Hexameron 1.23–1.38

As for the nature and quality of the substance of heaven, why should I list what the philosophers have argued in their disputations? Some assert that heaven is composed of the four elements; others bring in a kind of fifth nature, a new body, to make it up, and imagine that it is an ethereal body, with which neither fire nor air nor water nor earth is mixed. For, they say, the elements of this world have each their own course, use, and natural motion, so that the heavier sink down and are carried downward, while the empty and light rise up to the higher regions (for each has its proper motion); but in the circuit of a sphere these are confused and lose the force of their course, since a sphere turns in its orbit, and the upper parts are exchanged with the lower and the lower with the upper. And where the motions according to nature have been changed, they say, the qualities of their substances must also usually change. Why then do we maintain that it is an ethereal body? So that it may not seem liable to corruption. For what is composed of corruptible elements must necessarily be dissolved. Since the elements are of different natures, they cannot have a simple and inviolable motion, because the different motions of the elements fight one another. One motion cannot suit all and fit elements that differ; for the motion that suits the light elements is unsuited to the heavier ones. So when the motion of heaven must go upward, it is weighed down by the earthy elements; when a course downward is required, that fiery vigour is dragged by force, since it is compelled downward against the use of its nature. But everything that is forced into its contrary, not by nature but by necessity, is quickly dissolved and split into the things of which it seems to be composed, each returning to its own region. Considering these things, then, others thought that heaven could not be stable, and judged that the body of heaven and the stars is ethereal, introducing a kind of fifth nature of body, so that they might think the substance of heaven would last for a long time.

But this opinion could not stand against the prophetic statement, which the divine majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God, also confirmed in the Gospel. For David said: “In the beginning you, Lord, founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They shall perish, but you remain; and they all shall grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will change them and they shall be changed; but you are the same, and your years shall not fail.” The Lord confirmed this in the Gospel so far as to say: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” Those, then, who thought a fifth, ethereal body should be introduced in order to assert the perpetuity of heaven accomplish nothing, since they see just as well that a portion unlike the rest, joined to a single member, usually brings ruin to a body rather than otherwise. Notice at the same time that the prophet David, while naming the earth first and heaven afterward, believed that the work of the Lord should be declared. For when he spoke and they were made, it does not matter which you mention first, since both were made together; and so that heaven might not seem to be awarded the prerogative of the divine substance, as if it were thought superior by the privilege of a first-born creature. So let us leave those people to their own quarrels, who refute one another in their mutual disputes; for us it is enough for salvation to have not a controversy of disputations but the truth of the commandments, not cunning in argument but faith of mind, so that we may serve the creator rather than the creature, who is God blessed for ever.

“But the earth was invisible and unformed.” A good craftsman first lays the foundation; then, when the foundation is laid, he marks out the parts of the building and adds the ornament. So when the foundation of the earth had been laid and the substance of heaven made firm (for these two are, as it were, the hinges of things), he added: “But the earth was invisible and unformed.” What is “was”? Perhaps they might stretch their opinion to infinity and without beginning and say: “See, matter, that is hylē, as the philosophers say, had no beginning even according to the divine Scripture.” But to those who say this you will answer that it is written: “But Cain was a worker of the earth,” and Scripture has of the one called Jubal: “He was the father who showed the psaltery and the harp,” and “There was a man in the land of Ausitis whose name was Job.” Let them stop, then, raising a question from the word, especially since Moses said first that God made the earth. It “was,” then, from the time it was made. For if they say it is without beginning, then, saying that not only the Lord but also hylē is without beginning, let them define where it was. If in a place, then the place too is claimed to have been without beginning in which the matter of things was, which had no beginning. But if that seems absurd to believe about a place, see whether we must perhaps think the earth could fly, and that having no foundation it hung up by the oarage of wings. Where then shall we get wings for it, unless perhaps we draw here the interpretation of the prophetic saying, “From the wings of the earth we have heard wonders,” and that other, “Woe to the land, wings of ships”? But even if we take it so, in what air did the earth fly? Without air it could not fly; yet air could not yet exist, because the distinction of the elements had not been made out of the matter of things, since the elements themselves had not yet been made. Where then was this matter, propped up by the oarage of wings? It was not in the air, because air is a body of the world; and that air is a body is taught by the reading that, when an arrow is shot to the place at which the archer aims, the air is cut and at once closes back on itself. Where then was hylē, unless one should say, by a kind of mad design, that it was in God? Then God, of invisible and inviolable nature, who dwells in light unapproachable, the incomprehensible and most pure Spirit, was the place of the matter of the world, and a portion of the world was in God, though even the mind of his servants is not of this world, as we have it written: “They are not of this world, even as I am not of the world.”

