Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.14–2.4

Why was it not said, when this had been done, “God saw that it was good”? This consideration, then, has persuaded me. It is clear that everything changeable is formed from some formlessness; and at the same time the catholic faith prescribes and the most certain reason teaches that there could be no matter of any natures except from God, the originator and Creator not only of all things formed but also of all things that can be formed (of this matter a certain scripture also says to him, “You who made the world out of formless matter”). Hence this matter was mentioned in those words which, by spiritual prudence, would suit even slower readers or hearers, the words said before the counting of the days, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” and so on, until it was said, “And God said,” so that the order of formed things might then follow.

Not that formless matter is prior in time to formed things, since both were created together, that from which a thing was made and what was made. For just as the voice is the matter of words, and words signify formed voice, yet the speaker does not first emit a formless voice that he can afterward gather and form into words, so too God the Creator did not make formless matter at an earlier time and afterward form it in order, as by a second consideration, into the various natures; for he created matter already formed. But because that from which something is made, though not prior in time, is still prior in a kind of origin to that which is made from it, Scripture could divide in the times of speaking what God did not divide in the times of making. For if it is asked whether we make the voice from words or words from the voice, hardly anyone is found so slow-witted as not to answer that words are made from the voice. So, although the speaker makes both at once, what he makes from what is clear enough to natural attention. Therefore, since God made both at once, both the matter that he formed and the things into which he formed it, and Scripture had to speak of both but could not speak of both at once, who would doubt that it had to speak first of that from which something was made, and then of what was made from it? For even when we say “matter and form,” we understand both to exist at once, and yet we cannot utter both at once. And just as, in a short time, when we pronounce these two words, it happens that we pronounce one before the other, so in the length of a narrative one thing had to be narrated before the other, although God made both at once, as has been said; so that what is prior only in origin in the making is also prior in time in the narrating. For two things, of which one is in no way prior, cannot be named at once; how much less can they be narrated at once! So there is no doubt that this formless matter, however close to nothing, is such that it was made only by God and was created together with the things that were formed from it.

But if it is said credibly that this matter is signified by the 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 said there of the Spirit of God, we understand the rest as names indeed of visible things, but used to suggest that formlessness as it could be suggested to slower minds; because these two elements, earth and water, are more easily handled than the others by the hands of workers in making something, and so that formlessness was more fittingly suggested by these names); if, then, this is said with probability, there was no formed mass which the light, illuminating it on one side, might make dark on the other, so that night could follow when the day departed. And if we wish to understand day and night as the sending out and drawing in of that light, we neither see any cause why this should happen (for there were not yet living creatures for whom this alternation might be provided for their health, and for whom, after they came into being, we see it provided by the circuit of the sun), nor does any example occur to us by which we could prove such a sending out and drawing in of light to produce the alternations of day and night. The casting of rays from our eyes is indeed a casting of a certain light, and it can be drawn in when we look at the air nearest our eyes, and sent out when we attend to things far off in the same line. And certainly when it is drawn in it does not altogether cease to see what is far off, but sees it more dimly than when the gaze is sent out toward it. Yet the light that is in the sense of one who sees is shown to be so slight that unless it is helped by outside light we can see nothing; and because it cannot be told apart from that light, it is hard, as I said, to find an example by which the sending out of light for day and its drawing in for night could be demonstrated.

