Although the serpent was cunning, it was only more cunning than the dumb animals that were governed by Adam. It is not true that because the serpent surpassed the level of animals in cleverness, it was immediately raised up to the level of human rationality. It was only more clever than those animals that lack reason and was only more crafty than the animals that had no mind. For it is clear that the serpent, which did not have the mind of man, did not possess the wisdom of mankind. Adam was also greater than the serpent by the way he was formed, by his soul, by his mind, by his glory and by his place. Therefore it is evident that in cunning also Adam was infinitely greater than the serpent.

Do not think of the snake the way he currently is, since we now run from him and are disgusted by him. It was not this way in the beginning; the snake was a friend of humanity, even the closest of servants. What, then, made him our enemy? The declaration of God: You are more cursed than all the cattle, and more than every wild animal. I will place hostility between you and the woman.^[1] This hostility destroyed the friendship. I say friendship, but I do not mean an intellectual relationship, it was instead one which mindless creatures are capable of having. The snake used to serve humans in the same way the dog displaces friendship—not with word but by body language. Since it was a creature who held such great closeness to humanity, the snake was a convenient tool for the devil. . . . So the devil spoke through the snake in order to deceive Adam. Please hear me in love and do not receive my words carelessly. My question is not easy to take. Many scoff, how did the snake speak, with a human’s voice or with a snake’s hiss? or how did Eve understand him? Before the fall, Adam was filled with wisdom, discernment and prophecy. . . . When the devil noticed the snake’s intelligence and Adam’s high opinion of it (Adam considered the snake very wise), the devil spoke through the snake so that Adam would think that the snake, being intelligent, was able to imitate even human speech.

Before the fall, all things were subject to the control of man, because God had made him ruler over all the things on the earth and in the water. And the serpent was on intimate terms with man, associating with him more than all the rest and conversing agreeably with him. For that reason it was through this relation that the devil, who is the source of evil, made that most evil suggestion to our first parents.

As for the serpent’s speech, either Adam understood the serpent’s own mode of communication, or Satan spoke through it, or the serpent posed the question in his mind and speech was given to it, or Satan sought from God that speech be given to the serpent for a short time.

The serpent could not

enter paradise,

for neither animal

nor bird

was permitted to approach

the outer region of paradise,

and Adam had to go out

to meet them;

so the serpent cunningly learned,

through questioning Eve,

the character of paradise,

what it was and how it was ordered.

When the accursed one learned

how the glory of that inner tabernacle,

as if in a sanctuary,

was hidden from them,

and that the Tree of Knowledge,

clothed with an injunction,

served as the veil

for the sanctuary,

he realized that its fruit

was the key of justice

that would open the eyes of the bold

and cause them great remorse.

The tempter then turned its mind to the commandment of the One who had set down the commandment. Adam and Eve were commanded not only to not eat from the tree, but they were not even to draw near to it. The serpent then realized that God had forewarned them about even looking at it lest they become entrapped by its beauty. With this in mind, the serpent enticed Eve to look upon it.

The cause of envy was the happiness of man placed in paradise, because the devil could not brook the favors received by man. His envy was aroused because man, though formed in slime, was chosen to be an inhabitant of paradise. The devil began to reflect that man was an inferior creature yet had hopes of an eternal life, whereas he, a creature of superior nature, had fallen and had become part of this mundane existence.

Since every creature is subject to passion, lust stole into man’s affection with the stealth of a serpent. Moses was quite right in representing pleasure in the likeness of a serpent. Pleasure is prone on its belly like a serpent, not walking on feet or raised on legs. It glides along, so to speak, with the slippery folded curves of its whole body. Earth is its food, as it is the serpent’s, for it has no comprehension of heavenly food. It feeds on things of the body, and it is changed into many sorts of pleasures and bends to and fro in twisting wreathes. It has venom in its fangs, and with these the dissolute individual is disemboweled, the glutton destroys himself, the spendthrift is undone.

