Hexameron 2.1–3.1

The Second Day. The first day, or rather “one” day (for let it keep the prerogative of the prophetic word), we have finished as well as we could. In it we have learned that heaven was founded, the earth created, the waters overflowing, the air poured around, and the division of light and darkness made, by the operation of almighty God and the Lord Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit also. Who, then, would not marvel that a world unequal in its unlike members rises into one body, and that things so far apart come together by an indissoluble law of concord and love into fellowship and union with one another, so that what is separate by nature is bound into the bond of unity and peace as if by an undivided sympathy? Or who, seeing these things, would probe with weak wit the possibility of their reason? The divine power, incomprehensible to human minds and inexpressible in our words, has woven all these things together by the authority of its will.

God, then, made heaven and earth and commanded them to be as their author, not as one who devised a shape, but as the worker of nature. For how could the impassible working power of God and the passible nature of matter suit each other, as if each borrowed from the other what it lacked? For if matter is uncreated, then God seems to have lacked the power to create matter and to have borrowed from it what underlies his operation; and if it was unformed, it is quite remarkable that matter co-eternal with God could not give beauty to itself, though it did not receive its substance from a creator but possessed it without time. The worker of all things, then, found more than he contributed: he found matter on which he could work, and contributed the shape which would bring beauty to the things he found. That is why the day on which the foundations of all things were laid and the causes began to exist on which the substance of this world and of the whole visible creation rests, is to be set apart from the others as “one day,” not compared with the others as “the first day.” So let our discourse go on to the wonderful works of the second day, whose excellence is to be referred to the praise of the creator, not according to the capacity of our treatment but according to Scripture. I ask you, therefore, to be willing to judge what we say naturally,

and to weigh it with a simple mind and diligent attention, not gathering likelihoods according to the traditions of philosophy and the empty seduction of persuasion, but according to the rule of truth, which is expressed in the oracles of the divine word and poured into the hearts of the faithful by the contemplation of so great a majesty; for it is written: “Strengthen me in your words. The unjust have told me their exercises, but not as your law, O Lord. All your commandments are truth.” Let us consider, then, what was made, not according to the natures of the elements, but according to Christ, who made all things he willed, abounding in the fullness of his divinity, and let us not question the capacity of nature. For when in the Gospel he healed the leper and poured sight back into the blind, the people who were present and watching did not recognize a course of medicine, but, marvelling at the Lord's power, gave praise to God, as it is written. Nor did Moses stretch out his hand according to the reckonings of the Egyptians, the conjunctions of the stars, and the measures of the elements, so that the Red Sea was divided, but in obedience to the command of the divine power. So he himself says: “Your right hand, O Lord, is glorified in power; your right hand, O Lord, has shattered the enemies.” To him, then, holy people, lift up your mind, and bring your whole soul to him. God does not see as man does: God sees the heart, man the face. So man does not see as God does. You hear that God saw and praised. Do not, then, judge what was made by your own eyes or gather it by opinions; do not think that what God saw and approved should be revised by you.

“And God said: Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water.” And so it was done. Hear the words of God: “Let there be,” he says. This belongs to one who commands, not to one who calculates; he gives orders to nature, he does not obey its capacity; he does not gather measures or examine weight. His will is the measure of things, his word is the completion of the work. “Let there be,” he says, “a firmament in the midst of the water.” Everything God sets up is firm. And quite fittingly he put “firmament” first, before adding “in the midst of the water,” so that you would believe the firmament was made by God's command before you could doubt because of the flowing nature of the waters. If you consider the nature of the elements, how was the firmament made solid between waters? They flow, it is held fast; they run, it remains. “And let it divide,” he says, “between water.” But water usually mingles, not divides. How does he command what he knows to be contrary to the nature of the elements? But since his word is the origin of nature, he who gave the origin rightly claims the right to give nature its law.

