beings, who takes pleasure in the good without any experience of evil, so that
364 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis to order beneficial; with him, surely, we never have to fear that he could order anything injurious.
Further reflections on the nature of good and evil; why Emmanuel did not have to experience the difference between them
14, 31. Nor can it be that his own will does not drop on a man like a ton of bricks,38 if he exalts himselfby preferring it to the will of the one above him. This is what the man experienced by ignoring God's command, and this is what he learned by the experience—what the difference is between good and evil, the good of obedience, that is to say, and the evil of disobedience, of pride, that is, and insubordination, of a perverse imitation of God,39 and of claiming a harmful freedom. Now the tree by which it was possible for this to happen took its name, as we have already said above, from this very event. We would have no aware ness of evil, after all, except by experience, because there would not be any unless we had committed it. Evil, you see, is not a nature of any kind, but the loss of the good has been given this name.
The unchangeable good, of course, is God, whereas human beings, as far as the nature is concerned in which God made them, are indeed a good, but not an unchangeable one like God. Now the changeable good, which comes after the unchangeable good, becomes a better good, when it clings to the unchangeable good by loving and serving it with its own rational will. This is indeed the nature of a great good, that it also received the ability to cling to the nature of the highest good. If it refuses to do this, it deprives itself of a good, and this is bad for it, the consequence ofwhich by thejustice of God is also torment. What, after all, could be so inequitable as that it should go well with a deserter of the good? Nor indeed is there any way in which this could really happen; but sometimes the loss of the higher good is not perceived as evil, when the lower good, loved in preference to it, is possessed. But the divine justice ensures that those who have been willing to lose what they ought to have loved will be grieved by the loss of what they have in fact loved, while praise in every case continues to redound to the creator of all natures. The good, you see, whose loss brings grief is still good, because unless it were still something good by nature, there would be no grief over its loss by way of penalty.
32. That person, however, should have his praises sung above all other human beings, who takes pleasure in the good without any experience of evil, so that
38. Literally, "with a great weight of ruin," grandi ruinae pondere. 39. This applies more immediately to the sin of Lucifer; see 1s 1 4: 1 31 4, where he is understood by the tradition as being presented to us under the figure of the king of Babylon, and Ez 28:2. where it is under the figure of the prince of Tyre. But he involved Adam and Eve in this pretension, when he tempted them by saying. Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gn 3:5).