The Literal Meaning of Genesis
316 NOTES
28/1.479,17-18 Zycha; ML 34.232), says: "In the realm of bodies there is nothing more excellent than a heavenly body." Arist., De caelo 268b-269a, arguing from the circular motion of the heavenly bodies, says that the heavens consist of a fifth substance more divine than the four elements. Cic., De republica 6.17, says that above the moon all things are eternal. Cf. Plato, Tim. 41a, a passage quoted by Aug. (in Cicero's translation), De civ. Dei 13.16.1. Sen., Nat. quaest. 7.1.6-7, notes two opinions: one that the stars are all fire, and the other that they have bodies of an earthly substance.
1547 uce quadam incorporali ac sua. Cuthbert Butler, Western Mysticism (London 1922) 52, remarks: '""This evidently is mere makeshift, and I do not know any other place where Augustine attempts to define the light wherein are seen the objects of spiritual or imaginary vision." It may be, however, that Aug. postulates this light only in the case of the supernatural manifestations that are mentioned in what immediately follows.
155m the preceding chapter a close parallel was shown to exist between the relative value of the objects of ocular vision and the relative value of the objects of spiritual vision. Now a similar scale of values is found in the objects of intellectual vision. Thus we have:
1. in ocular vision:
terrestria and caelestia;
2. in spiritual vision: naturaliter visa and demonstrata ab angelts;
3. in intellectual vision: intellectualia in ipsa anima and Deus tlluminans. But all comparisons limp, and Aug. was not unaware of the fact that in intellectual vision there is an infinite gulf that separates the two objects, whereas in the other two kinds of vision the two classes of objects have merely a different degree of excellence in the same order.
'S6These are mentioned simply as examples of the objects of intellectual vision. For a longer list, see 12.24.50 supra.
15S7Bither in itself or in the light" (vel in se vel in illo): these words designate the two ways in which the intellect, illumined by God, who is the Light of the soul, can see the intelligible re-
BOOK TWELVE
ality which is the object of its vision. First, in se: this refers to normal intellectual vision in this life, when divine illumination makes the objects of the highest kind of vision present to the intellect so that it sees them "'in itself."' Second, in illo [/umine]: this refers both (1) to the vision granted to the soul in the next life, when it beholds the Light, which is God, face to face and in that Light knows all else that it knows, and (2) to the extraordinary case of the soul in this life caught up in ecstasy by a special grace of God to see a fleeting vision of the Light and in it a vision of the immaterial reality illumined by the Light. Gilson 93 proposes a different interpretation of this text. According to him, in se refers to the knowledge that the just man has of the virtues which he possesses in his own soul; in illo [Jumine] refers to the knowledge that the unjust man has of the virtues which he does not possess in his own soul but can see only "'in the light." Aug., therefore, according to Gilson, is explaining how a man who is not just can have an intellectual knowledge of justice. But if this statement is examined in the context of the whole chapter, I think it is clear that the words 1m se and 1n illo are to be explained as I have attempted to explain them above. Nevertheless, it is true that Augustine's theory of illumination does provide for the case of the sinner whose mind is enabled to see certain truths under the influence of divine illumination. Although the sinner turns away from the light, still he is touched by it. See Aug., De Trin. 14.15.21 (CCL 50A.450; ML 42.1052).
158Aug. frequently speaks of God as the Light which illumines the intellect. But there are also passages where he is careful to distinguish between the Light that is God Himself and the created light that God gives to the mind, as in Contra Faustum
20.7 (CSEL 25.541,27-29 Zycha; ML 42.372): "... this light is not that Light which is God Himself. For this is a creature, and He is the Creator; this is made, and He is the One who made it... ." See also Epist. 147 De videndo Deo 17.44 (CSEL 44.318,16-319,1 Goldbacher; ML 33.616). Hence, when Aug. says that the Light illuminating the soul is God Himself, we must understand him to mean that the ultimate source of the light is God, who gives a created light to the mind.
159F rom this statement it is clear that Aug. was not an ontolo-
318 NOTES gist. Nevertheless, the possibility of a supernatural vision of the uncreated Light (even in this life by a special gift of God) is stated in the last sentence of this chapter.
160Jt sees above itself that Light in whose illumination ..." (supra se videt illud quo adiuta). The text of z is rendered obscure by the inadvertent omission of i//ud, which is in the MSS, including E (and no variants are cited by z).