But first let us consider what the firmament is: whether it is the same as what he called heaven above, or something else, and whether there are two heavens or more. For there are some who say that there is one heaven, and that, since there was one substance, as they say, there could not be enough substance to make another heaven, because when all of it had been spent on the upper heaven, nothing was left that could serve to build a second or third heaven. Others again assert that there are innumerable heavens and worlds; and these are mocked by their own people (for their fight is not greater with us than with their own), who strive to prove by geometrical numbers and necessities that there can be no other heaven, and that nature does not allow a second or a third, nor is the power of the worker adequate to make many heavens. And who would not mock this artful eloquence of theirs? Though they do not deny that many things of the same kind can be made by men from one and the same cause, they doubt whether the creator of all could make several heavens, of whom it is written: “But the Lord made the heavens,” and elsewhere: “He has done whatever he willed.” What is difficult for him, for whom to will is to have done? Their reasoning from impossibility, then, wavers when they argue about God, to whom it is truly said: “Nothing is impossible for you.”

We, then, cannot deny that there is not only a second but even a third heaven, since the apostle confirms by the testimony of his writings that he was caught up to the third heaven. David too placed the heavens of heavens in that choir of those praising God. Imitating him, the philosophers introduced the harmonious motion of the spheres of the five planets and of the sun and moon, to whose orbits, or rather spheres, they say all things are connected. These, linked and as it were set into one another, they think turn backward and are carried in a motion contrary to the rest; and by the impulse and motion of these orbits a sweet sound, full of delight, art, and most pleasing melody, is given forth, because the air, cut by so artful a motion, which tempers high notes with low, produces such varied harmonies evenly that it surpasses all the sweetness of musical song.

If you ask for proof of this and demand that it be proved to us by sense and hearing, they hesitate. If it were true, how, when the motion of the spheres resounds so greatly (since that heavenly sphere to which they say the courses of the stars are fixed, turning without pause, has a swifter revolution and produces a high sound, while the lunar sphere produces the deepest), would it not be heard by us, when we usually hear fainter sounds? So if we demand that the truth of their argument be proved by our own testimony and by the gift of hearing, they reply that our ears have been deafened and our sense of hearing dulled by long familiarity with that sound, taken in from the beginning of our birth; and they bring the example of the Nile, the greatest of rivers, which, at the place where it hurls itself from the highest mountains down those cataracts, so stops the ears of those living nearby by the greatness of its roar that they are said to lack the gift of hearing. But truth itself easily answers them. For we who hear the thunder produced by the clash of clouds, would we not hear the revolutions of such great spheres, which, as they are thought to move with a greater motion, would surely produce more violent sounds? They add besides that this sound does not reach the earth so that people, captivated by the sweetness and delight which that very swift motion of the heavens from east to west produces, would not abandon their own business and work, and everything here would be left idle through a kind of transport of the human mind toward the heavenly sounds. But let us leave those things that are foreign to our study and to the course of the divine reading to those who are outside; let us hold fast to the teaching of the heavenly Scriptures.

Our subject, then, is that God said: “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between water and water.” And here it is discussed whether he calls “firmament” what he had already made before, of which it is written: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” I am aware that some before us have taken it so, on the ground that Scripture stated above that heaven was created and founded by God as its author, and here unfolded the account of the work and the creation, so that there the sum of the work was briefly included, and here the character of the operation was set out through the very forms of the things coming together. But we are moved by the fact that another name is used, a more solid form is described, a cause is distinguished, and the person of a fellow worker is added. For so it is written: “And God divided between the middle of the water which was under the firmament and the middle of the water which was above the firmament.”

