the oxymoron, even if it means changing the metaphor.
Book VIII 365 before ever being conscious of the loss of the good, he chooses to hold on to it in order not to lose it. ln fact ifthis were not a quite unique theme ofpraise, it would not have been attributed to that child who from the nation of Israel became Emmanuel, God-with-us, and reconciled us to God, the man who was mediator between men and God,40 the Word at home with God, flesh at home with us,41 Word-flesh between God and us. It is about him, of course, that the prophet says: Before the child knows goodor evil, let him shun malice in order to choose good
(Is 7:16).
How can he either shun or choose what he does not know, if not because these two are known in one way by the common sense of good people, in another by the experience of bad ones? Evil is known by the common sense of good people, even without their feeling it; they hold on to the good, you see, to avoid by losing it the experience of evil. Again, the good is known through the experience of evil, since those with whom things go badly on the loss of the good feel what it is that they have lost. So then, before the child knew by experience either the good which he would be deprived of or the evil which he would feel on loss of the good, he shunned evil in order to choose good; that is, he refused to lose what he had, lest he should feel by its loss what he ought not to lose. A unique example indeed of obedience! That, certainly, of the one who did not come to do his own will but the will of the one by whom he had been sent,42 not like that other one who chose to do his own will, not that of the one by whom he had been made. How right it is thatjust as through the disobedience of one man many have been constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one man shall many be constituted as just (Rom 5:19); because just as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (I Cor 15:22)!
More problems about the naming of the tree ofknowledge of good and evil
15, 33. It is quite groundless, however, for some people to be brightly dull-witted43 by asking how it could be called the tree of discerning good and evil, before the man had transgressed the commandment attached to it, and had discerned by experience what the difference was between the good which he lost and the evil he committed. Well, the tree received that name, you see, to put him on his guard, while it remained untouched in accordance with the prohibition, against what he would undergo if he touched it in spite of its being prohibited. It was not, after all, because they took a bite from it in spite of the commandment,
40. See 1 Tm 2:5. 41. See Jn 1:1.14. 42. See Jn 6:38. 43. He says, literally, "to be sharply blunted," acute obtunsi. The important thing is to reproduce the oxymoron, even if it means changing the metaphor.