Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis

Contents

Reading pages: 1–4 · 5–12 · 13–16

1. 1Augustine begins by insisting that obscure matters in Genesis be treated by inquiry, not assertion, within the bounds of the catholic faith, which he then summarizes: creation from nothing by the Trinity, evil as sin or its punishment, and redemption through Christ.
2. 2Augustine lists four ways of interpreting Scripture: history, allegory, analogy, and aetiology.
3. 3Augustine explores the senses of “in the beginning” (time, or the Son as Beginning), whether angels and time preceded heaven and earth, and whether “heaven and earth” means the whole creation or formless matter, affirming only that every creature, time included, has a beginning.
4. 4Augustine defends Genesis 1:2 against the Manichees, reading “earth,” “abyss,” and “water” as names for the one formless matter God made from nothing, and weighs whether “the Spirit of God” is the Holy Spirit, a created vital spirit, or air.
5. 5Augustine explains that God's “Let there be light” was spoken ineffably, distinguishes created light (bodily, sensory, or rational) from the begotten Wisdom of God, and treats darkness as a privation which God orders but does not make.
6. 6Augustine asks what it means that God “called” light day and darkness night — whether the naming is the act of distinguishing — and how there could be day and night before the sun.
7. 7Augustine explains that “one day” here includes night, and suggests that God, who “created all things at once,” did not need time, the six days being a narrative order for weaker minds.
8. 8Augustine considers whether the waters above the firmament are physical or a higher, incorporeal nature, reports a theory linking Saturn's slowness to cold waters above the sky, and suggests that the firmament was formed first in a rational creature and then in body.
9. 9Augustine notes the differing order of “God saw that it was good” on the first and second days and takes it as a sign that God's working involves no intervals of time.
10. 10Augustine reads the gathering of the waters and the appearing of dry land as the forming of formless matter into water and earth, with “one gathering” expressing the unity that all form implies.
11. 11Augustine considers why the creation of plants, which propagate by seed and are rooted in the earth, is joined to the third day yet introduced by a fresh command of God.
12. 12Augustine asks how there were days before the lights of the fourth day, suggesting that “morning” and “evening” may mark form and privation in created things, and how the lights divide day and night.
13. 13Augustine interprets the lights as signs of seasons, days, and years — time as a trace of eternity — and explains “beginning of the day and night” as the rule of sun, moon, and stars, noting that the moon is always full though not always seen so.
14. 14Augustine asks why birds come from the waters, suggesting that the moist lower air is called water while the purer upper air belongs to the firmament, and explains springs and rivers as arising from sea-vapor and rain.
15. 15Augustine discusses the creatures of the fifth day and the blessing of fruitfulness, argues from the gestation of animals that the “days” cannot be ordinary days, and reads evening and morning as formless matter and imposed form.
16. 16On “Let us make man to our image and likeness,” Augustine distinguishes image from likeness, presents the Son as Likeness itself in which creatures participate, places the image in the human mind, and concludes that man was made to the image of the whole Trinity.