testaments, but its all having both a figurative and a literal meaning. His giving priority to the
Book 1
Genesis 1:1-5: Creation of heaven and earth; the work of the first day
The multiple meanings ofscripture
1, 1. All divine scripture is twofold, as the Lord points out when he says, A scribe learned in the kingdom of heaven is like a householder bringing forth from his treasury new things and old (Mt 13:52), which are also said to be the two testaments. In all the holy books, however, one ought to note what eternal realities are there suggested, what deeds are recounted, what future events fore told, what actions commanded or advised. So then, in accounts of things done, what one asks is whether they are all to be taken as only having a figurative meaning, or whether they are also to be asserted and defended as a faithful account of what actually happened. No Christian, I mean, will have the nerve to say that they should not be taken in a figurative sense, ifhe pays attention to what the apostle says: All these things, however, happened among them in figure (1 Cor 10:11), and to his commending what is written in Genesis, And they shall be two in oneflesh (Gn 2:24), as a great sacrament in Christand in the Church (Eph 5:32).1
Genesis 1:1-2: the state of the question
2. So if that text has to be treated in both ways, what is meant, apart from its allegorical significance, by ln the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gn
1:1)? Does it mean in the beginning of time, or because it was the first of all things, or in the beginning, which is the Word of God, the only begotten Son? And how could it be shown that God produced changeable and time-bound works without any change in himself? And what may be meant by the name
1. The real twofold quality of scripture, he is saying, is not its obvious division into two testaments, but its all having both a figurative and a literal meaning. His giving priority to the figurative or spiritual meaning is in line with the practice of most of the Fathers, from Origen onward, but is the exact opposite, of course, of contemporary exegetical orthodoxy today—and indeed of the line Augustine is taking in this work.