Книга 9

“And the Lord God said: It is not good for the man to be alone; Let us make him a helper suitable for him. The Lord God formed from the ground every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought it to man to see what he would call them, and that whatever man called every living soul, that would be its name. And the man gave names to all the livestock, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was no helper like him. And the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs and covered that place with flesh. And the Lord God created a wife from a rib taken from a man, and brought her to the man. And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman: for she was taken out of man. Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife; and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:18–24). If what we have considered and written in previous books serves as a kind of guide to the reader, then there is no need to dwell long on the words: “The Lord God formed from the earth every living creature of the field and every bird of the air,” because in previous books we explained why it is said “yet” (Gen. 2:5), namely: in connection with the creation of creatures completed in six days, in which everything was causally begun and completed at once, so that these the reasons were later revealed in their actions. But if anyone decides that this subject should be explained differently, let him first carefully examine everything that we had in mind when forming his opinion, and if at the same time he is able to form a more probable opinion, we, for our part, not only will not interfere with him, but, on the contrary, will sincerely thank him. If anyone is disturbed by the fact that (Scripture) does not say: “God formed from the earth all the beasts of the field, but from the water all the birds of the air,” but in such a way that He created both of these kinds from the earth, let him know that in this case two explanations are possible: or the Scripture here simply remained silent about what God created the birds of the air from, since it should already be clear to us that from the earth God created not both of these, but only the beasts of the field, as for the birds heavenly, then we were already told before that they were produced from the waters at the first creation of causes; or by earth in the present case is meant earth together with water, just as it is named in that psalm in which, having finished praising the heavenly objects, (the writer) turns his speech to the earth and says: “Praise the Lord from the earth, great fish and all the deeps” (Ps. 149:7), and does not say: “Praise the Lord from the water.” It goes without saying that all the deeps are in the waters, and yet they praise the Lord from the earth; in the waters are reptiles and winged birds, and yet they praise the Lord from the earth. In accordance with this general name for the earth, in relation to which and about the whole world it is said that God created heaven and earth, everything that is created from land or from water can be understood as created from earth. Let us now pay attention to how we must understand the words of God: “It is not good for man to be alone; Let us make him a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18), that is, did He speak these words in time, uttering certain specific sounds, or does this indicate an idea that originally existed in the Word of God, according to which a wife was to come about; What idea did Scripture mean when it said: “And God said, Let it be...” (Gen. 1:3, 6), i.e., during the initial creation of everything? Or perhaps God spoke these words in the mind of man himself, just as He speaks to some of His servants in His servants themselves? From among such servants was the one who said about himself in the psalm: “I will listen to what the Lord God says” (Ps. 84:9). Or, perhaps, the revelation of the creation of the woman was given to man through an angel in the likeness of bodily sounds, although Scripture is silent, whether it was done in a dream or, as often happens, in ecstasy, or in some other way, similar, for example, to how revelations are given to the prophets, among whom is the following: “And the angel who spoke to me said to me” (Zech. 1:9), or He also gave a voice through some bodily creature, as He uttered a voice from the cloud: “This is My Beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17). Which of all these methods took place here, we cannot clearly imagine; Let us, however, consider it as an undoubted truth that God spoke these words, and if He spoke them with a bodily voice or a temporarily expressed likeness, He spoke not through His substance, but through the medium of some creature subject to His power, as was said in the previous book. For God was seen later by holy men, either with a head white like a wave, or with the lower half of his body like copper, or in some other way; However, for those who blissfully believe and understand better than others that the eternal substance of the Trinity, imparting motion to all other substances, does not itself move either in time or in space, it is absolutely certain that God communicated these visions not through His substance, but through the created substances subordinate to it. Therefore, let us no longer search for how God said the above words, but rather try to understand their meaning. For that it was necessary to create for man a helper similar to him, this is contained in the eternal Truth itself, and in Her he hears about this who can know in Her what was created and why. If we ask why this helper should have appeared, then the most likely answer will be that (she appeared) for the sake of giving birth to children, just as, for example, the