used by the 1talian editors refers to Hebrews 2:6, whose author Augustine would certainly not
Book 1 65 the last shreds of life. In this age, however, as in the old age of a very old man, the new man (Eph 4:24; Col 3:10) is born, who is already living according to the spirit. For on the sixth day it was said: Let the earth produce live soul (Gn
1 :24)—because what had been said on the fifth day was: Let the waters produce, not live soul, but reptiles oflive souls (Gn 1:20), since reptiles are bodies, and that people was still enslaved to the law by bodily circumcision and sacrifices as though in the sea of the Gentile nations.37 Here however he talks of "live soul," alive with the life in which a longing for eternal realities is beginning to show itself.
So then, the snakes and cattle which the earth produces signify the nations which are now steadily going to believe the gospel. About these it is said, in that receptacle which was shown to Peter in the Acts of the Apostles: Kill and eat; and when he called them unclean, he was given the answer: What God has cleansed, do not you call unclean (Acts 10:13.15).
Next the man38 is made to the image and likeness of God (Gn 1 :26.27), just as in this sixth age our Lord is born in the flesh, of whom it is said through the prophet: And he is the man, and who will acknowledge him ?i9 Andjust as on that day male andfemale (Gn 1 :27), so also in this age Christ and the Church. And the man is put in charge on that day of cattle and snakes and the flying things of heaven, just as in this age Christ rules the souls that defer to him, which have come to his Church partly from the Gentiles, partly from the people of the Jews. They have come so that people may be tamed and domesticated by him, whether they had been given over to fleshly concupiscence like cattle, or had been groping in the darkness and murk of curiosity as if they were snakes, or soaring up on the wings of pride as if they were birds.
And just as on that day the man and the animals with him feed on seed-bearing plants and the fruit of fruit trees and green plants, so too in this age any spiritual man who is a good minister ofChrist and imitates him to the best of his ability feeds spiritually together with the people on the nourishment provided by the holy scriptures and the divine law. This is partly to make them
37. See the comment on this statement in the passage from the Revisions, section 2, at the beginning of this volume. 38. Augustine identifies the making of man in Genesis 1:27 with the making of the first man, Adam, from the mud of the earth in Genesis 2:7; so one has sometimes to translate him, as here, as saying "the man" (that is, the first man), while at others he is clearly talking about "man in general." Latin, having no definite or indefinite article, did not raise—or shall we say, it evaded—this particular little problem. 39. There is no such prophetic text. The old Maurist editors prudently give no reference; the text used by the 1talian editors refers to Hebrews 2:6, whose author Augustine would certainly not have called a prophet. But there the author is quoting Psalm 8:4, "What is man that you should remember him?" etc. and indeed applying the whole psalm to Christ. 1 myself would suggest that since Augustine is here talking precisely of Christ's "birth in the flesh," the text he had in mind and was paraphrasing with excessive freedom, was 1saiah 53:8, "His begetting, who will declare?"