Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

What God created and wrought on the first day of all things Moses lucidly sets forth in these words: In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters. And God said: Be light made. And light was made. And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness. And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was evening and morning one day. In which words he embraces many things worthy of note, which, that they may be made known, are to be opened up under the following Questions.

You ask 1. — What Moses signified or intended by these words, In the beginning God created?

I answer. That since Moses stood forth as the most keen-sighted and chief of all the prophets, and wrote nothing save at the dictation of the divine Spirit, it ought not to seem wonderful that his utterances are laden with mysteries and embrace divine arcana beneath the rind of the letter; which appears above all in the first chapter of Genesis; for as many words as he brought forth, so many oracles does he seem to have poured forth. That however we may uncover and examine each one according to our measure, that first verse of Genesis must be weighed point by point under the distinct headings now to be proposed.

IN THE BEGINNING. — A threefold exposition of these words is allowed among the sacred interpreters, especially with St. Ambrose, book 7 of the Hexaemeron, chapter 4, and St. Augustine, book 1 of De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 1. For first, in the beginning sounds the same as in the Son, who several times called himself the beginning of things. Thus John 8, being questioned, answered: The beginning, who also speak unto you; and Apocalypse 1: I am the last and the first, the beginning and the end. For he is as it were the idea and wisdom of the Father, and likewise the Word by which he created all things; for through him all things were made, and without him was made nothing: or, as St. Paul speaks to the Colossians 1, In him were created all things in the Heavens and on the Earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers: all things were created through him and in him: and he is before all, and all things in him consist. But this exposition is mystical and symbolical.

The second explanation is that in the beginning, or commencement, not of an age but of time, and of the world, God created all things; namely, when the duration of the world began together with the world itself. For although in the beginning of the world there was not such a time as now is — for our time is the measure of the motion of the first Movable, the Sun, and the Heavens: but then there was not yet the first Movable, nor the Sun, nor the Heavens; and consequently there was not yet their motion, which could be measured by time — there was the duration of a corporeal thing, namely in that very instant in which Heaven and Earth were created. Whence God is said to have created Heaven and Earth, not indeed in time, but in the beginning of time, that is, in the first moment of time. We may also understand, says St. Ambrose, in the beginning, that is, before time: just as the beginning of a road is not yet a road, and the beginning of a house is not yet a house.

The third explanation, finally. That in the beginning signifies the same as before all things, so that God is deemed to have created nothing before Heaven and Earth, in order that the order of the creation of things may be designated, and it may be signified that Heaven and Earth hold among all creatures the primary degree and order of formation: which David signifies in Psalm 101: In the beginning, O Lord, thou didst found the earth, and the heavens are the works of thy hands. As if he should say, that as one about to build a house lays the foundation before the rest, so God, in fashioning the world, before other things created Heaven and Earth, as it were the two chief parts of the world, which of necessity precede the others in the order of nature; and he cast and built in advance, as it were, the bases and props that should sustain and support the rest, and enclose them as it were in their bosom. And so the narrative of Moses concerning the making of the world could be resolved thus: God in the beginning created heaven and earth: the earth was void and empty, and a rude and undigested mass; which darkness covered and encompassed, and from which God straightway brought forth light.

— From which two things, observes St. Basil in his Homily on the Hexaemeron, can be inferred: first indeed, that from the teaching of Moses it be clearly inferred that the world is not eternal, but had at some time a beginning of its arising. Secondly, that the antiquity of the world can also be known, and likewise a reckoning be made of how far from our age its beginning lies distant, by computing, as it were along its course, all the years gone by. In which things the Ethnic writers erred from the truth: for some judged the world to be everlasting: others indeed thought it began at some time, yet feigned very many myriads of years, and ages almost innumerable, to have slipped by. This indeed was formerly the common fiction among Christian and ethnic writers, to whom only an obscure report of the Genesis and origin of the world had come, so that — as is the way of men — they adulterated the truth of God and the sacred history with alien fictions.

Here however the marvelous consensus of the writers of both Testaments must not be passed over in silence. For since there are two kinds of things that have an origin: some eternal and divine, as the Son and the Holy Spirit, of which the one proceeds from the divine Father alone, the other from the Father and the Son; others indeed temporal, as all the things procreated at the beginning of the world — the sacred writers Moses and John the Evangelist, who made mention of both origins, used a like beginning; for each takes his rise from these words: In the beginning; yet so that they expressed those two origins, as greatly discrepant, also in diverse ways. For Moses adds: In the beginning created, etc. But John: In the beginning was the Word, etc. Yet each wrote aptly to his purpose. For, says Severianus of Gabala, that one spoke usefully, this one properly. For where creation was in question, Moses used the word of making or creating; but where the Creator and Author of the Evangelist, he used the word was. A wide difference indeed lay between, namely between created and was; for the one was made when it was not: but the other was who ever is. That both writers used the same beginning, they add, was that one root of piety might be shown, which both instructed this Lawgiver and illumined that Theologian. For the two Testaments are twin, begotten of one parent. Hence it comes to pass that with one consent they utter their discourse: for it is almost the same image and likeness. And as to two twins born of the same Parent there belong like properties, and culture, and certain equal lineaments of countenance: so also the two Testaments, because they sprang from the same Parent, have a certain great similitude.

CREATED. — That he might open the mode of the production of the Universe, Moses did not use the word iatsar, which signifies to fashion or form, which word he used in chapter 2, verse 7, when he recounted the formation of man: but he wrote bara, which word denotes the production of any thing from nothing, or which proceeds from non-being to being; doubtless that he might signify the world to have been founded from nothing, and might refute the erroneous opinion of those who feigned that all things proceeded from a certain pre-existing eternal formless matter, as if in their formation God had added nothing else than ornament and form: which silly fiction Moses dissipated when he said that all things were first founded not by generation, nor by eduction, nor by any other mode of production from a pre-existing subject, but by the omnipotent power and divine Word and command.

Therefore when it is said that God created heaven and earth in the beginning, it is openly signified that Heaven and Earth were not made from any pre-existing matter, but simply from nothing; as also that most pious Mother of the Machabees expounded, book 2, chapter 2, where, addressing her younger son, she says: I beseech thee, my son, look upon Heaven and Earth, and upon all things that are in them, and understand that God made them of nothing. It does not escape me that Aben Ezra, in his commentary on these words of Moses, contends that the word bara, that is, created, does not signify the production of a thing from nothing; which opinion he labors to establish from the clause of the first chapter, verse 21: And God created the great whales. And verse 27: God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. In which places the word bara is employed to signify the procreation of a thing from another thing, as of man from the soil, and of woman from man. — But all others whatsoever that are celebrated among the Hebrew Doctors cry out against him, with Moses Bar-nachman, who writes expressly in his commentary: There exists not among us in the sacred tongue a word by which we signify the production of a thing from nothing, except BaRa. To him accords R. D. Kimchi: Every, he says, signification of creation is the innovation of a thing, and its passage from non-being to being. That however they may reconcile the texts just cited, which seemingly conflict with this assertion, they distinguish a twofold use of the verb to create in the Scriptures. For first it signifies the production of some thing from pure nothing, in which sense they affirm it must be taken in this place. Second, that word is used to denote some pre-eminent and excellent thing, which is brought to light by the singular virtue and power of God. And hence it is that he uses it where he sets forth the creation of the heavens and of man. For the whales are of vast and, in a manner, portentous magnitude: but man, by reason of his excellent gifts, surpasses all creatures, indeed is as it were the head and prince of all creatures. — They observe moreover that a distinction intervenes between these words bara, that is, created, and iatsar, that is, formed, and agascha, that is, made. That to create is to make something from nothing; to form is to induce a figure upon a created being; to make is to arrange, perfect, complete the several members, and adapt them to their certain use. There extants the passage of Isaias XLIII, 7¹: Every one that calleth upon my name, I have created him for my glory, I have formed him, and made him. Which passage Rabbi Kimchi thus expounds: First I created him, that is, I produced him from non-being to being. Then I formed him, that is, I made him to exist in a fitting form. Thereupon I made him, that is, I disposed or ordered him. For the word signifies the disposition of a thing and its perfection, wherefore he says also: I made him.

GOD CREATED. — That the world was founded by God Moses distinctly pronounces, that he might signify that its fabric and workmanship are not to be ascribed to Angels, or to any other creature, as very many of the Ancients, heretics, raved. Above all Simon Magus, who assigned the fabrication of the world to Angels; which error St. Irenaeus admirably crushed, book 2 of Adversus haereses, chapters 1 and 2, with this efficacious argument: namely, that if Angels created the world, it was either against the command of God or by his own order and mandate. If the first, it follows that God is impotent, or improvident and negligent. If the second be asserted, the consequence will be that the creation of the world is to be referred not to the Angels themselves but to God.

