version Augustine was using had invented it, because they had just used the good Latin word
Book III 233 started to toil away at the earth after sinning that it started to bring these things forth to him, to make his work all the more difficult. So it would not have to mean that these things sprang up previously in other places, and later on in the fields which the man was cultivating to get crops from, but in the same places both before and after; before, though, not to the man; after, however, to the man. That would be what was signified by adding to you, because it did not say, "thorns and thistles shall it bring forth," but shall it bringforth to you; that is, "These things shall begin to make extra hard work for you, which previously were being produced purely as food for other animals."
Why it is only in the creation of man that God says "Let us make, etc. "
1 9, 29. And God said, Let us make man to our image and likeness; and let him lord it over thefishes of the sea and theflying things ofheaven and all cattle and all the earth and all reptiles crawling over the earth. And God made man to the image of God; he made him male andfemale, he made them and blessed them,n saying: lncrease and multiply andfill the earth and lord it over it, andprince it29 over thefishes of the sea and theflying things ofheaven and all cattle and all the earth and all reptiles crawling over the earth. And God said: Behold, l have given you every seed-bearingfodder seeding seed, which is on all the earth, and every tree which has in itfruit ofseed-bearing seed—it shall befor you asfood andfor all beasts of the earth and allflying things ofheaven and every reptile crawling on the earth, which has in it the breath of life—and every greenfodder asfood. And it was made thus. And Godsaw all the things that he had made, and behold they were very good. And there was made evening and there was made morning, the sixth day (Gn 1:26-31).
28. Both the Maurists and the CSEL text punctuate this passage in the usual way. But this was not Augustine's way, as can be seen most clearly in The Trinity X11.6.8. There he formally explains his preference for his own idiosyncratic punctuation—he no doubt did not regard it as idiosyncratic himself! And a few pages later on here in this work, 22,34, near the end, we will find him saying: "On account of their being joined in one, God made, it says, man to the image of God. And in case anyone should think that it was only the spirit of man that was made, although it was only as regards the spirit that he was made to the image of God, he made him, it says, male andfemale, to give us to understand that the body was also being made now." Back here in the long passage being quoted, one manuscript omits Deus after benedixit, in this also being true to Augustine's reading of the text, and so 1 follow this manuscript, as against the Maurists and CSEL. 29. Principamini; a word not given in any Latin dictionary; my guess is that the translators of the version Augustine was using had invented it, because they had just used the good Latin word dominamini, "lord it," for another word introduced by the Greek Septuagint with reference to the earth. A common, in some ways the most authentic, title for the Roman Emperors was princeps, "prince." Albert Blaise, Dictionnaire Latin-Franfais des Auteurs Chretiens
(Strasbourg, 1954), gives many references to the fathers for this deponent verbprincipor, the oldest being to the Latin text of 1renaeus' Against Heresies 3,34,4.
234 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis
There will be more fruitful passages time and again later on for a more thor ough reflection on the nature of man. Now however, to conclude our examina tion and discussion of the works of the six days, l must briefly insist in the first place that the following point is not to be passed over lightly: that while with the other works it says, God said: Let it be made, here on the other hand we have, God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness, to insinuate, that is, a plurality of persons, if I may so put it,30 on account of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. He immediately advises us, however, of the unity to be understood in the godhead by saying, and God made man to the image of God; not as though the Father made to the image of the Son, or the Son to the image of the Father—otherwise it would not be true to say "to our image," if man were made to the image of the Father alone or of the Son alone—but it is put like this: "God made to the image of God," as much as to say, "God made to his image."
When it now says to the image of God, after saying above to our image, it is giving a clear signal that that plurality of persons is not leading us to say or to believe or to understand gods in the plural, but to take Father and Son and Holy Spirit—the trinity on whose account it says to our image—as being one God, on whose account it says, to the image of God.
ln what respect man was made to the image of God; and why it does not say after the creation of man, "And thus it was made "
20, 30. Here we must not neglect that other point either, that after saying, to our image, he immediately added, and let him have authority over thefishes of the sea and the flying things of heaven and of the other animals which lack reason, giving us to understand, evidently, that it was in the very factor in which he surpasses non-rational animate beings that man was made to God's image. That, of course, is reason itself, or mind or intelligence or whatever other word it may more suitably be named by. That is why the apostle too says: Be renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new man, who is being renewedfor the recognition of God according to the image of him who created him (Eph 4:23-24; Col 3:10), where he makes it plain enough just in what part man was created to God's image—that it was not in the features of the body but in a certain form of the illuminated mind.
3 1 . Now with that light of the first day, if by that name is rightly to be under stood the created intellectual light which shares in the eternal and unchangeable Wisdom of God, it did not say, "and thus it was made" and then repeat with and
30. 1 think he is excusing his use of the word pluralitatem; not indeed his own invention, as it had already been employed by Ambrose, according to Lewis & Short. But no doubt it would have struck Augustine, the professional rhetorician, as a neologism, at least in its theological use. Apart from that it seems to have been just a grammatical term for "the plural."