110. Gn. adu. Man. 2.21.32; Hill, Genesis, 93; CSEL 91.155. (continued)
Made to be Godly 77
Adam and Eve are here presented as unwilling to accept the gravity of their disobedience: content with the levity of leaves when the severity of dead skin is the only fitting response. God must therefore descend to show them the severity of their disobedience, exchanging their leaves for skins.
Augustine understands that there is no more effective symbol of mortality than slaughtered skins. Animal pelts naturally represent the slaying of that which was once alive. Furthermore, donning such pelts symbolizes the loss of human dignity: sinful men and women becoming more akin to the beasts.111 The tunicae pellicae also represent not only the deception of Adam and Eve but their mortality as well. Their illegitimate imitation [non imitatio legitima] of God has resulted in their deaths and now all humanity will be cast down into the savage and thus moribund world of the animals.
It will become the mission of the Son to descend and to seek out what was lost by the first humans' abandonment of paradise and consequent descent into mortal flesh. Augustine writes, "Just as a coin, you see, if it's rubbed with earth, loses the emperor's image, so the human mind, if it is rubbed with earthly lusts, loses God's image. However, along comes Christ, the master of the mint, to strike the coins afresh . . . and he will show you that God is looking for his image."112 So, although the divine image on earth sought deification apart from divinity itself, the Son comes to unite those made in the Trinity's image and to rejuvenate what the children of Adam have freely worn down.
Conclusion
Augustine understood imago to mean that the copy not only retained an inherent likeness to its model, but it also
111. ibid. "Quo enim maiore indicio potuit significari mors, quam sentimus in corpore, quam pellibus, quoniam mortuis pecoribus detrahi solent? Ita cum contra praeceptum non imitatione legitima, sed illicita superbia deus esse appetit homo, usque ad beluarum mortalitatem deiectus est"; CSEL 91.155-56.
112. s. 229W; Hill, Sermons (III/6), 342 (date unknown).