Works (CSEL) 17 part 1/16

That men should have taken up so great an opinion, that some of them established three first principles of all things - God, and the exemplar, and matter, as Plato and his disciples did - and asserted that these are incorrupt and uncreated and without beginning, and that God made the world out of matter not as the creator of matter but as a craftsman looking to the exemplar, that is, the idea, which matter they call ὕλην, which is asserted to have given to all things the causes of generation; and that they reckoned the world itself also to be incorrupt and neither created nor made; while others too, as Aristotle with his followers thought fit to argue, posited two principles, matter and form, and a third along with these, which is called the operative, to which it might competently belong to effect what it had judged should be undertaken.

What then is so unfitting as that they should join the eternity of the work with the eternity of the omnipotent God, or should say that the work itself is God, so that they pursued heaven and earth and sea with divine honors? From which it came to pass that they believed the parts of the world to be gods, although concerning the world itself there is no slight question among them. For Pythagoras asserts one world, others say there are innumerable worlds, as Democritus writes, to whom antiquity granted very great authority concerning natural philosophy; and Aristotle ventures to say that the world itself always was and shall be; whereas Plato, on the contrary, presumes to assert that it was not always but shall always be; while very many testify in their writings that it neither always was nor always shall be.

Amid these dissensions of theirs, what estimate of the truth can there be, when some say that the world itself is God, because a divine mind seems, as they think, to be in it; others, that its parts are gods; others, both? In which neither what is the shape of the gods, nor what their number, nor what their place, nor what their life or care can be comprehended - since, by the reckoning of the world, it would have to be understood that god is something rolling, round, burning, driven by certain motions without sense, who is borne along by an alien, not his own, motion. Whence holy Moses, foreseeing by the divine Spirit that these errors of men would come to pass, and had perhaps already begun, at the opening of his discourse thus says:

'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' comprehending the origin of things, the author of the world, the creation of matter, that you might know that God is before the beginning of the world, or is himself the beginning of all things - just as in the Gospel the Son of God, to those saying 'Who are you?' answered, 'The Beginning, who also speak to you' - and that he himself gave to things the beginning of generation, and that he himself is the creator of the world, not an imitator of matter guided by some idea, out of which he might conform his works not to his own will but to a proposed model. He says beautifully also, 'In the beginning he made,' that he might express the incomprehensible swiftness of the work, since he had set forth the completion of the finished operation sooner than the indication of its beginning. Who said this we ought to consider.

It was assuredly that Moses, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, whom, taken up from the river, Pharaoh's daughter loved as a son, and, supported by royal resources, desired to have formed and instructed in all the disciplines of secular prudence. He, although he received his name from water, yet did not think it should be said that all things consist of water, as Thales says; and though he was reared in the royal court, yet for love of righteousness he chose to undergo voluntary exile rather than, at the height of tyranny, to acquire the full enjoyment of sin by its delights.

Finally, before he was called to the office of liberating the people, moved by a natural zeal for equity, having avenged on one of his own people the man who was receiving injury, he gave himself over to ill-will and snatched himself from pleasure, and, shunning all the tumults of the royal house, betook himself into the secret place of Ethiopia; and there, removed from all other affairs, he bent his whole mind to the divine knowledge, that he might see the glory of God face to face. To him Scripture testifies that 'no prophet arose any more in Israel like Moses,' who knew the Lord face to face, not in a vision nor in a dream, but speaking mouth to mouth with God most high, neither in an appearance nor through riddles, but graced with the gift of the clear and manifest presence of the Divine.

And so he opened his mouth and poured forth the things which the Lord spoke in him, according to what he had said to him, when he sent him to Pharaoh the king: 'Go, and I will open your mouth and instruct you what you ought to speak.' For if he had received from God what he should say concerning the dismissing of the people, how much more what he should speak concerning heaven? In short, not in the persuasion of human wisdom nor in the simulating disputations of philosophy, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, as a witness of the divine work, he dared to say: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.'

He did not, as though the world were to come together by a concourse of atoms, await a late and idle business, nor some disciple of matter, by contemplating which he might fashion the world, but he thought that God the author must be set forth. For the man full of prudence perceived that the divine mind alone contains the substance of things visible and invisible and the causes of things - not, as the philosophers dispute, that a stronger interlocking of atoms supplies the cause of continual perseverance; he judged that they were weaving a spider's web who gave such minute and insubstantial first principles to heaven and earth, which, as they were joined together by chance, so by chance and at random would be dissolved, unless they stood firm in the divine power of their governor.

