On this account some allegorize all that concerns Paradise itself, where the first men, the parents of the human race, are, according to the truth of holy Scripture, recorded to have been; and they understand all its trees and fruit-bearing plants as virtues and habits of life, as if they had no existence in the external world, but were only so spoken of or related for the sake of spiritual meanings.As if there could not be a real terrestrial Paradise!
As if there never existed these two women, Sarah and Hagar, nor the two sons who were born to Abraham, the one of the bond woman, the other of the free, because the apostle says that in them the two covenants were prefigured; or as if water never flowed from the rock when Moses struck it, because therein Christ can be seen in a figure, as the same apostle says, "Now that rock was Christ!"(2) No one, then, denies that Paradise may signify the life of the blessed; its four rivers, the four virtues, prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice; its trees, all useful knowledge; its fruits, the customs of the godly;its tree of life, wisdom herself, the mother of all good; and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the experience of a broken commandment.The punishment which God appointed was in itself, a just, and therefore a good thing; but man's experience of it is not good.
These things can also and more profitably be understood of the Church, so that they become prophetic foreshadowings of things to come.Thus Paradise is the Church, as it is called in the Canticles;(3) the four rivers of Paradise are the four gospels;the fruit-trees the saints, and the fruit their works; the tree of life is the holy of holies, Christ; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the will's free choice.For if man despise the will of God, he can only destroy himself; and so he learns the difference between consecrating himself to the common good and revelling in his own.For he who loves himself is abandoned to himself, in order that, being overwhelmed with fears and sorrows, he may cry, if there be yet soul in him to feel his ills, in the words of the psalm, "My soul is cast down within me,"(4) and when chastened, may say," Because of his strength I will wait upon Thee."(5) These and similar allegorical interpretations may be suitably put upon Paradise without giving offence to any one, while yet we believe the strict truth of the history, confirmed by its circumstantial narrative of facts(6)CHAP.22.--THAT THE BODIES OF THE SAINTS SHALL AFTER THE RESURRECTIONBE SPIRITUAL, AND YET FLESH SHALL NOT BE CHANGED INTO SPIRIT.
The bodies of the righteous, then, such as they shall be in the resurrection, shall need neither any fruit to preserve them from dying of disease or the wasting decay of old age, nor any other physical nourishment to allay the cravings of hunger or of thirst;for they shall be invested with so sure and every way inviolable an immortality, that they shall not eat save when they choose, nor be under the necessity of eating, while they enjoy the power of doing so.For so also was it with the angels who presented themselves to the eye and touch of men, not because they could do no otherwise, but because they were able and desirous to suit themselves to men by a kind of manhood ministry.For neither are we to suppose, when men receive them as guests, that the angels eat only in appearance, though to any who did not know them to be angels they might seem to eat from the same necessity as ourselves.So these words spoken in the Book of Tobit, "You saw me eat, but you saw it but in vision;"(1) that is, you thought I took food as you do for the sake of refreshing my body.
But if in the case of the angels another opinion seems more capable of defence, certainly our faith leaves no room to doubt regarding our Lord Himself, that even after His resurrection, and when now in spiritual but yet real flesh, He ate and drank with His disciples; for not the power, but the need, of eating and drinking is taken from these bodies.And so they will be spiritual, not because they shall cease to be bodies, but because they shall subsist by the quickening spirit.
CHAP.23.--WHAT WE ARE TO UNDERSTAND BY THE ANIMAL AND SPIRITUAL BODY;OR OF THOSE
WHO DIE IN ADAM, ANDOF THOSE WHO ARE MADE ALIVE IN CHRIST.
For as those bodies of ours, that have a living soul, though not as yet a quickening spirit, are called soul-informed bodies,and yet are not souls but bodies, so also those bodies are called spiritual,--yet God forbid we should therefore suppose them to be spirits and not bodies,--which, being quickened by the Spirit, have the substance, but not the unwieldiness and corruption of flesh.Man will then be not earthly but heavenly,--not because the body will not be that very body which was made of earth, but because by its heavenly endowment it will be a fit inhabitant of heaven, and this not by losing its nature, but by changing its quality.The first man, of the earth earthy, was made a living soul, not a quickening spirit,--which rank was reserved for him as the reward of obedience.And therefore his body, which required meat and drink to satisfy hunger and thirst, and which had no absolute and indestructible immortality, but by means of the tree of life warded off the necessity of dying, and was thus maintained in the flower of youth,--this body, I say, was doubtless not spiritual, but animal; and yet it would not have died but that it provoked God's threatened vengeance by offending.And though sustenance was not denied him even outside Paradise, yet, being forbidden the tree of life, he was delivered over to the wasting Of time, at least in respect of that life which, had he not sinned, he might have retained perpetually in Paradise, though only in an animal body, till such time as it became spiritual in acknowledgment of his obedience.