And first they want to destroy what has been rooted and impressed in our minds by frequent reading of the Scriptures, that there are waters above the heavens. They say that the sphere of heaven is round, with the earth in its middle, and that water cannot stand on that curved surface, because it must flow down and slip away, since its course is from higher to lower. For how, they say, can water stand on a sphere when the sphere itself revolves? This is the familiar trickery of dialectic: “Grant me something from which I may answer you; if it is not granted, no word is returned.” They ask to be granted that the axis of heaven turns with a swift motion, while the globe of the earth is unmoved, so as to maintain that waters cannot be above the heavens, because the axis would pour them all off as it revolves. As if, granting them what they ask and answering them according to their own opinions, they could deny that in that height and depth there is both length and breadth, which no one can grasp except him who is filled unto all the fullness of God, as the apostle says. For who could easily be a judge of the divine work? There is, then, breadth in the very height of heaven. There are also, to speak of things we can know, many buildings that are round outside and square inside, or square outside and round inside, whose tops are flat, on which water usually lies. We say this so that they may notice that their opinions can be overcome by opinions more likely than theirs, and stop measuring so great a work of God by consideration of human work and our capacity.

We, however, follow the course and order of the Scriptures and judge the work by considering its author: what was said, and who said it, and to whom. “Let there be,” he says, “a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide between waters.” I hear that a firmament was made by command, by which the water was divided and the upper separated from the lower. What is plainer than this? He who ordered the water to be divided by the firmament set between and in the middle foresaw how it could remain divided and separated. The word of God is the power of nature and the permanence of its substance, as long as he who established it wills it to remain, as it is written: “He established them for ever and for ever and ever; he set a command, and it shall not pass away.” And so that you may know that he said this of those waters which you deny can be in the upper parts of heaven, hear what comes before: “Praise him, you heavens of heavens, and let the waters that are above the heavens praise the name of the Lord.” Did he not say, as if to you who oppose him: “For he spoke and they were made, he commanded and they were created; he established them for ever and for ever and ever; he set a command, and it shall not pass away”? Or does he not seem to you an adequate author to give a law to his own work? It is God who speaks, of venerable nature, inestimable in greatness, immeasurable in rewards, incomprehensible in his works; who can easily search out the height of his wisdom? But he speaks to the Son, that is, to his arm; he speaks to his power, to his wisdom, to his justice. And the Son does it as the mighty one, does it as the power of God, does it as the wisdom of God, does it as divine justice. When you hear these things, why do you wonder if by the working of so great a majesty water could be suspended above the firmament of heaven?

Gather these things from others, from those that are seen by human eyes: how the wave divided itself for the crossing of the Jews, if you ask for a reason. It is not usual in nature for water to separate itself from water, and for the waters poured into the depth to be parted by earth in the middle. “The waves,” he says, “froze,” and in the likeness of a firmament reined in their course with an unwonted limit. Could he not have freed the Hebrew people in another way? But he wished to show you, so that by that spectacle you would judge that even what you have not seen is to be believed. The Jordan too turned back its stream toward its source. For water to stop as it flows is unusual, to go back uphill without any barrier is held impossible; but what is impossible for him who gave power to the weak, so that the weak man says: “I can do all things in him who strengthens me”? Let them say, at any rate, how air is compressed into cloud, whether rain is generated by the clouds or gathered in the bosom of the clouds. We often see clouds come out of the mountains. I ask whether water rises from the earth or whether the water that is above the heavens comes down in abundant rain. If it rises, it is surely against nature that water, which is heavier, should rise to the higher regions and be carried by air, since air is finer. Or if water is snatched up by the motion of the whole sphere as it spins, then as it is snatched up at the bottom of the sphere, so it is poured out at the top. If, as they would have it, it does not cease to be poured out, it surely does not cease to be snatched up, because if the axis of heaven always moves, the water too is always drawn up. If it comes down, then it remains continually above the heavens, since it has a place from which to come down. Then what is the obstacle to their admitting that water is suspended above the heavens? For by what word do they say that the earth is suspended in the middle and remains unmoved, though it is certainly heavier than water? By the same reasoning they can say that the water above the heavens is not hurled down by the revolution of that heavenly sphere. For as the earth is suspended in the void, or remains unmoved by its weight balanced on all sides, so the water too is held in balance by weights either heavier than or equal to the earth's. That is why the sea does not easily pour over the lands, unless it is ordered to go out.

