footed beasts, wild animals, creeping things. Paradise was his royal and lordly residence. That is why God brought the animals to Adam, as creatures that lived apart from him. For slaves do not always stand by their master, but only when they are needed. The animals were named and at once sent out; but Adam remained in paradise. Now let us learn the exact understanding of this. The irrational animals were allowed to approach Adam, to bow before him, and to fawn on him. I mean this: just as there were three kinds of trees (trees that fed him so that he might live, trees that tested him so that he might live well, and a tree that kept him so that he might live forever), so too three kinds of irrational animals were given to him: one kind for food (set apart not for him alone but for the whole race), another for service, another for delight. For example, for food, those that are now slaughtered; for service, horses, camels, donkeys, oxen, and the other working animals; for delight, the animals that mimic, and the bright voices of the birds of the air, which charm the ears. For just as a body after toil, if it does not shake off its labors, cannot hold out for further labors, so a soul that endures the labors of virtue, unless it is refreshed by pleasant sights, is not equal to the strain of virtue. When God sees a soul weary, he refreshes it through pleasant things, as happens with us too. For often a man comes back from the marketplace with his mind flooded by ten thousand griefs, having met with many heavy sights and fallen into unbearable misfortunes and losses; coming into the house he finds the delight of a little child, and the softness of his mind soothes the hardness of his labors. For when he is despondent, his wife does not come to console him, since her consolation would be untimely, nor does a slave dare to console him; so God brings in the artless nature, which is pardoned because it does not understand, and through it soothes the soul worn out by its labors. If a slave smiles at him, he is thought to be laughing at his master's misfortune; if his wife laughs, she is thought to be insensible to the calamity; but a child's coaxing is above suspicion, because of the innocence of its nature. And often what friends could not do by counsel, nor wise men by admonition, a child could do merely by laughing, dissolving the whole misfortune. Then the soul, at the very height of its grief, sees the child, and at first turns away and rejects the untimely comfort; but it is drawn by the child's persistence, and when the man has often turned his eye toward it, his mind is captured; then he takes up the child, puts off his grief, and says: “Let God grant me this one alone, and I care nothing for the rest.” Do you see how God raises up consolation for the soul even from ordinary things? Since, then, Adam was alone in paradise, with no friend, no neighbor, no kinsman, God brought the animals to him for his delight; for example, as there are today animals that mimic, some imitating gestures and others voices: the ape and such animals imitate human gestures, the parrot and other birds the voice. So he had delight from the irrational animals, some twittering, others fawning. Since, then, there were many that supplied his consolation, the serpent was the most prudent of all the wild animals of the earth, as Scripture said: “The serpent was the most prudent of all the wild animals that the Lord God made.”

So it was more imitative than the imitative animals, and more […] than the […]. [The serpent, which now we] both flee and loathe, was not so from the beginning. The serpent was a friend, and nearer to man than the other animals that fawned on him. Who, then, made it an enemy? God's sentence: “Cursed are you above all the wild animals. I will put enmity between you and the woman.” That enmity dissolved the friendship. I mean a friendship not of reason but an irrational familiarity; just as today a dog shows a kind of friendship, not by reason but by natural impulse, so the serpent fawned on man. Since, then, it was very familiar, it appeared to the devil to be a suitable instrument. Seeing Adam delighting in the serpent, and the serpent fawning on him and imitating many human ways, the craftsman of wickedness devised what those who weave plots do when they corrupt a man through his own people; for no one prevails through strangers, but only through one's own household, as the Savior said: “A man's enemies are those of his own household.” He speaks, then, through the serpent, giving Adam an impression […]. I urge your love not to attend carelessly to what is said. It is no ordinary question; for many ask how the serpent spoke: with a human voice, or with a serpent's hiss, and Eve understood it? Before the transgression Adam was filled with wisdom and understanding and prophecy. Consider how much wisdom he had, that one man was enough, without a teacher, taught by no human being, to give names to all the birds and animals and creeping things and wild beasts, and simply to everything. Picture in your mind the species and the kinds; to put it briefly, he gave so many names that we today, even with experience, cannot repeat them. When, then, God brought the animals to the man, Adam, being wise and having God's Spirit, saw the particular nature of each. He paid attention to the serpent as more prudent, as having perception, as understanding movements from a nod. While Adam was so disposed, the devil perceived both the serpent's prudence and Adam's opinion of it, for he regarded the serpent as intelligent. So he speaks through it, so that Adam might suppose that the serpent, being prudent, had even managed to imitate the human