The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
which were already literally open, meaning that they were opened to see and recognize what they had not formerly noticed.
When curiosity was stirred up and made bold to transgress a commandment, it was eager to experience the unknown, to see what would follow from touching what was forbidden, finding delight in taking a dangerous sort of liberty by bursting the bonds of the prohibition, thinking it likely that death, which had been feared, would not follow. We must assume that the fruit on that tree was similar to the fruit of other trees, which our first parents had tasted and found harmless. Hence, they supposed that God could more easily forgive sinners than they themselves could bear with patience their ignorance as to what the fruit was or why God had forbidden them to eat of it. As soon, then, as they had violated the precept, they were completely naked, interiorly deserted by the grace which they had offended by pride and arrogant love of their own independence. Casting their eyes on their bodies, they felt a movement of concupiscence which they had not known. It was in this respect, then, that their eyes were opened to that to which they had not been open before, although they were open to other things.
CHAPTER 32
Death and concupiscence the result of original sin.
42. This death occurred on the day when our first parents did what God had forbidden. Their bodies lost the privileged condition they had had, a condition mysteriously maintained by nourishment from the tree of life, which would have been able to preserve them from sickness and from the aging process. For although they had natural bodies which were to be transformed subsequently, yet even there in Paradise, in the food from the tree of life, there was a symbol of what happens through the spiritual nourishment given by Wisdom.'!? The tree of life was indeed a sacrament!!3 of that nourishment which feeds the an-