Were they perhaps gathered together on high, as happens when the threshed harvest is heaped up on the threshing-floor for winnowing, and, piled into a mound, lays bare the place which it had spread over and covered? Who would say this, when he sees the plains of the sea everywhere evenly spread out, since even when certain as it were mountains of the surging water are raised up, they are again levelled flat when the storms are calmed? And if any shores are laid bare more widely, it cannot be said that there are no other spaces of the lands to which that may go which recedes from elsewhere, whence it may again come to that place from which it had withdrawn. But when absolutely the whole earth was covered by the watery nature, whither could it withdraw so as to lay bare any parts?
Or was the water perhaps thinner, covering the lands like a mist, which was thickened by being gathered together, so that from many parts, in which dry land could appear, it might lay them bare? And yet the earth too, subsiding far and wide, could have provided other hollow parts in which the confluent and rushing waters might be received, and dry land appear from those parts from which the moisture withdrew. Now matter is not in every way formless where even a misty appearance has become visible. And therefore it can still be asked when God created these conspicuous appearances and qualities of the waters and the lands; for this is found in none of the six days. And so, if He did this before every day, as it is written before the mention of the first of those days:
'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' — so that in the word 'earth' we may understand an already formed earthy appearance, its waters poured over it, these having already been declared in this visible appearance of their own kind; so that in what Scripture says next: 'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the water,' we may suppose no formlessness of matter, but earth and water without light, which had not yet been made, already established with their own most familiar qualities — so that the earth is understood to be called 'invisible' because, being covered with waters, it could not be seen, even if there were someone who could see, and 'unformed' indeed,
because it was not yet distinguished from the sea and girded with shores and adorned with its own offspring and living creatures. If, then, it is so, why were these appearances, which are beyond doubt bodily, made before every day? Why is it not written: 'God said, Let there be earth, and earth was made,' likewise: 'God said, Let there be water, and water was made'? Or both together, if they are contained under one as it were law of the lowest place: 'God said, Let there be earth, and so it was done'? Why was it not said, when this had been made, 'God saw that it was good'?
For this consideration prompted the inquiry, since it is manifest that everything mutable is formed out of some formlessness; and at the same time both the Catholic faith prescribes and the most certain reason teaches that the matter of no natures could have existed except from God, the originator and creator of all things not only formed but also formable — of which a certain Scripture also says to Him: 'Thou who madest the world out of formless matter.' This matter, in those words which might be suited, for the sake of spiritual prudence, even to slower readers or hearers, was, we hold, mentioned in those things which, before the enumeration of the days, were said: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' and the rest, until it was said:
'And God said,' so that thereafter the order of formed things might follow. Not because formless matter is prior in time to formed things, since both were created together — both that from which a thing was made, and that which was made. For just as the voice is the matter of words, while words indicate a formed voice, and yet the one who speaks does not first emit a formless voice which he might afterward gather up and form into words: so also God the Creator did not at a prior time make formless matter and afterward form it, by an as it were second consideration, into the natures of various things;
for He created matter already formed. But because that from which something is made, even if not in time, yet by a certain origin is prior to that which is made from it, Scripture could divide by the times of speaking what God did not divide by the times of making. For if it be asked whether we make the voice out of words or words out of the voice, no one will easily be found of so slow a wit as not rather to answer that words are made out of the voice: thus, although the speaker makes both at once, what he makes from what is sufficiently apparent to natural attention.
Wherefore, since God made both at once — both the matter which He formed and the things into which He formed it — and since both had to be spoken of by Scripture, and both could not be spoken of at once, who could doubt that that from which something was made ought to have been spoken of before that which was made from it? For even when we say 'matter and form,' we understand that both exist at once, and yet we cannot utter both at once.
