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

And God said: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years: to shine in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth. And it was so done. And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars, etc. All of which He set into the celestial rings, or spheres, as so many most resplendent gems, with wondrous order and beauty. Concerning the expounding of these words there remains for us here but little to say, since we have discussed at length the nature, motion, and influx of the stars in our Physics. Wherefore only a few things need be noted here.

You ask 1. — Why did God form the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars on no other than the fourth day of the world's origin?

I answer, that this was done by wise counsel and by an entirely divine ordination, lest occasion should be given for suspecting that the Sun and the Stars had contributed anything to the first germination of plants, and hence that men might have an opportunity of worshipping them as divinities. Hence on that fourth day of the world God fashioned first of all the Sun and the Moon, that we might know that the intervals of days and nights could subsist without the Sun; and that grasses and plants could rise from the earth at the mere command of the Creator, without any service of His being employed; and thus men might cease to marvel exceedingly at them, or to ascribe to them some divinity, which God certainly foresaw would one day come to pass. For indeed, that not only the Gentiles but even the Jews fell into an error of this kind is sufficiently shown by the frequent rebukes read among the Prophets against the Jews, who adored the rising sun, sacrificed to the moon as to the Queen of Heaven, and venerated all the host of Heaven. From which crime of impiety Job, rejoicing and exulting that he had been pure and free, said in chapter 31: If I beheld the sun when it shone, and the moon going in brightness, and my heart in secret hath rejoiced, and I have kissed my hand with my mouth: which is a very great iniquity, and a denial against the most high God. Whence Moses, Deuteronomy chapter 4, warned the Hebrews beforehand against this error, saying: Lest perhaps lifting up thy eyes to heaven, thou see the sun and the moon, and all the stars of heaven, and being deceived by error thou adore and serve them, which the Lord thy God created for the service of all nations, that are under heaven. — Nor did that nefarious worship of the Sun and the Stars flourish only among the Jews and the Ethnics; nay, even among Christians also, as Saint Leo testifies in homily 7, On the Nativity of Christ, where, reporting and refuting many errors current among the Christians of his time, he says among other things: There are added also those who falsely assert that the whole condition of human life hangs upon the effects of the Stars, and that things which belong either to the divine will or to ours are the gods of those whose course cannot decline; yet, that they may do harm more abundantly, they promise that these can be changed if supplication be made to those stars that oppose them. Thereby the very fiction destroys itself by its own reasoning; for if what has been foretold stands fast, then the stars are not to be venerated. From such institutions also that impiety is engendered, that the sun, rising at the beginning of the daylight, is adored by certain foolish persons from elevated places! Which some even think they do religiously, so that before they arrive at the Basilica of the blessed Apostle Peter (which is dedicated to the one true God, and to Christ), having surmounted the steps by which one ascends to the raised ground of the upper area, they turn their body toward the sun as it rises, and with bowed necks incline themselves in honor of the resplendent orb; a thing over which we decay and grieve much, partly through a fault of ignorance, partly through the spirit of paganism.

Therefore, that the production of light and of plants and elements preceded the formation of the sun and moon and the other stars happened not rashly nor fortuitously, but by the prudent counsel of divine Wisdom. For since nothing is more prone to us than to bind and attribute the power of God to creatures whose ministry He uses in establishing His works; thence it is that just as the sun and moon administer light to us, we include that power in them after such fashion in our estimation, that if they were taken from the world much light would seem able to remain. Therefore the Lord testifies by the very order of creation that He holds light in His hand, which He can bestow upon us without sun and moon. Wherefore in the fashioning of the world God willed not to create first of all the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, in order that when men recalled to memory and revolved in their minds the beginnings of the world, and knew that light and plants and the elements were brought forth before the stars, they might understand that the benefits received from the influx of the Stars must be attributed not to the Stars but to God, and thanks rendered to Him.

You ask 2. — Whence have the stars been made?

I answer, that this was the opinion of certain Hebrews, namely that the stars were created on the first day of the world, and only on the fourth affixed to heaven and suspended therein. Which Rabbi Salomon teaches among others in his commentary, and some Christians concur with him, especially Cajetan and Catharinus; and accordingly they judge that the Stars were created together with the Earth and Heaven by God, and consequently were not brought forth from any presupposed matter. But this opinion accords not at all with the narrative of Moses: for he writes that on the first day light was produced together with Heaven and Earth, adding nothing further of work; then on the fourth day he declares that the greater and lesser lights were made at God's command; therefore they had not existed before this day. — There are those who think the stars were produced outside of Heaven, and were afterwards fastened into it like radiant gems by the divine hand itself, the artificer of all things; as Moses seems to indicate in these words: And God made two great lights, and set them in the firmament; expounding which, Basil of Seleucia, in Oration 1, says that the stars were set in the heaven by the divine hand like splendid flowers, saying: unto these ends He infixes the lights of the stars in the heaven, and sows the firmament with luminous flowers, conducing to the grace and use of those who dwell upon earth. To him accords Claudius Marius Victor, book 1, On Genesis:

The heavens too, painting themselves with distinct zones, Vibrate with varied colors from ethereal flowers.

