Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 1 part 19/22

O that you would slay them with the two-edged sword, and they be its enemies no more! For thus do I love them to be slain to themselves, that they may live to you. But behold, there are others, not faultfinders but praisers of the book of Genesis, who say: 'The Spirit of God, who wrote these things through Moses his servant, did not wish in these words to have this understood—not this which you say, but something else, which we say.' To these I answer thus, with you, O God of us all, as judge. Will you say that those things are false which Truth tells me with a strong voice in my inner ear concerning the true eternity of the Creator: that his substance is in no way varied through times, nor is his will outside his substance?

whence he does not now will this and now will that, but wills all that he wills once and at the same time and forever, not again and again, nor now these things, now those, nor does he will afterward what he did not will before, nor cease to will what he willed before; because such a will is mutable, and everything mutable is not eternal; but our God is eternal. Likewise, that which he tells me in my inner ear: the expectation of things to come becomes a beholding when they have come, and the same beholding becomes a memory when they have passed; and every intention which is thus varied is mutable, and everything mutable is not eternal; but our God is eternal.

These things I gather together and join, and I find my God, the eternal God, to have founded the creature by no new will, nor does his knowledge suffer anything transitory. What, then, will you say, you contradictors? Are these things false? 'No,' they say. What of this? Is it false that every formed nature, or every formable matter, is not save from him who is supremely good, because he supremely is? 'Neither do we deny this,' they say. What, then?

Do you deny this, that there is a certain sublime creature, cleaving with so chaste a love to the true and eternal God, that although it is not coeternal with him, it nevertheless never looses or flows away from him into any variety and vicissitude of times, but rests in the most truthful contemplation of him alone—because you, O God, to one who loves you as much as you command, show yourself to him and suffice for him, and therefore he does not turn aside from you nor from himself? This is the house of God, not earthly nor of any heavenly bodily mass, but spiritual and a partaker of your eternity, because it is without blemish forever. For you established it for an age and for an age of ages; you set a precept and it shall not pass away. Yet it is not coeternal with you, since it is not without beginning:

for it was made. For even though we do not find any time before it—since Wisdom was created before all things—not, indeed, that Wisdom which is plainly coeternal and coequal with you, our God, its Father, and through whom all things were created, and in which Beginning you made heaven and earth; but assuredly a wisdom which was created, namely an intellectual nature, which by the contemplation of light is itself light—for it too, though created, is called wisdom; but as great as is the difference between the light which illumines and that which is illumined, so great is the difference between the Wisdom which creates and that wisdom which is created, just as between the justice that justifies and the justice that was made by justification; for we too are called your justice;

for a certain servant of yours says: that we may be the justice of God in him. Therefore, because a certain wisdom was created before all things, a wisdom which was created, namely the rational and intellectual mind of your chaste city, our mother, which is above and is free and is eternal in the heavens—what heavens, but those which praise you, the heavens of heavens, since this too is the heaven of heaven belonging to the Lord?—even though we do not find time before it, because it precedes even the creation of time, being created before all things, yet before it there is the eternity of the Creator himself, from whom, being made, it took its beginning, not, indeed, of time, since time did not yet exist, but of its own founding.

Whence it is so from you, our God, that it is plainly something other than you, and not the selfsame; and not only before it, but not even in it, do we find time, because it is fit to behold your face always, and is nowhere turned aside from it; whereby it comes to pass that it is varied by no change. Yet there is in it that very mutability, whereby it would grow dark and cold, were it not, by cleaving to you with great love, to shine and glow as it were a perpetual noonday from you. O house luminous and beautiful, I have loved your comeliness and the place of the habitation of the glory of my Lord, your builder and possessor! For you let my pilgrimage sigh, and I say to him who made you, that he may possess me also in you, because he made me too.