Then, since they themselves say that the sphere of heaven revolves, shining with burning stars, did not divine providence necessarily take care that water should abound within the sphere of heaven and above it, to temper the fires of that blazing axis? For this reason, because fire abounds and blazes, water too abounded on the earth, so that the heat of the rising sun and of the twinkling stars would not burn it up and an unwonted heat harm the tender beginnings of things. How many springs, rivers, and lakes water the lands, because a kind of inner fire heats them! For how would trees sprout, or grain and crops break forth, or what has sprung up ripen, unless an inner fire also quickened them? This fire is often struck from rocks, and often leaps out of wood itself when it is cut. So, as the creature fire is necessary, so that things may remain ordered and arranged, and the mildness of heaven may temper the coldness of the waters, so also the abundance of waters is not superfluous, so that one would not be consumed by the other; for unless the measure of each is suitable, as fire dries up water so water puts out fire. That is why he weighed all things by weight and measure; for even the drops of rain are numbered by him, as we read in the book of Job. Knowing that there would be either an easy failing of things or a dissolving of the universe if one were overcome by the other, he so tempered the losses of each that neither fire would scorch too much nor water overflow, but a moderated diminishing of each would take place, which would remove the excess and preserve what is necessary. So, though such streams of the greatest rivers break forth from the earth (the Nile flooding Egypt with its outpoured stream; the Danube from the western regions cutting between the barbarian peoples and the Romans until it is buried in the Black Sea; the Rhine directing its courses from the ridge of the Alps to the depths of the ocean, a memorable wall of the Roman empire against wild nations; the Po, faithful carrier of sea-borne supplies for the support of Italy; the Rhone, driven by a swift course, cuts the straits of the Tyrrhenian sea, where no small danger is said to face sailors while the waves of the sea and the streams of the river fight with each other; and likewise from the north the Phasis, pouring from the Caucasus mountains, with many others hurls itself into the Black Sea; it would take long to list the names of each river that flows into our sea or empties into the ocean), though, then, there is such an abundance of waters, still the land of the southern region is often scorched by heat and, loosened by the burning, crumbles into dust, the labour of the wretched farmer wasted, so that often, when the wells are dried up and the pools parched, the life-giving supply of drink fails. And there will indeed be a time when he will say to the abyss: “You shall be desolate, and I will dry up all the rivers,” as he announced through Isaiah would be. But even before that day comes, fixed by the divine decision, the nature of the elements fights no little among itself. So the world is often shaken by the harshness of floods or troubled by excessive heat and drought.

Do not, then, think the multitude of waters incredible, but look at the force of heat, and you will not be unbelieving. Fire absorbs a great deal, as must be plain to us from this at least: when physicians fasten to the body certain vessels with narrow mouths, flat on top and hollow inside, after lighting a little lamp-flame in them, how that heat draws all the moisture into itself! Who then would doubt that the fiery ether, blazing with great heat, would set everything on fire and burn it up, unless it were restrained by a certain law of its author, so that neither rivers nor lakes nor the seas themselves could quench its force? And so the water from above, coming down with a kind of rush, often bursts into such great rains that rivers and lakes are suddenly filled and the seas themselves overflow. That is why we often see even the sun moist and dewy.

