The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK ELEVEN 137 accomplished his end except by using an animal over which he was allowed control. The will to do harm can come from any perverse spirit, but the power to do it can come only from God, and this must be because of some hidden and sublime principle of justice, because there is no iniquity in God.
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Why did God, foreknowing the result, allow Adam to be tempted?
6. If someone asks, therefore, why God allowed man to be tempted when He foreknew that man would yield to the tempter, I cannot sound the depths of divine wisdom, and I confess that the solution to this problem is far beyond my powers. There may be a hidden reason, made known only to those who are better and holier than I am, not because of their merits but simply by the grace of God. But in so far as God gives me the ability to understand or allows me to speak, I do not think that a man would have deserved great praise if he had been able to live a good life for the simple reason that nobody tempted him to live a bad one. For by nature he would have it in his power to will not to yield to the tempter, with the help of Him, of course, who resists the proud and gives His grace to the humble.}% Why, then, would God not allow a man to be tempted, although He foreknew he would yield? For the man would do the deed by his own free will and thus incur guilt, and he would have to undergo punishment according to God's justice to be restored to right order. Thus God would make known to a proud soul, for the instruction of the saints in ages to come, how wisely He uses even bad wills of souls when they perversely use their natures, which are good.
Man fell because of his pride.
7, We must not imagine that the tempter would have caused the man to fall unless there had arisen in the man's soul a proud spirit that needed to be checked, so that the humiliation of his sin would teach him how wrong he was in relying on himself. It is truly said, Before ruin the heart is lifted up, and before glory tt is humbled.\* This is perhaps the voice of the man who says in the Psalm, In my prosperity I said, "I shall never be moved.""® And then, when he had learned by experience what an evil is the proud reliance on one's own powers and what a good is the help of God's grace, he said, O Lord, by Thy favor Thou bast given strength to my beauty; and then Thou bast turned Thy face away, and I have been dismayed.'© But whether these words were said about the first man or about another, a lesson had to be taught to a soul that exalted itself and trusted too much in its own strength, even if the lesson involved experiencing punishment; for it must learn how wretched is the state of a creature if it withdraws from its Creator.
Here also there is an important lesson about the goodness of God, since no man who turns away from Him prospers. On the one hand, those who rejoice in the pleasures that bring death cannot be free of the fear of suffering; on the other hand, those who have become insensible through an excess of pride, and fail completely to realize the disaster of their desertion, are seen to be much more unfortunate by others who have been able to recognize such an evil. The result is that if the former refuse to take the remedy which would help them to avoid such ills, their example will help others to avoid them. For the Apostle James says, Each one is tempted when he is attracted and enticed by bis own concupiscence. Then concupiscence, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.\7
Hence, when the swelling of pride is healed, a man rises up if before the trial there was no will to remain with God, but at least after the trial there is the will to return to Him.