[The Devil] aimed to circumvent Adam by means of the woman. He did not accost the man who had in his presence received the heavenly command. He accosted her who had learned of it from her husband and who had not received from God the command which was to be observed. There is no statement that God spoke to the woman. We know that he spoke to Adam. Hence we must conclude that the command was communicated through Adam to the woman.

The serpent signifies the devil, who was certainly not simple. His cleverness is indicated by the fact that he is said to be wiser than all the beasts. The serpent was not said to be in paradise, though the serpent was among the beasts that God made. For paradise signifies the happy life, from which the serpent was absent, since it was already the devil. He had fallen from his beatitude because he did not stay in the truth. And we must not be confused as to how the serpent could speak to the woman, when she was in paradise and it was not. The serpent entered the paradise spiritually and not bodily, as the apostle suggests: You were living by the principles of this world, obeying the ruler who dominates the air, the spirit who is at work in those who rebel.^[1]

Do you see how the devil led her captive, handicapped her reasoning and caused her to set her thoughts on goals beyond her real capabilities, in order that she might be puffed up with empty hopes and lose her hold on the advantages already accorded her?

But it is most truly said . . . Pride is the beginning of all sin,^[1] for it was this sin that overthrew the devil, from whom arose the origin of sin and who, through subsequent envy, overturned the man who was standing in the righteousness from which he had fallen. For the serpent, seeking a way to enter, clearly sought the door of pride, when he declared, You shall be as gods. That is why it is written, Pride is the beginning of all sin,^[2] and The beginning of the pride of man is to fall away from God.^[3]

The conclusion is that the devil would not have begun by an open and obvious sin to tempt man into doing something that God had forbidden, had not man already begun to seek satisfaction in himself and consequently to take pleasure in the words you shall be as gods. The promise of these words, however, would much more truly have to pass if, by obedience, Adam and Eve had kept close to the ultimate and true source of their being and had not, by pride, imagined that they were themselves the source of their being. . . . Whoever seeks to be more than he is becomes less. Whenever he aspires to be self-sufficing, he retreats from the One who is truly sufficient for him.

The words of the tempter would not have caused those two to be tempted to sin if their avarice had not been so helpful to the tempter. Even if the tempter had not come, the tree itself, by its beauty, would have caused them a great struggle due to their avarice. Their avarice then was the reason that they followed the counsel of the serpent. The avarice of Adam and Eve was far more injurious to them than the counsel of the serpent.

In paradise, rebellion certainly began in the soul. There began the process of giving consent to breaking the commandment. This is why the serpent said, You shall be as gods. But the whole man committed the sin. It was then that the flesh was made sinful flesh, whose faults could be healed only by the One who came in the likeness of sinful flesh.

It is temperance that cuts off desires. God commanded the first humans to hold to it, for he said, What is in the middle of the garden, you shall not eat, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. And because they did not preserve temperance, the transgressors of this signal virtue were made exiles from paradise, with no share in immortality. For the law teaches temperance and pours it into the hearts of all.

Eve is the first to teach us that sight, taste and the other senses, when used without moderation, distract the heart from its remembrance of God. So long as she did not look with longing on the forbidden tree, she was able to keep God’s commandment carefully in mind. She was still covered by the wings of divine love and thus was ignorant of her own nakedness. But after she had looked at the tree with longing, touched it with ardent desire and then tasted its fruit with intense sensuality, she at once felt drawn to physical intercourse, and, being naked, she gave way to passion. All her desire was now to enjoy what was immediately present to her senses, and through the pleasant appearance of the fruit she involved Adam in her fall.

Those who have been tricked into taking poison offset its harmful effect by another drug. The remedy, moreover, just like the poison, has to enter the system, so that its remedial effect may thereby spread through the whole body. Similarly, having tasted the poison, that is the fruit, that dissolved our nature, we were necessarily in need of something to reunite it. Such a remedy had to enter into us, so that it might by its counteraction undo the harm the body had already encountered from the poison. And what is this remedy? Nothing else than the body that proved itself superior to death and became the source of our life.

