point in the Latin, tanquam unus ex nobis, as 1 hope will become clear shortly. 1 think the figure
Book II 93 presented under the figure of the skin tunics. They themselves, you see, had made aprons out of fig-leaves for themselves, and God made them tunics of skin ; that is, they set their hearts on the pleasures of lying after turning their backs on the face of Truth, and God changed their bodies into this mortal flesh, in which lying hearts are concealed.
It is not to be supposed, after all, that thoughts can remain hidden in celestial bodies in the same way as they do in these present bodies of ours; but just as some at least of our inner thoughts and feelings are revealed by the expression on our faces, and especially by our eyes, so I am convinced that in a similar way no feelings and thoughts of the spirit whatsoever are concealed in the transparent simplicity of heavenly bodies. And so such a dwelling place and such a change into angelic form will be earned by those people who even in this life, when it has been possible for them to conceal lies under tunics of skin, have still hated and avoided such falsehood out of a most ardent love of truth, and who only keep covered up what their listeners are unable to bear;45 but lies they never tell at all. The time will come, you see, when nothing will be covered up; for nothing is hidden which will not be made manifest (Lk 12:2).
But these two continued to remain in Paradise, even though now under the sentence of God's condemnation, until it came to the tunics of skin, that is, to the mortal condition of this life. What more effective indication, after all, can be given of the death, which we are aware of in the body, than skins which are flayed as a rule from dead cattle? And so when the man went against the commandment and sought to be God, not by lawful imitation but by unlawful pride, he was cast down into the mortal condition of monstrous beasts.
Two ways oftaking "Adam has become like one of us "
33. That is why the divine law mocks him from the mouth of God in the following way, mockery by which we in our turn are being advised as much as ever we can to beware of pride.
22. Behold, Adam has become as ifone ofusfor the knowledge ofgetting to know good and evil (Gn 3:22). This ambiguous expression involves a figure of speech,46 because "has become as ifone ofus" can be understood in two ways. In the first way, "one of us" as though he himself has also become God (and that is where the mockery comes in), as you can say "one of the senators," meaning of course "a senator." Or else it is because he would indeed have been a god, though
45. An allusion, it seems, to Jn 1 6: 1 2: / still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 46. The ambiguous expression is "as ifone of us," and only ambiguous by stretching to the limits a point in the Latin, tanquam unus ex nobis, as 1 hope will become clear shortly. 1 think the figure of speech it involves (facitfiguram) must be irony.