language you find in the Song of Songs, but quite simply tells of things that
Book V111
Genesis 2:8-17: The planting of Paradise
Three ways oftaking the account ofParadise: literally, figuratively, or both
1,1. And God planted a paradise in Eden to the East, and put there the man whom he hadfashioned (Gn 2:8). I am well aware that many people have said many things about Paradise. There are, however, three generally held opinions about this topic; one held by those who think Paradise should only be understood in the literal material sense,1 another by those for whom only the spiritual sense is true, the third by those who take Paradise in each way, differently though in the material, differently in the spiritual sense. So then, in a word, I admit that it is the third opinion which I favor. This is the line on which l have here and now under taken to talk about Paradise (to the extent that the Lord sees fit to help me); that the man made out of mud—which of course is a human body—is to be under stood as having been placed in a bodily paradise; and so Adam himself, even if he stands for something else in the way the apostle said he is the form of the one to come,2 is still to be taken as a human being set before us in his own proper nature, who lived a definite number of years and after producing a numerous progeny died just as other human beings die, though he was not born of parents like others but was made from the earth, as was required at the beginning of the line; and so the paradise too, in which God placed him, is to be understood as quite simply a particular place on earth, where the man of earth would live.
2. The narrative indeed in these books is not cast in the figurative kind of language you find in the Song of Songs, but quite simply tells of things that happened, as in the books of the Kingdoms3 and others like them. But there
His word is corporaliter, and he is certainly thinking about the bodily objects mentioned in the story, especially trees and the bodies of the man and the animals. But here it will not quite go literally into English as "bodily" or "corporeal." See Rom 5:14. The Latinforma here renders the Greek typos, which is perhaps more usually translated figura; Adam figuratively represents Christ; he is the "type" of Christ, in the technical sense of the word, taken straight from the Greek, as used by theologians. The name given in the Greek Septuagint to what we call, following the Hebrew Massoretic style, the books of Samuel and Kings.