For if, he says, God himself made the Angels, or was even the cause of their creation; he will seem to have made the world itself also, who prepared the causes of its fabrication: although they say the Angels were made, or the fabrication of the world, through a long succession downward from the first Father; nevertheless that which is the cause of the things that were made will recur to him who was put forth as the origin of such a succession. Just as the correction of the war is referred to the King, who prepared those things which are the cause of victory: and the founding of this city, or of this work, to him who prepared the causes for the perfection of those things which were made below. Wherefore we no longer say that the axe cuts the wood, or the saw cuts; or that man cuts and hews — most rightly should one say that he does, who made the very axe and the saw for this, and much earlier all the instruments by which the axe and the saw were fabricated. If therefore justly, according to their reasoning, the Father of all is said to be the maker of this World, and not the Angels, nor any other maker of the world besides him who was put forth, existing first as the cause of this reparation having been made. So St. Irenaeus. — Lest anyone however should think that God founded the world by the aid of Angels, he adds: But all things that were made, he made by the unwearied word. For this is proper to the supereminence of God, not to need other instruments for the creation of the things that are made; and his own Word is fit and sufficient for the formation of all things, as also John the disciple of the Lord says of him: all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing. But in all things is this one also who is with us according to our manner. And this world therefore was made by his Word, as the Scripture of Genesis says, that God made all things that are with us through his Word. Likewise also David pursues it: for he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.

St. Epiphanius pursues the same error, Haeresis 22, and slays it both by the words of Moses: In the beginning God created heaven and earth, and by the oracle of Christ the Lord, Luke 10, where addressing the divine Father he calls him the Lord of heaven and of earth; whence he gathers: that if the creator of heaven and earth is God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in vain are all things bandied about by the impostor Simon, namely that the world was fabricated by the Angels with defect. He should also be seen in those things wherein he presses the case against Saturninus, the assertor of the same error. — Theodoret also impugns the same error, book 5 of the Haereticarum fabularum, chapter 4, and refutes it from the cited oracles both of the Old and of the New Testament. From the Old indeed he produces the aforesaid words of Moses, as also those of David, Psalm 32: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, etc. Then he adds:

All the prophets also teach us things consonant with these. And Isaias indeed cries out, chapter 42: Creating the heavens, and stretching them out: establishing the earth, and the things that spring from it: giving breath to the people that is upon the earth, and spirit to them that tread upon it... Nay even God himself says through him, chapter 11: I stretched out the heavens alone. But I have no need of prophetic voices. For before the law and the prophets nature taught men this. And that ancient Melchisedech, blessing Abraham, spoke thus, Gen. 14: Blessed be Abraham by the most high God, who created heaven and earth... The noble Job also, who before the law was given was illustrious in virtue, acknowledged the true God the Creator: Who, he says, stretcheth out the heavens alone, who walketh upon the sea as upon the ground. Job 9. — He adds from the New Testament. Let us hear therefore, he says, the divine John saying that all things were made through the Word; without him, he says, was made nothing. Let us hear also the divine Paul crying out: In him were created all things, visible and invisible. And when he preached in the Areopagus he said, Acts 17: God who made the world, and all things that are in it — since he is Lord of heaven and earth — dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is he worshipped with men's hands, needing anything, since he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things: and made of one blood all mankind to dwell upon the whole face of the earth.

St. Augustine should be seen on this matter, book 12 of De Civitate Dei, chapters 24 and 25, where he expressly proves that although the Angels at times serve God in producing, conserving, and governing creatures, these are yet to be ascribed not to them but to God:

For if, he says, in that species it ever is, as we say that all that Alexander had its founders: how much rather ought we to call none but God the founder of natures, who makes not otherwise out of matter; and if he withdraw, so to speak, his fabricative power from things, will they not so be not, as before they were made they were not? But I say before, by eternity, not by time. For who else is the Creator of times, but he who made those things by whose motions times run?

He inquires there whether the Angels served God in the creation of the world: but he leaves the question doubtful.

Moreover God founded creatures, not because he needed them, but because he is good; for, as Plato says in the Timaeus, no other reason was there with God for creating the world than the manifestation of his goodness: Let us seek therefore, he says, the cause which impelled him who contrived these things to seek an origin of things and a new workmanship: namely, that Goodness stood forth. Hence

Tertullian, book 2 of Adversus Marcionem, chapter 26, where inquiring into the reason by which God was induced to the production of the world: The first, he says, is the goodness of the Creator, which God willed not to lie hidden for eternity: that is, he willed there to be something by which he might be known: he subjoins: And he committed the same to his highest goodness, that it was about to appear as the trafficker of good; not indeed sudden, nor of a goodness that obtrudes itself, nor of a summons of oneness, as if it were to be judged from that point at which it began to work. It must however be observed that Moses expressed in Hebrew the aforesaid words created God thus: Bara Elohim, where the name Elohim of plural termination is joined to the singular verb Bara by a construction, as it seems, altogether unusual; as if the sense were, the Gods or Judges created. Whence the Master of the Sentences, book 1, distinction 2, says: Moses used this formula of speech, that he might shadow forth the mystery of the Trinity, and might signify the unity of essence, power, and operation in God, by the singular verb Bara; but the Trinity of persons by the name Elohim, which he judges to be a plural declined from El. But that exposition is slender and altogether meager. For Elohim is not derived from El; otherwise in the plural termination it would not be said Elohim, but Elim; nor indeed is it truly of the plural number, but common, although its termination be plural, as St. Jerome expressly teaches, epistle 136: We must know, he says, that Elohim is of common number, for both one God is so called and many; after the likeness of which, heaven also is called schamaim, that is, heavens. Thence also the interpreters often vary; an example of which thing we can have in our own language: Athenas, Thebas, Solonas etc., which although they have a plural termination, nevertheless express a singular thing; for neither were there many Athens, nor many Thebes etc. — Confirmation of this truth can be sought from the fact that that word is at one time construed with a plural, at another with a singular verb: with a plural indeed, thus 2 Kings, chapter 7 and 23, where in the Vulgate we read: And what one nation in the earth is like thy people Israel, for whom God went, to redeem them to himself for a people; in the Hebrew we read: halecu Elohim, that is, the Gods went. So also Genesis chapter 20, verse 13, and chapter 30, verse 7. With the singular however, as throughout the whole first chapter of Genesis, and often elsewhere. Further, if the word Elohim connoted plurality and in God a Trinity of persons, it would rightly be said that in God there are three Elohim, and presently three gods, or three judges; such is the signification of the word Elohim. But it is altogether absurd that the three divine persons should be called three gods, or three judges, as also three Lords; because, as the Symbol of St. Athanasius testifies, As we are compelled by Christian truth to confess each person by himself to be God and Lord; so we are prohibited by the catholic religion from saying three Gods or Lords. Moreover in the same chapter the word Elohim is found said of the single divine persons: for the divine Father, to whom omnipotence and the creation of heaven and earth are appropriated in the Symbol of faith, is called Elohim. Likewise the Son or Word of the Father is illustrated by the same name when it is said: Elohim said. Even the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Elohim, who moved over the waters. Therefore if Elohim by force of number embraces three persons, each divine person embraces the others, and so the Son will be the Son of himself, and the Holy Spirit the Spirit of himself: how absurd and false these consequences are, no one does not see. Finally the word Elohim imports plurality no more than the word Adonim, since the termination of each is plural. But the word Adonim is for the most part carried in Scripture of one only, as Genesis chapter 21, verse 9, and chapter 12, verse 30, and Isaias chapter 19, verse 4.

Perhaps someone will reply that the reason of the two words is not the same, inasmuch as the word Adonim, since it lacks a singular from which it might be declined, must needs be of common gender; but otherwise of the word Elohim, which is declined from Elouh. — But whoever objects these things does not advert that the word Adonim is in truth declined from the singular Adon, which is read Josue chapter 3, verse 2, and Mich. chapter 4, verse 2.

Therefore the aforesaid exposition of the word Elohim rests on no solid foundation. Wherefore I judge it must rather be said that it is either of common gender, or is here used by Moses in the plural after the manner of the Hebrew tongue, indeed also of human custom, whereby princes and magnates, by reason of the dignity and eminence whereby they excel others, speak of themselves in the plural; or are for the sake of honor and reverence addressed by inferiors in the number of multitude, as is even now in use among the French, as also among the Spaniards and Italians.

The Hebrews also raise here the question why Moses used the word Elohim rather than Iehova. R. Barnachman answers that he touched on it for this reason, that the word Elohim signifies the strength, power, and infinite fortitude of God, which was needed that he might wonderfully produce all things from nothing. But Iehova signifies the ineffable majesty of God, whereby he infinitely excels all creatures. The Cabbalists add that the sacred name Iehova chiefly signifies the mercy and goodness of God in the divine Letters; but the word Elohim his equity and justice, which he willed especially to be commended at the origin of things. For although the creation of the world be a work of the overflowing goodness of God pouring itself forth beyond the bosom of the divinity, as St. Basil expressly declares in his Homily on the Hexaemeron; nevertheless its constitution and ordering is a work of divine justice and righteousness(?), as Tertullian most excellently explains, book 2 of Adversus Marcionem, chapter 12, where he elegantly says: From the beginning the Creator was as good as he was just, both proceeding together; his goodness wrought the world, his justice tempered it: which even then judged that the world was to be made out of good things, because with the counsel of goodness he judged. It is a work of justice, that the separation pronounced between light and darkness, between day and night, between Heaven and Earth, between the upper and the lower water, between the surge of the sea and the mass of the dry land, between the greater and the lesser lights, of day and of night, between male and female, between the tree of the knowledge of death and of life, between the world and Paradise, between the water-born and the earth-born animals. All things as goodness conceived, so justice distinguished.