earth serves as a helper for a seed, so that a bush is born from both of them together. This was also stated at the initial creation of things in the words: “Male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:27–28). This idea of ​​the creation and union of man and woman, as well as the blessing, remained even after man’s sin and punishment. Thanks to them, the earth is now full of people who possess it. For although the remark is made that they entered into intercourse and began to give birth after expulsion from paradise, I do not see any reason to believe that even in paradise they could not have “an honest marriage ... and not from a defiled bed” (Heb. 13:4). If they lived faithfully, righteously and obediently and holyly served God, from their seed, by the will of God, could be born offspring without any passionate excitement of lust and without the difficulties and diseases of childbirth; and children would not replace dying parents, and while those giving birth would remain in the same state, eating from the tree of life that grew there and drawing bodily strength from it, those who were born would come to the same state, until after a certain number had been fulfilled, such a change would have happened to them, if they all lived righteously and obediently, such a change that their animal bodies, having turned into another quality besides death, they would have become spiritual, for now they would have served the spirit and lived in the spirit. All this could well have happened if they had not deserved the punishment of death by breaking the commandment. And whoever does not believe that this could be so means only the so-called. the natural order of natural things, which arose after the sin and punishment of man; but we should not join the ranks of those people who believe only what they are accustomed to seeing. For who will doubt that everything we have just talked about could be communicated to a person living obediently and piously, as long as he does not doubt that the clothes of the Israelites were given such a property that they did not wear out for forty years? Why did they enter into intercourse only after expulsion from paradise? The short answer is this: because immediately after the creation of the woman, before they entered into intercourse, that crime followed for which they were condemned to death and removed from this blessed place. For Scripture does not say how much time passed from this act of theirs to the birth of Cain. It can also be said that God has not yet allowed them to have intercourse. For why shouldn’t they wait for divine permission for such a matter, in which there was no lust, this, so to speak, incentive for disobedience of the flesh? But God did not allow this because He arranged everything according to His foreknowledge, by which, without a doubt, He knew in advance about their fall, after which the mortal human race was supposed to spread. And if a wife was not created to give birth to children, then why? If in order to cultivate the land together, then cultivating the land was not yet such work that there was a need for an assistant, but if there was, then a man would sooner be given an assistant; the same can be said about consolation, if we assume that the husband was bored from loneliness. For in this sense it would be much more appropriate for two friends to live together than for a man and a woman. And if they were to live together in such a way that one commanded and the other obeyed, so that hostile wills would not disturb the peace of the cohabitants, then to maintain peace it would be sufficient for such an order that one was created earlier and the other later, especially if the younger was created from the older, as the woman was created. Would anyone really say that from the rib of a man God could only create a woman, but in no way a man? Therefore, I do not find for what purpose the wife was created to help the husband, if we do not have in mind childbearing. For if it was necessary for parents to leave this life, giving place to children, so that the human race, through this succession, would reach its known number, then people, after the birth of children and the fulfillment of their human duty, could move from this present life to a better one, not through death, but through some change - whether higher, in which, united with bodies, they will be holy like angels, or, if this should be given to everyone together only at the end of the age, some lower, but nevertheless one that could have a better condition than what our bodies now have. For it is impossible to think that Elijah is either already in the state in which the saints will be when, after completing their daily work, they receive a denarius (Matthew 20:10), or in the state in which people are who have not yet departed from this life, from which he himself has already passed, but not by death, but by transference (to heaven) (2 Kings 2:11). Thus, he already occupies a better position than he could have in this life, although he does not yet have what from this life, righteously spent, he will receive at the end, “because God has provided something better for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us” (Heb. 11:40). And if anyone thinks that Elijah could not have deserved it if he had been married and had children (they think that he did not have a wife, since Scripture does not tell us about this, although, on the other hand, it does not say anything about his celibacy), then what will he answer us regarding Enoch, who, having children, pleased God so much that he did not die, but was taken into heaven (Gen. 5:24)? Why couldn’t Adam and Eve give place to their successors not by death, but by transference (to heaven), if they, living righteously, gave