female some days later, since on the sixth day itself it says as clearly as anything,
Book VI 305 there was notfound a helper like him. And God cast alienation of mind over Adam, and hefell asleep. And he took one of his ribs andfilled up its place with flesh. And the Lord God built the rib which he had taken from Adam into a woman (Gn 2:18-22).
So if, when a help like the man was not to be found among cattle and the beasts of the field and the flying things of heaven, God went on to make him a help like him out of a rib from his side, and this was done afterhe had still molded these same beasts of the field and flying things of heaven from the earth, and brought them to him, how can we understand this to have been done on the sixth day, seeing that on that day the earth produced live soul in accordance with God's word, while it was on the fifth day that the waters produced flying things, likewise in accordance with God's word? So then, it would not say here, And God still moldedfrom the earth all the beasts ofthefieldand all theflying things ofheaven, when the earth had already produced all the beasts of the field on the sixth day, and the water all the flying things on the fifth, unless it had been done in another way then, that is potentially and causally, as befitted that work by which all things were created together simultaneously, from which he rested on the seventh day, and in another way now, as we see the things which he creates over intervals of time in the way he is working until now.
And thus it was in the course of these most familiar days of material light, which are made by the sun going round and round, that Eve was made from the side of her man. That is when it was, after all, that God still molded beasts and flying things from the earth, among which a help like Adam himself was not to be found, and she was formed. So it was in the same sort of days that God also molded him from mud.
8. Nor can it be said that the male indeed was made on the sixth day, the female some days later, since on the sixth day itself it says as clearly as anything, Male andfemale he made them and blessed them etc., all of which is said about them both and to them both. So then, in one way both of them then, and in another way both of them now; then, that is to say, in terms of a potentiality inserted as it were seminally into the universe through the Word of God, when he created all things simultaneously, resting from them on the seventh day, from these, all things would be made and happen, each in its own time, through the ordered course of the ages; now, on the other hand, in terms of the work to be bestowed on the march of time, at which "he is working until now"; and it was right and proper for Adam to be made now in his own time from the mud of the earth, and his woman out of the man's side.
A warning not to take Augustine as saying things that infact he is not saying
6. 9. Let us take it then as established that in allotting some of the works of God to those invisible days in which he created all things simultaneously, some