You ask 2. — What Moses understood by Heaven, and Earth?

I answer. Many of the Ancients judged those words to be a certain general utterance whereby Moses embraced summarily and as it were in compendium all things that are made by God, that at the outset of his discourse he might at once teach the Jews that the whole visible universe of things proceeded from God the Maker of the whole world; wherefore he pronounced thus: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, as if he should say, whatsoever you behold in the nature of things, and whatsoever the circuit of heaven and earth embraces, together with the sun itself and the earth, all that God fabricated at the beginning of times. Then indeed he describes, by parts and point by point, the order in which things were founded by God. Which exposition St. Gregory of Nyssa approved in his Hexaemeron, asserting that Moses, while he made mention of heaven and earth, did so as the extremes of all things that are conceived by the senses: so that when he said that the other things comprehended between them(?) were created by God, he might embrace all that which is contained within the extremes. — More distinctly indeed St. Cyril of Alexandria expounds this same opinion, book 2 contra Iulianum, page 51: When therefore, he says, Moses said: In the beginning God made heaven and earth, understand him summarily, and as it were with all things brought into a compendium, to set forth the creation of all things; then to proceed artfully to explain in what part the several things were adorned, that each created thing might chiefly have attained its proper existence: namely, he says, he founded all things by his most powerful Word. St. Basil also makes mention of this interpretation, Homily 3 on the Hexaemeron, page 33, although he dissents from it: It has been said, he says, expounding these words, by our predecessors, that this is not the creation of the second heaven, but a certain explanation of the former; for there the Scripture referred the creation of heaven and earth in sum: here however it more curiously delivers to us the reason by which each thing was made its element. But we say, since a diverse name and peculiar office of the second heaven has been handed down, that one must needs be other than that first which was made in the beginning, having a more solid nature, which furnishes to all things a pre-eminent utility. — St. Augustine also makes mention of this opinion, book 1 of De Genesi ad litteram chapter 3, and likewise book 1 contra adversarium legis, where he confesses it probable. The same likewise some of the Recentiers champion with Petavius, book 1 De Opificio chapter 2. — But to this interpretation the recital of Moses of the things made by God at the beginning of the world conflicts: for his purpose was to relate the heads and chief kinds of things in the order in which they were procreated. Moreover if by the words heaven and earth he did not set forth the distinct creation of each made on the first day of the world, he would have omitted the formation of those chiefest parts of the world: for neither does he afterwards make mention of their creation. — God indeed commands that the firmament be made on the second day, which straightway existed; but that procreation of the firmament supposes that the formation of heaven and earth and of the waters subsisting in the earth had already taken place, since when unto the end it is commanded that the firmament be made, that it divide the waters from the waters, already therefore the waters existed, and presently the earth their support and center. Moreover on the first day of the world the earth was void and empty, and the Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters; therefore on that day the earth was already produced, and the waters existed, the same earth an abyss surrounded with darkness, constituting the same globe. Then if here the procreation of the earth be not recited, the consequence will be that it was omitted by Moses, since its formation is not distinctly recited elsewhere. God indeed commanded on the third day of the world that the earth bring forth the green herb, but not that it exist. I ask however on what day it was founded, if not on that first day on which God created heaven and earth? Finally when God commanded that light be made, either heaven and earth already existed, or they were procreated together with the light, or that primordial light occupied and irradiated void and imaginary spaces; which last no arbiter, unless of unsettled mind, will affirm. It must needs be therefore confessed that heaven and earth were founded on the first day of the world together with that primordial light.

St. Augustine furnishes three other expositions of the aforesaid words: the first indeed, book 12. Confessionum, c. 7. where by Heaven he interprets the angelic nature: by Earth truly the corporeal nature; so that he willed God from the beginning to have founded two things as it were the two extremes of the whole of being: one the highest, and next to God, namely the angelic nature: the other the lowest, and next to nothing, which are corporeal things, and prime matter. Secondly the same, in the book De Genesi contra Manichaeos chapter 7. Heaven, and Earth, he says, is here called prime matter from the fact that out of it Heaven was to be produced on the second day, and Earth on the third. But he judges the matter first to have been formless, then formed. Thirdly, in the book De Genesi ad litteram chapter 15, he thus opens his mind, and subjoins the third exposition of the words, writing thus: In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth, etc. Not because formless matter is prior in time to things formed: since both were created together, both that of which it was made, and that which was made. For as the word matter is of the words, but the words indicate the formed word: not however does the speaker first send forth a formless voice, which he may afterwards gather and form into a word: so God the Creator did not first make in time formless matter, and afterwards form it through the order of whatsoever natures, as it were by a second consideration: for he created matter formed; namely because that of which anything is made, although not prior in time, yet by a certain origin is prior to that which is made from it. Scripture could diversify the times of speaking, which God did not distinguish in the times of doing: for if it be asked whether we make words of the voice or of the word, no one is easily found of so dull a wit who would not rather prefer that words are made of the voice: so since the speaker makes both together, what he makes from what sufficiently appears by natural attention. Wherefore since God made both together, both the matter which he formed, and the things into which he formed it, and both ought to have been said by Scripture, nor both at once... [the exposition is pursued] — it is attributed to Severianus bishop of the Gabali, book 1 De Mundi creatione, where when he had said: in six days all things were created by God: nevertheless the first day differs from the rest that follow. For on the first day God made, whatsoever he made, out of non-beings: but from the second day onward he made nothing out of non-beings, but out of those which he had created on the first day he changed them as he willed; he concludes: Therefore on the first day God created the matters of things: but on the remaining days he cast their forms and ornament or distinction. Nor is St. Gregory of Nyssa far removed from this opinion, in his Hexaemeron, page 8, who hands down that at the beginning there existed not the corporeal things themselves, but only the seeds of things and of bodies: ⟦Thus, he says, certain powers existed in that first act of God created(?), joined to the reasons of seeds⟧; yet so that the several things were not yet in act. That exposition moreover St. Augustine delivers and champions in many places, especially book 1 of De Genesi contra Manichaeos chapter 5.: The first matter, he says, was made confused and formless, whence would come all things which are distinct and formed, which I believe was called by the Greeks chaos... And yet God is most rightly believed to have made all things of nothing; because even if all things formed were made of that matter, this matter itself nevertheless was made of altogether nothing. He then opens why that matter is Heaven and Earth: not because, he says, it was already there, but because it could be so: for Heaven also is written to have been made afterwards: just as if considering the seed of a tree we should say that there are the roots, and the trunk and the branches, and the fruits and the leaves, not because they already are, but because from it they are to be, etc. The same he holds, book 12. Confessionum, c. 7., 8 and 12., and in the imperfect work De Genesi ad litteram. Which interpretation Bede in his Commentary embraces, and Isidore book 1 De Differ. chapter 9. — But this interpretation altogether abhors the opinions of the Philosophers, especially of those who judge that matter never existed separate from form, nor can exist even by divine power. There are added the reasons previously adduced, by which this opinion no less than the preceding is prostrated; above all because if heaven and earth, the element, were not created in the very beginning of things, it will be necessary that their formation was omitted by Moses; for neither was the earth founded on the third day; for on that day we read indeed that God said, not that the earth should become, but that the dry should appear, and germinate; that is, that what was covered and buried by the waters should become dried, and a fit place of generation both of plants and of animals. Therefore, says St. Basil, homily 2, page 19, God made heaven and earth, not by halves each, but the whole heaven and the whole earth; the very essence, I say, or matter he made comprehended with form. For God is not the inventor of figures, but the Creator of the very nature of things.

BUT YOU WILL SAY, heaven and earth and all things that are in them. That God made out of nothing the Scripture sacred for the most part testifies, Wisd. 11, verse 17; Isai. 45, verse 7; and 2 Machab. 1, verse 20(?); certainly for no other reason than because God at the beginning created prime matter out of nothing, or out of no pre-existing subject; but the rest he then fashioned out of it. The production therefore of that matter was shadowed forth under the words heaven and earth. — I answer that God could as easily fashion out of nothing heaven and earth, consisting of their own matter and their own forms, as the prime matter itself void of forms. For if by hypothesis matter had pre-existed, he could have educed from it the forms of heaven and earth; why not create these together with it? Moreover that it was so made the very text of Scripture persuades, which distinctly relates not prime matter, from which heaven and earth proceeded; but heaven and earth created at the beginning.

Perhaps someone will press the case with Hermogenes, in Tertullian, book adversus Hermogenem chapter 21: if therefore we say that all things were made out of nothing because no mention is made of matter out of which they are feigned to have been procreated; in turn it can be contended that all things were made out of matter, because Moses does not openly signify that any things were procreated out of nothing. — Tertullian answers that the cause is diverse in each case:

For although, he says, Scripture has not openly pronounced that all things were made out of nothing, just as neither out of matter, I say there was not so great a necessity of openly signifying that all things were made out of nothing, as there would have been if they had been made out of matter. Because what is made out of nothing, while it is not shown to have been made out of something, is manifested to have been made out of nothing: and it does not run the risk of being judged made out of something, when it is not demonstrated out of what it was made. But what is made out of something, unless this very thing be openly declared, that it was made out of something — while out of what it was made is shown — it will run the risk of first seeming to have been made out of nothing, because it is not published out of what it was made. These things said he; by which he plainly indicates sufficiently that heaven and earth can rightly be said to have been procreated out of nothing, since mention is made of no matter out of which they were made.