birth to children without sin? For if Enoch or Elijah, being mortal in Adam and bearing within themselves, as it were, the debt of death (and in order to get rid of this debt, they are believed to return to the present life and after a certain period of time die), are now in another life, where, until the resurrection of the flesh, before their spiritual body changes into a spiritual one, they do not suffer lack either from illness or from old age; then how much more just and probable is the assumption that the first people who lived without any personal or hereditary sin were able to transition, after the birth of children, to a better state, from which they, after the fulfillment of the age, together with the entire host of saints could be changed into an angelic image not by carnal death, but by the power of God? So, I do not see for what other help was the wife created, if not for the birth of children; and yet, I don’t know why, this reason is eliminated. For why does faithful and pious virginity deserve great and great honor before God, if not because one must abstain from marriage even in our time, when from among all nations there is the greatest multitude to replenish the saints, that is, when the desire to receive unclean pleasure denies itself that which is no longer required by the need to replenish posterity? Then, the weakness of both sexes, prone to a shameful fall, is supported by honest marriage, so that what is a duty to the healthy is a medicine to the sick. Even intemperance itself is not something evil because marriage, which binds even intemperate people, is not something good; on the contrary, it is not from the evil of intemperance that the good of marriage becomes reprehensible, but on the contrary, from the good of marriage the evil of intemperance also becomes excusable, and therefore what is good in marriage and from which it is good cannot in any case be a sin. And this good is threefold: faith, raising children and sacrament. In faith, it is observed that in addition to marriage, one does not enter into intercourse with another person or with another; in raising children - so that (they) are conceived with love, grow safely and are brought up religiously; in the sacrament - so that the marriage is not dissolved and that the divorced person does not enter into an alliance with another person. This is, as it were, a marriage rule, which either embellishes natural fertility or restrains intemperate depravity. We have said enough about this subject in our recently published book “On Marital Welfare,” in which we pointed out the difference between the abstinence of widowhood and the superiority of virginity in terms of the degree of their dignity; There is no need to dwell long on this subject in this place. Let us now turn to the question, for what help was the wife created for the husband, if they were not allowed to have intercourse with each other in paradise to give birth to children? Those who think this way perhaps consider all intercourse to be a sin. Indeed, very often people, wrongly avoiding vices, quickly fall into the opposite vices. So, for example, one who is afraid of stinginess becomes wasteful; whoever is afraid of luxury becomes stingy; those who are reproached for laziness become restless; those who are reproached for worrying become lazy, etc.; all this happens because they look at their crimes from the point of view not of reason, but of opinion. In the same way, since people do not know what is condemned by the divine court in adultery and fornication, they abhor marital cohabitation even for the sake of having children. Those who do not do this, but at the same time believe that the fertility of the flesh is given from above to compensate for mortality, on the one hand, do not think that the first people could have cohabited if, due to the sin they committed, death, they did not need successors by birth, on the other hand, they do not pay attention to the fact that if the need for successors for those who were to die could have been just, then the need for accomplices for those who were to live could have been even more just. For if even now, when the earth is filled with the human race, there is a just need for offspring who could compensate for the dying, then in order for the earth to be filled with two people, how could they fulfill this duty if not by birth? But will anyone be so mentally blind as not to judge what an adornment the human race is for the earth, even if few on earth live well and commendably, and how strong the state order is, turning sinners into a kind of harmonious earthly union? For people are not so depraved that, even being sinners, they are not superior to cattle and birds, the breeds of which our lower part of the world is decorated to such an extent that contemplation of it can lead everyone to admiration. And who is so reckless as to think that it could be less decorated if it were filled with undying righteous people? And since the highest society of angels is very numerous, they should not be united in marriage if they do not have to die. Anticipating that the same multitude should unite with the angels in the resurrection of the saints, the Lord says: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage (for they will no longer die), but remain as the Angels of God in heaven” (Matthew 22:30); but in real life, when the earth was to be filled with people, why else was the female sex needed, if not so that the female nature would help the planter of the human race, as fertility (helps) the earth? However, it is much more decent to think that the spiritual body of the first people who lived in paradise, still innocent of death, was such that they did not have the desire for carnal pleasure, which