Severianus, bishop of Gabala, also concurs, Oration 3, On the creation of the world, where, speaking of the formation of the stars and asking how God made the lights? he answers: It seems He made them outside the heaven, and afterwards fixed and placed them above. Just as an artisan, after he has finished a tablet, affixes it to the wall: so God first made the lights outside the heaven, and then, as an artisan, fixed them in the upper regions, as Scripture testifies: And God made two great lights, and set them in the firmament. — Some hold with Theodoret that the Astra were formed out of that primordial light which, namely, had illumined the natal days of the three former worlds. Hence Saint Maximus, in his scholia on chapter 4 of Saint Dionysius, On the Divine Names, says that the Sun is nothing else than light... and that that first-begotten light which was created on the first day was only on the fourth transformed into the Sun. Of the same opinion Saint Basil seems to have been; for in homily 6 he says that on the first day the nature of light itself was created, but on the fourth the solar body was constituted, to be the vehicle of that primordial light. — Again, I judge that it must rather be said as more probable that the stars were brought forth from some part of the Heavens, because God on this fourth day rarefied one part of the Heavens and condensed another; and into that condensed part, the form of the Heavens having been expelled, He introduced a new form of the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars.

You ask: why has Moses made mention here only of the Sun and the Moon, and not likewise of the other five Planets, in this place? — I answer, that perhaps he passed this over in silence, because in the commemoration of the Sun and Moon, as better known to us, he wished the other planets to be understood; or because he comprehended them under the general name of stars, since they appear and seem to shine only in the manner of stars; or finally because the proper motions, effects, uses, and differences of those Planets from the other stars are known only to learned men; whereas he was writing the Genesis of the world for a ruder people, and indicated only those things which could be apprehended by the senses and by the eyes.

You ask 3. — By what reason has Moses written that the sun and moon are great lights, whereas it is established by astrological reckonings that the star of Saturn, which appears the least of all on account of its great distance, is greater than the lunar!

I answer, that Moses wrote this not from inexperience, but according to the understanding and sense common to the Israelites, in whose favor he was committing the Genesis and fabric of the world to writing. And since he was appointed teacher no less to the unlearned and rude than to the learned, he could not otherwise open school to all [so take him, as you place the hope of good in his teaching?]; it is no wonder if he chooses chiefly those things which can be understood by all. If an astrologer seek the true dimensions of the stars, he will truly find the moon less than Saturn. But that is hidden: for another thing appears to the eyes. Therefore Moses turned himself rather to use. For since the Lord stretches forth His hand, in a manner, even unto us, while He makes us enjoy the splendor of the sun and moon: how great ingratitude would it be to wink knowingly at experience itself? There is therefore no reason why men of glib tongue should see inexperience in Moses, because he makes the moon the second luminary: for he calls us not up into heaven, but only sets forth what lies open before the eyes. Let the astrologians keep for themselves the higher knowledge; meanwhile, because they perceive the nocturnal splendor of the moon, they are convicted by use itself of perverse ingratitude, unless they acknowledge the beneficence of God.

You ask 4. — What is signified by these words: Let there be lights made in the firmament of heaven, to divide the day and the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons?

I answer 1. That the sense is not this, that those lights effect the night and the day by their own light; for the Moon does not establish the night by her light, as the Sun does the day; since indeed nothing is more repugnant to night than light: but that the Sun effects both, the day by His presence, the night by His absence. The sense therefore is, let them divide, that is, let them shine distinctly: the Sun indeed by day, but the Moon and the Stars by night. — It is added moreover, and let them be for signs: not indeed prognostics of judicial Astrology, for there is here no speech of signs of human events hanging upon liberty, as the judicial astrologers suppose, whom I have attacked at length, and as I believe efficaciously, in the Physics, disp. 5, question 15 and following; but as

