Tractates on the Gospel of John
TRACTATE 9 205 should seek there in this one sentence, "they shall be two in one flesh, a great mystery in reference to Christ and the Church," we may now seek Christ everywhere and drink wine from all the water-jars.
(4) Adam sleeps that Eve may be made;^^ Christ dies that the Church may be made. Eve was made from the side of the sleeping Adam; the side of the dead Christ is pierced with a spear that the mysteries may flow forth by which the Church is to be formed. To whom would it not be clear that in those past events future events have been represented, inasmuch as the Apostle says that Adam himself is a figure of him who was to come? He says, "who is a figure of him who was to come."^^ All things were prefigured mystically. For, in fact, God could take a rib from a man who was awake and form a woman. Or did he, perhaps, have to sleep to keep his side from hurting when the rib was extracted. Who is there who could sleep so that bones are torn out of him without his waking up? Or was it because God tore them out that the man felt nothing? He who could do so with a sleeping man, could also, then, tear them out of a man awake without pain.
(5) But beyond all doubt the first water-jar was filled, the prophecy of that time about this future time was dispensed.
11. Christ was also represented in Noe; and the world, in that ark. For why were all living creatures shut up in that ark^^ except to signify all the nations? For God did not lack the capability of creating anew every species of living things. For when no creatures were in existence, did he not say, "Let the earth bring forth" and the earth brought forth? So, from the same source as he made them then, he could remake them; he made them by a word, he could remake them by a word.
(2) Except, he was revealing a mystery and he was filling the second jar of prophetic dispensation that through the wood the figure of the world might be set free, because the life of the world was going to be fastened on wood.
35. Cf. Gn 2.21-22. 37. Cf. Rom 5.14. 39. Cf. Gn 1.24.