our bodies that are involved in death now have. For something had already happened in them, as soon as they ate from the forbidden tree, since God said not “if you eat from it, you will die,” but “on the day you eat from it, you will die” (Gen. 2:17); so that on this very day everything happened in them about which the apostle, groaning, says: “For according to the inward man I delight in the law of God; but in my members I see another law, warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Poor man I am! who will deliver me from this body of death? I give thanks to (my) God Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:22–25). It seemed insufficient to him to say: “Who will deliver me from this mortal body,” he says: “From this body of death.” In like manner he says the following: “The body is dead because of sin” (Rom. 8:10), is not mortal, but dead, although, of course, it is mortal, since it is subject to death. These bodies, one must think, were not like that: although they were spiritual bodies, and not spiritual, they were not dead, that is, not those that must necessarily die; they became such on the day when (their ancestors) touched the forbidden tree. And our bodies are called healthy in their own way, but if this health is impaired to such an extent that our insides are consumed by a fatal disease, upon seeing which the doctors announce the onset of death, then our body is called mortal, but in a different sense than when it was healthy, although even then it had to die sooner or later. So in the bodily members of the first people, clothed with bodies, albeit spiritual, but such that, if (the first parents) had not sinned, they would not have been subject to death, but would have received an angelic form and a heavenly quality, as soon as the commandment was broken, death appeared, like some kind of mortal disease, and changed the quality thanks to which they dominated the body so that they could not say: “In my members I see another law, opposing the law of the mind.” mine,” because although their body was not yet spiritual, but only spiritual, it was not “the body of death,” from which and with which we are born. For we, I will not say when we are born, but even while we are still conceiving, to which we give the beginning to something else, if not some disease from which it is necessary for us to die - not so much necessary for the one who falls ill with dropsy, dysentery or elephantiasis, as for the one who receives this body, in which we all become children of wrath, because it was made so by nothing other than the punishment for sin (Eph. 2:3). And if so, then why shouldn’t we think that the first people, before sin, could control their reproductive members to give birth to children, just as the soul is the driving force in any action without any difficulty and produces, as it were, an itch of pleasure? For if the omnipotent and ineffably praiseworthy God, great even in the smallest deeds, gave bees the ability to produce children in the same way as the form and liquid of honey, then why can it seem incredible that he arranged for the first people such bodies that, if they had not sinned and did not immediately receive a certain disease from which they must begin to die, they would command their members, with which the fetus is conceived, by the power of that wave with which Do we command our feet when we walk, so that this fruit is seeded without passionate heat and born without illness? But having transgressed the commandment, they received in their members the action of that law, which is opposed to the law of the mind, but which is regulated by marriage, limited and curbed by abstinence, so that just as punishment comes from sin, so merit comes from punishment. So, anyone who doubts that woman was created for her husband from man (precisely as a woman), who gave birth to Cain and Abel and all their brothers, from whom all people came, and among them Seth, from whom we reach Abraham and the well-known people of Israel, he inevitably shakes everything that we believe, and must be rejected by the minds of the faithful. Therefore, when the question is raised why the female sex was created for the husband, I, who have carefully reviewed everything, do not see any other reason than the need for offspring, so that from their trunk the earth would be filled with people - a trunk that was not born in the same way as people are born now, when their members are inherent in the sinful law, opposing the law of the mind, although overcome by the grace of God. And what could be fairer than such punishment, so that the body no longer serves every beck of the soul, that is, does not become its slave, just as the soul itself refused to serve its God? However, whether God creates both from parents, body from body, and soul from soul, or creates souls in some other way, in any case He creates them not for an impossible task and not for a small reward, so that when the soul, reverently obedient to God, overcomes by the grace of God the sinful law found in the members of the body of death and received by the first man as a punishment, it receives a heavenly reward for the greater glory of its own, showing to those how much praise obedience deserves, which could with its strength overcome the punishment for someone else's disobedience. But since, I think, the question of why a wife was created for a husband has been sufficiently studied, let us now examine the question of why all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air were brought to Adam so that he would give them names, but at the same time as if from here the need arose to create a wife for him from his rib because among these animals there was no helper for him like him. It seems to me that this was