The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
poreal place, and they will not hesitate to declare that his soul was obviously corporeal in view of his parched tongue and the drop of water he craved from the finger of Lazarus.?" For my part, I have no desire to rush into controversy with them on a question so perplexing; it is better to doubt about the mysterious than to dispute about the uncertain.
I have no doubt that the rich man is to be understood as being in the burning heat of punishment and the poor man in the cool refreshment of joy. But how we must interpret the flame of hell, the bosom of Abraham,?® the tongue of the rich man, the finger of the poor man, the excruciating thirst, the refreshing drop of water, may possibly be discovered with considerable effort by those who humbly seek, whereas it will never be found by those who engage in acrimonious debate.
I must, then, immediately give my answer to the question we are considering, so that I may not be delayed by a problem which is profound and in need of lengthy discussions. If souls are contained in corporeal places even after they have left the body, the thief on the cross could have been brought to that paradise where the first man had been placed in the body. Having said this, I may add that with the help of a more appropriate passage in Scripture, if the need arises, we may hope somehow to determine what we should seek or what we should think in this matter.
10. But I have no doubt, and I do not think anyone else has doubts, that Wisdom is not a body and therefore not a tree. It was possible, however, that through a tree, that is, through a corporeal creature used as a sacrament, Wisdom could be signified in the earthly Paradise.*° But this interpretation is not accepted by the reader who does not see in Scripture the many material sacraments of spiritual things, or maintains that the first man could not have been able to rule his life according to such a sacrament. Yet St. Paul speaks of this sort of sight when he says of the woman whom we believe to have been made from a rib of the man, For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will cleave to bis wife; and they will be two in one flesh.
This is a great sacrament in Christ and in the Church.3°
It is strange and hardly tolerable to observe how men want to