1 7; also Book V1, 19,30, notes 23 and 25; and on a similar point of language, with reference to
442 The Literal Meaning of Genesis angels, with his body changed from being "ensouled" to being "enspirited";20 so we can understand him to have enjoyed a blessed life to a certain degree, even without any foreknowledge of his future sin. After all, those people had no such foreknowledge either, to whom the apostle says: You who are spiritual, instruct such a person in a spirit ofmildness, looking to yourselflest you too should be tempted (Gal 6: 1); yet we are not being absurd or outrageous when we say that they were already blessed by the very fact of being spiritual, not yet indeed as "enspirited" in body, but in thejustice of faith, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribu lation (Rom 12:12).
So how much more then, and in ampler measure was the man blessed in Para dise before his sin, who while uncertain about his coming fall was rejoicing in hope because of the reward of his transformation to come, and to the extent that there would be no tribulation for him to strive patiently to bear with! He would not, you see, like a fool be vainly and presumptuously certain about something uncertain, but would be hoping in trust and faith, before he laid hold of that life where he would be absolutely certain about his eternal life to come.21 And so he would be able to exult, as it is written, with trembling (Ps 2:11). And in this exul tation he would be much more abundantly blessed in Paradise than the saints are now in these earthly regions; to a lesser degree indeed22 than in that eternal life of the holy and supercelestial angels, but still not to no degree at all.
Taking up the point of there being, perhaps, two kinds or categories ofangels
19, 25. But to say about some angels that in their category or whatever it is they could be blessed while being unsure of their wickedness and damnation to come, or of their assuredly perpetual salvation, though they would not even be supported by the hope that they too by some transformation for the better would later achieve certainty about this—well, it is a scarcely tolerable assumption; unless, maybe, it were also to be said that these angels were created to be assigned to services in the world under other more exalted and more blessed
20. From being animale to being spiritale. See Book 1X,3,6 above and note 6 there, and 1 0, 1 6, note
1 7; also Book V1, 19,30, notes 23 and 25; and on a similar point of language, with reference to "flesh" and "spirit," see Book X, 12,20 and notes 15 and 17. 21. 1f Adam and Eve had not sinned, as Augustine sees it, they would not have died, but at some time predetermined by God they and their progeny would have been transformed by being given the kind of terrestrial immortality that the fruit of the tree of life was designed to confer. 1t would be in that state that they would be absolutely certain of the eternal life to be enjoyed in due course in the company of the angels, when there would be another transformation, the kind we hope to undergo at the resurrection, and their terrestrially immortal, but still merely "ensouled" bodies, would be "enspirited"—by none other than the Spirit of God. 22. 1 here take the liberty, without manuscript support, of emending the text'smodo quodam inferiore, "to a certain lesser degree," to modo quidem inferiore, which suits the whole structure of the sentence better.