done in the form of some kind of prophetic signification, but, however, it was done in such a way that, while the event that took place is certain, its interpretation remains open. In fact, what does it mean first of all that Adam gave names to birds and amphibians, with the exception of fish and everything that swims in general? For if we turn to human language, then all this is called as people gave it the name in their speech. Not only what exists in the waters and on the earth, but also the earth itself, the water, the sky and everything that we see in the sky, what we do not see and what we believe, all this, depending on the difference in human languages, is called by different names. We know that originally, before the pride of the post-flood tower divided human society into different languages, there was one language (Gen. 11:1–8). Whatever this language may be, this is not relevant to our question. What is certain is that Adam also spoke it, and if this language still exists, then it also contains those articulate sounds with which the first man gave names to amphibious animals and birds. Is it now likely that the names of fish in this language were established not by man, but from above, and that man later learned them from God Himself? Even if we assume that this was the case, then why it was so, there is no doubt a mysterious meaning hidden in this. Meanwhile, one must think that the names of the fish were given gradually, after becoming familiar with their breeds. But if this was not done when the animals, cattle and birds were brought to man, so that he would give names to all of them, collected and divided by breed, and, moreover, give names gradually and earlier than the fish, then what was the reason for this, other than the intention to designate something that would be significant as a foretelling of the future? – It is at this point that the order of the narrative primarily draws our attention. Then, did God really not know that He did not create anything in the breeds of animals that could be a helper similar to man? Was it not necessary for the man himself to realize this and consider his wife all the more dear because in all the flesh created under the sun, he did not find anything like her? And it is surprising if he could only find out when the animals were brought to him and he reconsidered them. For if he believed God, then God could inform him about this in the same way as he gave him a commandment, as he questioned and judged him for sinning. And if he did not believe, then of course he could not even know whether all the animals were brought to him by the One in whom he did not believe, or perhaps he hid in some remote countries of the earth animals similar to him, which he did not show to him. - So, I think there should be no doubt that things happened this way for the sake of some prophetic sign, but nevertheless this is exactly what happened. In our present work, we set out not to solve prophetic riddles, but to give a justification for the authenticity of the events that took place in their historical sense, so that what may seem impossible to empty and unbelieving people or, as contrary evidence, contradicts the very authority of Holy Scripture, having discussed it in the world of powers and with the help of God, show it is neither impossible nor contrary; and what seems possible and without the slightest shadow of a contradiction, but may, however, seem to some to be superfluous or even stupid, regarding all this, to prove that it did not happen in the natural or ordinary order of events and, on the basis of the most undoubted, preferable for our hearts, authority of Holy Scripture, should be considered mysterious, and therefore not stupid. The explanation or investigation of this last subject we have either already presented in another place, or we postpone until another time. What does it mean that a wife was created for her husband from his rib? Let us assume that it was necessary to do this in order to approve the strength of the marriage union itself; But did the same necessity require that this be done by the sleeping person and that, then, the place where the bone was taken out should be filled with flesh? Indeed, could it not be possible to take part of the flesh itself in order to form it into a wife in an even more appropriate manner, since this is the lower sex? Or, having created so many things, could God form only a rib, and not flesh or dust, into a wife, creating a man from dust? And if it was necessary to take exactly the rib, why wasn’t another rib inserted instead of this rib? Why is it not also said: “created” or “formed,” as in all previous cases, but rather, says the Lord God, he created a rib, as if it were a house, and not a human body? There is no doubt in this way that since all this was so and cannot be stupid, then it was for the sake of commemorating something else. And indeed, the foreseeing God, from the very beginning of the human race, mercifully predicts in His deeds the fruit of the future age; so that what is revealed and written by Him to His servants at one time or another, whether through the succession of people, or through His Spirit, or through the ministry of angels, represents evidence both of the promise of the future and of the recognition of what has already been fulfilled. In the future, this subject will be revealed to us more and more clearly. Let us therefore turn to what we have set as the task of our present work, namely: how, in accordance not with the omen of the future, but with the literal, not allegorical meaning of the events that have taken place, further words can be understood. So, “The Lord God formed from the ground all the animals of the field and all the birds of the air (we have already