voice. The serpent comes, then. Nowhere did Scripture say that the devil spoke in the serpent; Moses simply passed over the history. Attend, I beg you, with exactness. Paul, the second man to have been in paradise, did not himself undo the wording either, but says: “I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning …”; and he did not say, “the devil.” He was a faithful guardian of the Scriptures, a servant of the Scriptures, a teacher of the Scriptures, an interpreter of the Scriptures. He did not wish to undo the wording, so as not to undo the order of the Scriptures; but he resolved the difficulty by the sense. “I fear,” he says, “lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by its cunning, so your thoughts be corrupted.” How so? Was Paul afraid that the serpent would come again and deceive some? But, he says, “I know that that serpent does not appear, but the one who worked in it does.” But Paul, as a faithful servant and guardian of the holy Scriptures, did not alter the wording, but revealed the sense; and the Master himself of things ancient, new, and to come made the difficulty clear, so that no one might lay the sin on the serpent, but on the one who worked through it. Christ says to the Jews, when they said to him, “We are from God”: “If you were from God, you would do the works and the will of God; but now you are from your father the devil.” He named the devil, and at once brings in the history: “He,” he says, “was a man-slayer from the beginning.” The servant interpreted as a servant; the Master taught as Master: he showed the one who murdered Adam. He did not say simply, “He was a murderer,” but “a man-slayer”; for he killed not one man, but through that one every man. “And he does not stand in the truth,” he says, “because he is a liar.” [3] See how he explained both that he is the devil and that he is a liar. And how did he lie? The serpent said to the woman: “Why is it that God said to you not to eat from every tree?” Do you see the liar? God said: “From every tree you shall eat, but from one do not eat.” The liar says: “Why did God say that you are not to eat from every tree?” Is this not a terrible lie? For when someone wishes to misrepresent a matter maliciously, he feigns ignorance, so as to bring in his villainy unsuspected, as if to say, “I do not know; there is no scheme; I came in simplicity; I know nothing.” Have you not met many such people? Do we not know the deeds of the deceitful? Do they not stitch such things together and feign ignorance? So too the devil: “Why is it,” he says, “that God said to you” (that is, “I misheard, I did not hear well”) “that you are not to eat from every tree?” The woman, thinking it was ignorance, corrects the wording. “He did not say so,” she says; “God did not say not to eat from every tree, but he permitted every tree and forbade one; for he said to us: Do not eat, lest you die.” He seemed to be learning what he did not know; then, no longer suspected as a schemer, he says to her: “You will not die by death.” See another lie. For God had said, “In the day you eat [of it, you shall surely] die”; this was his second lie. “For God knew,” he says, “that in the day you eat you will be like gods.” See a third lie. See the error contrived for the world. And since, as I said before, he planned to raise up the worship of many gods in the world, he anticipated it as in a story and sowed in the woman's ears the notion that there are many gods. But while the craftsman of wickedness thus sowed beforehand the notion of gods, God, foreseeing it, so arranged that the coming error should not be spoken by a human mouth, so that the first rational voice should not utter anything about gods; rather, the first mouth to do so was a serpent's, so that every mouth speaking about idols might be likened to that mouth. I know that you pardon my voice and seize the holy meanings of the Scriptures. Let no one, then, be occupied with elegance of voice, but with the force of the thoughts. “For God knew,” he says, “that in the day you eat you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.” Many say, especially those who have followed Porphyry, hateful to God, who wrote against the Christians and drew many away from the divine doctrine; they say, then: “Why did God forbid the knowledge of good and evil? Granted that he forbade evil; why good as well? For when he says, Do not eat from the tree of knowing good and evil, he prevents him from knowing evil; why also good?” Wickedness always schemes against itself and gives handles against itself. God did not forbid the knowledge of good; for Adam had it even before he ate. For if he had no knowledge, how does he recognize the woman? How does he speak about nature: “Bone from my bones and flesh from my flesh”? And how does he prophesy the future: “She shall be called woman, because she was taken [from her husband. For this reason a man will leave his fa]ther and mother,” and the rest? He knew so much, and did he not know the good? He knew God, he kept God's ordinances, he had knowledge, he gave so many names; how did he not have knowledge of the good? What, then, is it? God does not forbid the knowledge of the good; he wishes that the knowledge of evil not be joined to the good. I resolve the sophism of impiety from the Scriptures. Paul says: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.” He did not forbid both, but hallowed the holy and threw away the accursed and profane. So too the Savior: “You cannot serve God and mammon”; in the same way it is impossible to serve both God and a demon. So God prevented him from taking knowledge of evil, so that the knowledge of evil might not be mixed with the good.

