The Literal Meaning of Genesis
202 NOTES
1, Bourke 242-43, and G. Verbeke, L'Evolution de la doctrine du Pneuma du stoicisme a s. Augustin (Paris 1945) 371-72, 502, and passim.
14This theory is developed in ch. 32 infra. 15Here "spirit" does not have the special meaning it has elsewhere in this book explained in n. 13 supra. In this place it means an immaterial reality. The argument here is based on a disjunction which presents four possibilities:
1. Body: a) seen with the eyes of the body (in which case St. Paul would be just as certain about the manner of seeing as about the thing seen); or b) seen without the eyes of the body (but the possibility of this kind of vision is doubtful; and if it could occur, it probably would be so different from corporeal vision as to leave no doubt about the manner in which the object was seen).
2. Spirit: a) represented by an image of a body (in which case he would doubt just as much whether it was a body as whether it was seen in the body); or b) perceived immediately by the intellect (in which case it would be certain that it was not seen by the body). The possibility of the case mentioned under 1b is so doubtful that Aug. relegated it to the end. This accounts for the curious order of the argument: the obvious possibilities are discussed first, and then a conceivable but unlikely case is taken up for the sake of completeness. The upshot of the argument is that St.
Paul could not be at the same time certain about the object seen and doubtful about the manner of seeing. About what, then, does he doubt? If we suppose that the soul alone was carried away, there will remain a doubt about the relation that meanwhile existed between body and soul; and this is the doubt expressed in the words, whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. Aug. explains this in the next paragraph.
'6Both things: the object seen and the manner of seeing. \7Etiam si possunt vidert is the reading of P, R, S, Bru, Val, Vat,