Through [Christ] a pattern of life has been given us, that is to say, a sure path by which we may come to God. For we who have fallen through pride could only return to God through humility. Thus was it said to the first creature of our race: Taste, and you shall be as God. As I was saying, our Savior has himself condescended to exemplify in his own person that humility which is the path over which we have to travel on our return to God. For he did not think it robbery to be equal to God but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.^[1] Hence, the Word through whom all things in the beginning were made was created man.

She hastened to eat before her husband that she might become head over her head, that she might become the one to give command to that one by whom she was to be commanded and that she might be older in divinity than that one who was older than she in humanity.

As Eve was seduced by the word of a [fallen] angel to flee from God, having rebelled against his word, so Mary by the word of an angel received the glad tidings that she would bear God by obeying his word. The former was seduced to disobey God [and so fell], but the latter was persuaded to obey God, so that the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. As the human race was subjected to death through the act of a virgin, so was it saved by a virgin, and thus the disobedience of one virgin was precisely balanced by the obedience of another.

It wasn’t the eating from the tree that opened their eyes: they could see even before eating. Instead the eating from this tree was the symptom of their disobedience and the breaking of the command given by God; and through their guilt they consequently divested themselves of the glory surrounding them, rendering themselves unworthy of such wonderful esteem. Hence Scripture takes up the point in its customary way with the words, They both ate. Their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked. Because of the fall they were stripped of grace from above, and they felt the sense of their obvious nakedness so that through the shame that overcame them they might know precisely what peril they had been led into by breaking the Lord’s command.

I know that some at this point might accuse the Lawgiver and assert that the law is the cause of the fall. We absolutely must oppose that argument. We must plainly argue and demonstrate that God gave the law not because he hated humanity or wanted to mark our nature with shame but because he loved us and cared for us. In order that you learn that the law was given as a means to help, listen to the words of Isaiah: He gave the law in our support.^[1] One who pursues hatred does not give help. Again the prophet declares, Your word is the lamp guiding my steps and the light for my paths.^[2] But one who pursues hatred does not dispel the darkness with his lamp, nor does he provide light to one who is wandering. Solomon says, The command of the law is the lamp, the light, the life, the reproach and the rule.^[3] So the law is not only a help, not only a lamp but also light and life. Therefore these things are not for those who pursue hatred, not for those who will to be lost, but for those who hold out and lift up their hand.

If someone asks, therefore, why God allowed man to be tempted when he foreknew that man would yield to the tempter, I cannot sound the depths of divine wisdom, and I confess that the solution is far beyond my powers. There may be a hidden reason, made known only to those who are better and holier than I, not because of their merits but simply by the grace of God. But insofar as God gives me the ability to understand or allows me to speak, I do not think that a man would deserve great praise if he had been able to live a good life for the simple reason that nobody tempted him to live a bad one. For by nature he would have it in his power to will not to yield to the tempter, with the help of him, of course, who resists the proud and gives his grace to the humble.^[1] Why, then, would God not allow a man to be tempted, although he foreknew he would yield? For the man would do the deed by his own free will and thus incur guilt, and he would have to undergo punishment according to God’s justice to be restored to right order. Thus God would make known his will to a proud soul for the instruction of the saints in ages to come. For wisely he uses even bad wills of souls when they perversely abuse their nature, which is good.

The eyes of sense were then opened, which they had done well to keep shut, that they might not be distracted and hindered from seeing with the eyes of the mind. It was those eyes of the mind which in consequence of sin, as I imagine, were then closed. To that time they had enjoyed the delight of beholding God and his paradise. This twofold kind of vision in us was familiar to our Savior, who said, For judgment I have come into this world, that those who see not might see and that those who see might be made blind^[1]—meaning by the eyes that see not the eyes of the mind, which are enlightened by his teaching; and the eyes that see, meaning the eyes of sense, which his words render blind.

It was not in order to see outward things that their eyes were opened, because they could see such things already. It was in order that they might see the difference between the good they had lost and the evil into which they had fallen. That is why the tree is called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They had been forbidden to touch it because if they did it would bring on the experience of this distinction. It takes the experience of the pains of sickness to open our eyes to the pleasantness of health.

As soon as our first parents had disobeyed God’s commandment, they were immediately deprived of divine grace and were ashamed of their nakedness. They covered themselves with fig leaves, which perhaps were the first thing noticed by the troubled pair. The parts covered remained unchanged except that previously they occasioned no shame. They felt for the first time a movement of disobedience in their flesh, as though the punishment were meant to fit the crime of their own disobedience to God. The fact is that the soul, which had taken perverse delight in its own liberty and disdained the service of God, was now deprived of its original mastery over the body. Because it had deliberately deserted the Lord who was over it, it no longer bent to its will the servant below it, being unable to hold the flesh completely in subjection as would always have been the case, if only the soul had remained subject to God. From this moment on, then, the flesh began to lust against the spirit. With this rebellion we are born, just as we are doomed to die and because of the first sin to bear, in our members and vitiated nature, either the battle with or defeat by the flesh.

Then they saw that they were naked by perverted eyes. Their original simplicity, signified by the term nakedness, now seemed to be something to be ashamed of. And so that they might no longer be simple, they made aprons for themselves from the leaves of the fig tree, as if to cover their private parts, that is, to cover their simplicity, of which that cunning pride was ashamed. The leaves of the fig tree signify a certain itching, if this is correctly said in the case of incorporeal things, which the mind suffers in wondrous ways from the desire and pleasure of lying. As a result those who love to joke are even called salty in Latin. For in jokes pretense plays a primary role.

Since our first parents, shamed by guilt for their transgression, made aprons for themselves from fig leaves, the fig tree can fittingly designate the tendency toward sin. Sin appears wrongfully to be filled with sweetness for the human race.

Now the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.^[1] The understanding of transgression leads to penitence, and God extends his kindness to those who repent. For [Adam] showed his repentance in making a girdle, covering himself with fig leaves, when there were many other trees that would have irritated his body less. He, however, in awe of God, made a clothing that matched his disobedience. . . . And he would no doubt have kept this clothing forever, if God in his mercy had not clothed them with tunics of skin instead of fig leaves.

It was not only by the patience he exhibited that God wished to help them; he also wished to benefit them by the sound of his feet. God endowed his silent footsteps with sound so that Adam and Eve might be prepared, at that sound, to make supplication before him who made the sound.

What are you saying—God strolls? Are we assigning feet to him? Have we no exalted conception of him? No, God doesn’t stroll—perish the thought. How could he, present as he is everywhere and filling everything with his presence? Can he for whom heaven is throne and earth a footstool be confined to the garden? What right-minded person could say this? So what is the meaning of this statement, They heard the sound of the Lord God as he strolled in the garden in the evening? He wanted to provide them with such an experience as would induce in them a state of anguish, which in fact happened: they had so striking an experience that they tried to hide from the presence of God.

We read in Genesis that when Adam transgressed, when he paid heed to the serpent rather than to God, when he hid himself from the face of God, then God came into the garden and was walking about in the cool of day. Now listen to what the Scripture says. God sought out Adam, not at midday but in the evening. Adam had already lost the sunlight, for his high noon was over.

See the Lord's loving kindness and the surpassing degree of his long-suffering. I mean, though being in a position to begrudge such great sinners the right of reply and rather than to consign them at once to the punishment he had determined in anticipation of their transgression, he shows patience and withholds action. He asks a question, receives a reply and questions them further as if inviting them to excuse themselves so that he might seize the opportunity to display his characteristic love in regard to the sinners, even despite their fall.

Toward evening God was walking in paradise, that is, he was coming to judge them. He was still walking in paradise before their punishment, that is, the presence of God still moved among them, when they no longer stood firm in his command. It is fitting that he comes toward evening, that is, when the sun was already setting for them, that is, when the interior light of the truth was being taken from them. They heard his voice and hid from his sight. Who hides from the sight of God but he who has abandoned him and is now beginning to love what is his own? For they now were clothed with a lie, and he who speaks a lie speaks from what is his own. This is why they are said to hide near to the tree that was in the middle of paradise, that is, near themselves who were set in the middle rank of things beneath God and above bodies. Hence they became hidden to themselves so that they might be troubled by their wretched errors after they had left the light of truth that they were not. For the human soul can be a partaker in the truth, but the truth is the immutable God above it. Hence whoever turns away from that truth and toward himself, rejoicing not in God who rules and enlightens him but rather in his own seemingly free movements, becomes dark by reason of the lie.

