Sentences, Books I–II

Chapter 1 (103).

1. The formation of woman. In that same paradise God also formed woman from the substance of man. After planting paradise, placing man in it, and bringing all the animals to him and assigning them their names, Scripture adds 2: God cast Adam into a deep sleep, and when he had fallen asleep, he took one of his ribs and formed it into a woman.

2. Why he created the man first and afterward the woman from the man, rather than both together *. Here we should consider why he did not create man and woman together, as he did the angels, but first the man, then the woman from the man. This was so that the human race might have one beginning, whereby both the devil’s pride would be confounded and man’s humility exalted by likeness to God. For the devil had desired to have a beginning distinct from God; and so, to curb his pride, man received as a gift what the devil perversely sought to seize but could not obtain. Through this the image of God appeared in man: for just as God is the beginning of the creation of all things, so man is the beginning of the generation of all human beings.

3. Another reason why all human beings come from one *. God also willed that all should come from one man, so that, when they recognized that they all came from one, they might love one another as though they were one.

Chapter 2 (104).

Why she was formed from the man’s side and not from another part of his body. Since woman was made from man for these reasons, she was formed not from just any part of the man’s body but from his side, to show that she was created as a companion in love. Otherwise, if she had been made from his head, she might seem to have been put before man for dominion; or, if from his feet, to have been subjected to servitude. Since, therefore, she was prepared for the man neither as mistress nor as servant but as companion, she was to be brought forth neither from his head nor from his feet, but from his side, so that he might know that the one he had learned was taken from his side was to be placed beside him.

Chapter 3 (105).

1. Why the rib was taken from a sleeping man and not one awake. It was not without reason that the rib from which woman was formed as a help to the man in procreation was taken from him while asleep rather than awake: this was to show that he felt no pain, and at the same time to display the marvelous work of divine power, which opened the side of a sleeping man without waking him from the rest of sleep.

2. The mystery signified by this work. In this work too the mystery of Christ and the Church was figured 1: just as woman was formed from the side of a sleeping man, so the Church came forth from the sacraments that flowed from the side of Christ sleeping on the cross, namely blood and water 2, by which we are redeemed from punishments and cleansed from sins.

Chapter 4 (106).

1. That by God’s power the woman was made from that rib without any external addition, just as the five loaves were multiplied within themselves. It is also customary to ask whether woman was made from that rib without the addition of anything external. Some have not found this acceptable. But if God had added an external increase to complete the woman’s body, that increase would have been greater than the rib itself; therefore she ought rather to be said to have been made from that increase than from the rib, since she would have received more portions of substance from it. It remains, then, that by divine power she was made from the substance of that rib alone, without any external addition

Chapter 1: Summa sententiarum III.3 (PL 171, 1119 C; 176, 92 C); Hugh, On the Sacraments I.6.34 (PL 176, 284 A–B). Chapter 2: Hugh, On the Sacraments I.6.35 (PL 176, 284 D).

Apparatus (p. 416): 14 unum esset trp. BCM. 16 concupierat] cupierat BC, corr. in cupierat L. 22 Rubrica om. MNW. 26 parte corporis trp. BCMPV.

Apparatus (p. 417): 1 capite] viri add. BCW. 3 igitur] ergo NOP. 10 sensisse poenam trp. BCM. 11 ostenderetur] probaretur LMNTW (Hugo), monstraretur C. 13 Rubrica om. MVW.

1 Resp. Prov. 21, 28: Vir obediens loquetur victoriam. 2 Gen. 2, 21–22. 1 Resp. Eph. 5, 32. 2 Resp. Ioan. 19, 34.

Chapter 3, no. 1: From Hugh, On the Sacraments I.6.36 (PL 176, 284 C–D). — No. 2: From Summa sententiarum II.3 (PL 171, 1119 D; 176, 92 C–D), and more remotely from Augustine, Tractates on John 120.2 (PL 35, 1953; CCL 36, 661).