I have gone astray like a lost sheep, but on the shoulders of my Shepherd, your builder, I hope to be carried back to you. What do you say to me, you contradictors whom I was addressing, who yet believe both that Moses was the devout servant of God and that his books are the oracles of the Holy Spirit? Is this not the house of God—not, indeed, coeternal with God, but yet, after its own manner, eternal in the heavens, where you seek the vicissitudes of times in vain, because you do not find them? For it surmounts every distension and every rolling span of duration, to which it is always good to cleave to God. 'It is,' they say. What, then, of those things which my heart cried out to my God, when it heard within the voice of his praise—what at last do you contend to be false?

Is it because there was formless matter, where, on account of no form, there was no order? But where there was no order, there could be no vicissitude of times; and yet this almost-nothing, inasmuch as it was not utterly nothing, was assuredly from him, from whom is whatever is, in whatever way it is anything at all. 'This too,' they say, 'we do not deny.' For with these I wish to confer something in your presence, my God—with those who concede that all these things, which your Truth does not keep silent within my mind, are true. For those who deny these things, let them bark as much as they will and make a din to themselves: I will try to persuade them to be still and to make a way for your Word to reach them. But if they refuse and repulse me, I beseech you, my God, be not silent toward me. Speak truly in my heart;

for you alone speak thus; and I will dismiss them to puff outside into the dust and to stir up the earth into their own eyes, and I will enter into my chamber and sing to you songs of love, groaning with unutterable groanings in my pilgrimage, and remembering Jerusalem with my heart stretched out upward toward her—Jerusalem my fatherland, Jerusalem my mother, and you the ruler over her, illuminator, father, guardian, husband, chaste and strong delights and solid joy and all ineffable goods, all at once, because you are the one supreme and true Good: and I will not be turned away, until you gather all that I am from this dispersion and deformity into the peace of her, my dearest mother, where are the firstfruits of my spirit, whence these things are made certain to me.

And conform and confirm me forever, my God, my mercy. But with those who do not say that all those things which are true are false, who honor your holy Scripture set forth through holy Moses and place it with us on the summit of authority to be followed, and yet contradict us in something, I speak thus. Be you, our God, the arbiter between my confessions and their contradictions. For they say: 'Although these things are true, Moses nevertheless did not have those two things in view, when by the revelation of the Spirit he said: In the beginning God made heaven and earth.

By the name of heaven he did not signify that spiritual or intellectual creature always contemplating the face of God, nor by the name of earth the formless matter.' What then? 'What we say,' they assert, 'is what that man perceived; this he expressed in these words.' What is that? 'By the name of heaven and earth,' they say, 'he wished first to signify this whole visible world universally and briefly, so that afterward he might set forth, by the enumeration of days, all things as it were point by point, which it pleased the Holy Spirit to declare in this way.'

For such people were that uncultivated and carnal nation to whom he spoke, that he judged that only the visible works of God should be commended to them.' But the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss—from which it is consequently shown that all these visible things, which are known to all, were made and arranged through those days—they agree are not incongruously to be understood as that formless matter. What? If another should say that the same formlessness and confusion of matter was first conveyed by the name of heaven and earth, because out of it this visible world, with all the natures which most manifestly appear in it (which is often wont to be called by the name of heaven and earth), was founded and perfected? What?

If yet another should say that heaven and earth were not unfittingly named as the invisible and the visible nature, and through this that the whole creation, which God made in Wisdom, that is, in the Beginning, was comprehended under these two terms;

yet because all things were made not out of the very substance of God, but out of nothing—because they are not the selfsame which God is, and a certain mutability is present in all things, whether they remain, like the eternal house of God, or whether they are changed, like the soul and body of man—the common matter of all things invisible and visible, still formless but certainly formable, out of which heaven and earth were to be made (that is, both the invisible and the visible creation, each now formed), was declared by these names, by which would be called the earth invisible and unformed and darkness over the abyss; with this distinction, that the earth invisible and unformed is to be understood as bodily matter before the quality of form, but the darkness over the abyss as spiritual matter before the restraining of its as it were flowing immoderation, and before the illumination of wisdom?