From these things therefore it may be gathered that by the words heaven and earth it was signified by Moses without any figure that heaven and earth were in truth founded on the first day of the world: but that out of them, as it were out of matter and seeds, the rest both celestial and terrestrial were produced; especially if we confess that water with earth constituted the same mass. Whence those two chief parts of the world alone were procreated out of nothing; the others indeed were formed out of them pre-existing. Wherefore Moses preferred heaven to earth, Theophilus of Antioch most excellently explains, book 2 ad Autolycum, saying that it was so done that the omnipotence of God the Artificer might be commended; For man, he says, who is situated in the lowest region of the world begins to build from the earth, nor can he construct the roof unless the foundation be laid. But the power of God in this is shown: that out of the very things that exist not, he first creates all things according to his will. For the things that are impossible with men are possible with God. Therefore the prophet said that the fabrication of the heavens was made first, because it was as it were the roof, speaking thus: in the beginning God made heaven; that is, by the beginning heaven was made: as I showed above.

That however a fuller and more distinct knowledge may be had of the aforesaid words of Moses concerning the production of heaven and earth, these two words must be weighed point by point.

HEAVEN. — Since in sacred Scripture the acceptation of this word is manifold, that the Interpreters might set forth its evident signification, they distinguished a threefold heaven, of which the first they called the aerial, namely the space of the air encompassing earth and water and expanded to the sphere of fire (if there be one) or to the orb of the lower planet. The second the aetherial, distinguished into several orbs of the planets. The third finally is that dwelling of the blessed minds, therefore called the empyrean heaven, because it shines and resplends after the manner of fire. To which division St. Paul seems to have been precedent when in II ad Cor. chapter 12 he says that he was rapt unto the third heaven, and heard arcane words which it is not lawful for mortal man to utter. Where by the third heaven he seems to signify that dwelling of the Angels and holy Souls, which the sacred Interpreters place in the empyrean heaven. It is asked however which of these Moses willed to signify by the name of heaven. — There are those who judge that by him was designated namely the empyrean, which is the dwelling of the Angels and of the Blessed, far removed from the sight of men, and named by Scripture the heaven of heavens and the seat of God. Thus thought Severianus of Gabala, Oration 1 De Creatione mundi: He created heaven, he says, when it was not: not this heaven, but that which is above: for this was founded only on the other day. God created the higher heaven, of which David says: The heaven of heavens is the Lord's. The same judge St. John Damascene, book 2, chapter 6; Beda, and very many others. — But since Moses tempered his words and opinions to the capacity of the rustic and dull Jewish people, it is not likely, says Petavius book 1 chapter 2, that he willed at the very outset of the book that another thing be understood by the name of heaven, than what commonly all learned and unlearned subject to that word, and what is more often expressed in the sacred Scriptures. But that highest heaven is discerned by no senses, nor is it established otherwise than by authority alone and the opinion of the Doctors. Then that heaven which they call empyrean is thought to be incorruptible and immutable, inasmuch as it is to be forever the dwelling of blessed minds: and it seems not to have had that lucidity of the latter, because it has splendor, and as it were the dowries of a glorious body. Therefore if that empyrean heaven were created together with the earth on the first day of the world, since between it and the earth there interposed a great abyss, why did it not irradiate the latter, nor put to flight the darkness which covered it? — The Angelic Doctor thinks himself to solve this instance, part 1, question 66, article 3, ad 1, saying that therefore the splendor of that heaven did not dispel the gloom of the nascent orb, because, lacking density, it emits no rays. Molina adds, disputation 3, that that heaven, in the part wherein it is nearest to the other orbs, is overlaid with a curtain and thick with opacity; whence it comes to pass that its clearness cannot be seen, nor does it cast forth light and influence outward; nor does it serve the generation and conservation of nascent things, but only the habitation and delectation of blessed minds. But as gratuitously as these things are feigned, so easily are they rejected as vain fictions. — Hence also is refuted the ludicrous and vain fiction of Abeuchus Eugubinus at the beginning of his cosmopoeia, wherein, swept away into a freer speculation, he did not doubt to assert that the empyrean heaven is eternal, inasmuch as it is the seat of God and the throne of his divine Majesty. For if the empyrean heaven be anything (as in truth it is) distinct from God, it is heretical to establish that it is coeternal with God, and not made by him, through whom all things were made; which error also the royal Poet condemns when he says: praise the Lord, ye heavens of heavens, by which words he designates the empyrean heaven; but straightway he subjoins: he spoke, and they were made, etc. Nor does the reason of Steuchus urge anything; for the throne of God is therefore called eternal, because his kingdom shall stand for eternity, nor shall it be subject to any mutation after the manner of earthly kingdoms. — Therefore the opinion of those seems to me more likely who think that on the first day of the world the celestial orbs were founded, which God afterwards willed to adorn with the light of stars and astral bodies, and likewise with solidity and firmness, that they might become fit receptacles and vehicles of the stars, and might by their influence and splendor quicken the interior parts of the world which they encompass. For this the Hebrew word schamaim connotes, by which heavens, several, at least two, are indicated. Nor does it stand in the way that on the second day God commands the firmament to be made which he calls heaven; for it would be permitted to reply: that so far the celestials were created procreated on the first day, in that they in truth received existence, but their substance was fluid and as it were watery; for that properly the word schamaim signifies; for the word seems to be compounded of the letter sch and maim, that is, waters, or which(?) are waters, or of schum and maim, that is, there are waters. But on the second day they received solidity and firmness after the manner of crystal, that they might become fit to sustain the supercelestial waters.

From all these things it may be gathered that on the first day of the world not only light, but also in truth heaven and earth together with the other three elements were procreated, as St. Basil expressly explains, hom. 1, page 10:

Whereas Moses says: in the beginning God made heaven and earth, he, he says, intimates the origin of the Universe from two principles: granting to Heaven indeed the prerogative of generation: but establishing the earth second in origin. But whatsoever is the mean of these arose altogether with the same bounds with them. Therefore although he said nothing of the other elements — of fire, I say, water, and air — he nevertheless by his own subtle ingenuity willed them to be understood. First indeed because in all things all things are commingled: and so in earth you will find water, air, and fire. For even as from flint so from iron, which draw their origin from the earth, fire issues forth, emerging from copious frictions and shining forth. Where it is worthy also of admiration, in what manner, since fire lies hid unharmed within those very bodies, the same when it has gone forth consumes those very things by which it was until then preserved. But that water is innate by nature to the earth itself, those demonstrate who dig wells; and that the nature of air likewise inheres in the same earth, those vapors themselves, which we behold rising from the earth moistened and warmed by the sun, and borne upward. These things said he.

Wherefore, says Franciscus Valesius, in the book De sacra philosophia chapter 1, on the first day was made the whole sphere of generable and corruptible things, consisting of the bodies of the Elements: earth, I say, air, and fire: those indeed neither pure, and retaining their sincerest natures, nor set apart, and colored by order, nor illustrated by any celestial light, but commingled with water and earth within the obscure air, and within all these, fire invisibly enclosed, which among the rest warmed the waters, and rendered them fluid, lest they congeal with cold; and night and this chaos existed, God made light, through which those bodies were rendered visible, and the first day was touched.

So Valesius: by which he signifies that as Moses by the name of heaven embraced all the celestial orbs, so by the name of earth he declared the production of all the elements, of which the earth seems the support and in part the dwelling; for all the elements are commingled with the earth, for it embraces fire, air, and water in its bosom and its caves and grottoes.

Hence it appears what Moses willed to signify by this word:

AND EARTH. — For by the name of earth he narrated at least implicitly the production of the four elements, which together with the earth were created at the beginning of the world, the royal Poet saying, ps. 101: In the beginning thou, O Lord, didst found the earth. Or as the Hebrew text has: Before and before other things. Whence the opinion of those must be disapproved who will that by the name earth was signified by Moses prime matter, out of which all sublunary bodies consisted. For in truth, if the earth, the element, was not created in the very beginning of things, it will be necessary that its formation was passed over by Moses. For neither, as some think, was it founded on the third day: for on that day we read indeed that God said, not that the earth should become, but that the dry should appear; that is, that what was covered and buried by the waters should become dried, and a fit place of generation both of plants and of animals. Therefore, says St. Basil, homily 2, page 19, God made heaven and earth, not by halves each, but the whole heaven and the whole earth; the very essence, I say, or matter he made comprehended with form. For God is not the inventor of figures, but the Creator of the very nature of things.

Proceed: what Moses willed to signify by these words added: And the earth was void and empty?

