Annotatio XLVI

”The Lord sent a deep sleep upon Adam.” — Genesis 2:21

Chrysostom, in homily 15 on Genesis, illustrating this sentence by his exposition, brought forth these words:¹ “‘And he took,’ he says, ‘one of his ribs’ — do not take in a human manner the things that are said, but consider that these gross words are suited to human weakness; for unless Scripture had used these words, how could we have learned such hidden mysteries? Let us not, therefore, be addicted to the words only, but let us think all things about God as is fitting; since, when it is said ‘He took,’ [it] and all such things are said on account of our weakness.” From these words a certain Spaniard endeavored to bring aid to Thomas Cajetan — who (as we shall say presently) opined that the formation of Eve from Adam’s rib is to be understood not according to the truth of history, but as the narration of a figurative parable — which opinion the Spaniard thinks was expressed by Chrysostom, many ages before Cajetan, in the aforesaid words. But how far this man strays not only from the truth, but from Chrysostom’s mind, Chrysostom himself shows a little before, when he says: “He who is the wise and powerful Fashioner of our nature, being about to take away one of his ribs — lest, by feeling pain, [Adam] should afterward become hostile to the woman formed from him, being mindful of the pain — for this reason, sending an ecstasy, oppressed him with so deep a sleep that, as if seized by a certain heaviness, he took no perception of the thing that was being done; and he filled up flesh in place of it, lest, the sleep being shaken off, he should perceive from the emptiness what had been done. And so, that he might afflict him with sadness neither in the taking-away nor on account of the removal, he so dispensed both, that he both took it away without his torment, and, that place being filled up whence he had taken it, did not allow him to perceive the sense of what had been done.” These things Chrysostom [says], manifestly demonstrating that he by no means understood by metaphor and parable those things in which he judged the danger of the sense of true pain, true torment, and true sadness to be imminent. But as for his warning — that Moses, speaking of the formation, must not be understood in a human and gross manner — he said this not to overthrow the truth of history, but to confute the madness of the Anthropomorphites and the Arians. Of these, the former thought God to be endowed with a body,² and to have fashioned man from mud with fleshly hands and corporeal operation and motion, after the manner of a potter or a surgeon, and the woman from the man’s rib. But the Arians, taking a handle for cavilling from these words, “And the Lord God sent [a deep sleep],” contended that the Father alone, without the Son, formed the man, and from the man the woman;³ because they said that in the divine Scriptures the Father alone is called “God” and “Lord,” but the Son, as being less than the Father, is called only “God,” not “Lord.” Confuting both, therefore, Chrysostom warns [us] not to take these words either in a human and gross manner with the Anthropomorphites, or, with the Arians, to place a distinction between “God” and “Lord”: because, he says, of both [Father and Son] there is one essence, and Scripture uses those names indiscriminately. Look at the following Annotation.