Annotatio XXXVI

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

Augustine, Bishop of Kissamos, in the Annotations on the Pentateuch, while he pursues the exposition of this passage most profusely, seems to deviate in three ways from the rule of right faith. For he asserted, first, that that paradise, in which the first parents were created, began little by little to be abolished, with all its adornment, after Adam’s sin;¹ then, the Flood succeeding, [it was] so overturned by the inundation of the waters and dissipated by the most rapid whirlpools that it entirely ceased to be — no vestige of the divine place now remaining, because of the crimes of men. Secondly, he asserted that Enoch and Elijah were not translated into that paradise,² since it was, immediately from Adam’s fall, destitute of cultivation and habitation, and finally, after the Flood, utterly emptied. Thirdly, he affirms that the fault for which the first parent was cast out of paradise brought upon man not the death of the body, but only of the soul.³ Of these, the first assertion is repugnant to the common consensus of all the Fathers. The second not only contradicts the Fathers, but divine scripture also: which, in the book of Ecclesiasticus, says, “Enoch pleased God, and was translated into Paradise, that he might give wisdom [repentance] to the nations”;⁴ nor is it right to understand this testimony of the heavenly Paradise, since it does not fit that anyone should descend thence to preach penance. The third opposes not only Augustine and very many other Fathers, but also the authority of the African Council, which condemned this position, against Pelagius its author, as appears below in Annotation 52. Yet this man — well-deserving in the studies of the sacred letters — can be kindly excused, from the words which he immediately added under these positions, writing in this manner: “These things I say, not being ignorant that the gravest and most holy men hold otherwise; which, if they are too little Christian, I retract, and readily refute.” Ambrose, Archbishop of Compsa [Catharinus], also noted these things before me, in his commentaries on the book of Genesis.