4. SeeGn 2:19-22.
306 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis to these visible ones in which he is working every day at whatever is being as it were unwrapped in time from those primordial wrappings, we have been following the words of scripture, and been led by them to make the distinction in a way that is not absurdly wrongheaded. The point is admittedly somewhat diffi cult to grasp, and those who are rather slow on the uptake may find it hard to make head or tail of it. So what we now have to beware of is being thought to hold and express opinions which we know perfectly well that we do not hold or express.
For although, you see, I have been directing the reader's steps as carefully as I could, I imagine all the same that several people are groping in the dark in these places and are thinking that the man was first made in that work of God in which he created all things simultaneously, in such a way as to be actually living some sort of life and thus to hear, believe, and understand the words of God addressed to him, when God said, Behold, l have given you every seed-bearingfodder (Gn
1 :29). So please, would anyone who thinks this be assured that I have neither held nor expressed this opinion.
1 0. And again, if I say that in that first establishment of things, in which God created all things simultaneously together, man was not to be found as he is now, not only as an adult but not even as an infant, not only as an infant, but not even as a fetus in his mother's womb, not only this, but not even as the visible seed of a human being; such people will suppose that he was not to be found there at all. So then, let them go back to scripture, and they will find there that on the sixth day man was made to the image of God, made, indeed, male and female.3 Next let them inquire when the woman was made, and they will find it was outside those six days; the time she was made, after all, was when God was still molding from the earth beasts of the field and flying things of heaven,4 not when the waters produced flying things and the earth produced living soul, which also includes beasts.5
So both then and later on; not either then and not later on, or later on and not then; and not different ones later on, but the very same ones in a different way then, in a different way later on. They will ask me: "In what way later on?" l will answer: "Visibly, with the appearance of the human constitution as we know it—not however born of parents, but he from mud, she from his rib." They will ask: "In what way then, the first time?" I will answer: "Invisibly, potentially, in their causes, in the way things to come are made when they have not yet been made in actual fact."
1 1 . Here, very likely, they will be at a loss to understand. Everything they are familiar with, after all, down to the bodily materiality ofseeds, is being eliminated.
3. SeeGn 1:27. 4. SeeGn 2:19-22. 5. SeeGn 1:20.24.