How then were invisible things joined to visible things, and unformed things to him who gave order and beauty to all? Unless perhaps, because he said, “But the earth was invisible,” they believe it was invisible in its substance, and not because, covered by the waters, it could not be visible to bodily eyes, just as many things lying in the depth of the waters escape the sight and keenness of the eyes. For nothing is invisible to God; but a creature of the world is judged by the estimation of a creature. The earth was invisible also because there was not yet the light to illuminate the world, not yet the sun; for the lights of heaven were made afterward. And if the sun's ray often lights up even hidden things and brings to view by the splendour of its light what is sunk in the depth, who would doubt that what lies in the depth cannot be invisible to God? Unless perhaps we take “invisible earth” to mean that it was not yet visited by the word and protection of God, since it did not have man, for whose sake the Lord would look down on the earth, as it is written: “The Lord looked down upon the children of men, to see if there were any who understood or sought God.” And elsewhere he says: “From heaven he hurled judgment; the earth trembled and was still.” And rightly “invisible,” because “unformed,” since it had not yet received a fitting shape and appearance from its own maker.

And perhaps they may say: “Why did God not, as he spoke and they were made, give fitting ornaments to the elements together with their rising? Could heaven not have shone at once, as soon as it was created, adorned with stars, and the earth be clothed with flowers and fruits?” Certainly he could; but things are declared to have been made first and set in order afterward so that they would not be believed to be truly uncreated and without beginning, as they would be if the forms of things seemed to be ungenerated from the beginning and not added afterward. The earth is read to have been unformed, and still those same philosophers honour it with the privileges of eternity with which God is honoured: what would they say if it had come with its preservation from the beginning? It is described as sunk in the waters, as if condemned to a kind of shipwreck of its beginnings, and still some believe it was not made: what if it had laid claim to a first-born beauty? Add to this that God wished us to be imitators of himself, so that we first make something and afterward make it beautiful, lest by attempting both together we be able to complete neither. Our faith, moreover, grows by a kind of step. So God first made, then beautified, so that we would believe that the same one adorned who made, and made who adorned, and would not think that one adorned and another created, but that the same one did both, first making, then setting in order, so that one might be believed by means of the other. You have clear testimony of this in the Gospel. When the Lord was about to raise Lazarus, he ordered the Jews to remove the stone from the tomb, so that seeing the dead man they might afterward believe him raised. Then he called Lazarus, and he rose and came out with his hands and feet bound. Could not he remove the stone who could raise the dead? And could he who was able to give life back to the dead not loosen the knots of the bonds? Could he not restore walking with the bonds broken to one to whom he gave the power to step with his feet bound? But surely we notice that he wished first to show him dead, so that they would believe their own eyes, then to raise him, and third to order them to loosen the grave bands themselves, so that through these things faith would be poured into the unbelieving and belief would be born by certain steps.

