The Weight of the Body and the Dwelling

Another might be a mother of those living according to the life of our Lord Jesus Christ saying, 'I am the Life' (John 14:6), or the church, which has life from him as from a fountain, from which even those registered in it, the church being experienced as firstborn, participate in divine life. And it is evident that if this is a mother, and Christ is a father of the believers, 'from whom every family is named in the heavens and on earth' (Ephesians 3:15).

And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife skin garments and clothed them (Genesis 3:21). Fittingly, the skin garments become those which no one would call other than bodies, being consistent with the one who is about to be a mother to all with her husband. For if even the skin-lovers would think that God has made garments out of skins, what is appropriate for the 'clothed them' (Genesis 3:21), being able to do this through themselves? For coverings were not unthought of, those who sewed for themselves girdles out of leaves.

But that in many of the divine teachings the body is called skin, it is possible to find. For the blessed Job says: 'For I know that he who is about to release me is ever-enduring; he will raise my skin upon the earth that draws these things' (Job 19:26), and Job clearly spoke these things about his own body. And again the same says such things about himself: 'You clothed me with skin and flesh, and you brought me together with bones and sinews' (Job 10:11). For it is a clear and most evident sign that the skin garments are the body, since Job also remembers the one who clothed, which was also said concerning the first-formed.

And it also has the merit of observation; for it is possible to say as 'God made skin garments for both' (Genesis 3:21), but it is not said thus, but 'God made for Adam and his wife garments' (Genesis 3:21). For it is evident that there are different characters of male and female and different idiosyncrasies and many more, just as the place of the man and the woman possessing the succession are beginnings. First, it is said that man came to be in the image, which signifies the incorporeal; but since he also came to be in another state as needing something to use, he lacked an organic body, and now they become skin garments. This is illustrative of what is said: 'For corruptible...'

The body weighs down the soul, as this thickness shows; and thereafter the earthly tent wears out the prudent mind. The earthly tent is that which the soul uses when being freed from this body toward its own transitional movements, which serves as a means of joining the spiritual essence to the thickness. This weighs down the soul, but the tent wears out not the soul but the mind.

The apostle teaches this, saying: 'We know that if our earthly house, the tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, an unmade eternal house in the heavens; for indeed we who are in the tent groan' (2 Cor 5:1-4). By calling the house a tent, he clearly teaches the things previously mentioned.

If anyone were to seek how, if paradise is a place transcended, they are being led in and thus cast out, it must be said that things are not exactly as the words of the utterance are. For in things happening at once, it is often fitting that the former and the latter be said, not so that the things have the same state as the words of the utterance. This kind is that which is said in prophecy: 'Behold, the Lord sits upon a thin cloud, and he will come into Egypt, and the works of Egypt's hands will be shaken' (Isa 19:1). For it is not to be thought that the Lord has come from heaven, so that by thus descending upon him to Egypt he comes to a place near the earth, but because he simultaneously took a body and was in Egypt, these things are said because the order of things is not being unified.

Therefore, we do not say that the Savior, having first sat upon the thin cloud, came into the world, but we say these things together; and here we do not say that in paradise he had thick bodies and thus were cast out, for it is not possible to live there with such a body. Indeed, the thief he led into paradise with a naked soul, saying to him: 'Today you will be with me in paradise' (Luke 23:43)—and indeed his body remained in the cross until it was given to the earth—at the same time as the one who heard said: 'You are a seal of likeness and a crown of beauty in the luxury of paradise,' it did not become like you, as shown by living there. Through these things he demonstrates that to dwell there with thick bodies was not possible.