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QUESTION 57 57. ON THE ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY- THREE FISHl 99 (1) "All things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's."2 If one counts from the beginning of the series, one gets 1, 2, 3, and 4.3 Again: "The head of the woman is the man, the head of the man, Christ, and the head of Christ, God."4 If one counts in the same way, one similarly gets 1, 2, 3, and 4. Furthermore the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 is 10. Accordingly the number 10 rightly signifies the teaching which presents God as the maker and the creature as the made. And since the perfected and indestructible body is subject to the perfected and indestructible soul, and again since the latter is subject to Christ and Christ to God (not as a dissimilar and foreign nature, but as the Son to the Father), this same 10 correctly signifies the whole of that everlasting state which, faith teaches, will follow on the resurrection of the body. And perhaps this is the reason why those who are hired for the vineyard receive a denarius as salary.5 Now just as the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 is 10, so (1 + 2 + 3 + 4) multiplied by 4 is 40. (2) But suppose that the body is correctly signified by the number 4 because the body consists of the celebrated four elements (the dry and the moist, the cold and the hot), and because the three-dimensional character of the body is produced by a progression, which also is contained in the number 4, from the point to the line, from the line to the plane, and from the plane to the solid. If this is so, then it is not absurd to think of the number 40 as indicating the divine plan which was carried out in the tem1 Cf. In 21.4-14. 2 1 Cor 3.22-23. 3 The series, from top to bottom, is: God, Christ, man, the physical universe. 4 1 Cor 11.3. 5 Mt 20.2. A denarius is a Roman coin originally containing ten Roman asses. Its name derives from the Latin adjective denarius, which means "containing ten." St. Augustine is obviously drawn to this interpretation of Mt 20.2 because the word denarius is also regularly used in the phrase denarius numerus to refer to the number 10. 100 ST. AUGUSTINE poral order6 for our salvation when the Lord assumed a body and deigned to appear visibly to men. For the numbers 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 (which signify the creator and the creature) multiplied by 4, i.e., represented by the body in time, make 40. For between 4 and 4x there is this difference: 4 is static, 4x is dynamic. Therefore, as 4 refers to body, thus 4x refers to time and indicates the mystery carried out in the body and in time for those who were entangled by a love for things physical and were subjected to time. The number 40, therefore, as was said, is not inappropriately thought of as signifying that divine plan of salvation expressed in time. Moreover, perhaps this is why the Lord fasted forty days, showing the poverty of this present world which is driven by the movement of bodies and time. 7 And [perhaps this is] why he was with his disciples for forty days after the resurrection , making known to them, I think, that same temporal program which he carried out for our salvation.8 Moreover, the number 40 teaches the same point when by the addition of its factors it reaches the number 50,9 since indeed these same factors are whole!O numbers-whole because physical and visible action in time, wholesomely!! managed, secures man's perfection. This perfection, as has been said, is signified by the number 10. Likewise the number 40, through the addition of its factors, generates the number 10 because [10 is the difference when 40] reaches the number 50 by this addition of its factors, as was said above. For the 1 which 40 contains forty times, the 2 which it contains twenty times, the 4 which it contains ten times, the 5 6 dispensatio temporalis. Dispensatio has been met with earlier in Q. 53.1 where, being in the plural, it was translated "economies." However, in what follows it will be translated "the divine plan (of salvation expressed) in the temporal order." Any serious departure...

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