explained these words to the best of our ability), and brought them to man to see what he would call them” (Genesis 2:19). In order not to think in a carnal way about how God brought the animals and birds to Adam, we need in this case to rely on the idea of ​​​​the dual action of divine providence, which we discussed in the previous book. One should not, in fact, think that this happened in the same way as hunters or bird-catchers track down and drive the animals they catch to the snares; One should not think that some verbal order was given, hearing which rational souls understand and obey. Animals and birds did not receive such an ability; however, they too, in their own way, obey God, but not by the rational will of the will, but in the way that God, without moving in time himself, at the right time moves everything through the angelic ministries, who in His word receive knowledge of what should happen and at what time, and by Him, not moving in time, they move in time, fulfilling His commands in the circle of creatures subordinate to them. For every living soul, not only rational, as in people, but also irrational, as in cattle and birds, is moved by impressions. But the rational soul either sympathizes or does not sympathize with impressions by the will; the unreasonable soul does not have this judgment, although nature in its own way moves under the influence of a certain impression. The soul has no power over those impressions that it perceives either in the bodily sense, or deeper, in the spirit itself, and by which the desires of every animate being are moved. Hence, when impressions are instilled through angelic obedience, God’s command reaches not only people, not only birds and animals, but also everything that is hidden under the waters, such as, for example, the whale that swallowed Jonah (Jon. 2:1); and not only to such large animals, but even to a worm, for he, as we read, was ordered from above to gnaw the root of the pumpkin, under the shadow of which the prophet rested (John 4:7). And if God designed man in such a way that he, even being clothed with sinful flesh, can, with the power of his mind, and not his body, catch, tame and hold in an amazing way in his power not only cattle and beasts of burden that obediently serve his household needs, not only domestic ones, but also freely flying birds and even wild animals, when, noticing their desires and sorrows, he lures them in, locks them in a cage and releases them to freedom and, thus Thus, little by little pacifying them, he weans them from wild instincts and, so to speak, invests them with human rights: is it not all the more powerful that the angels have, who, at the command of God, cognizable by them in the most immutable, constantly contemplated Truth, moving themselves in time, and the bodies subordinate to them in time and space, can inspire in every living soul the impressions by which it moves, and the desires arising from its bodily insufficiency, so that she herself, without knowing it, is drawn to where she should go. Let us now see how the very formation of the wife, which in a mysterious sense is called creation, took place. Undoubtedly, the nature of a woman was created, although from a male, pre-existing nature, but not by some movement of existing natures. Angels cannot create any nature; there is only one Creator of every nature, great and small - God, that is, the Trinity itself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore, let us pose the question differently, namely: how was Adam put to sleep and how was the rib removed from his body without any painful sensation? For they can perhaps say that even angels were able to do this. But only God, from Whom all nature exists, could even form a bone so that a woman could emerge from it. I don’t think that the angels could even make that addition to the husband’s body, which consisted of filling the place of the taken bone, just as they could not form man himself from the dust of the earth; this is not because it is not the job of angels to create anything, but because they are not creators, since we do not call farmers creators of fields and trees. “He who plants and he who waters is nothing, but God who makes everything grow” (1 Cor. 3:7). This return also includes the fact that in the human body, when a bone was taken out of it, flesh filled its place, that is, this was the work of God, by which He supports natures so that they exist, and by which He created the angels themselves. Thus, it is the farmer’s job to bring water when watering; but for water to flow through sloping places, this is no longer the work of the farmer, but of Him who arranged everything in measure, number and weight (Wis. 11:21). The farmer's job is to clear the knots from the tree and sow the land; but so that the earth absorbs moisture, sends out sprouts, deposits one in the soil, with which the root is attached, and drives up the other, with which the trunk is nourished and branches develop, - all this is the work of the One who grows. Likewise, when a doctor attributes nutrition to a sick body, and medicine to a wounded body, he (attributes), first of all, not from those substances that he himself created, but which he finds created by the action of the Creator; then, if he can prepare food and drink, formulate a plaster and apply it, then can he, from the substances he ascribes, produce and create forces or flesh? This is accomplished by nature itself with an internal and most intimate movement for us. And yet, if God deprived nature of that internal action by which He supports and produces it, then it would, as if instantly extinguished, cease to exist. That is why, in view of the fact that God controls all creation by the twofold action of providence, which