56. See Prv 3:18.
460 The Literal Meaning of Genesis and what it may signify. What we are told was said may have been meant to be taken metaphorically or literally, but its actually being said ought not to be treated as a metaphor.
53. And God said: Behold, Adam has become like one ofus in gaining knowl edge of good and evil (Gn 3:22). Since it was God who said this, by whatever means or in whatever way, but still God, his saying one ofus is not to be under stood in any other sense but as referring with the use of the plural to the Trinity, just as it was said earlier on, Let us make man (Gn 1 :26), just as the Lord too said about himselfand the Father: We shallcome to him andmake our abode with him (Jn 14:23). So in this way the result the proud man had longed for from the serpent' s suggestion, andyou will be like gods, was turned back on his own head. Behold, he says, Adam has become like one ofus.
These are God's words, you see, spoken not so much in ironic mockery of this man, as with the intention of deterring the rest of us, on whose account these things were written down, from indulging in the same kind of pride. He has become, he said, like one ofus in gaining knowledge of good and evil; how else are we to understand this but as an example given to strike fear into our hearts, because not only had he not become such as he had wanted to become, but he did not even keep hold of what he had become?55
Adam cast out ofParadise
40, 54. And now, God says, what if he should ever stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and eat, and should livefor ever. And the Lord God sent him awayfrom the paradise ofpleasure to work the earth from which he had been taken (Gn 3:22-23). First we have God's words, then the action that followed on the words. Adam, you see, had not only estranged himselffrom the life he was going to have received with the angels had he kept the command ment, but also from the one he had been living in Paradise in a privileged kind of bodily condition. So he naturally had to be barred from the tree of life, whether because it would enable him to continue in that privileged bodily condition through some invisible virtue in a visible thing, or because it was also a visible sign or sacrament of invisible Wisdom.56 ln any case he certainly had to be cut off from it, whether because he was now going to die, or because he was also being in a way excommunicated, as nowadays in this paradise which is the
55. And what was that? 1 think Augustine must be referring back to man's creation in God's image and likeness. Gn 1 :26, to which he has just alluded a few sentences earlier. We have to remember that the Latin for "to become" is the same as for "to be made." So—but it would not really be English—we could have translated God's words as "Behold, Adam has been made like one of us," and then gone on to say that not only was he not made such as he wanted to be made (like gods), but did not keep what he had been made (God's image and likeness). 56. See Prv 3:18.