Philo teaches rightly in the book On the making of the world, signs are things from which conjecture may be made: First indeed, of rain, serenity, frost, winds, etc. Secondly, let them be for signs for sowing, planting, reaping, navigating, vintage, healing, etc. Thirdly, and properly, let them be for signs of times, namely of days, months, and years: for the year is described by one course of the sun, and one revolution through the zodiac; but by twelve lunations, while evidently the Moon runs twelve times through the zodiac. Likewise there are signs for determining the four seasons of the world; namely for effecting spring, summer, autumn, winter. Also for presignifying times dry, hot, humid, stormy, serene, salubrious, morbid. Similarly they are signs of Feasts, Neomenies, Sabbaths, and of all those things which pertain either to religion or to the political state: the vicissitudes of all which are ordered and defined by the motion of the Sun and Moon. And finally, as Saint Augustine says in the imperfect book On Genesis according to the letter, chapter 13, those two Astra are for signs, and for seasons, that is, they distinguish times; which, he says, by the distinction of intercalations signify that the unchangeable eternity remains above them, that the lowest, that is, as it were, the footprint of eternity, may appear. — Finally Saint Bonaventure adds, that since things future are of triple difference; some proceeding from a natural cause, some provenient from the free will of man, and some proficising from the divine will, those two lights may be called signs in a threefold manner: namely they are altogether uncertain signs either of natural effects, or of acts of free will, or of divine things; but of the third order they can be signs partly certain, partly uncertain: certain indeed by prediction and divine institution, because, as Christ the Lord says concerning the last and final days of the world, There shall be signs in the Sun, and in the Moon, and in the Stars, which will shortly presignify the coming destruction of the world and the general judgment: partly uncertain however, namely as regards the knowledge of man, Christ the Lord Himself saying, that it is not for you to know the times, or moments, which the Father hath put in His own power.

You ask finally. — In what sense are the Sun and the Moon called two great lights?

I answer, that various opinions of the ancient Philosophers existed on this matter, which Plutarch reports in book 2, Of the opinions of the Philosophers, chapter 21. For Anaximander makes the axle of the Sun equal to the earth; Hierarchus of a foot's breadth. Epicurus says it is as great as it appears, etc. But these are old wives' trifles: for it is established by certain demonstrations of the Mathematicians that the star of the Sun exceeds the whole globe of the waters encompassing the earth a hundred sixty and six times, and that it stands distant from the earth four millions of miles; whence it follows that so vast is the periphery and amplitude of the solar orb, that as the sun completes its circle in twenty-four hours, in one hour it runs through one million and a hundred forty thousand miles; which is the same as if it should run around the circuit and compass of the earth fifty times: for the convex circumference of the solar Heaven contains twenty-seven millions and three hundred sixty thousand miles, which if you divide into twenty-four hours, you will find the aforesaid number, yea and somewhat more. — But as to the Moon, Saint Basil taught

in Homily 6, and elsewhere, book 1, chapter 6, that I find her far larger alike than the other stars, to which opinion Saint Augustine seems to subscribe, book 2, On Genesis according to the letter, chapter 16, where he says: Surely let them grant this at least to our eyes, that it is so manifest that she shines more upon the earth than the rest, neither does the day brighten save by the light of the sun, nor does the night, all the stars appearing, so shine if the moon be absent, as it is illumined by her presence. But Saint Augustine speaks rather of the light of the Moon than of her magnitude. Whence the Mathematicians rightly teach that all the stars and planets whatsoever are greater than the Moon, Mercury alone excepted, who is three hundred ninety times less than the earth; but there is no star in the firmament which is not ninety times greater than the whole globe of the earth; the magnitudes of the wandering stars indeed are diverse, yet all exceed the earth, three excepted; Venus, the Moon, Mercury; for the earth is greater than the star of Venus thirty-seven times, than the star of the Moon truly thirty-nine times; than the star of Mercury far more abundantly. Therefore the Moon is called a great luminary, not indeed by the amplitude of her axis, but by reason of the greater illumination, and of that marvelous efficacy whereby she prevails upon these lower things. For, says Saint Ambrose, book 4, chapter 7, the Moon assumes that ministry in which is her brother (the sun), that she illuminate the darkness, cherish the seeds, increase the fruits. She has also very many things distinct from her brother, that Him whom the heat of the day exhales of the humors of the earth, she may restore in the brief time of night with dew: for even the Moon herself is besprinkled with a milky dew. Then thereafter she is diminished and increased, that she may be less when she rises again new, and when diminished may be filled full. In which is a great mystery, for even the elements compassionate her defect, and by her progress are filled up wherein they had been diminished. For the brains of animals, and the moist things of sea-shores: since fuller oysters are reported to be found, and many other things, when the lunar globe grows.