I answer. That this expression is made up of those two Hebrew words Thohu va-bohu, which the Seventy Interpreters render ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος, that is, invisible, or unseeable, and formless, the Wise Man also confirms, when he says, chapter 11, 18: Thy almighty hand made the world of matter without form, in Greek ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης, that is, out of hyle, or formless matter. Hence St. Augustine, book 11. Confessionum, c. 6 and 8: Thou, O Lord, hast made the world of formless matter, which Thou didst make of nothing, hardly any thing so great(?), etc. Aquila however translates it: vanity and nothing; Symmachus: useless and undigested; Theodotion: empty and nothingness; the Paraphrase of Onkelos: desolate and blind; Pagninus: desolate and nothing; Ionathas: empty of men and of beasts of burden; which St. Basil, homily 2, explains thus: The earth, he says, is called invisible, not because there was not yet anyone who could behold and contemplate it, or who could not do so at that time, since it was plainly immersed in the waters, which, floating upon its surface, had covered it over on every side(?); add to this that light had not yet arisen: in whose absence it seems hardly wonderful that the earth situated in the middle part of the world was invisible, and this very thing was also said by Sacred Scripture, because with the air diffused everywhere over it, it would lack light. Therefore the earth is said at the beginning to be invisible or formless, because it was covered with waters, and shrouded in darkness, and thus, on account of the mist diffused around it and the most profound abysses of the waters, could not be seen, especially since it was still bereft of its beauty and ornament, which it obtained only on the third day. Moses therefore rightly expressed this by those two words thohu va-bohu: for the Hebrews use them when they wish to designate something empty and confused, invisible and formless. Thus in that sense those words are used in 1 Kings, chapter 12: Do not go aside after vanities, which shall not profit you; neither follow them, for they are vanities, namely idols and vain divinities, Bohu. — Severianus, bishop of Gabala, weighs these points thus in his second Oration On the creation of the world:

The earth, he says, is called invisible. The Interpreters have clearly expounded this. For Aquila says: But the earth was vanity and nothing. It is called invisible, as it were unseeable, not that it did not appear, but as if one should say that it lacked ornament. It was not yet planted with shoots of a glad countenance, not yet crowned with fruits, not yet anointed with rivers and swelling streams, not yet adorned with various other ornaments; and it was inconspicuous, ἀόρατος, namely not yet prepared so as to be fit for bringing forth from itself plants and crops. Scripture says of a certain man strong and of elegant form, Exodus 2. 14: Is not this he who struck the Egyptian man χοπάρων? Is the man then invisible? But he is worthy, he says, to be seen and beheld. Therefore just as he called the Egyptian the visible man, as worthy to be seen, so also he named the earth formless, invisible." So much for him.

Tohu indeed is the same as empty, nothingness. Hence Isaias, chapter 34, prophesying the fall of Babylon, which he foretells is to be reduced to nothing, uses these words: And there shall be stretched over her the measuring line to reduce her to nothing, and the plummet to desolation; writing for nothing and desolation, or emptiness and vacuity, Thohu and Bohu. Similarly Jeremias, chapter 4: I looked upon the earth, and behold it was void and nothing, where for void and nothing, in Hebrew it is Thohu and Bohu. Hence those two words, though slightly different in pronunciation, are nevertheless almost identical in sense. Wherefore in the sacred Text they are written together on account of the equipollence of their signification. Moses therefore used these words aptly, that he might disclose what sort the first state of the earth had been. For it was without light, without any ornament or beauty; empty of men, of living things, and of plants; not divided into mountains, valleys, plains, and hills; not rising up and standing forth above the waters, but covered on every side most deeply by the waters; finally such that it could truly be called invisible and formless matter; for thus it is called in the book of Wisdom, chapter 11, where it is said that the hand of God made the round world of matter invisible, or formless.

Therefore by those words of his, In the beginning God created heaven and earth, Moses supplied arms for the refutation and overthrow of the triple error that afterwards arose: first indeed that of the Philosophers, who feigned the world eternal; second, that of the Manichaeans and Marcionites, who assert that there are two principles of created things, one good, namely God the best and greatest, from whom only spiritual and immaterial things were founded, the other most evil, from whom material things subject to corruption were procreated; thirdly finally that of those heretics who attribute the production of certain spiritual things to God, but assign the procreation of others to Angels or to other fabricated principles. The first error Moses proscribes with these words: In the beginning God; for St. Basil says, homily 1: Because many of those who held that the world existed from eternity together with God, opined that it was not made by Him Himself, but was as it were a certain shadowing forth of His power, asserted that it emerged of its own accord, as it were a self-appointed arbiter; and they confess indeed that God is its cause, but a cause not concurring by will: but just as the body is the cause of the shadow, and light of splendor; therefore prophecy, perceiving such an error, used this most exact structure of words: In the beginning God created, etc.

Hence also the error of the Platonists is proscribed — those who judged God to be indeed the artificer of heavenly things and of the intelligences, but that the authors of the lower parts of the world were lesser gods, whom they called daimones. Plato had gone before them, for speaking in the Timaeus about the lesser gods, he reports the supreme God addressing them thus: "Attend to these things, you who are sprung from the seed of the gods: I am the parent and maker of those works of mine which, having been made through me, are indissoluble, insofar indeed as I will. Although every thing bound can be loosed; yet it is by no means good, when reason is bound by reason, to wish to dissolve it. Wherefore since you have come into being, you cannot be immortal and indissolible; nevertheless you shall by no means be dissolved: neither shall any fates of death destroy you, nor any fraud prevail stronger than my counsel: which is a greater bond unto your perpetuity than those by which you were bound when you were being born. Know therefore what I judge. There remain for us three kinds, and these generated and mortal; unless these be provided, the completion of heaven will not be perfected: for it will not hold within its embrace all kinds of animals; yet it must hold them, if the world is to be altogether perfect. But if these were made by me alone, and endowed with life, they would be equal to the gods. That therefore they may be begotten under a mortal condition, and that this whole may be complete with all its parts, come now, turn yourselves from the laws of nature to the procreation of animals, and imitate the power which I employed in your birth. And insofar as they are created such that they ought to be called, like the immortal gods, of divine race, and hold the principality of all living things, and obey you and your law, I will give you the seed and the state of their origin. But you, weave together the mortal part with the immortal, as much of the task remains to you. And so make living animals, and nourish and increase them with allotted foods, until you receive them again consumed." Thus Plato. Which words, however, as John Serranus, his interpreter, says, are not to be received as if he wished God to commit the making of material things to Angels, as the aforementioned heretics prated, but only so that by this figure of speech assumed he might more effectively represent that God reserved to Himself alone the authority of creating souls, lest we judge — according to the opinion of madmen — that either Angels or the influxes of the stars have any power over our souls: and that He committed the generation of material things to other creatures, whence that physical axiom: the sun and man generate man: which doctrine of Plato seems wholly drawn from the first chapter of Genesis, where God commands the earth to bring forth the green herb, and the waters to bring forth reptile of living soul and fowl; and men to increase and multiply the human race.

YOU ASK AGAIN : why God, creating Heaven and Earth on the first day, did not adorn both at once fully and perfectly?

I answer. The first cause is His holy will; but the congruent reason is, that nature (whose Creator He is) proceeds from imperfect things to more perfect ones. The second is, that we might thereby learn that all things depend on God both as regards their initiation, and as regards their adornment and perfection; and that there is nothing in created things so imperfect — sin excluded — of which God is not the author. The third is, that we might, in imitation of the divine work, keep the same order in operating and perfecting. The fourth, lest if all things were read to be perfect from the beginning, they might be thought uncreated. Which reason St. Ambrose weighs excellently well, book 1 of the Hexaemeron, chapter 7. Why, he says, did not God, as He said and it was done, at once bestow upon the elements ornaments congruent to the things arising, as if He could not have made Heaven suddenly gleam, as soon as created, studded with stars, and the earth clothed with flowers and fruits? He could indeed; but therefore things are declared to be made first and afterwards composed, lest they be believed truly uncreated and without beginning, if the forms of things appeared as ingenerated from the beginning, and not added afterwards. An incomposed earth is read of, and honored by the Philosophers with the same privileges of eternity as God: what would they have said if its beauty had remained from the beginning! Sunk beneath the waters it is described, as devoted as it were to the shipwreck of its own beginnings, and hence believed by some not to have been made: what if it claimed its firstborn beauty? To this is added that God willed us to be imitators of Himself, that we should do something first, and renew it afterwards: nay rather, that if we undertake both at once, we can accomplish neither. Moreover our faith grows by degrees: therefore God first made, afterwards adorned, that we might believe that He is the same who made and has made, who adorned; lest we think one being adorned, another created: but that the same One wrought both, so as to make first and afterwards compose, lest the one be believed wanting to the other.

The same St. Chrysostom teaches, Homily 5. Common, he says, is the table, common nurse and parent of all is the earth, common city, and common sepulchre: for even our bodies are from it; thence aliments are supplied to our bodies; therein we dwell and abide; and after death access to it again lies open. Lest perhaps, therefore, the necessity of the convenience taken from it should make you love it beyond its desert, and the multitude of benefits cast you down into impiety, it demonstrates to you that before you were, it was formless and unordered.

QUESTION IV. — What is signified by these words : Darkness was upon the face of the deep ?