Now let us attend here. Why was it called the tree of knowing good and evil at all? It did not have such a nature, but it brought about such an occasion; I mean the idiom of the Scriptures. For example: a spring of water in the desert was called the water of contradiction: “I tested you at the water of contradiction.” Did the water have such a nature as to bring the people to contradiction? Why, then, did Moses, who drank of it, not contradict God? So the water was called the water of contradiction, not because it had such a nature, but because of the occasion that took place at it. Since the people contradicted there, it was called the water of contradiction. Again, Jacob saw God, as far as a man can see him, and calls the name of the place “Form of God.” The place did not have the form of God or the shape of God; but since the vision came to him there, he named the place from the event. Another place was called “Peace of God.” When an angel appeared to Gideon, he was afraid and says, “Alas, alas, I shall die, for I have seen an angel of God.” The angel says to him, “Peace to you; do not fear.” “And Gideon built an altar,” it says, “and called it Peace of God.” Just as the altar did not itself have peace, but was a symbol of the peace that came and was given; and just as the water did not have contradiction, but was so called because of the occasion at it; so too the tree did not have knowledge, but was so called because everyone who sins comes to the knowledge of what he sins. Let me put it again by an example. Sometimes, traveling, we pass through places infested by robbers, and people are accustomed to say, “These places are fearful.” Does the place have fear? Or do they say it because of the robbers who lurk in that place? So too that tree did not have a nature that worked deadly knowledge, but received its name from the tragedy that befell Adam around it. I resolve the matter briefly, for divine Scripture is never at a loss. Today we have an altar, of which the faithful partake. Does the gift itself have salvation by nature, or does it have it through the glory that is invoked upon it? Take a pledge from things present; do not doubt about the past. If this food saves by nature and not by grace, then that food kills by nature and not by transgression. I will show you another deadly food outside paradise; I mean idolatry. Why did the martyrs refuse to eat meat? Why were they afraid to eat? If they had eaten, would they have died? Not at all; but since the memory of the idols had been named over it, they fled not the eating but the invocation of the defiled. So the tree was the tree of knowing evil and good, not because it gave knowledge, but because it taught him through the transgression. For experience always teaches the foolish that transgressing is evil. Again, the question will be resolved by another way, not as though the first were weak, but because the grace of God is rich. Let no one think that bringing in many thoughts is a sign of the weakness of the earlier ones; for the grace of God, being rich, supplies us from its own treasures, if we are worthy. Attend, then. The martyrs refused to eat what was sacrificed to idols, truly fleeing the eating; just as, if Adam had fled the tree, he would have been saved. That knowing good and evil is not what is hateful, the truth shines out. For does God, who inquires into evil and does not do it, know it or not? Who dares to say that he does not know it? Knowledge is not action. Did Paul, who says, “Flee sexual immorality,” not know what sexual immorality was? Did the one who flees adultery not know what adultery was? But the knowledge did not condemn him. And God himself knows all our deeds, counting them and saying: “From the heart come evil thoughts, acts of greed. These are what defile a man.” Do God and the Apostle say these things without knowing them, or knowing them? So knowledge does not disgrace Adam. It was not knowledge that harmed him, but transgression. I want to ask him: what good or evil did he learn from the tree? After eating, did he know what murder is? There was not yet anyone to punish. Adultery was not known, for there were not yet marriages; there was no sexual immorality, no robbery, for there was not yet rich and poor; no slanders and false witness. What evil, then, did he come to know, except only this: that it was good to obey God and evil to disobey God? I will use a common, everyday expression, and let no one condemn it as bold. We are accustomed to say to those who sin, threatening them with correction: “I will make you learn correction.” Does he not mean learning by “knowledge”? So the “knowing” comes from the experience of misfortunes. He taught him to know how many evils he had been yoked to …