In this it gives clear evidence that it has taken to itself the element of water to temper itself. But they have so great a zeal for attacking the truth that they deny that the sun itself is hot by nature, because it is white and not red or glowing in the appearance of fire. So they say that it is not fiery by nature, and that if it has any heat, it comes from the excessive motion of its revolution. They think they must say this so that it may not seem to consume any moisture, since it does not have by nature the heat by which moisture is diminished or often drained. But they achieve nothing in contriving this, because it makes no difference whether one has heat by nature or from some affection or other cause, since all fire consumes moisture, or matter of the kind that flame usually burns. For whether fire struck from pieces of wood rubbed together is caught on leaves, flame still kindles, as if you lit a torch from a fire; or whether you light a light from the light of a flame, the form and nature of the light is the same, even if it was not natural fire that kindled it but an accidental cause produced it. Let them at least consider the sun's heat from this: God appointed different places and times for its course, so that if it always stayed in the same places, it would not burn them up with daily heat. They themselves say that the sea has salty and bitter water because the water that flows into it from the rivers is absorbed by heat, and as much is consumed by the daily heat as is brought in each day by the various courses of the rivers. This is said to happen by a kind of sifting of the sun, which snatches to itself what is pure and light and leaves what is heavy and earthy, from which that salty and dry part remains, which is useless and unpleasant to drink.

But let us return to our subject. “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water.” Let it not disturb you, as I have already said, that above he says “heaven” and here “firmament,” since David too says: “The heavens tell the glory of God, and the firmament announces the work of his hands,” that is, the work of the world, when it is seen, praises its author; for his invisible majesty is known through the things that are seen. And it seems to me that “heaven” is a common name, since Scripture testifies to many heavens, while “firmament” is a particular name; for here too it says: “And he called the firmament heaven,” so that he seems above to have said generally that heaven was made in the beginning, to include the whole structure of the heavenly creation, but here the particular solidity of this outer firmament, which is called the firmament of heaven, as we read in the prophetic hymn: “Blessed are you in the firmament of heaven.” For heaven, which is called ouranos in Greek, is in Latin called caelum, as if caelatum (“engraved”), because it has the lights of the stars set in it like figures, just as we call silver caelatum when it shines with raised figures. But ouranos is so called from horasthai, because it is seen; in contrast to the earth, which is darker, it is named ouranos because it is bright, as being visible. So I think this too was said: “The birds of heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven,” and “birds about the firmament of heaven,” because the powers that are in that visible place watch all these things and have them under their sight.

So, too, heaven was said to be shut in the time of Elijah, when unbelief reigned in Ahab and Jezebel and the people served the king's sacrilege, because no one lifted his eyes to heaven, no one honoured its author, but they worshipped wood and stones. From where do we gather this? Because in the curses on the people of Israel God said: “The heaven over your head shall be bronze to you, and your earth iron,” when the Jewish people, paying the price of unbelief, is punished by harsh weather from heaven and barrenness of the earth; for from heaven comes the cause of fertility. Moses too gave this in the blessings to Joseph: “from the bounds of heaven and from the dew of the abyss of springs below, and according to the season, from the course of the sun, and from the fitting months, and from the top of the mountains and of the everlasting hills,” because the fruitfulness of the lands is nourished by the moderation of heaven. Heaven, then, is iron when it pours out no moisture, when no rain bursts from the clouds. Heaven is also iron when the air is darkish, heavy and cloudy, of the colour of rust, when the earth is bound by the rigour of cold. Then moisture seems to hang as it were over our head and to threaten at every moment. Often, too, the waters, stiffened by icy blasts of wind, are solidified into snow, and when the air bursts, snow is poured out. For this firmament cannot burst without some crash. So it is called “firmament” because it is not weak or slack. Thus Scripture says of thunder, which, when the wind is caught in the bosom of the clouds and dashes violently to break out, crashes with a great sound: “making the thunder firm.” The firmament, then, is named from firmness, or because it was made firm by divine power, as Scripture also teaches us, saying: “Praise him in the firmament of his power.”

Nor has it escaped me that some have referred the heavens of heavens to the intellectual powers and the firmament to the active ones. And so the heavens praise, or tell the glory of God, and the firmament announces it, not as spiritual beings, but as works of the world they tell it, as we said above. Others again have interpreted the waters above the heavens as purifying powers. We accept these things as an ornament of the treatment; yet it does not seem foreign or absurd to us if we understand real waters, for the reason we gave. For dew and frost and cold and heat, according to the prophetic hymn, bless the Lord; the earth blesses him, and the stars bless him; and we refer the stars not to intellectual natures but to their reality. Even the dragons praise the Lord, because their nature and appearance, when seen, either spreads no little beauty or shows that there is reason in it.

