from—if, that is, it is now just talking about the formation of the body. That, you
76 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees the day on which Godmade heaven and earth, andall the greenery andfodder of thefield (Gn 2:5), so that we might in this way realize that invisible as well as visible creatures belong to time, being subject to change because God alone is unchangeable, God who is before all times.
On the making of the manfrom the mud of the earth
7, 8. Now at long last, after being informed about the whole of creation, invis ible as well as visible, and about the benefit conferred by the divine spring on the whole invisible creation, let us see what special information we are being given about the man, the matter that concerns us first and foremost. The first question, you see, that is usually raised by God'sfashioning the manfrom the mud of the earth (Gn 2:7) is what sort ofmud it was, or what material was being signified by the word "mud." These enemies, though, of the books of the Old Testament,10 looking at everything in a fleshly, literal-minded way, and therefore always getting everything wrong, are in the habit of commenting sarcastically even on this point, that God fashioned the man from mud. What they say, you see, is: "Why did God make the man from mud? Did he not have anything better, celes tial material for example, from which to make the man, so that he was reduced to making him, so fragile and mortal, from the muck of the earth?" What they fail to understand from the start is how many meanings both earth or water are given in the scriptures—mud, you see, being a mixture of water and earth.
What we are saying, you see, is that only after sin did the human body begin to be fragile and subject to decay and destined to die; the only thing in our bodies, after all, that horrifies these people is their mortality, to which we have been deservedly condemned. What in any case was so strange or difficult for God, even if he did make the man from the mud of this earth, about contriving a body for him that would not have been subject to decay, had the man kept God's commandment and not been willing to sin? After all, if we say that the beauty of the sky itself was made from nothing or from unformed material, because we believe its Craftsman to be all-powerful, what's so odd about the possibility of the body, which was made from any sort of mud you like, being made by the all-powerful Craftsman of such a kind that before the man's sin it would never cause him any trouble or excruciating pain or pester him with its defects, and would never be injured or go into a decline and fade away?
9. And so it is quite unnecessary to ask what God made the man's body from—if, that is, it is now just talking about the formation of the body. That, you see, is how I have heard that some of our people understand the text. They say that the reason it didn't add "to his image and likeness," after saying Godfash-
10. He just says "of the old books.'