The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK EIGHT ap)
CHAPTER
How God spoke to Adam.
37. We may also ask how God now spoke in such a way to the man whom He made, who was certainly from the beginning endowed with senses and intelligence, that this man could hear and understand what God said. For the man could not receive a command which it would be sinful for him to transgress®! unless he understood what he received. How, then, did God speak to him? Did He speak interiorly in his soul, through the understanding, so that the man would with wisdom understand the will and command of God without any corporeal sounds or likenesses of corporeal things?
I do not think that God spoke in this way to the first man. The Scripture narrative is such that we are led rather to assume that God spoke to man in Paradise as He spoke later to the patriarchs, such as Abraham and Moses, namely, under some corporeal form. It is thus, indeed, that the first man and woman heard the voice of God as He walked in Paradise towards evening, and they hid themselves.
What we must believe about God in order to understand the workings of His providence.
38. We have here a good opportunity that we ought not to neglect according to our ability and the measure of help and grace that God in His kindness gives us; I mean the opportunity to contemplate the twofold working of Divine Providence which I touched upon above in a passing way when I was speaking about the cultivation of the earth.?? My hope was that the mind of the reader would gradually become accustomed to contemplate this working of Providence, for this is a great help in keeping us from thinking anything unworthy of the divine nature.
We say, then, that the sovereign, true, one, and only God, Fa-