I answer, that by those words is signified that immense mass of waters by which it, as it were a deep, covered the earth, and extended even up to the Empyrean Heaven, and was illuminated by no light, since light had not yet been created, but darkness and mist possessed all things. For the abyss, says St. Basil, hom. 2, is abundant water, whose depth cannot easily be penetrated downward; or, as St. Aug. speaks on Psal. 11: The abyss is a depth impenetrable and incomprehensible; and it is wont rightly to be said of waters; for there is height where there is profundity, which cannot be penetrated down to the bottom: and hence, by a drawn similitude, Scripture calls the judgments of God a great abyss, because they are incomprehensible to human reason and understanding. — That however there was on the very first day of all things an immense magnitude and profundity of waters is not to be doubted; since, as Bede says, all that space of the world which lies between the Earth and the Empyrean Heaven was occupied by waters, that is, by a certain humid and aqueous matter, and as it were cloudy; not equally dense or rare, but such that, more densely compacted, it could be turned into elementary water, and, more attenuated, grow rare into air; and out of which, by a marvelous manner of concretion, even the celestial orbs were fashioned. Further, the surface of this liquid matter, both outermost and innermost, which the Hebrews call the face, had absolutely nothing of light, whence also nothing of color; but the whole, great as it was, both within and without, everywhere was dark, misty, and discolored.

Sererianus, bishop of Gabala, asks by what means the darkness was superinfused at the beginning of the world upon the face of the deep; for God, he says, did not make them, seeing that He is the author neither of darkness nor of mist: for God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all, 1 John 1. — He answers: "I thus judge that water covered the surface of the earth, and a dense obscurity and mist had stood about the waters (as is known even now in rivers); that obscurity and fog exciting a mist had made clouds; and overshadowing clouds, darkness. That a cloud excites darkness Scripture teaches: And the heaven was darkened with clouds, 1 Kings 18." So much for him.

YOU ASK : why that space was filled rather with water than with any other body?

I answer, that several congruent reasons can be brought forward for this. The first, that since the other things were to be produced out of that intermediate body, nothing could have been constituted there more fitting than water; since for new generations the humid and thicker concurs especially; for, says Bonfrerius, moisture is held to be the mother of generation, wherein matter as it were plays the passive role in the generations of things, heat concurring as it were as father, preparing and moistening and acting more actively.

The second reason, because water, as it were a kind of medium, easily admits either condensation, as appears in ice, or rarefaction, as when it passes into vapors; therefore there ought to be a body of this kind, out of which the celestial bodies could be compacted, and fire and air, as rarer and more fluid bodies, could be expressed.

The third reason finally was, lest God be compelled to annihilate something of matter once created, or to produce anew a fresh matter, which would be matter for the production of the remaining things: for if He had filled that space with some rarer body, for example, air, it would not have been sufficient for forming the solid bodies of the Heavens; and thus matter would have had to be created anew, which had not been rarefied into air or into fire; and therefore, lest anything be superfluous in the nature of things, it behooved the body chosen by God to have been such as would suffice for compacting the solid Heavens, and, with the greater part of the matter consumed in them, the remainder would pass into fire and air.

From these things it is established that water was created by God at the first together with the earth and the Empyrean Heaven; and very many affirm with St. Basil, Homil. 2, that the other two elements were co-created together with those two, where he says: It is still laughable that the other three elements are held to be contained in manifold ways within the earth: for that fire lies hidden within the earth the perpetual eruption of flames and of sulphur, as from Mount Aetna and other places, and the eruption from the earth of the fiery heat of the boiling of many waters sufficiently indicates. How much air the earth holds within its bowels the frequent earthquakes, on account of the spirit shut up and buffeted within, are indices: to say nothing of the interior caverns and grottoes filled by the earth with much air. But how great a force of waters is contained in the inner embrace of the earth, the perennial gushings of fountains, the origins of rivers, and also the overflowing of wells, openly show. It is therefore established that the other two elements were co-created together with the earth and water. Nor does it matter that Moses makes no mention of them; since he wrote for an uncultivated people, he set forth only two elements, namely earth and water, because these alone fall under sight, and out of them the other bodies are manifestly composed for the most part, and abide in them as in their natural place. The aforementioned bishop of Gabala subjoins another reason in the same Oration 1., namely that just as Moses, in recounting the creation of man, did not enumerate one by one the individual members of the body as made by God, but judged it sufficient to assert that man was formed by God; so, in describing the Genesis of the world, he embraced the creation of the four elements together with the formation of the earth, in whose bosom they are contained. His words are: Just as in the body he did not say all the members, so neither in the creation, although they were put forth together with the fabric of the world, did he pass through all things. But if there were no fire in the earth, we would not now carve fire out of flint or out of wood. For wood struck by friction generates fire; and whence would it generate it, if it were not in nature?

QUESTION V. — What do these following words indicate : The Spirit of the Lord moved over the waters ?

I answer, that the Hebrew word ruach, which the Vulgate Interpreter renders by the name Spirit, has in Scripture a varied and manifold signification. First indeed it sounds as breath: thus Psal. 135, v. 17: There is no spirit in their mouth. Secondly the same as the powers of the mind: thus Josue 2: Our heart fainted, nor did there remain in me spirit. Thirdly it is taken for knowledge and prudence of mind; thus Job 32, 8: The spirit is in men, and the inspiration of the Omnipotent giveth understanding. Fourthly for the sentiment of the mind and good will; thus Num. 14, 21: My servant Caleb, who followed me full of another spirit, I will bring into this land which he hath compassed about. Fifthly for appetite; thus Prov. 16, 32: He who rules his spirit (in Hebrew ruach) is better, that is stronger, than he who taketh cities. And Isaias 38, 2: his spirit shall consume him as fire (sic). Sixthly it signifies the soul itself of man and of brutes; thus Ecclesiastes 111., 21: Who knoweth if the spirit of the sons of Adam ascend upward, and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward? Seventhly it signifies the wind, which is for the most part called the spirit of the Lord in Sacred Scripture; thus Exod. 16: He blew with his spirit and covered them with the sea. And Psal. 147: He shall send forth his spirit, and the waters shall flow. Finally by that word the Holy Spirit is designated; thus very many Fathers interpret this verse of the Psalmist, Psal. 103: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their power.

These things thus premised, there is a threefold principal exposition of the aforesaid words. The first indeed is that of Tertullian against Hermogenes on Genesis, of Severianus the Gabalite in Oration 1., and of many others with the Hebrews, who judge that by the word spirit is signified the wind which at the beginning of the world blew most vehemently over the waters, that by that means the creation itself might be made known; for since the common uninstructed multitude apprehends the air only from its motion, they could not have judged it to have been created in the beginning of the world, unless they had heard it, by its own agitation, breathing back and hovering over the waters. — The second interpretation is that by Spirit is understood a certain power implanted in the waters for the exercise of their fecundity; for it is frequent in Scripture that by Spirit is signified a certain sudden and extraordinary motion of God, for the accomplishing of something great and eminent. Thus in Judges 11 we read that the spirit of the Lord rushed upon Sampson, and he tore apart a lion: and 1 Kings 11 the same Spirit rushed upon Saul, and he cut down Borem. And therefore they think Moses wished to signify that that power and efficacy of God was present with the waters, that it might be made known that all things whatsoever are afterwards narrated to have been made out of the waters in an instant of time by the command of God, were not made by the native faculty and power of the waters, but by the supernatural virtue of God, which through that infused power was in the waters. — The third finally, and almost the opinion approved by the consensus of all the holy Fathers, is that by the Spirit of God is principally signified the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son, whose virtue brooded over the waters to render them fruitful, and to impart to them prolific power: for although it be common to the whole Most Holy Trinity, and undivided, to operate ad extra; nevertheless, because the power of vivifying is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, who is therefore called the vivifying Spirit, therefore that prolific virtue impressed upon the water is attributed to Him. Thus St. Basil, homil. 2: it has been approved by our forefathers, he says, that Scripture calls the Spirit of God here nothing else than the Holy Spirit Himself, who completes the number of the divine and blessed Trinity. The same is the sense of other more recent Fathers, praised a little below.

The authority of the Church also accedes, which in the blessing of fountains thus chants concerning the Holy Spirit: O God, whose Spirit over the waters in the very beginnings of the world was borne, even then conceived in the nature of the waters the power of sanctification. Which Tertullian explains excellently well in the book De Baptismo, who thus commends the dignity of the waters, chapter 3, where weighing the aforesaid words of Genesis, The Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters, he says: You have, O man, first of all to venerate the antiquity of the waters, in that they are an ancient substance; hence the dignity, in that they were the seat of the divine Spirit, more pleasing of course then than the other elements; for the darknesses were still wholly unadorned, lacking the cult of the stars, and the abyss was sad, and the earth unprepared, and the Heaven not yet: the liquid alone, ever perfect matter, glad, simple, pure of itself, offered itself as a vehicle worthy of God. What of the fact that thence God constituted the waters, in a manner the modulators, of the disposition of the world? For in order that He might suspend the firmament of heaven in the midst, He made it with waters divided; and that He might suspend the dry land, He expedited it with waters gathered apart. When the world had been ordered thence through the elements, and inhabitants were to be given, it was commanded to the first waters to bring forth souls. The first liquid brought forth that birds might live, lest it be a marvel in baptism if the waters know how to animate. — But that the Spirit of the Lord is said to have been borne over the waters, that it may be signified, says the aforementioned St. Basil, the same as that He cherished, and imparted to the nature of the waters vital fecundity. St. Augustine subscribes to these, book 1 of De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 18, where he writes: That which in the Greek and Latin tongue has been said of the Spirit of God, that He was borne over the waters, according to the understanding of the Syriac tongue, which is neighbor to the Hebrew — for this is reported to have been expounded by a certain learned Christian Syrian — is held to be understood not that He was borne above, but rather that He cherished. Not as swellings or ulcers are cherished in the body with waters tempered either with cold or with congruent heat; but as eggs are cherished with broodings, wherein any heat of the maternal body is in a manner an aid in forming the young, through a certain effect of love in its own genus. St. Jerome concurs in this, Quaestiones In Genesim. For that, he says, which in our codices is written, ferebatur, in the Hebrew has Merachefeth, which we can call incubabat, thus we understand it is not said of the spirit of the world, as some judge, but of the Holy Spirit, who as He Himself is vivifier, consequently also Founder; or if you please, Founder and God. For send forth, He says, Thy Spirit and they shall be created.