161 Aug. has just mentioned the frustration of the soul in its attempts to behold the Light which is God. In other words, there is no normal and natural vision of God in this life. Now he concludes by describing a supernatural vision or ecstasy in which the intellect does see the uncreated Light which is the source of all its illumination. Cf. Augustine's description of his own mystical experience at Milan before his conversion: "I entered, and I saw with the eye of my soul (such as it was), above this eye of my soul and above my mind, the unchangeable Light" (Conf. 7.10.16). 162The difficulty proposed here is briefly mentioned in 8.5.9 supra, but there the problem is left unsettled.
163T9 an incorporeal one that is like the corporeal" (ad incorporalia corporalibus similia). These words imply that the objects of spiritual vision can have an objective, extramental, but noncorporeal existence. This is indeed puzzling. But we must bear in mind that spiritus in this book is described as having some of the functions of the Neoplatonic TVEVLA, understanding, of course, that in Neoplatonism the pneuma is a tenuously material vehicle of the soul, whereas in Aug. the spiritus is the lower part of the immaterial soul in which sensible objects are represented.
Plotinus, Enn. 4.7.4, says that there are thousands of soulless pneumata; and these beings, whatever they are, though they would be tenuously corporeal for Plotinus, may have suggested to Aug. the idea of an incorporeal region that is like the corporeal. In any case, Aug. makes it clear in the following paragraph that he is only proposing an opinion. See n. 13 to this book swpra.
164] n Epist. 162.3 (CSEL 44.514,7-19 Goldbacher; ML 33.706), Aug. rejects the Neoplatonic doctrine of the pneuma, an astral body that was said to serve as a vehicle of the soul, and Yenies the theory that the soul at death takes some bodily entity from the body (a/iquod corpus ex corpore). Porphyry, Sententiae 32 (29), had maintained that the pneuma, stamped with an image of the body, accompanies the soul at death. In Augustine's theory, there is no pneumatic body. Its function in man's cognition is taken care of by the spiritus, which is immaterial. But this spiritus has a likeness of the body (similitudo corporis), just as Porphyry's pneuma has an image (€i SwAov) of it.
'es"But it is brought to a realm that is spiritual in accordance with its merits" (4d spiritalia vero pro meritis fertur). Aug. proposes the same theory in De natura et origine animae (De anima et eius origine) 4.18.26-27 (CSEL 60.405-7 Urba-Zycha; ML 44.539-41). However, in De civ. Dei 21.10.2, which is a later work (A.D. 413-26), he maintains that the fire of hell will be corporeal (corporeus ignis erit). But, he says, a spirit can suffer from a corporeal fire 'in a mysterious but real way" (op. cit. 21.10.1); for just as spirit can be united with body to form a living man, so a spirit in a mysterious manner can be united with fire, not to give it life but to receive punishment from it.
leo | by the likenesses of their senses" (stmilibus sensibus). The text is uncertain. The readings that I have found in the MSS and editions which I have examined are: similibus E}, z; al. similia E2; similia sensibus P; similis sensibus R; similibus sensibus S,
B, Bod, Nov, Lau?, Pal, Bru, Agaésse-Solignac; similitudinibus sensuum Val, Vat, m. In an article in Speculum 25 (1950) 91, I defended the reading of m, similitudinibus sensuum. But since then the evidence I have discovered in Bod, Nov, Lau, and Pal, and the comments of Agaésse-Solignac 49.438-39 n. 17, have led me to believe that similibus sensibus is the more likely reading. In effect it comes to the same thing as similitudinibus sensuum, and the meaning of Aug. is clear. It is interesting to note that in Epzst.
162.3 (CSEL 44.514,17-19 Goldbacher; ML 33.706) Aug. describes the soul as out of the body when it sees images in sleep (or when it is completely separated in death) and that he says it takes with it eyes that are not corporeal but like the eyes of the body (quosdam simillimos [oculos]). He says that in sleep it sees with these eyes objects that are not bodies but similar to bodies (quibus visa simillima cernit in somnis, sed nec 1psa corporea).
320 NOTES
167 Acts 12.7-9, discussed by Aug. in chs. 11 and 14 supra. 168] De civ. Dei 21.10.1 (a later work) Aug. holds the opinion that the fire of hell is material.
3.978 ff., says that the torments pictured as happening in the lower world are in reality the sufferings men undergo in this life, that Tantalus, Tityos, Sisyphus, and the daughters of Danaus are types of people tormented in this world, and that Tartarus, Cerberus, and the Furies are symbols of the punishment of crime here on earth.
