and so condense, curdle, stiffen, congeal, etc.; 1 am simply quoting Lewis & Short! That
394 The Literal Meaning of Genesis ls it that a man could be made from a woman without anyone coupling with her, but a woman could not so be made from a man; and that a virgin' s womb had in it the material for making a man, while a man's side did not have in it the means for making a woman, though there it was a case of the Lord and master being born from a maidservant, here of a maidservant being formed from a field hand? Well, the Lord too could have created his flesh from a rib or any other part of the virgin; but while he would in this way have been able to show that he had repeated in his own body what had been done already, it was more to the point for him to show in his mother's body that nothing which is chaste is to be treated as something to be ashamed of.
The different levelsfrom which the causal ideas orformulaefunction
17, 31. But you may ask where, in this connection, that setting up of causes comes in, by which God first of all made man to his image and likeness—it says there too, of course: male andfemale he made them (Gn 1:27); whether that formula, which God "concreated" with the first works of the world and set fermenting33 in them, was programmed to mean that it was now necessary for the woman to be made from the man's side, or whether it was only programmed to mean that she could be made; but that she had to be made like that had not already been prescribed there but was hidden away in God. So then, ifyou do ask this, l will say what I think without rashly asserting anything; still, when l have said it, it may be that those who are already imbued with Christian faith will judge, on giving the matter serious consideration, that there can be little doubt about it, even ifnow is the first time they have taken cognizance ofthese things.
32. The whole course of nature that we are so familiar with has certain natural laws of its own, according to which both the spirit of life which is a creature34 has drives and urges that are somehow predetermined and which even a bad will cannot bypass, and also the elements of this material world have their distinct energies and qualities, which determine what each is or is not capable of, what can or cannot be made from which. It is from these base-lines ofthings, so to say, that whatever comes to be takes in its own particular time span, its risings and continued progress, its ends and its settings, according to the kind of thing it is. Hence the fact that beans are not produced from grains of wheat or wheat from beans, nor human beings from cattle or cattle from human beings.
33. Concrevit, from concresco, properly speaking an intransitive verb meaning to grow together, and so condense, curdle, stiffen, congeal, etc.; 1 am simply quoting Lewis & Short! That dictionary gives no instance of the verb's being used in a transitive sense with an object, as it clearly is being used here. So 1 am taking it as meaning "making to grow together," hence to ferment, like yeast, because that does seem to be the way Augustine envisaged these rationes causales as functioning. 34. As distinct from the uncreated Spirit of life.