we spoke about in the previous book, manifesting this action both in natural and in voluntary movements, not a single angel can create nature, as well as himself. But the angelic will, being devoted to God and fulfilling His commands, in the circle of subordinate objects can, in its own way and through natural movements, just as it happens in agriculture or healing, control matter so that something happens in time in accordance with the original ideas, uncreated in the Word of God, causally laid down in the six-day affairs. So, who dares to say for sure what kind of service the angels could provide to God in the formation of a wife? However, I can say with complete confidence that the replenishment (taken from the husband) of flesh in place of the bone, the body and soul of the wife, the combination of members, all the entrails, all the feelings and in general everything that the creature, man and woman have become, all this was accomplished exclusively in that action that God, not through the angels, but only Himself, not what He did and then left, but constantly does so that the nature of both other objects and the angels themselves could not exist if He didn't act. But since, as far as the power of human understanding has been given to us to investigate the nature of things, we know that animate and sentient flesh is born only from material elements, that is, water and earth, or from the leaves and fruits of trees, or even from the flesh of animals (such as, for example, countless genera of worms and reptiles), or from the copulation of parents, and yet we do not know of any flesh born from any animal that would be so similar to her, that would differ from her only in gender, then we are looking for, but in nature we cannot find the likeness of that creation by which the wife was created from the rib of her husband. The reason for this is nothing other than the fact that we know how people act on this earth, but how angels engage in their own kind of farming in the real world, of course, we do not know. In fact, if a certain species of trees made its natural movement without human care, then we would know nothing more than that trees and herbs are born from the earth and from their seeds falling from them to the ground, but would we know what power grafting has so that a tree of another species, having its own root, begins to give birth to someone else's fruits, which for it, by virtue of the resulting unity, become its own? We became familiar with this phenomenon from gardening, although the gardeners themselves were in no way the creators of trees, but were in some way workers and servants of the Creator God. For nothing could exist from their action unless it had an internal cause of its nature in the action of God. Is it surprising that we do not know the creation of a wife from the rib of her husband, if we do not know how angels serve the Creator God - we, who could not know that a tree from a tree branch acquires someone else’s strength, if we did not know how gardeners serve God in the creation of this phenomenon? However, in no case should we doubt that the Creator of both people and trees is none other than God, and we must firmly believe that the wife was created from the husband apart from any intercourse, although during this action of the Creator He may have been served by angels, just as we firmly believe that from the woman in addition to intercourse came the husband, when the promise of the seed of Abraham was “taught through the angels, by the hand of a mediator” (Gal. 3:19) For unbelievers, both are incredible; but how can it seem probable for believers that one, in the application to Christ, happened in the proper sense, while the other, about Eve, was written allegorically? Is it possible that without intercourse only a husband could come from a woman, and not a wife from a man, and the virgin womb could not produce a husband, but the male side could not produce a wife, although in the first case the Lord was born from a slave, and in the latter it was formed from a slave. slave? The Lord could, of course, have created His flesh from a bone or from some member of the Virgin, but the One who could show that in His body He did on another occasion what had already been done, showed with greater benefit that in the body of a mother one should not be ashamed of anything that is pure. If it is asked in what relation (to the creation of a wife) is the causal creation in which God created the first man in His own image and likeness (when, without a doubt, the words were spoken: “Male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27)), i.e., did the very idea that God created and realized in the first affairs of the world contain the fact that, according to it, the wife had to come from the rib of the husband, or only that it could happen, but in order for it to certainly happen, this was not yet inherent in that idea, but was hidden in God - so, I say, if they ask about this, then I will answer as this matter seems to me, without any bold statement; Perhaps, however, when I express my opinion, prudent and prudent people, who have already been educated by the Christian faith, even if they are now becoming acquainted with this subject for the first time, will not consider my opinion doubtful. Every most ordinary movement of nature has its well-known natural laws, in accordance with which the spirit of life, which is a creature, has its own well-known and in some way defined aspirations, from which even evil will cannot deviate. On the other hand, the elements of the sensory world have a certain strength and quality: what each of them can (produce) and what can come from each of them. Everything that is born from these, as it were, fundamental principles of things