many wild animals and that many birds harm us when we want to avoid them or to capture them, though we often cannot. In what sense then did we receive power over these?" On this point they should first be told that they make a big mistake when they consider man after sin, when he has been condemned to the mortality of this life and has lost that perfection by which he was made to the image of God. But even man's state of condemnation involves such power that he rules many animals. For though he can be killed by many wild animals on account of the fragility of his body, he can be tamed by none, although he tames very many and nearly all of them. If, then, this state of man's condemnation involves such power, what ought we to think of that reign of his, which is promised to him by the word of God, once he has been renewed and set free?
How Verse Twenty-Eight Should Be Taken Spiritually
30. There follows the words, "He made them male and female, and God blessed them, saying, 'Increase and multiply, and generate and fill the earth.' " 91. Here one is completely right to ask in what sense we should understand the union of male and female before sin, as well as the blessing that said, "Increase and multiply, and generate and fill the earth." Should we understand it carnally or spiritually? For we are permitted to understand it spiritually and to believe that it was changed into carnal fecundity after sin. 92. For there was
____________________-77-
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information:
Book title: On Genesis:Two Books on Genesis against the Manichees; And, on the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, an Unfinished Book.
Contributors: Saint Augustine - Author, Roland J. S. J. Teske - Unknown.
Publisher: Catholic University of America Press.
Place of publication: Washington, DC.
Publication year: 1990.
Page number: 77.
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