“And God saw that it was good.” The Son does what the Father wills, the Father praises what the Son does. Nothing of a degenerate nature is found in him, whose work does not fall short of the Father's will. He saw, certainly: not that he directed bodily eyes, but he determined that it accorded with the fullness of grace, so that his judgment would be known to me; for we are accustomed to dispute even about divine things. And what wonder if those can revise the work who raise questions about the generation of the worker himself? They call him to judgment, they try to assert that he is unequal and degenerate. That is why you read both “God said” and “God made”: Father and Son are honoured by the same name of majesty. “And God saw that it was good.” He spoke as to one who knew everything the Father willed, and saw as one holding in knowledge everything the Son would do and bringing it about by a shared operation. He saw that it was good.

He did not, of course, learn what he did not know, but approved what pleased him. The work did not please as something unknown, just as the Father, who was well pleased in the Son, was not well pleased as with one unknown, as it is written: “This is my most beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Son always knows the Father's will and the Father the Son's; the Son always hears the Father and the Father the Son, through the unity of nature, will, and substance. Indeed, the Son testifies to this in his Gospel, saying to the Father: “I knew that you always hear me.” For the Son is the image of the invisible God. As the image he expresses everything of the Father; as the brightness of glory he illuminates and shows us everything of his. The Son sees the Father's work as the Father sees the Son's, as the Lord himself declared: “The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing.” He sees the Father doing, then, and sees through the secret of the invisible nature, and hears likewise. So he says: “As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me.”

That is the mystical sense; this is the moral. He saw for me, he approved for me. What God has approved, do not call blameworthy, since you remember that it is written for you: “What God has cleansed, do not call common.” Let no one, then, blaspheme God's good. And if the firmament is good, how much more is its creator good, even if the Arians are unwilling and the Eunomians protest, the worse fruit of a degenerate root.

“God saw,” he says, “that it was good.” Craftsmen usually make the single parts first and afterward join them with skilful fitting, like those who carve human faces or bodies from marble, or mould them in bronze or wax; yet they do not know how the single members can fit together and what grace the future joining will bring. So either they do not dare to praise, or they praise in part. But God, as the judge of the whole, foreseeing what is to come, praises as already complete what is still at the first beginning of the work, anticipating the end of the work by his knowledge. Nor is it a wonder in one for whom the perfection of things lies not in the completion of the work but in the predestination of his will. He praises the single parts as fitting what is to come; he praises the fullness made up of the beauty of the single parts. For that is true beauty, that what is fitting be both in the single members and in the whole, so that grace is praised in the parts and in all the fullness of a fitting form.

But now let the second day be closed for us, lest while we build up the work of the firmament we make our hearers weaker from the flow of speaking, as the sermon is drawn out into the night, which, still lacking the light of the moon and stars (for the lights of heaven have not yet been created), could bring darkness to those going home; and at the same time so that bodies may be cared for with food and drink, and while the souls feast the weakness of the flesh may not complain of a night-time fast as well.

The Third Day. Today the third day is born for us in our sermon, as it has dawned in the reading: a glorious day, which freed the earth from shipwreck when God said: “Let the water that is under heaven be gathered into one gathering.” With this I wish to begin my preface. “Let the water be gathered,” it was said, and it was gathered; yet often it is said, “Let the people be gathered,” and they are not gathered. It is no small shame that senseless elements obey the command of God and men do not obey, to whom sense was given by the creator himself. And perhaps this shame has made more of you come together today, so that on the day on which the water was gathered into one gathering the people might not seem today to be by no means gathered into the church of the Lord.