But just as it happens in the brevity of time, when we utter these two words, that we utter one before the other, so in the length of a narrative one had to be narrated before the other, although both, as has been said, God made at once — so that what is prior only by origin in the making, is also prior in time in the narrating, because two things, of which even the one is in no way prior to the other, cannot be named at once, much less narrated at once! Therefore it is not to be doubted that this formless matter, next to nothing, is in some way such that it was not made except by God, and was created together at once with the things which were formed out of it. But if it is credibly said that it is signified by those words:
'But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the water,' so that — except for what is there placed concerning the Spirit of God — we understand the rest indeed as names of visible things, yet spoken to convey that formlessness, as far as could be conveyed to the slower; because these two elements, that is, earth and water, are more tractable than the rest to the hands of those working to make something, and therefore that formlessness was more fittingly conveyed by these names: if, then, this is probably said, there was no formed mass which light, illumining it on one side, might on the other side make darkness, whence night might succeed when day departed.
But if we should wish to understand the emission and contraction of that light as day and night, we neither see a cause why it should so happen — for there were not yet living creatures to whom this alternation might be salubriously afforded, and to whom, once they had later arisen, we see it afforded through the circuit of the sun — nor does any example occur by which we might prove that emission and contraction of light, so that the alternations of day and night might come about. For the casting-out of rays from our eyes is indeed a casting-out of a certain light, and it can be contracted, when we look at the air which is nearest to our eyes, and emitted, when we attend to things placed far off along the same straight line.
Nor indeed, when it is contracted, does it altogether cease to discern things that are far off, but certainly more obscurely than when the gaze is emitted upon them. Yet that light which is in the sense of the one seeing is taught to be so slight that, unless it be aided by external light, we can see nothing; and because it cannot be distinguished from that external light, by what example the emission of light into day and the contraction of light into night might be demonstrated is, as I said, difficult to find. But if a spiritual light was made when God said, 'Let there be light,' that true light co-eternal with the Father, through whom all things were made and which enlightens every man, is not to be understood; but that of which it could be said: 'Wisdom was created before all things.'
For when that eternal and unchangeable Wisdom, which was not made but begotten, transfers itself into spiritual and rational creatures, as into holy souls, so that, being illumined, they may be able to shine, there comes to be in them a certain disposition of luminous reason, which can be taken as the light that was made when God said, 'Let there be light' — if there already was a spiritual creature, which was signified by the name 'heaven' in what is written, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth': not a bodily heaven, but the incorporeal heaven of the bodily heaven, that is, set above every body, not by degrees of place, but by the sublimity of its nature.
But in what manner both that which was illumined and the illumination itself could come to be at once, and yet had to be narrated at different times, we said a little before, when we were treating of matter. But the night succeeding to this light, so that evening might come — in what way are we to understand it? And from what kind of darkness could such a light be divided, when Scripture says: 'And God divided between the light and the darkness'? Were there already sinners and fools falling away from the light of truth, between whom, and those remaining in that same light, God divided, as it were between light and darkness — and, calling the light day and the darkness night, showed Himself to be not the author of sins, but the orderer, by the distribution of merits?
Or is this 'day' the name of all time, and does it include all the volumes of the ages under this term, and therefore was it not called the first, but 'one day'? 'For evening came,' it says, 'and morning came, one day' — so that by this, that evening came, the sin of the rational creature, and by that, that morning came, its renewal, may seem to be signified. But this is the discussion of prophetic allegory, which we have not undertaken in this discourse. For we have set out to speak now, concerning the Scriptures, according to the proper meaning of the deeds done, not according to the enigmas of things to come. Therefore, with respect to the account of the natures made and established, in what way do we find evening and morning in the spiritual light?