And not without reason do they not know a governor who have not known God, through whom all things are ruled and governed. Let us therefore follow him who knows both the author and the governor, and let us not be led away by vain opinions. 'In the beginning,' he says. How good the order, that he should first assert that which they were wont to deny, and that they might recognize the beginning to be the beginning of the world, lest men should suppose the world to be without a beginning. Whence David too, when he was speaking of heaven and earth and sea, says: 'You have made all things in wisdom.' He gave therefore a beginning to the world, he gave also to the creature its infirmity, lest we should believe it to be ἄναρχον, that is, without beginning, and uncreated, and a partaker of the divine substance.

And beautifully Scripture added the word 'made,' lest any delay should be thought to have occurred in the making, so that even thus men might understand how incomparable a Worker He was, who completed so great a work in the brief and tiny instant of His operation, so that the effect of His will outran the very perception of time. No one saw Him working, yet recognized the work done. Where then is delay, when you read: 'For He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created'? Therefore He needs neither the practice of an art nor the exertion of power, who in a moment of His will fulfilled the majesty of so great an operation, making the things that were not to be so swiftly that neither did His will run ahead of His working, nor His working ahead of His will.

You marvel at the work, you seek the Worker—who gave the beginning to so great a work, who made it so swiftly: Scripture at once subjoins, saying 'because God made heaven and earth.' You have heard the Author; you ought not to doubt. This is He in whom Melchizedek blessed Abraham, the father of many nations, saying: 'Blessed be Abraham of the most high God, who made heaven and earth.' And Abraham believed and said: 'I stretch out my hand to the most high God, who made heaven and earth.' You see that no man discovered this, but God announced it. For Melchizedek is God, who is in truth the King of peace and of righteousness, having neither beginning of days nor end. It is no wonder, then, if God, who is without beginning, gave a beginning to all things, so that the things which were not might begin to be.

It is no wonder if God, who contains all things by His power and embraces the universe in His incomprehensible majesty, made these things which are seen, since He also made those which are not seen. And who would deny that the invisible things are more excellent than those which are seen, since the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal? Who would doubt that God made these things—He who, speaking through the prophet, said: 'Who has measured the waters with His hand, and the heaven with His palm, and all the earth with His closed fist? Who set the mountains in a balance and the rocks in a scale and the woods on a yoke? Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor, or who has instructed Him?' Of whom also we read elsewhere that 'He holds the circuit of the earth, and made the earth as nothing.'

And Jeremiah says: 'The gods that have not made heaven and earth shall perish from the earth and from under this heaven. The Lord who made the earth by His power, and established and ordered it by His wisdom, and by His prudence stretched out the heaven and the multitude of waters in the sky.' And he added: 'Every man has become foolish by his own knowledge.' For he who follows the corruptible things of the world, and from these supposes that he can grasp the truth of the divine nature, how is he not made foolish by the craft of his subtle disputing? Therefore, since you hear so many oracles by which God testifies that He made the world, do not believe Him to be without beginning, because the world is said to be like a sphere, so that no beginning of it appears to exist.

And when it thunders, all things seem to be set in motion as it were in a circle, so that you cannot easily grasp where it begins and where it ends, because it is held impossible to gather by the senses the beginning of a circuit. For you cannot find the beginning of a sphere, nor where the orb of the moon began, nor where it ends in the monthly waning of the moon. Yet even if you yourself cannot grasp it, it does not therefore follow that it did not begin or will never end. If you yourself draw a circle with ink or stylus, or describe it from a center, you will not easily either gather with your eyes or recall with your mind where you began or ended, once an interval has been interposed; and yet you are your own witness that you both began and ended. For though it escapes the senses, it does not undermine the truth.

But the things which have a beginning also have an end, and to those things to which an end is given it is established that a beginning was given. That the world will have an end the Saviour Himself teaches in His Gospel, saying: 'For the fashion of this world passes away,' and 'heaven and earth shall pass away,' and below: 'Behold, I am with you always, even to the consummation of the world.'

How then do they assert that the world is coeternal with God, and associate the creature with the Creator of all, and dispute that it is equal to Him, and think that the material body of the world is to be joined to that invisible and inaccessible divine nature? especially since, according to their own opinion, they cannot deny that, of that whose parts are subject to corruption and mutability, the whole must necessarily be subject to those same passions to which its own portions are liable. Therefore he teaches that there is a beginning, who says: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' Now 'beginning' is referred either to time, or to number, or to foundation, just as in the building of a house the beginning is the foundation.