Chapter 4, no. 1: A composite of Summa sententiarum III.3 (PL 171, 1119 D–1120 A; 176, 92 D) and Hugh, On the Sacraments I.6.36 (PL 176, 284 D). — No. 2: “For angels … through angels” is from the Ordinary Gloss on Genesis 2:20 (in Lyra I, 38c; v 22b). multiplied within itself, it is said that the woman's body was made: by that same miracle by which afterward, when Jesus had multiplied five loaves by a heavenly blessing, five thousand men were satisfied.¹

2. Although that work was completed through angelic ministry, the angels were not creators. — Augustine, On Genesis 2*. This also must be known: although the formation of the woman took place through the ministry of angels, the power of creation is not therefore to be attributed to them. “For angels can create no nature; therefore neither can they form a rib into a woman, nor supply flesh in place of the rib—not that they do nothing toward something being created, but they are not creators on that account, just as farmers are not creators of crops or trees.” God alone, that is, the Trinity, is creator. “Therefore the woman was made by God, even if the rib was supplied through angels.”

Chapter 5 (107).

1. Whether the woman was made according to the higher or the lower causes—that is, whether the seminal principle contained the fact that she should be made thus, or only that she could be made thus, while the cause of her being made thus lay in God alone. — Augustine, On Genesis 3*: But it is asked whether the principle that God created together with his first works contained this: that according to it the woman necessarily had to be made from the man's side, or only that she could be made thus.

2. He discusses the causes of things at greater length: the causes in God are properly called primordial, and why the term is plural. In order to understand this, one must know that the causes of all things have existed eternally in God: for it was eternally in God's power and disposition that a human being, or a horse, or things of this kind should be made thus. These are called primordial causes because no other causes precede them; rather, they precede others and are causes of causes. Although divine power, disposition, or will is one, and hence there is one principal cause of all things, Augustine nevertheless says in the plural that the primordial causes of all things are in God, on account of the diverse effects; he adduces the likeness of a craftsman, in whose design rests the form that a chest will have. So too in God the cause of each future thing preceded it.

3. Not all things that come to be have their causes in creatures*. In creatures, however, the causes of some things, but not all, are present, as Augustine says,¹ because God implanted seminal principles in things, according to which some things proceed from others: from this seed, such a grain; from this tree, such a fruit; and the like.

4. The causes that are in creatures are also called primordial, though improperly, and why.* These too are called primordial causes, though not so properly, because they have before them an eternal cause, which is properly and universally first. Those are called first with respect to certain things, namely the things that proceed from them. — Another reason why they are called primordial.* They are also called primordial because they were implanted in things by God at the first establishment of things. And just as creatures are mutable, so these causes too can be changed; but the cause that is in the immutable God cannot be changed.

Chapter 6 (108).

1. A very useful distinction among the causes of things: some are in God and in creatures, others in God alone. The causes of all things, then, are in God; but the causes of some are both in God and in creatures, while the causes of others are in God alone. The causes of those things are said to be hidden in God because it lies in the divine disposition that this or that should happen, whereas it is not in the creature's seminal principle.

2. Why some things are said to happen naturally and others not. Those things that happen according to a seminal cause are said to happen naturally, because the course of nature is known to human beings in this way; other things happen beyond nature, and their causes are in God alone. — Augustine, On Genesis*. These, however,

Apparatus: 18 concreavit] creavit OPRV, quod corr. interl. OR. 20–21 Rubrica om. MNVW. 3 Rubrica om. NVW. 8–9 Rubrica om. RVW. 9 et quare om. BCX. 12 Rubrica om. VWX. 15 immutabili] mutabili CMRT, quod corr. RT. 19 Deo] sunt add. OP. 23 vel] quae BCX.