Attend, then, with exactness. For even if this was said the other day, the subject draws the discourse. God, who gave all things, was invisible; the one who received all things from God was visible. The receiver appeared; the giver did not appear. Man was alone, with the irrational animals around him. He had no one over his head. God set a law for him, the tree in the middle as a reminder, so that, having received the mastery, he might not forget. For example, he went about gathering the fruits with his wife; he came near the tree; he said, “Let us not touch this tree, for God gave a command about it.” And the visible thing was a reminder of the invisible one, as happens even now. Consider how many governors there are throughout the whole earth. And since the emperor is not present to all, the emperor's image must stand in law courts, in marketplaces, in assemblies, in theaters. In every place where a governor acts, it must be present, so that what is done may be ratified. The emperor, being a man, cannot be present everywhere; and God, again, cannot appear to men as God. So he gave the tree as an image of his kingship, bringing to Adam's mind that he had received mastery over all things: “Know the one who gave you the authority.” And that you may learn how the tree reminded them: when the serpent wished to deceive the woman, he said to her, “Why did God say that you are not to eat from every tree?” The woman did not forget the law, but even corrects his ignorance and says: “God did not say so; but we may eat from every tree; but from this tree, God said, do not eat from it, nor touch it.” See the exactness. God did not say, “Do not touch.” For touching brought no danger; but they, having a divine understanding and enjoying the rest, determined among themselves: “God said, Do not taste the tree; but we will not even touch it.” So much did the woman care to keep God's commandment. So the tree stood in the middle, and by it he deceived them. Hear a strange thing. He used as his instrument for the deception something implanted in man. For when God formed man, he put in him, along with the rest of his knowledge, a longing for God. So when the devil saw in them the torch of that longing, he says: “You will be like gods. Now, as men, you cannot always be with God; if you become like gods, you will always be with him.” For he did not say to them, “If you eat, you will become enemies of God.” Desire for equality with God, then, deceives the woman; and she does not deceive her husband, but persuades him. And Paul testifies, saying, “Adam was not deceived.” Then why was he condemned? See the terrible thing. The woman, deceived, ate; after eating, she persuades her husband too, so that she might not be ruined alone; and she persuaded, she did not deceive, as often happens even now. A man knows the faith, loves the law, is zealous for orthodoxy, and is persuaded by his wife not to show his zeal, not because he is ignorant of the truth, but because he obeys his companion. Many have thought that Adam took the fruit from the woman in ignorance, not knowing where she had brought it from. But he has no defense; for God convicts him, saying to him, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife.” He did not say, “Because you took from your wife”; and indeed Adam could have said, “I did not know; I did not know where she brought the fruit from.” The husband's charge is not that he was deceived, but that he was enticed. Let us come next to the court; let us look at the first records of that holy, impartial, and kindly trial, written in immortal letters, whose memory, aspect, and brightness not even the whole of time can dissolve. Attend now. “Adam heard,” it says, “the voice of the Lord walking in paradise in the afternoon.” He knew it from the sound and from habit. Could God appear through a noise? He appeared not as he was, but as he wished. Blessed be the God of the saints, who visited Adam then in the afternoon, and now on the cross in the afternoon. For the Savior endured the passion during the same hours that Adam spent from his eating to the transgression and the judgment, from the sixth hour to the ninth. At the sixth hour he ate; for by the rule of nature the meal comes after the sixth hour. In the afternoon God came to him. Adam desired to become a god; he desired impossible things; Christ answered his desire. “You desired to become what you could not; I desire to become man, which I can.” For God set his own act against Adam's deception as a counterweight. “You desired the things above you; I take the things beneath me.” This is what Paul too says: “And being found in form as a man.” “You desired to become a god, and I was not angry on that account, for I want you to long for equality with God; but my anger is that you wished to seize the dignity against your Master's will. You desired to become a god, and could not; I become man, and make the impossible possible.” That he came to this out of desire, he himself testifies when the one who feeds all was eating the Passover with those he feeds, and a table was set for the one who feeds the whole world under heaven; he says to the apostles: “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you.” “Did I begrudge you equality with God? You wished to seize what was mine, and could not; I take what is yours, and can.” Attend. He came down in the afternoon and says: “Adam, where are you?”