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| Of the Fall of the First Man, in Whom Nature Was Created Good, and Can Be Restored Only by Its Author.
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Chapter 11.—Of the Fall of the
First Man, in Whom Nature Was Created Good, and Can Be Restored
Only by Its Author.
But because God foresaw all things,
and was therefore not ignorant that man also would fall, we ought
to consider this holy city in connection with what God foresaw and
ordained, and not according to our own ideas, which do not embrace
God’s ordination. For man, by his sin, could not disturb the
divine counsel, nor compel God to change what He had decreed; for
God’s foreknowledge had anticipated both,—that is to say, both
how evil the man whom He had created good should become, and what
good He Himself should even thus derive from him. For though God
is said to change His determinations (so that in a tropical sense
the Holy Scripture says even that God repented723
), this is said with reference to
man’s expectation, or the order of natural causes, and not with
reference to that which the Almighty had foreknown that He would
do. Accordingly God, as it is written, made man upright,724
and
consequently with a good will. For if he had not had a good will,
he could not have been upright. The good will, then, is the work
of God; for God created him with it. But the first evil will,
which preceded all man’s evil acts, was rather a kind of falling
away from the work of God to its own works than any positive
work. And therefore the acts resulting were evil, not having God,
but the will itself for their end; so that the will or the man
himself, so far as his will is bad, was as it were the evil tree
bringing forth evil fruit. Moreover, the bad will, though it be
not in harmony with, but opposed to nature, inasmuch as it is a
vice or blemish, yet it is true of it as of all vice, that it
cannot exist except in a nature, and only in a nature created out
of nothing, and not in that which the Creator has begotten of
Himself, as He begot the Word, by whom all things were made. For
though God formed man of the dust of the earth, yet the earth
itself, and every earthly material, is absolutely created out of
nothing; and man’s soul, too, God created out of
nothing, and
joined to the body, when He made man. But evils are so thoroughly
overcome by good, that though they are permitted to exist, for the
sake of demonstrating how the most righteous foresight of God can
make a good use even of them, yet good can exist without evil, as
in the true and supreme God Himself, and as in every invisible and
visible celestial creature that exists above this murky atmosphere;
but evil cannot exist without good, because the natures in which
evil exists, in so far as they are natures, are good. And evil is
removed, not by removing any nature, or part of a nature, which had
been introduced by the evil, but by healing and correcting that
which had been vitiated and depraved. The will, therefore, is
then truly free, when it is not the slave of vices and sins. Such
was it given us by God; and this being lost by its own fault, can
only be restored by Him who was able at first to give it. And
therefore the truth says, “If the Son shall make you free, ye
shall be free indeed;”725
which is equivalent to saying, If
the Son shall save you, ye shall be saved indeed. For He is our
Liberator, inasmuch as He is our Saviour.
Man then lived with God for his
rule in a paradise at once physical and spiritual. For neither
was it a paradise only physical for the advantage of the body, and
not also spiritual for the advantage of the mind; nor was it only
spiritual to afford enjoyment to man by his internal sensations,
and not also physical to afford him enjoyment through his external
senses. But obviously it was both for both ends. But after that
proud and therefore envious angel (of whose fall I have said as
much as I was able in the eleventh and twelfth books of this work,
as well as that of his fellows, who, from being God’s angels,
became his angels), preferring to rule with a kind of pomp of
empire rather than to be another’s subject, fell from the
spiritual Paradise, and essaying to insinuate his persuasive guile
into the mind of man, whose unfallen condition provoked him to envy
now that himself was fallen, he chose the serpent as his mouthpiece
in that bodily Paradise in which it and all the other earthly
animals were living with those two human beings, the man and his
wife, subject to them, and harmless; and he chose the serpent
because, being slippery, and moving in tortuous windings, it was
suitable for his purpose. And this animal being subdued to his
wicked ends by the presence and superior force of his angelic
nature, he abused as his instrument, and first tried his deceit
upon the woman, making his assault upon the weaker part of that
human alliance, that he might gradually gain the whole, and not
supposing that the man would readily give ear to him, or be
deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman. For
as Aaron was not induced to agree with the people when they blindly
wished him to make an idol, and yet yielded to constraint; and as
it is not credible that Solomon was so blind as to suppose that
idols should be worshipped, but was drawn over to such sacrilege by
the blandishments of women; so we cannot believe that Adam was
deceived, and supposed the devil’s word to be truth, and
therefore transgressed God’s law, but that he by the drawings of
kindred yielded to the woman, the husband to the wife, the one
human being to the only other human being. For not without
significance did the apostle say, “And Adam was not deceived, but
the woman being deceived was in the transgression;”726
but he
speaks thus, because the woman accepted as true what the serpent
told her, but the man could not bear to be severed from his only
companion, even though this involved a partnership in sin. He was
not on this account less culpable, but sinned with his eyes open.
And so the apostle does not say, “He did not sin,” but “He
was not deceived.” For he shows that he sinned when he says,
“By one man sin entered into the world,”727
and immediately after more
distinctly, “In the likeness of Adam’s transgression.” But
he meant that those are deceived who do not judge that which they
do to be sin; but he knew. Otherwise how were it true “Adam was
not deceived?” But having as yet no experience of the divine
severity, he was possibly deceived in so far as he thought his sin
venial. And consequently he was not deceived as the woman was
deceived, but he was deceived as to the judgment which would be
passed on his apology: “The woman whom thou gavest to be with
me, she gave me, and I did eat.”728
What need of saying more?
Although they were not both deceived by credulity, yet both were
entangled in the snares of the devil, and taken by sin.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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