1 Resp. Matth. 14, 15–21. 2 Lib. IX, c. 15, n. 26; dein c. 16, n. 30 (PL 34, 403, 405; CSEL 28-I, 286, 290). 3 Lib. IX, c. 17, n. 31 (PL 34, 405s; CSEL 28-I, 290s). 4 De div. quaest. 83, q. 46 (PL 40, 30); In Ioan., tr. 1, n. 17 (PL 35, 1387; CCL 36, 10); De Trinit., III, cc. 8–9, nn. 15–16 (PL 42, 877s; CCL 50, 142s); Retract., I, c. 3, n. 2 (PL 32, 589; CSEL 36, 20s). 1 De Genesi ad litt., VI, cc. 10 et 18; IX, c. 17, n. 32 (PL 34, 346, 351, 406; CSEL 28-I, 183s, 192, 291s).

Chapter 5, no. 1: Ordinary Gloss on Gen. 2:20 (Lyra I, 38b; v 22b). Nos. 2–4: Summa sententiarum III.3 (PL 171, 1120 A–C; 176, 93 A–C).

Chapter 6: Nearly the same material occurs in Summa sententiarum III.3 (PL 171, 1120 C–1121 B; 176, 93 C–94 A). But the author copied Augustine’s statement (nos. 2–3) from the Ordinary Gloss on Genesis 2:20 (in Lyra I, 38c; v 22b–c). For no. 3, it is also useful to compare Lombard’s Gloss on Ephesians 3:9 (PL 192, 189 D–190 A), where “natures subsist” (p. 420, line 13) reads “he substituted natures” (cum x, 169c; z, 99b). Augustine¹ says that they are things done through grace, or done not naturally but wondrously to signify such things. Among them he places the making of the woman from the man's rib, saying: “That the woman had necessarily to be made thus was not established in created things, but was hidden in God. Every course of nature has natural laws. Beyond this natural course, the Creator has it in his power to make something other than what their natural principle allows: for example, that a dry staff suddenly blossom and bear fruit;² that a sterile woman give birth in old age;³ that a donkey speak;⁴ and the like. He gave natures the capacity for these things also to happen from them, but not that they should be part of their natural movement.”

3. The twofold work of providence. “Therefore he holds within himself the hidden causes of certain future things, which he did not implant in created things; and he fulfills them not by that work of providence through which natures subsist in order to exist, but by that through which he administers them as he wills, having created them as he willed. Thus the hidden causes of all things done to signify grace—not by the natural movement of things but wondrously—were in God. One of these was that the woman was made from the side of the sleeping man. The first establishment of things did not contain that the woman should be made thus, but that she could be made thus, lest God be thought to act with a mutable will against the causes he had established by his own will.”

Chapter 7 (109).

1. On the woman's soul: it is not from the man's soul, as some thought when they said souls are propagated by traducianism. Just as the woman's body was drawn from the man's body, some thought that her soul too was propagated from the man's soul, and that all souls except the first were propagated from another, like bodies. — The opinion of others who thought all souls were created together at the beginning*. Others thought that all souls were created together at the beginning.⁵

2. The teaching of the Catholic Church*. The Catholic Church teaches that souls were made neither all at once nor by propagation from another, but are infused into bodies conceived and formed through intercourse, and are created in the act of infusion.¹

3. Here the two false opinions are refuted and the Church's teaching confirmed. — The authority of Gennadius*. Hence, in Ecclesiastical Dogmas:² “We say that human souls did not exist from the beginning among the other intellectual natures, nor were they created together, as Origen imagines; nor are they sown together with bodies through intercourse, as the Luciferians, Cyril, and certain presumptuous Latins assert. Rather, we say that only the body is sown through the marital union; the creation of the soul is known to the Creator alone. By his judgment the body is coagulated in the womb, joined together and formed; and once the body has been formed, the soul is created and infused, so that a human being composed of soul and body lives in the womb and emerges alive from it, complete in human substance.”

4. Jerome³ also condemns with the bond of anathema those who say souls are propagated from another, adducing the Prophet's authority:⁴ He who formed their hearts one by one. The Prophet, he says, indicates clearly enough that God does not make one soul from another, but creates souls individually from nothing.