But if it was a spiritual light that was made when God said, “Let there be light,” it is not to be understood as that true light, coeternal with the Father, through whom all things were made and who enlightens every man, but as 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, passes into spiritual and rational creatures, as into holy souls, so that, enlightened, they can shine, there comes about in them a certain disposition of shining reason, which can be taken as the light made when God said, “Let there be light”; if there was already a spiritual creature signified by the name of heaven in what is written, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth”: not the bodily heaven, but the incorporeal heaven of the bodily heaven, that is, set above every body, not by degrees of place but by the loftiness of its nature. How both what was to be enlightened and the enlightening itself could be made at once, and yet had to be narrated at different times, we said a little earlier when we were treating of matter. But how are we to understand a night following this light, so that evening came? 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 light God divided, as between light and darkness, and by calling the light day and the darkness night showed that he is not the maker of sins but the one who orders them by the distribution of deserts? Or is this day the name of all time, which includes all the ages under this word, and is it therefore called not the first day but one day? For “evening came,” it says, “and morning came, one day,” so that by the coming of evening the sin of the rational creature seems to be signified, and by the coming of morning its renewal. But this is a discussion of prophetic allegory, which we have not undertaken in this work. For we have set out now to speak of the Scriptures according to the proper sense of things done, not according to the riddles of things to come. So, in terms of the natures made and established, how do we find evening and morning in a spiritual light? Is the dividing of the light from the darkness the distinction of a thing already formed from what is formless, while the naming of day and night suggests the ordering by which it is signified that God leaves nothing disordered; that formlessness itself, through which things change by passing in some way from form to form, is not unarranged; and that the failings and advances of creation, by which all temporal things succeed one another, are not without their contribution to the beauty of the universe? For night is ordered darkness. And the reason why it was said, as soon as light was made, “God saw the light, that it was good,” although he could have said this after everything of that same day (that is, when he had set out, “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,” he could then have said, “And God saw that it was good,” and then added, “And evening came, and morning came,” as he does in the other works to which he gives names), the reason he did not do so here is that that formlessness was distinguished from the formed thing in such a way that it was not an end in itself but still remained to be formed through the other creatures, now bodily ones. So if, after they had been distinguished by that division and by names, it had then been said, “God saw that it was good,” we would take these to be signified as made things to which nothing more was to be added in their kind. But because he had perfected only the light in this way, “God saw,” it says, “the light, that it was good,” and he separated it from the darkness by division and names; and he did not then say, “God saw that it was good,” for that formlessness had been separated so that other things might still be formed from it. For this night that we know so well (the circuit of the sun over the lands makes it), when it is divided from the day by the arrangement of the lights, “God saw that it was good” is said after that division of day and night itself. For this night was not some formless substance from which other things would still be formed, but a space full of air lacking the light of day; and to this night certainly nothing more was to be added in its kind to make it more beautiful or more distinct. But evening, throughout those three days before the lights were made, may perhaps not unreasonably be understood as the end of a finished work, and morning as the signifying of a work to come.

But above all let us remember, as we have already said many times, that God does not work by temporal movements, as it were, of his mind or body, as a man or an angel works, but by the eternal, unchangeable and stable reasons of his Word, coeternal with himself, and by a kind of brooding, if I may put it so, of his Holy Spirit, equally coeternal. For what was said in the Greek and Latin languages of the Spirit of God, that he “was borne over the waters,” according to the sense of the Syriac language, which is close to Hebrew (this is reported to have been explained by a certain learned Syrian Christian), is said to be better understood not as “was borne over” but as “brooded over”; not as swellings or wounds in the body are treated with waters either cold or warmed to a suitable heat, but as eggs are brooded by birds, where the warmth of the mother’s body in some way also helps the chicks to be formed, through a kind of affection of love in its kind. So let us not think in a carnal way of temporal words of God on each of the days of these divine works. For the very Wisdom of God, having taken on our weakness, did not come to gather the children of Jerusalem under his wings, as a hen gathers her chicks, so that we might always be little ones, but so that, while being infants in malice, we might cease to be children in mind. And in obscure matters, very far removed from our eyes, if we read anything about them, even in the divine writings, that can give rise to different opinions without harm to the faith in which we are instructed, let us not throw ourselves into any one of them with headlong assertion, so that, if perhaps the truth, examined more carefully, rightly overturns it, we fall; fighting not for the meaning of the divine Scriptures but for our own, so that we would want our meaning to be that of the Scriptures, when we ought rather to want the meaning of the Scriptures to be ours.