We learn from the authority of the Scriptures that 'beginning' can also be spoken of as of conversion and of depravity. There is also the beginning of an art, namely the art itself, from which thereafter the work of the various craftsmen began. There is also the beginning of good works, namely the best end; as the beginning of mercy is to please God by what you do, for we are chiefly called forth to confer assistance upon men. There is also a divine virtue which is expressed by this appellation. It is referred to time, if you wish to say at what time God made heaven and earth—that is, at the world's outset, when it began to be made, as Wisdom says: 'When He prepared the heavens, I was with Him.' But if we refer it to number, then it fits that you understand:

First He made heaven and earth, then the hills, regions, and uninhabitable bounds; or thus: before the rest of the visible creatures—day, night, fruit-bearing trees, and the diverse kinds of living things—He made heaven and earth. But if you refer it to foundation, you have read that the beginning of the earth is its foundation, when Wisdom says: 'When He was making the strong foundations of the earth, I was beside Him, arranging all things.' There is also the beginning of good discipline, as is that saying: 'The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord,' since he who fears the Lord turns away from error and directs his ways to the path of virtue. For unless a man fears God, he cannot renounce sin. This we can likewise take of that other saying:

'This month shall be to you the beginning of months,' although this too may be taken of time, since he was speaking of the Lord's Passover, which is celebrated at the beginning of spring. In this beginning of months, then, He made heaven and earth, since the world's outset ought thence to be taken—where there was a springtime temperate climate suitable for all. Hence the year too expressed the image of the world's birth, so that after the wintry frosts and the mists of winter the brighter-than-usual splendor of springtime might shine forth. The world's first rising therefore gave a form to the future courses of the years, so that by that law the alternations of the years should arise, and at the beginning of each year the earth should bring forth the new seedlings of the seeds, where first the Lord God had said:

'Let the earth bring forth the herb of grass yielding seed after its kind and after its likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree making fruit.' And immediately the earth brought forth the herb of grass and the fruit-bearing tree; in which the divine providence both of perpetual moderation and the swiftness of the earth bringing forth supports for us the estimation of springtime's season. For although at any time it was both ready for God to command and for earthly nature to obey, so that amid wintry frosts and the hoarfrosts of winter the earth, warmed by the heavenly command, might bring forth its sprouting offspring, yet it was not in keeping with the eternal arrangement that ground stiffened by rigid ice should suddenly relax into green fruits and mingle blossoms with bristling frosts.

Therefore, that Scripture might show the season of spring at the world's constitution, it says: 'This month is to you the beginning of months, it is the first to you among the months of the year,' calling the springtime season the first month. For it was fitting that the beginning of the year should be the beginning of generation, and that generation itself should be cherished by softer breezes. For the tender beginnings of things could not endure the labor of harsher cold nor sustain the injury of scorching heat.

At the same time it is permissible to add this, since it rightly concurs, that He seems to have entered upon this generation and into these uses at the very season at which from this generation there is a lawful passage into regeneration; since indeed in the spring season the children of Israel left Egypt and passed through the sea, baptized in the cloud and in the sea, as the Apostle said, and at that season the Passover of our Lord Jesus Christ is each year celebrated—that is, the passage of souls from vices to virtue, from the passions of the flesh to the grace and sobriety of the mind, from the leaven of malice and wickedness to truth and sincerity. To the regenerate, therefore, it is said: 'This month is to you the beginning of months, it is the first to you among the months of the year.'

For he who is washed forsakes and abandons that intelligible Pharaoh, the prince of this world, saying: 'I renounce you, devil, and your works and your dominions.' Nor will he henceforth serve him either in the earthly passions of this body or in the errors of a depraved mind—he who, having sunk all his malice in the manner of lead, and being fortified on right and left by good works, strives to pass over the straits of this present age with unhindered footstep. In the book also which is written of Numbers, Scripture says: 'The beginning of the nations is Amalek, and his seed shall perish.'