receives in due time a beginning and development, an end and a kind of destruction. Hence it happens that a bean is not born from a grain of wheat, wheat is not born from a bean, a man is not born from cattle, or, conversely, cattle is not born from a man. But the power of the Creator has the power, beyond this natural movement and course of things, to produce from all these objects something other than what their seed causes contain, but not something that He Himself did not put into them, so that it could come from them or from Himself. For His power is not foolish; but He is omnipotent with wise power and in each thing He produces in due time what He created in it in the possibility of earlier. Therefore, there are different ways in which one grass grows one way and another another, one age gives birth and another does not give birth, a person speaks, but cattle cannot speak. The reasons for these and similar methods not only exist in God, but are embedded by Him in things along with their creation. But although He gave created natures the opportunity for a tree cut out of the earth, dried and polished without root, earth or water, to suddenly turn green and bear fruit, for a woman, barren from youth to old age, to begin to give birth, for a donkey to speak, etc. (for even He Himself cannot produce from them that which, as He previously intended, cannot come from them, since He is not more powerful than Himself), but He gave in another way, so that they contained this possibility not in a natural movement, but in the movement with which He created them so that their nature was submissive to a more powerful power. Thus, God contains the causes of some created things secretly in Himself, without placing them in created things and realizing them not in that action of providence by which he supports the existence of natures, but in that by which he controls, as he wants, those of them that he created as he pleased. This also includes grace by which sinners are saved. For as for nature, damaged by the corrupted will, it accomplishes its rebirth not through itself, but through the grace of God, by which it is helped and corrected. And people should not despair at all when they hear the saying: “No one who goes in to her (that is, to another man’s wife) returns” (Prov. 2:19). For this is said about them from the point of view of their depravity, so that the one who returns would attribute his return not to himself, but to the grace of God, “not from works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:9). That is why the apostle called the secret of this grace hidden not in the world, in which the causal ideas of all things that have to arise naturally are hidden, as, for example, Levi, who received tithes, was hidden in the loins of Abraham (Heb. 7:9-10), but in God, who created all things (Eph. 3:9). That is why even the reasons for everything that was accomplished not through the natural movement of things, but miraculously, to signify this grace, were hidden in God; Among such cases is the fact that from the rib of a husband, and, moreover, a sleeping one, a wife was created, who through the husband became strong, as if strengthened by his bone, and through his wife he became weak, because the place of the bone was filled not with bone, but with flesh; the first creation, when on the sixth day it was said: “Male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27), did not imply that the wife should happen in this way, but only that she could happen in this way, so that nothing happened contrary to the reasons that God had established by His immutable will. And that it had to happen exactly this way, and that it would not happen otherwise, was hidden in God, Who created everything. But since (about this mystery the apostle) said that (he was given the grace to preach it) “that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known through the church to the principalities and powers in the heavens” (Eph. 3:10), then it seems probable that just as the promise of the Seed was “taught through the angels, by the hand of a mediator” (Gal. 3:19), so everything that happened in the nature of things beyond the ordinary and natural course and was connected with the coming of this Seed, that is, all the foreshadowing or announcements about It, all this was accomplished with the help of the ministry of angels, but in such a way that it doesn’t matter: there is no other creator and restorer of natures except God, who through everyone “planting it and watering it” is the one who “grows it up” (1 Cor. 3:7). Hence, the ecstasy that God induced on Adam so that he fell asleep can be reasonably understood as induced with the goal that, with the help of this ecstasy, Adam’s mind would become, as it were, a participant in the angelic influence and, having entered the sanctuary of God, would receive an idea of ​​the future. As a result of this, waking up and as if fulfilled by a prophecy, as soon as he saw the bone brought to him, that is, his wife, he immediately said (the apostle calls these words a great mystery): “Behold, this is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she will be called woman, for she was taken from man. Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife; and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:23–24). Although, according to the testimony of Scripture, these words were spoken by the first man, the Lord declared in the Gospel that they were spoken by God (Matthew 19:5). Therefore, we can think that due to the ecstasy that was induced on Adam, he could say these words by inspiration from above, like a prophet. But it’s time to put an end to this book so that in a new book we can offer readers further information. You might be interested in: