Annotatio XXXV

”The Lord had planted a Paradise.” — Genesis 2:8

Ambrose, in the book On Paradise — which he consumed wholly in an allegorical explanation of Paradise — seems to assert two things foreign to the common consensus of the theologians. First, that Paradise is not on the earth, but in the third heaven¹ (which error is attributed to Origen). For since in the preface of the book he proposes to investigate what and of what kind Paradise is, he shows the very great difficulty of this inquiry chiefly from this: that Paul, caught up into this Paradise, denies that he can remember whether he saw it in the body or outside the body,² adding also that he heard and saw in it things which it is not permitted to utter. And — lest you think Ambrose holds that Paul was caught up not into the heavenly but into the terrestrial paradise — the same [Ambrose], in the exposition of the second Epistle to the Corinthians, openly affirms that the Apostle was taken up to the heavens into the heavenly Paradise of God the Father. The second is that, in imitation of Philo, he seems to understand Paradise, and whatever is written in it, according to allegory alone, the historical sense being rejected:³ that is, by Paradise, the soul; by man, the mind; by woman, sense; by the serpent, delight; by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, wisdom; and by the other trees, the virtues implanted in the soul. Which assertion he seems to express in plainer words in the epistle to Sabinus (which he also wished to be the final resolution of this matter), writing thus: “Having read the Hexaemeron, you thought fit to inquire whether I had suppressed Paradise, and that I should indicate what opinion I held of it — and that you wished studiously to learn this. But I, long ago (being no longer a fresh priest), wrote about it; and I have found that the opinions of very many about it are diverse. For Josephus, being a Historian, says [it is] a place of the earth filled with very many trees and shrubs, watered also by a river which is divided into four streams; others [say] otherwise. Yet all agree in Paradise, and in the tree of life rooted [there], and the tree of knowledge which discerns good and evil; and the other trees also, full of vigor, breathing full of vivification, and rational — from which it is gathered that Paradise itself cannot seem earthly, [nor to be] in any soil, but in our principal part [the soul’s ruling faculty], which is animated and vivified by the soul with virtues and by the infusion of the spirit of God.” These are Ambrose’s words. From which, however, I cannot be led to believe that he assented either to Philo or to Origen in this part — especially since, in the exposition of the sixth chapter of the first [Epistle] to the Corinthians, he constantly affirms that Paradise is twofold,⁴ one earthly, in which Adam was placed, the other heavenly, into which Paul was caught up. For these are his words in that place: “There is both a lower Jerusalem and a higher — which the Apostle calls our mother; there is both a lower Paradise, in which man was placed [and] received the commandment, both that he should work there and that he should keep it; and there is that heavenly one, into which the Apostle, caught up, heard secret words.”