What then does he mean by Adam, where art thou? Does he not mean in what circumstance are you; not, in what place? It is therefore not a question but a reproof. From what condition of goodness, beatitude and grace, he means to say, have you fallen into this state of misery? You have forsaken eternal life. You have entombed yourself in the ways of sin and death.

Insofar as a rebellion of the flesh against the rebellious soul prompted our parents to cover their shame, they experienced one kind of death—God’s desertion of the soul. It was this death that was intimated when God asked Adam, who was beside himself with fear and in hiding, Where are you? This was not asked, of course, because God did not know the answer. Rather, it was asked in order to scold Adam by reminding him that there really was nowhere that he could be, once God was not in him.

Where are you, Adam? Are you trapped in the imagined godlikeness that the serpent falsely promised you? Or are you prepared for the death that I, the Lord, decreed for you? Would that you had considered the fruits! Suppose, Adam, that instead of a serpent who might be the most despicable creature of all, an angel or a god had come to you? Would you have despised the commandment of him who gave you all these things, heeding instead the counsel of one who had not yet done you any good? Would you then have considered evil the very One who formed you out of nothing? Would you despise the One who made you a second god over creation? Would you dare instead to consider good the very fallen one who gave you only a verbal promise of some good? If another god were to come to you in power, should you not have rejected his advice? How much more then in the case of a serpent who came to you with no power, with no wondrous deeds but with only the empty word that it spoke to you?

The fact that God searches for [Adam] does not proceed from any ignorance on the part of God, but it manifests man’s hope of a future discovery and salvation in Christ.

You see, since he was not unaware of the truth when he asked them but rather knew, and knew very well, he shows consideration for their limitations so as to demonstrate his own loving kindness, and he invites them to make admission of their faults.

Instead of confessing what he had done, which would have helped him, he related what had been done to him, which did not help him at all. . . . Adam again failed to confess his folly and blamed the woman.

When Adam heard God’s voice, he answered that he hid because he was naked. His answer was a wretched error, as if a man naked, as God had made him, could be displeasing to him. It is a distinguishing mark of error that whatever anyone finds personally displeasing he imagines is displeasing to God as well. We should understand in a lofty sense the words of the Lord, Who told you that you were naked, unless because you have eaten from that tree about which I told you that from it alone you should not eat? Before he was naked of any dissimulation and clothed with the divine light. From this light he turned away and turned toward himself. This is the meaning of his having eaten from that tree. He saw his nakedness, and it was displeasing to himself because he did not have anything of his own.

Insofar as he as yet had no experience of the divine severity, Adam could be deceived in believing that his transgression was merely venial. And therefore he was at least not deceived in the same way that Eve was. He was merely mistaken concerning the judgment that would follow his attempt to excuse himself: The woman you placed at my side gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate. To summarize briefly: though not equally deceived by believing the serpent, they equally sinned and were caught and ensnared by the devil.

If Adam and Eve had sought to repent after they had transgressed the commandment, even though they would not have regained that which they had possessed before their transgression of the commandment, they would have escaped from the curses that were decreed on the earth and upon them.