Which exposition Claudius Victor thus elegantly expressed in book 2 of In Genes., in these verses:

And the holy Spirit, brooding over the outstretched waves, Was animating the fostering waters, and to the seeds of things Not yet to be poured forth into shoots upon lands uncomposed He gave them, to be insinuated.

To these accedes the Venerable Bede in the Hexaemeron, where he thus says: The Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters, not with corporeal breathings, but with excellent power: because whatever He had thereafter begun to be formed and perfected lay subject to the will of the Creator. Tostatus interprets thus: The will and mind of God the artificer was borne over the waters: as it were penetrating with His mind, and designating what of those things which He had established He was to make out of the waters, in the similitude of a human artificer beholding and considering the matter subject to him, how from it a work can be fashioned according to the similitude of that form which he has conceived and formed in his mind. — Tertullian, aforementioned, adds, chapter 4, that therefore the Spirit of God was borne aloft over the waters, that He might impart to them His sanctity: The Holy, he says, assuredly was borne over the holy, and from that which was borne above, that which was borne borrowed sanctity. Since whatever subject matter upon which anything impends from above necessarily snatches its quality: especially a corporeal one from a spiritual, easy both to penetrate and to indwell through the subtlety of its substance: thus from the holy the natures of the waters sanctified, and itself conceived sanctifying. St. Jerome subscribes to him, epist. 83 ad Oceanum. The world was still formless (he says), nor yet was the sun glowing red, nor the moon pale, nor the stars twinkling; an unordered and invisible matter the magnitude of the abysses and deformed darknesses oppressed. The Spirit of God alone, in the manner of a charioteer, was borne over the waters, and was bringing forth the nascent world in the figure of baptism. — But it is to be noted here that Moses made mention of the Holy Spirit significantly, that namely he might expressly designate the mystery of the Trinity and the three divine Persons. For just as (as St. Aug. says, book 1 of De Gen. ad litteram, c. 6.) in the very beginning of the creature begun, which is commemorated under the name of Heaven and Earth on account of that which was to be perfected out of it, the Trinity of the Creator is intimated: for Scripture saying, in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth, we understand the Father in the name of God: and the Son in the name of the beginning, who is not the beginning of the Father, but per seipsum of the creature created first and principally spiritual, and consequently also of the whole creation. But Scripture saying, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters, we acknowledge the complete commemoration of the Trinity: So also in the conversion and perfection of the creature, that the species of things may be disposed, the same Trinity is intimated: namely the Word of God, and the begetter of the Word, when it is said: God said; and the holy goodness, in which it pleases God whatsoever is perfected for Him according to the measure of His nature, when it is said: God saw that it was good.

QUESTION VI. — How are these words to be received : God said : Let there be light ?

The first word of God, says St. Basil, created the nature of light, drove out the darknesses, illumined and gladdened the world, and at once brought to all things a grateful and pleasant aspect. For it was congruent, adds Nazianzen, that the great light should auspicate His work with light; since He dissolved and repelled the darknesses and that blind mass and confusion possessing all things. The author of the book of Esdras 4, chapter 6, v. 10 had gone before him: Then Thou didst say, he says, from Thy treasures that luminous light be brought forth, whereby Thy work might appear. — But what that primeval light was, the opinions of Interpreters vary. St. Gregory of Nyssa in the Hexaem. pag. 9 judges it to have been fire, and with him much more Victorinus in Genes. c. 6, saying that fire afforded light to the lower world, and had a circular motion, and as it were like a shining cloud circled the orb of the lands, just as now the sun. But very many, with whom the Angelic Doctor agrees, part 1, question 67, art. 1, contend that that light was the light of the sun itself produced from the beginning, but formless, namely such as had not yet a determined power for special effects in things below the moon. St. Basil, homil. 6. pag. 7., weighing these words: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, says: these do not conflict with those things which were said concerning light; for then the very nature of light was produced, but now this body of the sun was so founded upon it that it might be a worthy and triumphal vehicle of that primeval light. Then objecting that it could not be that light be separated from the sun; I do not say, he says, that separation of light from the body of the sun to be possible to me, but I judge that it must be asserted that those things which by the mere agitation and cogitation of the mind can be distinguished from one another, can by the very fact, by the faculty of the Creator, of either nature be joined together. Which He confirms from Exod. 3 where the bush appeared to Moses burning, yet not consuming: as also the testimony of David, Psal. 28, saying: the voice of the Lord cutting short the flame of fire. — Others indeed understand an accident of light properly so called produced in a body capable of light, whether in a thin cloud or in some other body, moved for the space of twenty-four hours about the abyss of waters by God or by Angels, which distinguished night from day in the manner of the Sun produced on the fourth day, whose vicar meanwhile that light was, as St. Bonaventura best expounds, distinct. 13. art. 2. quaest. 2. where he says: "It is understood, he says, that that light was where the sun now is, " for from it the Sun is believed to have been formed. And it was produced above " that part which is above our hemisphere; and illuminating that hemi-« sphere, it made day: and proceeding it arrived at oc-« casion [the west], and made evening; and afterwards returning to the east, it made " morning. Whence with respect to one and the same hemisphere it made night and day " successively; with respect however to our hemisphere and the other, " it made day on the one side and night simultaneously from the interposition of that " dense nature which was in the midst of that matter: which although it " was not yet in complete form, was nevertheless in that part so dense " that it could cast a shadow, just as in the upper part by its rarity " and a certain subtlety it could receive the influx of light, and therefore " insinuating both of these Scripture says: God divided the light from " the darknesses, with respect to the existence of light in one hemisphere, and dark-« ness in the other: and there was made evening and morning, with respect to its recession " from our hemisphere, and with respect to its return." — But St. Augustine willed that this light formed from the beginning was not corporeal but spiritual, for lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 9. he probably judges that under the name of Heaven, which was created in the beginning, the Angelic nature was signified by Moses; but under the name of light created on the first day, the confirmation and consummation of the Angels in grace is intimated: and by the division of light and darkness, the segregation of the evil Angels from the fellowship of the good is indicated. That he may prove this, St. Augustine argues after this manner: Moses says that Heaven and earth were created in the beginning: therefore before these nothing was created. The same Moses afterwards wrote that God rested on the seventh day from all the works which He had made. Moreover, that the Angels are works of God it is impious to doubt; since both in the hymn of the three children, and in Psal. 118, it is written: Praise the Lord, all His Angels, praise Him all His virtues: and afterwards it is subjoined: because He Himself said, and they were made, He commanded, and they were created. From these things it is concluded that the Angels were made within some one of those six days: and indeed that they were made before the fourth day, on which all the stars were founded, appears from those words of the Lord which are in Job, chapter 38, according to the translation of the Seventy Interpreters: when the stars were made, my Angels praised me with a loud voice. That they are to be judged made on the third or second day: for what was made on those days is manifest: namely on the third day the water was separated from the earth, and the earth brought forth herbs and plants: but on the second day the firmament was made, distinguishing the waters which are above the firmament from those which are beneath the firmament. Therefore it remains that the creation of the Angels, if it is to be referred to the works of those days, pertains to the work of the first day, on which light was made. — But the other holy Fathers cry out against this, as also the sacred Interpreters, who pronounce with unanimous consensus that that light was corporeal and sensible: which opinion indeed St. Bonaventura confirms with these reasons, distinct. 13. art. 1. qu. 1. First indeed, he says, because before the formation of light it is premised that darkness was upon the face of the deep: therefore if by the deep corporeal matter is understood, the light which was made for the expulsion of those darknesses was corporeal. Secondly, with the light receding gradually, and after the space of diurnal light passing into the lower parts, evening came about; as now it is wont to happen through the usual course of the sun: therefore if this cannot be understood except of corporeal light, it is plain, etc. Thirdly, Scripture numbers the series of six days: and it is established that all these days are of the same nature; otherwise they would not thus be numerable together: but after the formation of the sun from the fourth day onwards the days before were corporeal days: ergo in the three preceding days they were corporeal days: but such days cannot be except from corporeal light: ergo etc. — Therefore it seems to me more credible that that light, affixed as it were to a subject of vapor or little cloud, illuminated the whole hemisphere which we occupy, while the darknesses still occupied the lower hemisphere and half of the circle of the Orb: then by its assiduous motion it illuminated the other hemisphere so that in each part of the whole circle of the world's Orb light and darkness succeeded one another alternately within the space of four and twenty hours, and by its presence constituted day and night. — Therefore from these things it is established that that primeval light did not illuminate at once the whole globe of earth and water, but successively. Hence Moses subjoins: And God saw the light that it was good, and divided the light from the darknesses: divided, I say, first of place: for while here there is light and day, among the Antipodes there is night and darkness. Secondly He divided in time: for in the same hemisphere light and darkness, night and day succeed one another alternately and at diverse times. Thirdly in cause: for one thing is the cause of light, namely the lucid body: another of darknesses, namely the opaque body. But Moses regarded the second ground of division, as it were saying: God made it so that, after the light created by Him, darknesses and night should succeed. Whence follows: And He called the light Day, and the darknesses Night. — Hugh of St. Victor explains the matter thus in his annotations on Genesis, chapter 6. That light, he says, is believed to have been created in that place where the sun rises; and thus the beginning of that first day was not preceded by dawn as morning, that is, the light foretokening the rising of the sun; which Scripture, cautiously intimating, distinguishes the natural day by two extreme articles; thus: And there was made, he says, evening, which is the artificial end of the day; and there was made morning, which is the end of the night: namely by the rising of the sun, and its course even to its setting, and its return to its rising, one natural day is made. — There are nevertheless those who judge that the day began from light, and that the light was the primeval creature of God; to which opinion St. Ambrosius subscribes, chapter 9, book 1. Worthily, he says, the adornment of the world took its origin from light, for in vain would it be if it were not seen... for he who desires to erect some building worthy of the dwelling of the father of a family, before he lays the foundations, considers whence he may infuse light into it: and this is the first grace: which if it be lacking, the whole house bristles with deformed neglect. Another, but tropological, reason Hugh of St. Victor supplies in De sacramentis, book 1, par. 1, chapter 8, where he says: God therefore beginning His works that He might perfect them, first made light, that He might make all the rest in light. For He signified to us that He does not love works which are done in darkness, because they are evil, since every one who doth evil hateth the light, says Christ, John 3, that his works may not be reproved, because they are evil. But he who doth truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God. He Himself therefore, who was about to make truth, willed not to work in darkness, but came to the light, and made light, that He might manifest Himself through light. For not for this reason did He make light, that He Himself might be seen through light: but that He might manifest His works through light, because they are done in God. — There are those who opine that from this text of Genesis there prevailed among the Jews and other most ancient nations, with whom the commerce and custom of the Jews was, the usage of computing the day from sunrise to the same sunrise. For there was formerly in use among the Jews a triple genus of days, namely the legal or festal day, from evening to the following evening; the natural day, from sunrise to its following rise; but the usual day from midnight to midnight. Which custom also the Church observes, for on feast days and in celebrating divine offices she reckons the day in the manner of the Jews from vespers to vespers, but in keeping fasts from midnight to midnight. — But as regards the Ethnics and various nations, diverse among them was the usage of days, as appears in Gellius, lib. 3, cap. 2; Censorinus, De die natali, cap. 24; Pliny, lib. 2, cap. 77, who writes: They observe the day itself differently, different ones differently. The Babylonians between two risings of the sun; the Athenians between two settings: the Umbrians from noon to noon; the common people from light to darkness: the Roman priests, and those who define the day more civilly, likewise the Egyptians and Hipparchus, from midnight to midnight. Censorinus adds: Others divided the day into four parts, and likewise also the night: and military similitude attests this, wherein is spoken of the first watch, likewise the second, and the third, and the fourth. Nor certainly is that usage of watches recent, but most ancient, both among the Romans, as Vegetius testifies, lib. 3 of De re militari, cap. 8, and among the Jews, as appears Judg. 7, v. 19., and 1 Kings 11, v. 11. The artificial day is also wont to be distributed into two parts, namely matutinal and vespertinal, which are mutually distinguished by a point of time accustomed to be called meridies, as it were mid-day, as Varro observes, lib. 5 of De lingua latina, because, says Censorinus, it discerns the parts of the day. He adds also that at Rome the name of hour was unknown for three hundred years, and the day was distinguished into three times, antemeridian, meridian, and pomeridian: but where the usage of hours became known, their division depended at first not, as now happens, from the course of the sun, but from the arbitrament of the praetor, as Varro records from Cosconius: The praetor, he says, was accustomed being asked to order, when it seemed to him to be the third hour, to proclaim that it was the third hour, likewise midday, and the ninth hour. Equally indicative is the jest of the parasite in a comedy of Plautus, certain excerpts of which Gellius presents, lib. 3 Noct. Attic. cap. 3: thus however he was questioned:

May the gods destroy that man who first found out the hours, Yea whosoever first set up here a sundial, Who hath crushed me, wretched, bit by bit, my day; For when I was a boy, my belly was a sundial Far better than all these, and truer far.

As it were intimating that before hours were invented the days were general and lax periods, and yet that it was permitted, with a spur stimulating, to anticipate midday, since no fixed law was laid down such as clocks afterwards introduced. Nevertheless however, that gnomonic instruments and dials, on which the hours were marked out at fixed intervals of lines, and the knowledge of constructing a clock, were long ago in use among our ancestors, especially the Egyptians, Clement of Alexandria testifies, lib. 6 of the Stromata, where, recounting the duties of the Egyptians and their priests, he says: After the chanter proceeds the horoscopus who holds in his hand a clock and a palm branch, the symbol of astrology. There you see woven together that the clock is of astrology, and presently it may be conjectured, as from Adam the science of astronomy was handed down to posterity, so also the knowledge of making a clock; which received from his ancestors without doubt Moses taught to the Egyptians, although Marius Victorinus the Rhetorician, in his commentary on Cicero's first Rhetoric, brings forward another origin of the hours among the Egyptians: Of twelve hours, he says, this origin is recorded; once upon a time Hermes Trismegistus, when he was in Egypt, [observed] a certain sacred animal dedicated to Serapis, which had voided urine twice twelve times in the whole day, always with equal time interposed; it shone forth divided into twelve hours of the day, and thenceforward the number of hours is kept. Now the name of this brute living thing is Cynocephalus, which, as Horus Apollo observes, lib. Hieroglyphic. num. 6, having been accustomed to urinate twice twelve times per day and as many per night at the equinoxes, thence they distributed the day and night into twelve hours.

YOU ASK FIRST. — Why in the creation of Heaven and Earth did not God say, Let them be made, as He said in the creation of light and the other things?

I answer first, that the Author of the fourth book of Esdras, chapter 6, recounting this very history of Moses concerning the creation of the world, asserts that God said: Let Heaven and Earth be made. But this plainly disagrees with the narration of Moses. Wherefore Rupert answers secondly to this same question proposed by himself in three ways. First, he says, since the very first principle, in which all things were made, is the Word of God, it would have been superfluous and absurd to say, in the beginning God said: Next, the imperative word fiat presupposes something to which it is commanded, or a prescription laid down; but since the effecting of Heaven and Earth were themselves founded out of nothing, nothing preceded to which the voice and precept of God might be directed. Thirdly, thus Moses wished to say lest anyone should suspect that God indeed designed the species and forms of things, but did not perfect them: whereas Hyle, that is, prime matter, of which all things are full, was not made by God, but was always coeternal with God: therefore as it ought to be said, thus it was said, that in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. Thus Rupert. Yet his opinion, says Pererius, in that which he asserts, that the voice and command of God is not made nor directed to nothing, but only to that which is, does not seem to accord with the doctrine of Paul, who in chapter 4 of the Epistle to the Romans, speaking of God, says: Who calleth those things that are not, as those that are. And David Psal. 32: By the word of the Lord the heavens were established: and Psal. 118: Praise the Lord all ye Angels, praise Him all His virtues, because He Himself said, and they were made, He commanded, and they were created: ergo as well the heavens as the Angels, all were created by the word and command of God, namely out of nothing.

YOU ASK SECONDLY. — What was the state of things before the light was founded?

I answer, that the earth with the abyss of waters superinfused upon it was as it were a certain empty chaos, rude and undigested, of which Ovid:

One face of nature was throughout the whole world, Which they called Chaos, a rude and undigested mass; Naught but inert weight, and the seeds of things ill-joined Congested together in discord.

Or as Hilary explains in verse to Leo:

When black Chaos covered all, and the deep mass Of shapeless world pressed down upon bodies from above, And late-returning night crept back amid the gloom, Nor species nor form there was: God within was working, Mingled with veiled bodies, a secret power.

Hence it appears how improbably Gabriel in 2 dist. 12, qu. 1, said that this Chaos, or, as the Wise Man speaks, formless matter, was prime matter, either alone, or at least informed only by a certain rude, obscure, general, and common form of corporeity, such that it was only in potency for receiving all particular forms, as Abulensis judged: for from this place of Moses it is established that earth and heaven were created first: ergo matter created first was not devoid of form, but induced and imbued with the particular form of Heaven and Earth.

You ask thirdly. — With what day of the week does the first day of the world correspond?

I answer, with Sunday, as appears from the sabbath, or seventh day of rest. For Sunday follows it as the eighth, and again the first. This also appears from the hymn at matins of the Lord's day... On the first day of all days on which the world stands founded (or as it is held in the new form): On the first day on which the blessed Trinity founded the world, or on which the rising Founder, death overcome, delivers us. But it is certain that Christ the Lord rose again on Sunday.