There is yet another thing one might say, if anyone else should wish it: namely, that by the words 'heaven and earth' it is not the already perfected and formed invisible and visible natures that are signified, when we read 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' but rather that this very formless, inchoate beginning of things—the matter capable of being formed and created—is what is called by these names, because in it those things already existed in confused state, not yet distinguished by qualities and forms; which now, already arranged in their proper orders, are called heaven and earth: the one a spiritual, the other a corporeal creature. Having heard and considered all these things, I do not wish to contend with words; for that is profitable for nothing, save the subverting of those who hear.

But the law is good unto edification, if a man use it lawfully; for the end thereof is charity, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned. And our Master knew on what two precepts He had hung all the law and the prophets. To me ardently confessing this, O my God, light of my eyes in secret, what harm does it do me, when diverse meanings can be understood in these words—meanings which nevertheless are true? What harm, I say, does it do me, if I should understand something other than what another has understood the writer to have meant?

All of us indeed who read strive to track out and grasp what he whom we read intended; and since we believe him to be truthful, we dare not suppose that he said anything which we either know or think to be false. So then, while each man strives to perceive in the holy Scriptures that which their writer perceived in them, what evil is there if he perceives that which You, O light of all truthful minds, show to be true—even though the one he reads did not perceive this, seeing that he too perceived something true, though not this very thing? For it is true, O Lord, that You made heaven and earth. It is true that Your Wisdom is the Beginning in which You made all things.

Likewise it is true that this visible world has its great parts, heaven and earth, comprehending in a brief expression all natures made and created. And it is true that everything mutable suggests to our knowledge a certain formlessness, by which it receives form, or by which it is changed and altered. It is true that no times affect that which so cleaves to the unchangeable form that, though it be mutable, it is not changed. It is true that formlessness, which is next to nothing, cannot have the alternations of times. It is true that that out of which something is made can, by a certain manner of speech, already bear the name of the thing made from it: whence any formlessness whatsoever out of which heaven and earth were made could be called heaven and earth.

It is true that of all formed things nothing is nearer to the formless than earth and the abyss. It is true that not only what is created and formed, but whatever is capable of being created and formed, You made, of whom are all things. It is true that everything which is formed out of the formless is first formless, then formed. From all these truths, of which they do not doubt to whose inner eye You have granted to see such things, and who immovably believe that Moses, Your servant, spoke in the spirit of truth—from all these, then, one man takes for himself one thing, who says: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' that is, in His Word coeternal with Himself God made the intelligible and sensible, or spiritual and corporeal, creation; another takes something else, who says:

'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' that is, in His Word coeternal with Himself God made this whole mass of the corporeal world, with all the manifest and known natures which it contains; another says: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' that is, in His Word coeternal with Himself God made the formless matter of the spiritual and corporeal creation; another says: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' that is, in His Word coeternal with Himself God made the formless matter of the corporeal creation, wherein heaven and earth were still confused, which now, already distinguished and formed, we perceive in the mass of this world; another says:

'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' that is, in the very inception of making and working God made the formless matter holding heaven and earth confusedly, whence, now formed, they stand forth and appear with all that is in them. Likewise, as regards the understanding of the following words, from all those truths one man takes for himself this, who says: 'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the abyss,' that is, that corporeal thing which God made was still the formless matter of corporeal things, without order, without light; another says:

'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the abyss,' that is, this whole thing which was called heaven and earth was still a formless and dark matter, out of which would come the corporeal heaven and corporeal earth, with all that is in them known to the bodily senses; another says: 'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the abyss,' that is, this whole thing which was called heaven and earth was still a formless and dark matter, out of which would come the intelligible heaven—which elsewhere is called the heaven of heaven—and the earth, namely all corporeal nature, under which name is to be understood also this corporeal heaven, that is, out of which would come every invisible and visible creature;

another says: 'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the abyss,' Scripture did not call that formlessness by the name of heaven and earth, but, he says, that very formlessness already existed, which it named the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss, out of which Scripture had foretold that God made heaven and earth, namely the spiritual and corporeal creature; another says:

'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was upon the abyss,' that is, a certain formlessness was already the matter out of which Scripture foretold that God made heaven and earth, namely the whole corporeal mass of the world distributed into two greatest parts, the upper and the lower, with all the familiar and known creatures that are in them. For when someone tries to resist these two extreme opinions in this manner: 'If you do not wish this formlessness of matter to be seen as called by the name of heaven and earth, then there existed something which God had not made, out of which He made heaven and earth;

for Scripture did not relate that God made this matter, unless we understand it to have been signified by the term 'heaven and earth,' or 'earth' alone, when it was said: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' so that what follows—'but the earth was invisible and unformed'—although it pleased Scripture so to call the formless matter, we should nevertheless understand to be nothing other than that which God made in what was written: 'He made heaven and earth.'' The defenders of these two opinions, which we placed as the extremes, the one or the other, when they have heard these things, will answer and say:

'We do not deny that this formless matter was made by God, by God from whom are all things exceedingly good; for just as we say that what is created and formed is a greater good, so we confess that what is made capable of being created and formed is a lesser good—yet good nonetheless. But that Scripture did not mention God's having made this formlessness, just as it did not mention many other things—such as the Cherubim and Seraphim, and those which the Apostle distinctly names: thrones, dominions, principalities, powers—which nevertheless God plainly made. Or if in what is said, 'He made heaven and earth,' all things are comprehended, what do we say of the waters over which the Spirit of God moved?

For if they are understood together when earth is named, how then is formless matter taken under the name of earth, when we see waters so beautiful? Or if it is so taken, why was it written that out of that same formlessness the firmament was made and called heaven, while it was not written that the waters were made? For they are not still formless and unseen, which we behold flowing with so comely an appearance. Or if they received that appearance then, when God said, 'Let the water which is under the firmament be gathered together,' so that the gathering is itself the forming, what will be answered concerning the waters which are above the firmament? For neither would they, if formless, have deserved to receive so honorable a seat, nor is it written by what word they were formed.

Hence, if Genesis was silent about God's having made something which nevertheless neither sound faith nor sure understanding doubts that God made; nor will any sober doctrine on that account dare to say that these waters are coeternal with God, merely because we hear them indeed mentioned in the book of Genesis, while we do not find where they were made: why should we not likewise understand, with truth teaching us, that that formless matter also—which this Scripture calls the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss—was made by God out of nothing, and therefore is not coeternal with Him, although this narrative omitted to declare where it was made?' Having heard and examined these things according to the measure of my weakness, which I confess to You, my God who know it, I see that two kinds of disagreement can arise when anything is reported by truthful messengers through signs: one, if the disagreement is about the truth of things; the other, if it is about the will of the one reporting.

For in one way we inquire concerning the condition of the creature, what is true; in another way, what Moses, that excellent member of Your household of faith, wished his reader and hearer to understand in these words. In that first kind, let all depart from me who think they know things that are false. In this second kind likewise, let all depart from me who think that Moses said things that are false. But let me be joined with those, O Lord, in You, and let me delight with them in You, who feed upon Your truth in the breadth of charity; and let us draw near together to the words of Your book, and seek in them Your will through the will of Your servant, by whose pen You dispensed them.

But which of us so finds it, among so many truths which present themselves to seekers in those words understood in one way and another, that he can say as confidently, 'This is what Moses meant, and this is what he wished to be understood in that narrative,' as he says confidently, 'This is true—whether he meant this or something else'? For behold, my God, I, Your servant, who have vowed to You the sacrifice of confession in these writings, and pray that of Your mercy I may pay You my vows: behold, how confidently I say that in Your immutable Word You made all things, invisible and visible—do I say with equal confidence that Moses, when he wrote 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' attended to nothing other than this? For not as in Your

truth I see this to be certain, do I likewise see in his mind that he thought this when he wrote these things. For he could have thought, in the very inception of making, when he said 'In the beginning'; he could also have wished, by 'heaven and earth' in this place, to have understood no nature already formed and perfected, whether spiritual or corporeal, but both of them inchoate and as yet formless. I see indeed that whichever of these was said could truly have been said, but which of these he was thinking in these words, I do not see so clearly. Yet whether it was some one of these, or something else which I have not mentioned, that so great a man beheld in his mind when he uttered these words, I do not doubt that he saw the truth and fitly expressed it. Let no one now be troublesome to me by saying to me:

'Moses did not mean what you say, but he meant what I say.' For if he were to say to me, 'How do you know that Moses meant what you declare concerning these his words?', I ought to bear it with an equable mind, and would perhaps answer what I have answered above, or somewhat more fully, if he were the more obstinate. But when he says, 'He did not mean what you say, but what I say'—and yet does not deny that what each of us says is true—O life of the poor, my God, in whose bosom there is no contradiction, rain down into my heart Your softening dews, that I may patiently bear such men;

who say this to me not because they are divine and have seen in the heart of Your servant what they say, but because they are proud, and have not known Moses's meaning, but love their own—not because it is true, but because it is theirs. Otherwise they would equally love another truth, just as I love what they say when they say what is true, not because it is theirs, but because it is true; and therefore it is now not even theirs, because it is true. But if they should love it for this reason, that it is true, then it is both theirs and mine, since it is common to all lovers of truth.

But that which they contend—that Moses did not mean what I say, but what they themselves say—this I do not want, I do not love, because, even if it is so, yet that rashness springs not from knowledge but from audacity, and not from sight but from swelling pride brought it forth. And therefore, O Lord, fearful are Your judgments, since Your truth is neither mine nor his nor that other's, but belongs to all of us whom You publicly call to its fellowship, terribly admonishing us not to wish to hold it as private, lest we be deprived of it. For whoever claims for himself privately that which You set forth for all to enjoy, and wishes that to be his own which belongs to all, is driven from the common to his own, that is, from truth to a lie. For he who speaks a lie speaks of his own.

Attend, O best Judge, O God, the very Truth, attend to what I shall say to this contradictor; attend, for before You I speak, and before my brethren who use the law lawfully unto the end which is charity. Attend and see what I say to him, if it please You. For this brotherly and peaceable word I return to him: if both of us see that what you say is true, and both of us see that what I say is true, where, I ask, do we see it? Surely neither I in you nor you in me, but both of us in that immutable Truth itself, which is above our minds.

Since, then, we do not contend about the very light of the Lord our God, why do we contend about the thought of our neighbor, which we cannot so see as the immutable Truth is seen—when, even if Moses himself had appeared to us and said, 'This I thought,' we would not even so see it, but would believe it? Let us not therefore be puffed up one against another beyond what is written, the one in favor of the other. Let us love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves. Unless we believe that Moses meant, by these two precepts of charity, whatever he meant in those books, we shall make the Lord a liar, when we suppose something concerning the mind of a fellow servant other than He taught.

Now see how foolish it is, amid so great an abundance of utterly true meanings which can be drawn from those words, rashly to affirm which of them Moses chiefly meant, and by pernicious contentions to offend that very charity, for whose sake he said all things, whose sayings we are striving to expound.

And yet I, my God, exaltation of my humility and rest of my labor, who hear my confessions and forgive my sins—since You command me to love my neighbor as myself, I cannot believe less of Moses, Your most faithful servant, than I would wish and desire to be granted me by You as a gift, had I been born in that age in which he was, and had You set me in that place, so that through the service of my heart and tongue those writings might be dispensed, which were to profit all nations so long afterward, and throughout the whole world to surpass, from so lofty a summit of authority, the words of all false and proud doctrines. For I would indeed wish, if I were then Moses—for we all come from the same mass;

and what is man, save that You are mindful of him?—I would wish, then, if I were then what he was, and the book of Genesis were assigned to me by You to be written, that such a faculty of expression were given me, and such a manner of weaving discourse, that neither those who cannot yet understand how God creates would refuse the words as exceeding their powers, nor would those who already can do so, fail to find, in whatever true meaning they had arrived at by thinking, that it was not passed over in the few words of Your servant; and if another had seen another meaning in the light of truth, neither would that too be lacking, to be understood in those same words.