Augustine's Christian spirituality to accept, to trust, to believe the material world as telling us
Book I 67 by any fixed number of years, but however long anybody lives after those five ages, it is counted as old age; so in the same way in this age of the world there is no evident number of generations, and this is to keep the last day under wraps, which has to be kept hidden for our own good, as the Lord pointed out.41
A more personal allegorical interpretation of the seven days
25, 43. We also, one and all, have those six days in our personal lives, distin guished from each other in good works and an upright way of life, after which we should be hoping to rest. On the first day we have the light of faith, when we begin by believing visible things,42 and it is on account of this faith that the Lord was prepared to appear in visible form. On the second day we have a kind of solid structure in the discipline by which we distinguish between things of the flesh and things of the spirit, as between the nether and the upper waters. The third day is the one on which we separate our minds from the slippery slope and the stormy waves of fleshly temptations, like the dry land from the disturbances of the sea, to bear the fruits of good works, so that we can now say: With the mind l serve the law of God, but with theflesh the law of sin (Rom 7:25). On the fourth day, on which we have already been making and discerning spiritual perceptions in that solid structure of discipline, we see what unchangeable truth is, which shines in the soul like the sun; and we have the soul made a participant in this truth itself, and bestowing order and beauty upon the body, like the moon lighting up the night; and like all the stars, twinkling and shining in the night, we have those spiritual perceptions in the foggy darkness of this life.
Made stronger and braver by awareness of these things, we begin to produce results on the fifth day, acting in this most turbulent world, as in the waters of the sea, in the interests ofbrotherhood and good fellowship; we produce from bodily activities, which pertain to this sea, that is, to this present life, "reptiles of live souls," that is, works which benefit live souls; also "great whales," that is, the bravest kinds of action which contemptuously smash their way through the
41. See Acts 1:7; 1 Thess 5:1-2. 42. A strange description of faith, surely, as believing visible things! But it was basic to Augustine's Christian spirituality to accept, to trust, to believe the material world as telling us about its maker; and a basic affirmation against the Manichees. who had no trust or faith in the material world at all, but rejected it as evil. Augustine stayed with this idea and deepened it all his life. 1n The Trinity, X11 and X111, he will develop the idea of faith being an act of the feminine function of the mind, of knowledge as distinct from wisdom, and will conclude that the immediate object of Christian faith is the incarnate Word, precisely the flesh, the visible material humanity of Jesus Christ. There he has not been thinking any more of the Manichees, but rather of the Platonists. About them he had said in the Confessions, V11.9, 13: "1n their books 1 read (not that the same words were used, but precisely the same doctrine was taught...) that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God; he was God. He was with God in the beginning.... ; but that the Word was madeflesh and dwelt among its. 1 d id not read there." So Christian faith begins with the man, Christ Jesus.
68 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees stormy waves of the world, and "the flying things of heaven," voices that is to say by which heavenly truths are proclaimed. On the sixth day, however, we produce "live soul from the earth"; that is, from the stronghold of our minds, where we already have the spiritual fruit of good thoughts and ideas, we direct all the movements of our spirit so that it may be "a live soul," one at the service, that is, of reason and justice, not of foolhardiness and sin. In this way too may the man be made to the image and likeness of God, male and female, which here means understanding and activity; and may these be mated to fill the earth with spiritual offspring, that is, to subdue the flesh and do all the other things which have been mentioned above as belonging to human perfection. ln all these days of this sort evening consists in the completion or perfection of the various works, and morning in the start of the ones that follow.
After the works of this sort ofsix days, works that are very good, we should be hoping for everlasting rest, and should understand what it really means that God rested on the seventh dayfrom all his works (Gn 2:2), because not only is he the one who works these good works in us, ordering us to work them, but it is also he that is rightly said to rest, because at the end of all these works he bestows himself on us as our rest. Just as a householder, you see, is rightly said to build a house, when he does it, not by the work of his own hands but of those whose services he commands, so too is he rightly said to rest from his works when the building is completed and he permits the men he was employing to have a holiday and to enjoy themselves in merrymaking.
Book 11
A more detailed account of the creation of the man, to be taken figuratively, not literally
1,1. The listing of the seven days and the presentation of their works is given a kind of conclusion, in which everything that has been said already is called the book of the creating ofheaven and earth (Gn 2:4), even though it is only a small part of the book as a whole. But still it was entirely appropriate to give it this name, because these seven days furnish us with a miniature symbolic picture of the entire span of world history from start to finish. Then it goes on to tell the story of the man in more detail; and this whole account is to be analyzed in figu rative, not literal terms, to put the minds ofthose who seek the truth through their paces, and lure them away from the business of the world and the flesh to the business of the spirit. This, you see, is how it goes:
This is the book of the creating ofheaven and earth, when the day had been made on which God made heaven and earth, and all the greenery of the field before it was upon the earth, andall thefodder ofthefield before it sprouted. For
God had not yet rained upon the earth, nor was there a man to work on it. But a spring was coming upfrom the earth, and was watering all theface of the earth. And then Godfashioned the manfrom the mudofthe earth and blew into hisface the puffoflife, and the man was made into a living soul. And then God planted Paradise1 in Eden to the east, andput the man there whom he hadfashioned. And God still producedfrom the earth every tree that had a beautiful look about it, and was goodfor eating; and heplanted the tree of life in the middle ofParadise, and the tree ofknowledge of good and evil.
Now a river was comingforth out ofEden, and was watering Paradise;from there it is divided intofourparts. The name of one, Pishon; this is the one which goes round the whole land ofHavilah; there is gold there, indeed the goldofthat land is the best; there is carbuncle there and leek-green stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon; this goes round the whole land ofEthiopia. And the
1 . Whenever Augustine is using "paradise" as a proper name for that original enchanted garden, as we also do in English, 1 give it a capital P. But whenever it has to be translated with an article, definite or indefinite, as in a phrase like "the paradise of pleasure," 1 give it a lower case p, because then it is being used in its original (Persian) sense ofa park, nearly always a royal one.