Is the division of the light from the darkness the distinction of the thing already formed from the formless, while the naming of day and night is the intimation of a distribution, by which it is signified that God leaves nothing without order, and that that very formlessness — through which things are changed by passing in a certain manner from appearance to appearance — is not disordered, nor are the defects and advances of the creature, by which temporal things succeed one another in it, without a contribution to the beauty of the universe? For night is ordered darkness. But therefore, when light had been made, it was said, 'God saw the light, that it is good,' though He could have said this after all the works of the same day — that is, so that when He had unfolded: 'God said, Let there be light, and there was light,'
'and God divided between the light and the darkness, and God called the light day and the darkness He called night,' then He might say: 'And God saw that it is good,' and thereafter append: 'And evening came, and morning came,' as He does in the other works, on which He bestows names. Here, therefore, He did not do so for this reason: because that formlessness was distinguished from the formed thing in such a way that its end was not in it, but there still remained something to be formed through the other creatures, now bodily. And so, if, after those things had been distinguished by that division and by names, it were then said, 'God saw that it is good,' we should take these to be signified as things made, to which now, in their own kind, nothing was to be added;
but because He had thus perfected the light alone, 'God saw,' it says, 'the light, that it is good,' and by division and by names distinguished it from the darkness. Nor then did He say, 'God saw that it is good'; for that formlessness had been distinguished for this purpose, that still from it other things might be formed. For indeed this night, which is most familiar to us — for the circuit of the sun over the lands makes it — when it is divided from day through the distribution of the luminaries, after that very division of day and night it is said: 'God saw that it is good.' For this night was not some formless substance from which still other things might be formed, but a space of place full of air, lacking the daily light: to which night certainly nothing was now to be added in its own kind, whereby it might be more comely or more distinct.
But evening, in that whole three-day period before the luminaries were made, is perhaps not absurdly understood as the terminus of the completed work; while morning is understood as the signification of a work to come. But before all things let us remember — a matter of which we have already said much — that God does not work by temporal motions as it were of His own mind or body, as man or angel works, but by the eternal and unchangeable and stable reasons of His Word co-eternal with Him, and by a certain, so to speak, fostering warmth of His Holy Spirit, equally co-eternal.
For that too which was said, through the Greek and Latin tongues, concerning the Spirit of God, that it 'was borne over the waters,' according to the understanding of the Syriac tongue, which is close to the Hebrew — for this is reported to have been expounded by a certain learned Christian Syrian — is said to be understood not as 'was borne over' but rather 'was cherishing'; and not as tumors or wounds in the body are fomented with waters either cold or tempered with suitable warmth, but as eggs are cherished by birds, where that warmth of the mother's body somehow also assists the forming of the chicks through a certain disposition of love in its own kind. Let us not, therefore, through the several days of these divine works, think carnally of temporal utterances of God.
For not to this end did the Wisdom of God itself, taken up in our weakness, come to gather together the children of Jerusalem under its wings, as a hen gathers her chicks, that we should always be little ones; but that we should be infants in malice, and cease to be children in mind.
And in matters obscure and most remote from our eyes, if we should read any writings concerning them, even divine ones, which are able — the faith with which we are imbued being safe — to give rise to various and diverse opinions, let us not cast ourselves headlong into any one of them by rash affirmation, so that, if perchance the truth, more diligently examined, should rightly overturn it, we fall together with it — fighting not for the opinion of the divine Scriptures, but for our own, in such a way that we wish that to be the Scriptures' which is our own, whereas we ought rather to wish that which is the Scriptures' to be our own. For let us suppose that in what is written, 'And God said, Let there be light, and there was light,' one man understood a bodily light to have been made, and another a spiritual one.
That there is a spiritual light in the spiritual creature, our faith does not doubt; but that there is a bodily heavenly light, or even one above heaven or before heaven, to which night could succeed, is not against the faith so long as it is not refuted by most certain truth. And if this should come to pass, divine Scripture did not hold this, but human ignorance had thought it. But if certain reason should demonstrate this to be true, it will still be uncertain whether the writer of the sacred books wished this to be understood in those words, or something else no less true. But if the rest of the context of the discourse should prove that he did not wish this, that other thing which he himself wished to be understood will not therefore be false, but both true and more usefully known.
But if the context of Scripture should not oppose that the writer wished this to be understood, it will still remain to inquire whether he could not also have meant another thing. And if we should find that he could also have meant another thing, it will be uncertain which of them he meant; and that he wished both to be understood is not incongruously believed, if the rest of the surrounding context supports both opinions.
For it very often happens that even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, about the heaven, about the other elements of this world, about the motion and revolution or even the magnitude and intervals of the stars, about the fixed eclipses of the sun and moon, about the cycles of years and seasons, about the natures of animals, shrubs, stones, and other such things, in such a way that he holds it by most certain reason or experience. Now it is a very disgraceful and pernicious thing, and greatly to be guarded against, that any unbeliever should hear a Christian, speaking as it were according to Christian writings, so rave about these matters that, as the saying goes, seeing him err by a whole heaven, he can scarcely restrain his laughter.