For suppose that in what is written, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light,” one person thought it was bodily light that was made and another spiritual light. That there is spiritual light in spiritual creation our faith does not doubt; but that there is a bodily light, heavenly or even above the heaven or before the heaven, which night could follow, is not contrary to the faith so long as it is not refuted by most certain truth. And if that should happen, it was not what divine Scripture contained but what human ignorance had thought. But if certain reason demonstrates that this is true, it will still be uncertain whether the writer of the holy books meant this to be understood by those words, or something else no less true. And if the rest of the context of the passage proves that he did not mean this, the other thing that he did mean to be understood will not for that reason be false, but both true and more useful to know. But if the context of Scripture does not oppose the writer’s having meant this to be understood, it will still remain to ask whether he could not also have meant something else. And if we find that he could also have meant something else, it will be uncertain which of them he meant; and it is not unfitting to believe that he meant both to be understood, if the rest of the surrounding text supports both meanings. For it often happens that even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heaven, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and revolution or even the size and distances of the stars, about the definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the cycles of years and seasons, about the natures of animals, shrubs, stones, and other such things, and holds it by most certain reason or experience. Now it is exceedingly disgraceful and harmful, and greatly to be avoided, that he should hear a Christian talking such nonsense about these things, as if according to the Christian writings, that, seeing him wrong by the whole sky, as the saying goes, he can scarcely keep from laughing. And the trouble is not so much that an erring man is laughed at, but that our authors are believed by those outside to have held such views, and, to the great ruin of those whose salvation we are concerned for, they are criticized and rejected as unlearned. For when they catch someone from the number of Christians in error on a subject they know very well, and hear him asserting his foolish opinion from our books, how are they going to believe those books on the resurrection of the dead and the hope of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, when they think they were written falsely about things that they could already learn by experience or grasp by unquestionable calculation? What trouble and sorrow rash and presumptuous people bring on prudent brothers cannot be told enough: when they begin to be rebuked and refuted for their wrong and false opinion by those who are not bound by the authority of our books, then, to defend what they said with the lightest rashness and the plainest falsehood, they try to bring forward those same holy books to prove it, or even recite from memory many words from them that they think serve as evidence, “understanding neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertions.”

With this in view, to be considered and observed, I have explained the book of Genesis in many ways, as far as I could, and have put forward opinions on words placed obscurely for our exercise, not rashly affirming any one with prejudice to another explanation that is perhaps better, so that each may choose according to his small measure what he can grasp; and where he cannot understand Scripture, let him give God the honour and keep fear for himself. But since the words of Scripture that we have treated can be explained in so many ways, let those finally restrain themselves who, puffed up with worldly learning, attack as something unskilled and unpolished these words, which are set down so as to nourish all devout hearts; they crawl on the ground without wings and mock the nests of birds that are going to fly. But some weak brothers err more dangerously: when they hear these ungodly men discoursing subtly and at length on the numbers of the heavenly bodies or on any questions about the elements of this world, they lose heart, and with a sigh they put those men above themselves and think them great; they go back with distaste to the books of most wholesome piety and can scarcely bear to touch what they ought to drink in with delight, shrinking from the roughness of the crop and gaping at the flowers of thorns. For they have no leisure to see how sweet the Lord is, and they do not hunger on the sabbath; and so they are too lazy, with the authority received from the Lord, to pluck the ears and keep turning them in their hands and rub and clean them until they come to food.

Someone will say: “With all your threshing in this discussion, what grain have you husked? What have you winnowed? Why does almost everything still lie hidden in questions? Affirm one of the many things you have argued can be understood.” I answer him that I have come sweetly to this very food: I have learned that a man should not be at a loss in answering, according to the faith, what must be answered to people who try to slander the books of our salvation. Whatever they can demonstrate about the nature of things by true evidence, we should show is not contrary to our writings; but whatever they bring forward from any of their books that is contrary to these writings of ours, that is, to the catholic faith, we should either show by some means, or believe without any doubt, to be utterly false. And so let us hold fast to our Mediator, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” so that we are neither led astray by the talkativeness of false philosophy nor frightened by the superstition of false religion. And when we read the divine books, amid such a great number of true meanings drawn from a few words and safeguarded by the soundness of the catholic faith, let us choose above all the one that clearly appears to be what the author we are reading meant; but if this is hidden, then certainly one that the context of Scripture does not hinder and that agrees with sound faith; and if the context of Scripture too cannot be examined and discussed, then at least only what sound faith prescribes. For it is one thing not to discern what the writer chiefly meant, and another to stray from the rule of piety. If both are avoided, the reader’s fruit is complete; but if both cannot be avoided, even if the writer’s intention is uncertain, it is not without use to have drawn out a meaning that agrees with sound faith.