170 Among the wise men of whom Aug. is thinking he would surely include Plato and Vergil. See e.g. Plato, Phaedo 107d-
108c, 113d-114b, Phaedrus 248e-249b, Republic 330d-e, 363d-e, 615a—616a, Laws 870d-e, 881a, and Verg., Aen. 6.268-901. 171See Retract. 2.50.4 or 2.24.2 (CSEL 36.160,13-16 Knoll; ML 32.640): "In Book 12 where I was speaking of hell, I think I should have said that it is under the earth rather than giving a reason why it is believed to be or said to be under the earth as if it were not so." See 12.34.66 infra.
172Aug. says the same thing in Epist. 187.2.6 (CSEL 57.85-86 Goldbacher; ML 33.834), but he seems to have been mistaken about the meaning of the scriptural word for hell or the lower world. It is called sheo/ in Hebr., &Sn¢ (Hades) in Greek, and infernus or inferi in Latin. These words in Scripture designate a vast area below the earth where the departed, the just as well as the wicked, were before the resurrection of Christ, the wicked being in a special part of that area called Gehenna. See M.-J. Lagrange, Evangile selon saint Luc (2nd ed. Paris 1921) 445 n. 23. In De civ. Dei 20.15 Aug. does favor the opinion that before the redemption the souls of the just were apud inferos in a region completely separated from the torments of the damned, but he does not know of any scriptural support for this doctrine.
173 Acts 2.24. This statement according to the commonly accepted Greek text should read: God raised Him up, having loosed the pangs of death (boas Tag WStvac TOV Gavarov). The OL (followed by Aug. here) reads so/utis doloribus inferorum, and the Vulg. substantially agrees with this, reading solutis doloribus inferni; and in this they follow a variant reading, &ov for Oavarov, recorded among the variants in modern critical editions of the NT. Aug., therefore, was led to believe on the basis of a faulty text that the risen Christ released a certain number of sinners from the torments of hell: the original text does not bear that meaning. But it was, according to Aug., not a wholesale deliverance of the damned. Christ freed whom He willed (quos voluit): see Epist. 164.5.14 (CSEL 44.534,16 Goldbacher; ML 33.715). nre( ft. Phil. 2.10. 175Tuke 16.22-23. 176Gen. 44.29. Unto hell (ad inferos) means "'to sheol," the abode of the dead, not necessarily the place of torment. See n. 172 supra.
oda DW ae ep 1782 Cor. 12.24. 179Cf. Eccli. (Sirach) 40.28. Peat. Ps. 93.19. 181See Augustine's remark in Retractationes cited in n. 171 supra.
182Through the spiritus the soul in hell is afflicted by infernal images analogous to the material forces that act upon the dead body under the earth. The influence of Porphyry's doctrine on the pneuma is obvious here. See nn. 13, 163, and 164 to this book.
183See Arist., De caelo 269b, and Cic., De nat. deor. 2.116. 184This etymology assumes that "Hades" (%6n¢) is derived from a privative and 75, "I delight." The derivation of the word is uncertain: a privative with lev, "to see," has been suggested as a possibility (see LSJ [1940] s.v. "Avdnc, a derivation that was commonly accepted in the time of Plato (see J. Burnet, Plato's Phaedo {Oxford 1911] 80).
23.43. 186Wisd. 7.24. 187See Acts 10.10-12. 188With regard to the state of the soul in heaven before the resurrection of the body, Aug. is elsewhere less positive. Treating this point in Retract. 1.13.3 or 1.14.2 (CSEL 36.67,6-68,1 Knoll; ML 32.606), written a dozen years after De Gen. ad litt., he does not definitely decide whether the souls of the just now in heaven enjoy the beatific vision in the same manner as the an-
322 NOTES gels do. But he has no doubt that the just are in a state of joy (In Iohannis evang. 49.10 [CCL 36.425; ML 35.1751]) and that they see God face to face (Enarr. in Ps. 119.6 [CCL 40.1783; ML
37.1602)). 189See Wisd. 9.15. bo0See,1 Corie. 44, 191For Augustine's explanation of error, see 12.25.52 supra. me See P Core 15,53. 193Aug. may have St. Ambrose in mind. See Ambr., De paradiso 11.53 (CSEL 32/1.309,21-310,6; ML 14.300).
194Chs. 7-10 of Book 12.