And the trouble is not so much that an erring man is derided, but that our authors are believed by those who are without to have held such things, and, to the great destruction of those for whose salvation we labor, are reproved and rejected as unlearned. For when they have caught someone of the number of Christians erring in a matter which they know most excellently, and asserting his vain opinion out of our books, by what means will they believe those books concerning the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, when they have thought them to be written deceitfully concerning those things which they were already able to experience or to perceive by indubitable calculations?
For how much annoyance and sorrow rash presumers bring upon their prudent brethren cannot be sufficiently told: when, if ever they begin to be reproved and convicted of their depraved and false opinion by those who are not held by the authority of our books, in order to defend that which they have said with the most trifling rashness and most manifest falsity, they attempt to bring forward those same holy books, from which to prove it, or even recite from memory many words from them which they judge to avail for testimony, understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they affirm.
For to this end — that it might be considered and observed — I have, as far as I could, in many ways unfolded and brought forth from the words of the book of Genesis, which are obscurely set down for our exercise, various opinions, not rashly affirming any one thing to the prejudice of another exposition perhaps better, so that each may choose, according to his own measure, what he is able to grasp: but where he cannot understand the Scripture, let him give honor to God and fear to himself. But since the words of Scripture which we have treated may be expounded with so many outcomes, let those at last restrain themselves who, puffed up with secular letters, deride these things, set down so as to nourish all pious hearts, as something crude and unpolished — crawling on the earth without wings, and mocking the nests of birds about to fly.
But more dangerously do certain weak brethren err, who, when they hear those impious men discourse subtly and copiously about the numbers of the heavenly bodies or about any questions of the elements of this world, faint away, and, preferring those men to themselves with a sigh and thinking them great, return with disdain to the books of most salutary piety, and scarcely with patience touch those which they ought sweetly to drink in — shrinking from the roughness of the harvest-field and gaping after the flowers of thorns. For they have no leisure to see how sweet the Lord is, nor do they hunger on the Sabbath; and therefore they are slothful in using the power received from the Lord to pluck the ears of grain and to turn them over in their hands and to cleanse the rubbed ears, until they arrive at the food. Someone will say:
'What have you, with all this threshing of this dissertation, stripped out of the grains? What have you winnowed? Why does almost everything still lie hidden in questions? Affirm some one of those things which you have argued can be understood in many ways.'
To whom I reply that I have come sweetly to that very food, in that I have learned that a man does not stick fast in answering, according to the faith, what is to be answered to men who strive to calumniate the books of our salvation: so that whatever they may be able to demonstrate by truthful documents about the nature of things, we may show is not contrary to our writings; but whatever from any of their volumes they may bring forth contrary to these our writings, that is, to the Catholic faith, we may either by some means show it to be false, or without any doubt believe it to be most false — and so hold fast our Mediator, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, that we may neither be seduced by the loquacity of false philosophy, nor terrified by the superstition of false religion.
And when we read the divine books amid so great a multitude of true meanings, which are drawn out from a few words and fortified by the soundness of the Catholic faith, let us choose above all that which shall appear certain to have been the meaning of him whom we read; but if this lies hidden, then certainly that which the context of Scripture does not impede and which agrees with sound faith; but if even the context of Scripture cannot be thoroughly examined and discussed, then at least that alone which sound faith prescribes. For it is one thing not to discern what the writer chiefly meant, and another thing to stray from the rule of piety. If both be avoided, the fruit of the reader is perfectly attained.
