Lord amidst the trees of Paradise.!'8 When God interiorly turns
would visit the pair who fell away from the light of truth. Perhaps He had been accustomed to speak to them in a special interior manner (and how could it be described in human words?), just as He also speaks with the angels, enlightening their minds with His unchangeable truth, wherein their intellects know simultaneously all that happens in time but not simultaneously.
I suggest that God may have spoken thus with them, although not granting them the same degree of participation in divine wisdom that the angels have. But in a human way and in a manner less perfect, they may have had this kind of visit and conversation with God. Or perhaps it took place with the aid of a creature, either in an ecstasy of the spirit'!? with corporeal images, or in the bodily senses with some object made present to be seen or heard, just as God is accustomed to be seen or heard in a cloud through the ministry of His angels.
But their experience of hearing the voice of God as He walked in Paradise in the late afternoon could have been brought about in a visible way only by means of a creature. We cannot suppose that the substance of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which is invisible and everywhere present in its totality, appeared to the senses of the body, moving through space and time.
44. And then Adam and his wife bid themselves from the face of the Lord amidst the trees of Paradise.!'8 When God interiorly turns
His face away and man becomes confused, small wonder that his actions, on account of his great shame and fear, are like those of a madman. And deep within Adam and Eve there was also an instinct at work by which, even in their ignorance, they performed actions which would have some meaning for their descendants, who would one day understand and for whom these actions have been recorded.