“And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide between water and water.’ And so it was done. And God made the firmament, and God divided between the water that was below the firmament and the water that was above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven. And God saw that it was good. And evening came, and morning came, the second day.” About the word of God, in that God said, “Let there be a firmament,” and so on, and about his good pleasure, in that he saw that it was good, and about evening and morning, there is no need to discuss again here in the same way; and so from now on, whenever these things are repeated, we advise that they be considered meanwhile according to the earlier inquiry. But whether that heaven is now being made which goes beyond all the spaces of the air and all its height, where the lights and stars are also set on the fourth day, or whether the air itself is called the firmament, may rightly be asked. For many assert that the nature of these waters cannot be above the starry heaven, because they have their weight so ordered that they either flow over the earth or are carried as vapour in the air nearest the earth. And no one should refute these people by saying that, according to the omnipotence of God, to whom all things are possible, we must believe that waters even as heavy as those we know and perceive are spread over the heavenly body in which the stars are. For now it is fitting for us to inquire, according to his Scriptures, how God established the natures of things, not what he may wish to work in them or from them as a miracle of his power. For if God ever wished oil to remain under water, it would happen; yet the nature of oil would not on that account be unknown to us, namely that it is so made that, seeking its own place, even if it has been poured underneath, it breaks through the waters and sets itself on top of them. So now we are asking whether the Creator of things, who “arranged all things in measure and number and weight,” assigned to the weight of the waters not one proper place around the earth, but also one above the heaven, which is spread around 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. They deny that the heaven is in any way made solid above like a kind of pavement, so that it could bear the weights of waters, because such solidity can belong only to earth, and whatever is such is not heaven but earth. For the elements, they say, are distinguished not only by places but also by qualities, so that according to their own qualities they are also allotted their own places: water, for instance, over earth; and even if it stands or glides under the earth, as in hidden grottoes and caves, it is held up not by the part of the earth that it has above it, but by the part that it has below it. For if any part of the earth slips down from the upper part, it does not remain on the water, but breaks through it, sinks, and makes its way to the earth; and when it comes there it rests as in its own place, so that the water is above and the earth beneath. From this it is known that, even when it was above the waters, it was not carried by the waters themselves but held by the structure of the earth, as the vaults of caves are. Here we must warn against an error that I warned against in the first book: that no one of us, because it is written in the Psalms, “He founded the earth upon the water,” should think that we must rely on this testimony of Scripture against those who discuss the weights of the elements with subtlety. For they, not held by the authority of our writings and not knowing in what sense it was said, will more readily laugh at the holy books than give up what they have grasped by certain reasoning or proved by the plainest experiments. For that verse in the Psalms can rightly be taken figuratively: since spiritual and carnal people are often signified in the church by the names of heaven and earth, it showed that the heavens belong to the serene understanding of truth, saying, “who made the heavens in understanding,” and the earth to the simple faith of little ones, not uncertain and deceptive with fabulous opinions, but most firm in the preaching of prophets and gospel, which is made solid through baptism; and so it added, “He founded the earth upon the water.” Or, if anyone insists that it be understood literally, it can quite fittingly be taken either of the high parts of the lands, whether continents or islands, which are higher than the waters, or of the very roofs of caves, which are held firm by a solidity hanging over the waters. Therefore no one can understand literally what was said, “He founded the earth upon the water,” in such a way as to think that the weight of the waters is by natural order placed beneath the weight of earth to support it.

