1 3. That is, 1 take it, first by his keeping the word ofGod, as uttered in the command not to eat of the
Book II 11 ioned the manfrom the mud of the earth, is that now it is only talking about the formation of the body, while the moment when the interior man was being referred to was when it said: Godmade the man to the image and likeness of God (Gn 1:27).
But even ifwe understand that at this point too the man was made ofbody and soul, not in the sense that some altogether new work was being undertaken, but that what had been stated in summary form earlier on was here being unwrapped in a more detailed account; so if, as I am saying, we understand that in this place the man was made of body and soul, it was by no means absurd to give that mixture the name of mud. Just as water, you see, collects earth and sticks and holds it together when mud is made by mixing it in, so too the soul by animating the material of the body shapes it into a harmonious unity, and does not permit it to fall apart into its constituent elements.
On the blowing of the spirit of life into the man
8, 10. As for the way the text goes on: And he blew into him the spirit of life, and the man was made into a living soul (Gn 2:7); if he was still only a body, we must understand the soul being joined to the body in this place, whether it had already been made but was so to say in God's mouth, that is, in his Truth or Wisdom," or whether it was made at the moment when God blew the spirit of life into that clay model; in this case God's so doing would signify his actual work ofmaking the soul in the man by the spirit of his power. lfon the other hand the man who had been made was already body and soul, God's breathing into him added sensation to the soul itself when the man was made into a living soul—not that God's breathing was turned into the living soul, but that it got to work on the living soul.
We ought not, all the same, to take the man who had been made into a living soul as being already spiritual or "enspirited," but still as merely animated, "ensouled."12 The point, you see, at which he was "enspirited" or made spiritual was when he was placed in Paradise, that is, in the life of bliss and blessedness, and also received the command of perfection, so that he might be brought to finished completion by the word of God.13 And so after he had sinned, turning his back on God's command, and had been sent away from Paradise, he
1 1. From which, however, it did not depart as though separated by space when it was blown into him, seeing that God is not contained in any place, but is present everywhere. 12. See note 4 on the extract from the Revisions, 3, put at the head of Book 1 of this work.
1 3. That is, 1 take it, first by his keeping the word of God, as uttered in the command not to eat of the tree ofknowledge of good and evil; and finally through his being given by the eternal Word the knowledge he had refrained from grabbing. The manuscripts of the ancient world made no use of the distinction between upper case and lower case letters, to distinguish here between word and Word, as we do today; and neither, very properly, does the printed Latin text.