And certainly Amalek is not the first of all nations, but because by interpretation 'Amalek' is taken to mean 'a people of the wicked'—and the wicked are the nations—see whether we ought to understand the prince of this world, who rules over the nations that do his will, whose seed shall perish. Now his seed are the impious and the unbelieving, to whom the Lord says: 'You are of your father the devil.' There is also a mystical beginning, as is that saying: 'I am the first and the last, the beginning and the end,' and that one especially in the Gospel, where the Lord, being asked who He was, answered: 'The beginning, which also I speak to you.' He is truly and supremely the beginning of all things, because no one is before Him, and the end, because no one is beyond Him.

According to the Gospel, the beginning is of the ways of the Lord in His works, so that through Him the race of men might learn to follow the ways of the Lord and to work the works of God. In this beginning, then—that is, in Christ—God made heaven and earth, because through Him all things were made, and without Him was made nothing that was made; in Him, because in Him all things consist, and He is the firstborn of all creation: whether because He is before all creation, or because He is holy—for the firstborn are holy, as 'Israel is the firstborn,' not because before all, but because holier than the rest. Now the Lord is holy above all creation, even according to His assumption of a body, because He alone is without sin, He alone without vanity, while every creature is subject to vanity.

We can also understand: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' that is, before time, just as the beginning of a road is not yet the road, and the beginning of a house is not yet the house. Finally, others have rendered it 'en kephalaiō,' as it were 'in the head'; by which is signified that the sum of the operation was fulfilled in a brief and tiny instant. There are therefore also those who take 'beginning' not for time but before time, and as 'kephalaion,' or 'head,' so that we may say it is assigned as it were the sum of the work, since the sum of visible things is heaven and earth, which seem to have regard not only to this world but also to the indication of invisible things and as a kind of argument for those things that are not seen, as is that prophetic saying:

'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament announces the works of His hands.' Following this, the Apostle concluded in the same sense with other words, saying: 'For the invisible things of Him are understood by the things that are made.' For we easily understand Him to be the Author of angels and dominions and powers, who in a moment of His command made this so great beauty of the world to exist out of nothing—that which was not—and granted that things or causes which did not exist should have substance. For this world is a specimen of the divine operation, since while the work is seen, the Worker is preferred.

For just as of those arts some are active, which consist in bodily motion or in the sound of the voice—when the motion or sound has ceased, nothing remains over nor abides for the spectators or hearers—; others more contemplative, which exercise the vigor of the mind; others of such a kind that, even when the function of operation has ceased, the gift of the work appears, as building and weaving, which even when the craftsman is silent display his skill, so that the work bears witness to its maker: similarly this world too is a badge of the divine majesty, so that through it the wisdom of God may be made manifest. Beholding which, the prophet, lifting at the same time the eyes of his mind to the invisible things, said: 'How magnified are Your works, O Lord! You have made all things in wisdom.'

Nor indeed do we read in vain that it was 'made,' since very many of the Gentiles, who would have the world to be coeternal with God as a kind of shadow of the divine power, also assert that it subsists of its own accord. And although they confess that God is its cause, yet they would have it made a cause not out of His will and arrangement, but in such a way that, as the body is the cause of its shadow, the shadow clings to the body and the lightning-flash to its natural light by association rather than by deliberate will. Beautifully, then, does Moses say that 'God made heaven and earth.' He did not say that He caused it to underlie, nor that He furnished a cause to the world that it might be, but 'made'—as one good making what would be useful, as one wise making what He judged best, as one almighty making what He foresaw to be most ample.

But how could it be as it were a shadow, where there was no body, since there cannot be a bodily shadow of the incorporeal God? And how also could the splendor of the incorporeal light be bodily? But if you seek the splendor of God, the Son is the image of the invisible God. As is God, therefore, such also is the image. God is invisible, the image too is invisible; for He is the splendor of the Father's glory and the image of His substance. 'In the beginning,' it says, 'God made heaven and earth.' The world therefore was made and began to be, which was not; but the Word of God was in the beginning and was always. But the angels, dominions, and powers, even though they began at some time, yet already existed when this world was made.

For all things were created and founded, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; 'all things,' it says, 'were created through Him and unto Him.' What is 'created unto Him'? Because He is the heir of the Father, in that from the Father the inheritance has passed unto Him, as the Father says: 'Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance.' Yet this inheritance passed from the Father unto the Son, and returns from the Son unto the Father. Excellently, therefore, the Apostle in this passage too called the Son the Author of all things and the One who contains all things by His majesty; and to the Romans he says of the Father: 'For of Him and through Him and unto Him are all things.'