But if neither meaning can be avoided, then even if the writer's intention is uncertain, it is not without profit to have drawn out an interpretation in accord with sound faith. 'And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And it was so done. And God made the firmament, and God divided the water that was below the firmament from the water that was above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven. And God saw that it was good. And the evening was made, and the morning was made, the second day.' Concerning the word of God, in which God said:
'Let there be a firmament,' and the rest; and concerning His good pleasure, whereby He saw that it was good; and concerning the evening and the morning — there is no need here to discourse again in like manner. And thus henceforward, as often as these phrases are repeated, we advise that they be considered for the time being according to our earlier inquiry. But whether the heaven that is now made is that which surpasses all the spaces of the air and its whole height — where also on the fourth day the luminaries and the stars are set — or whether the air itself is called the firmament, may with good reason be asked. For many assert that the nature of these waters cannot be above the starry heaven, because they have their own weight so ordered that they either float upon the earth or are borne as vapour in the air nearest to the earth.
Nor should anyone refute these men by saying that, according to the omnipotence of God, to whom all things are possible, we ought to believe that even waters as heavy as those we know and perceive have been poured over the heavenly body in which the stars are. For now it befits us to inquire, according to His Scriptures, how God established the natures of things — not what He may will to work in them or from them for a miracle of His power. For indeed, if God willed that oil should at some time remain beneath water, it would not fail to happen; yet the nature of oil would not thereby be unknown to us — namely, that it is so made that, seeking its own place, even if it were poured underneath, it breaks through the waters and settles itself above them.
Now therefore we ask whether the Founder of things, who has disposed all things in measure and number and weight, has assigned to the weight of the waters not one proper place around the earth, but also a place above the heaven that is spread out and made solid beyond the boundary of the air. Those who deny that this is to be believed argue from the weights of the elements, denying that in any way the heaven has been made solid above, as it were like some pavement, so that it could sustain the weights of the waters; for such solidity could belong to nothing but earth, and whatever is of that kind is not heaven but earth. For the elements are distinguished not only by their places but also by their qualities, so that according to their proper qualities they should also be allotted their proper places.
Water, namely, is above earth; and even if it stands or slips beneath the earth, as in hidden caves and caverns, it is nevertheless contained not by that part of the earth which it has above it, but by that which it has below it. For if any part of the earth should fall from the upper part, it does not remain upon the water, but, that water being broken through, it sinks and makes its way to the earth; and coming thither it comes to rest as in its own place, so that above is the water and beneath the earth. From this it is recognized that even when earth was above the waters it was not borne up by the waters themselves, but was held by the structure of the earth, as the vaults of caverns hold together. Here it occurs to me to give warning that we must beware of an error, which in the first book I warned must be avoided — lest perhaps, because it is written in the Psalms:
'He founded the earth upon the water,' should think that we ought to rely on this testimony of Scripture against those who argue subtly about the weights of the elements. For those men, not being restrained by the authority of our letters and not knowing in what sense it was said, will more easily mock the holy books than repudiate that which they have either perceived by sure reasonings or proved by most manifest experiments. For that saying in the Psalms may rightly be taken either as spoken figuratively — so that, since by the name of heaven and earth the spiritual and the carnal are often signified in the Church, He may show the heavens to pertain to the serene understanding of truth, saying:
'He who made the heavens in understanding,' but the earth as pertaining to the simple faith of the little ones — a faith not uncertain and deceptive with fabulous opinions, but most firm through prophetic and evangelical preaching, which is made solid through baptism; and therefore He subjoined, saying: 'He founded the earth upon the water.' Or, if anyone insists that it be understood literally, then not incongruously either the higher parts of the lands — whether of continents or of islands — are taken, which are above the waters, or the very roofs of caverns, which are held firm above the waters by a suspended solidity. Wherefore no one can understand literally in such a way what is said:
'He founded the earth upon the water,' so as to suppose that the weight of the waters is set, as it were subject, to bearing up the weight of the earth in the natural order. But that the air is above the waters — although, on account of its ample spaces, it also covers the dry land — is understood from this: that no vessel pressed down mouth-first can be filled with water; whence it sufficiently indicates that the nature of the air seeks the higher place. For the vessel seems empty, but is proved to be full of air, when it is pressed mouth-downward into the water; because, since through its upper part it finds no place to escape, nor is its nature suffered to go downward beneath the waters once they are broken through, by its own fullness it repels them and does not permit them to enter the vessel.