That air is higher than water, although because of its greater extent it also covers the dry land, is understood from this: no vessel pressed down mouth first can be filled with water. This shows clearly enough that the nature of air seeks a higher place. For a vessel seems empty, but it is proved to be full of air when it is pressed into water mouth downward; because the air finds no place to escape through the upper part, and its nature does not allow it to go downward and under the waters by breaking through them, it pushes them back by its fullness and does not let them enter the vessel. But when the vessel is placed so that its mouth is not downward but tilted to the side, the water enters below as the air goes out above. Likewise, if the mouth of an upright vessel is open to the sky, when you pour in water the air escapes upward from the other parts, where you are not pouring, and room is made for the water to enter downward. And if the vessel is pressed down with greater force, so that the waters suddenly flow in from the side or from above and cover the mouth of the vessel all round, the air, striving upward, breaks through them to make room for them below; and that very breaking through is the gurgling of vessels, while the air escapes in parts, since it cannot all go so quickly because of the narrowness of the mouth. So if air is forced to go above waters, it even scatters them as they flow together, when, driven by its force, they bubble up and leap out and release it with bursting bubbles as it hastens to its own place and gives them access to fall to the bottom. But if it is forced to go under the waters out of a vessel, as when you want a vessel pressed mouth downward to the bottom to be filled as the air gives way, the vessel is more easily covered by the waves on every side than a tiny drop finds room to enter through its mouth from below.

Now who does not perceive that fire, leaping upward, wants to pass beyond even the nature of air? For if anyone holds a burning torch head downward, the tresses of the flame nevertheless strive upward. But since fire is soon extinguished by the overpowering pressure of the air poured around and over it, and, overcome by its abundance, is soon changed and turned into its quality, it cannot last long enough to leap through its whole height. So it is said that pure fire above the air is the heaven, from which they conjecture that the stars and lights too were made, the nature of that fiery light being gathered into globes and arranged into the forms that we see in the heaven. And so, just as both air and water give way to the weights of earth so that it reaches the earth, so the air itself gives way to the weight of the waters so that they reach earth or water. From this they wish it to be understood that in the same way air too, if someone could release a particle of it in those lofty spaces of the heaven, would necessarily fall by its own weight until it reached the airy spaces beneath. Therefore they conclude that there can be much less room for waters above that fiery heaven, since air, which is much lighter than waters, cannot remain there.

Yielding to such arguments of theirs, a certain man made a praiseworthy attempt to demonstrate waters above the heavens, so as to support the trustworthiness of Scripture from visible and observable natures themselves. First, which was easiest, he showed that this air too is called heaven, not only in common speech, by which we say the sky is clear or cloudy, but also in the usage of our own Scriptures, when they speak of “the birds of heaven,” since it is obvious that birds fly in this air; and the Lord, speaking of clouds, said, “You can judge the face of the heaven.” And we often see clouds gathered even in the air nearest the earth, when they rest on the slopes of ridges in such a way that they are often topped even by the peaks of the mountains. So having proved that this air too is called heaven, he wished it to be thought that it was called the firmament for no other reason than that its interval divides between certain vapours of water and these waters that flow with greater bulk on the earth. For clouds too, as those have found who have walked among them in the mountains, take on such an appearance by the gathering and massing of very tiny drops; and if they are thickened further, so that many very small drops are joined into one large one, the air does not allow it to be held within it but gives way to its weight downward, and this is rain. So from the air that is between the moist vapours, from which clouds are gathered above, and the seas spread below, he wished to show that there is a heaven between water and water. I judge this diligence and consideration most worthy of praise. For what he said is not against the faith and can be believed on the basis of evidence ready to hand. And yet it might seem that the proper weights of the elements do not prevent waters from being even above that highest heaven, in those tiny particles in which they could also be above this space of air. For although the air is heavier than the highest heaven and lies lower beneath it, it is without doubt lighter than waters; and yet those vapours are not prevented by any weight from being above it. So too above that heaven a lighter exhalation of moisture in still tinier drops can be spread out, which would not be forced by weight to fall. For these same people persuade us by the subtlest reasoning that there is no particle of body, however small, in which division comes to an end, but all things are divided without limit, because every part of a body is a body, and every body must have half of its quantity. And therefore, if water can come, as we see, to such tiny drops that it is carried as vapour above this air, which is by nature lighter than waters, why can it not also remain above that lighter heaven in tinier drops and lighter vapours?