'Of Him' is the beginning and origin of the substance of all things, that is, of His will and power—for all things took their beginning from His will, since there is one God the Father, of whom are all things; for He made them as it were of His own, He who made them whence He willed—'through Him' is the continuation, 'unto Him' the end. Of Him, therefore, is the matter; through Him the operation, which bound and held together the universe; unto Him, because both, as long as He wills, all things abide and consist by His power, and their end returns into the will of God, and by His decision they are dissolved. In the beginning of time, therefore, God made heaven and earth. For time is from this world, not before the world; and a day is a portion of time, not a beginning.

And although by the sequence of the reading we could establish that on the first day the Lord made day and night, which are the alternations of times, and on the second day made the firmament, by which He divided the water which is under heaven and the water which is above heaven, yet it suffices well enough for the present assertion that 'in the beginning' He made heaven—whence comes the prerogative and cause of generation—and made earth, in which the substance of generation might be. For in these were created those four elements, out of which are generated all these things that belong to the world.

Now there are four elements—fire of heaven, air, water, and earth—which in all things are mingled with one another; since indeed even in earth you may find fire, which is frequently struck out from stones and iron, and in heaven, since the sky is fiery and gleaming with shining stars, water can be understood to be present, which is either above the heaven or is frequently sent down to the earth from that higher place in abundant rain. These things we could gather at greater length, if we saw that they profited anything toward the edification of the Church. But because to be occupied with these things is a fruitless business, let us rather bend our mind to those things in which there is the advancement of eternal life.

Concerning the quality and substance of heaven, then, it is enough to bring forth those things which we have found in the writings of Isaiah, who in modest and ordinary words expressed the quality of the heavenly nature, saying that 'He established the heaven like smoke,' wishing to declare its nature to be subtle and not solid. As to its appearance too, it abundantly suffices that he himself spoke of the firmament of heaven, that 'God made the heaven like a vault,' since within the circuit of heaven are enclosed all things that are carried on whether in the sea or on the lands. This is likewise signified when it is read that 'God stretched out the heaven.'

For it is stretched out either like a skin for tabernacles, the dwellings of the saints, or like a book, that the names of many may be written therein, who have merited the grace of Christ by faith and devotion, to whom it is said: 'Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.' Concerning the quality or position of the earth, too, it profits nothing to treat, with a view to the appearance of what is to come, since it is enough for knowledge that the series of the divine Scriptures comprehends that 'He suspends the earth upon nothing.' What does it profit us to dispute whether it hangs in the air or upon the water, so that thence a controversy might arise—how the nature of air, thin and rather soft, could sustain the earthly mass, or how, if upon the waters, the heavy collapse of the lands is not submerged in the water?

Or how does the wave of the sea not yield to it and, moved from its place, spread itself out upon its sides? Many also have said that the earth is in the midst of the air and remains immovable by its own mass, because it extends here and there with equal motion on every side. Concerning which we think enough has been said by the Lord to His servant Job, when, speaking through the cloud, He said: 'Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell Me, if you have knowledge. Who set its measures, if you know? Or who is it that drew a measuring-line over it? Or upon what are its circles fastened?' And below: 'I shut up the sea with gates, and said: Thus far shall you come and shall not pass over, but in you shall your waves be broken.'

Does not God evidently show that all things subsist by His majesty, not by number, weight, and measure? For the creature does not give the law, but receives it, or keeps what it has received. It is not, then, that because the earth is in the middle it is suspended as if by an equal balance, but because the majesty of God constrains it by the law of His will, so that above what is unstable and void it should remain stable; as David too the prophet bears witness, saying: 'He founded the earth upon its firmness: it shall not be moved for ever and ever.' Here truly God is proclaimed not merely as a craftsman, but as almighty, who suspended the earth not by some center, but by the firmament of His command, nor suffers it to be inclined.

We ought, therefore, to understand not the measure of a center, but of the divine judgment; for it is not a measure of art, but of power—a measure of righteousness, a measure of knowledge—since all things do not pass by His knowledge as though immeasurable, but lie subject to His knowledge as though measured out. For when we read: 'I have made firm its pillars,' we cannot suppose the earth to be truly propped up by pillars, but by that power which underprops and sustains the substance of the earth. Finally, gather even from this how much the constitution of the earth is in the power of God, since it is written: 'Who looks upon the earth and makes it tremble,' and elsewhere: 'Yet once more I shake the earth.'