To Florus 4.4

He therefore says to Valerius: “Notice the arguments by which he thinks he agrees, against us, with the heading set out above. He says, ‘God, who had fashioned Adam from mud, built Eve from a rib and said: She will be called Life, because she is the mother of all the living’ (Genesis 3:20). That is not actually how it is written, but what does that matter to us? Memory commonly goes wrong over words, provided the meaning is retained. Nor was it God who named Eve Life, but her husband. The text says: ‘And Adam called his wife’s name Life, because she is the mother of all the living’” (Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.4.12).

What astonishing learning in this teacher, who allows not even the slightest departure from Scripture’s language! He rebukes my ignorance, yet deigns to pardon the lapse of memory through which I had supposedly said that God called the woman by the name Life. He thus used a small opportunity to try to appear both learned and kind. But just as identifying who named the woman is no remarkable feat of diligence, so his shamelessness is intolerable when he wants to forgive something he cannot blame. For my work does not read as his inventions have it. I first quoted the Law’s testimony, where the Creator of all things is shown saying, “It is not good for the human being to be alone; let us make him a helper like himself” (Genesis 2:18). Then I said: “What does this mean, ‘It is not good for the human being to be alone’? Had God made anything that could rightly be called not good, especially when he had made everything not merely good but very good (compare Genesis 1:31)? How, then, does he say, ‘It is not good for the human being to be alone’? These words do not criticize the creature’s condition; they show that being alone could have been ruinous for the human race unless a succession of descendants had sprung up through the service of the other sex. For even if Adam may be thought capable of becoming immortal had he not sinned, it is nevertheless clear that he could never have become a father unless he had found a wife. Taken from his side while he slept, she heard at her first naming the work for which she had been prepared: ‘She will be called Life, because she is the mother of all the living.’ This statement showed that thereafter no human being could either exist or live without coming into existence through the benefit of conception” (compare Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.4.12).

It is therefore clear that, although the matter is not very weighty, I said nothing that anyone could criticize without extraordinary shamelessness. The stamp of public falsehood has been branded on this most destitute of men. By trying to give away what he does not possess, he offends in two ways at once: he lacks the right to do it, and he courts applause for his generosity.