Do you see, dear friend, how patient God is? For when he said, Adam, where are you? and when Adam did not at once confess his sin but said, I heard your voice, O Lord, and realized that I am naked and hid myself, God was not angered, nor did he immediately turn away. Rather, he gave him the opportunity of a second reply and said, Who told you that you are naked? Unless you ate of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat. Consider how profound are the words of God’s wisdom. He says, Why do you say that you are naked but hide your sin? Do you really think that I see only your body but do not see your heart and your thoughts? Since Adam was deceived he hoped that God would not know his sin. He said something like this to himself, If I say that I am naked, God in his ignorance will say, ‘Why are you naked?’ Then I shall have to deny and say, ‘I do not know,’ and so I shall not be caught by him and he will give me back the garment that I had at first. If not, as long as he does not cast me out, he will not exile me! While he was thinking these thoughts . . . God, unwilling to multiply his guilt, says, How did you realize that you are naked? Unless you ate of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat. It is as though he said, Do you really think that you can hide from me? Do you imagine that I do not know what you have done? Will you not say, ‘I have sinned?’ Say, O scoundrel, ‘Yes, it is true, Master, I have transgressed your command. I have fallen by listening to the woman’s counsel, I am greatly at fault for doing what she said and disobeying your word. Have mercy on me!’ But he does not humble himself, he does not bend. The neck of his heart is like a sinew of iron! For had he said this he might have stayed in paradise. By this one word he might have spared himself that whole cycle of evils without number that he endured by his expulsion and in spending so many centuries in hell.

Then, as is quite common in cases of pride, he does not accuse himself of having consented to the woman but pushes the fault off upon the woman. Thus, as if out of a cleverness the poor fellow had conceived, he cunningly tried to attribute his sinning to God himself. For he did not just say, the woman gave to me, but added on, the woman you gave to me. Nothing is as characteristic of sinners as to want to attribute to God everything for which they are accused. This arises from that vein of pride. For man sinned in wishing to be like God, that is, to be free from his dominion, as God is free from all dominion, since he is the Lord of all.

Since Adam did not wish to confess his folly, God came down to question Eve and said to her, What is this that you have done? Eve too, instead of making supplication with her tears and bearing the fault herself so that mercy might take hold of both her and her husband, responded by saying not The serpent counseled or seduced me but The serpent deceived me and I ate. When the two of them had been questioned and were both found to be wanting in remorse or true contrition, God went down to the serpent not to make inquiry but to render punishment. For where there is opportunity for repentance, it would be right to inquire, but to one who is a stranger to repentance, judgment is fitting.

When God had left Adam, he came to Eve. He wanted to show her that she too would be cast out, if she was unwilling to repent. So he said, What is this that you have done? so that she at least might be able to say, I have sinned. Why else did God need to speak these words to her, unless indeed to enable her to say, In my folly, O Master, I, a lowly wretch, have done this, and have disobeyed you. Have mercy on me! But she did not say this. What did she say? The serpent beguiled me. How senseless! So you have spoken with the serpent, who speaks against your Master? Him you have preferred to God who made you. You have valued his advice more highly and held it to be truer than the commandment of your Master! So, when Eve too was unable to say, I have sinned, both were cast out from the place of enjoyment. They were banished from paradise and from God.

Again, after Adam had done wrong God gave him a chance to repent and be forgiven, and yet he kept on being stiff-necked and unrepentant. For God came to him and said, Adam, where are you? instead of saying, From what glory are you come to this? Are you not ashamed? Why did you sin? Why did you go astray?—as if urging him sharply to say, Forgive me! But there was no sign of humility. There was no change of heart but rather the contrary. He replied, The wife that you gave me—mark you, not my wife—deceived me. The wife that you gave me, as if to say, this disaster you placed on my head. So it is, my brethren, when a man has not the guts to accuse himself, he does not scruple to accuse God himself. Then God came to Eve and said to her, Why did you not keep the command I gave you? as if saying, If you would only say, ‘Forgive me,’ to humble your soul and be forgiven. And again, not a word! No forgive me. She only answered, The serpent deceived me!—as if to say, if the serpent did wrong, what concern is that to me? What are you doing, you wretches? Kneel in repentance, acknowledge your fault, take pity on your nakedness. But neither the one nor the other stooped to self-accusation, no trace of humility was found in either of them. And now look and consider how this was only an anticipation of our own state! See how many and great the evils it has brought on us—this self-justification, this holding fast to our own will, this obstinacy in being our own guide.