God, then, first made heaven and earth, yet he willed them to be subject to the end, not as perpetual, but as a corruptible creature. So he says in the book of Isaiah: “Lift up your eyes to heaven and look upon the earth below, for heaven has been made firm like smoke, and the earth shall grow old like a garment.” This is the earth that before was unformed. For the seas were not yet marked off by their bounds, and so the earth was flooded by wandering waves and a deep whirlpool. Consider that even now the earth usually bristles with marshy ooze and does not bear the plough where moisture poured over the land overflows. It was unformed, then, being unploughed by the tillage of a skilled farmer, because the farmer was still lacking. It was unformed, because it was bare of growing things, not grassy with banks of rivers, not shaded with groves, not glad with crops, not shady with the brows of mountains, not fragrant with flowers, not pleasant with vineyards. Rightly unformed, as it lacked adornment and had no garlands of budding vines. For God wished to show that the world itself would have no grace unless its maker turned it to a varied beauty. Heaven itself, when woven over with clouds, usually stirs dread in the eyes and sadness in the mind; the earth soaked with rain is a weariness; and the seas stirred by storms, whom do they not strike with fear? The form of things is very beautiful; but what would it be without light, without mild weather, without the gathering of the waters, under which the beginnings of this world were formerly held sunk? Take the sun from the lands, take from heaven the orbs of the stars: everything bristles with darkness. So it was before the Lord poured light into this world. And so Scripture says that “darkness was upon the abyss.” There was darkness because the splendour of light was lacking; there was darkness because the air itself is dark. Water itself is dark under a cloud, because the water in the clouds of the air is dark. There was darkness, then, upon the abysses of the waters. For I do not think evil powers are to be understood, as if the Lord had created their malice, since malice is surely not substantial but accidental, having turned aside from the goodness of nature.

So in the establishing of the world let the notion of malice be set aside for the time being, so that we may not seem to mix things that are discoloured with the divine operation and a most beautiful creation, especially since there follows: “And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.” Although some take this for the air, and some for the breath that we breathe and draw in, the breath of this vital air, we, agreeing with the judgment of the saints and the faithful, take it as the Holy Spirit, so that in the establishing of the world the operation of the Trinity may shine forth. For having first said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” that is, God made it in Christ, or God the Son of God made it, or God made it through the Son, because all things were made through him and without him nothing was made, there remained the fullness of the operation in the Spirit, as it is written: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and all their power by the Spirit of his mouth.” So as in the psalm we are taught the operation of the Word, who is the Word of God, and the power which the Holy Spirit gave, so here the prophetic oracle has rung out that God spoke and God made. And the Spirit of God was borne over the waters. Fittingly the Spirit was borne over them, when the vault of heaven was to be adorned and the lands were to sprout, because through him the seeds of new births were to germinate, according to the word of the prophet: “Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.” Indeed, the Syriac, which is close to the Hebrew and agrees with it in sound and sense in very many things, has: “And the Spirit of God was cherishing the waters,” that is, was giving them life, so as to draw them into new creatures and by his warmth to quicken them to life. For we read that the Holy Spirit too is creator, as he says: “The divine Spirit, who made me.” If, then, the Holy Spirit was borne over the waters, the darkness of the opposing powers could not be over them, where so great a grace claimed the place for itself; or if, as some wish, they take it as air, let them answer for what reason he said “Spirit of God,” when it would have been enough to say “spirit.”

These people, then, would have it that four elements were first generated by the Lord our God, heaven, earth, sea, and air, on the ground that fire and air, earth and water are the causes of things, of which the appearance and form of the world consist. Where then could the darkness of the spiritual hosts of wickedness have a place, when the world was putting on the beauty of this august form? Did God create malice along with it? No; it arose from us, not founded by God the creator; it is generated by lightness of conduct, having no prerogative of a creature nor the standing of a natural substance, but the fault of changeableness and the error of a fall. God wills it to be rooted out of the souls of each person: how would he himself generate it? The prophet cries: “Cease from your wickedness,” and above all holy David: “Turn from evil and do good”: how do we ascribe its beginning to the Lord? But this is the deadly opinion of those who thought the church should be thrown into confusion. From here the Marcions, from here the Valentinuses, from here that deadly plague of the Manichaeans have tried to bring infection into the minds of the saints. Why do we ourselves seek the darkness of death in the light of life? The divine Scripture brings salvation, it breathes the fragrance of life, so that as you read you may take in its sweetness and not run into headlong danger. Read simply, O man; do not, a perverse interpreter, dig a pit for yourself. The word is simple: “God made heaven and earth.” He made what was not, not what was. “And the earth was invisible”: from the time it was made, it was, and it was invisible because the water overflowed and covered it, and darkness was spread over it, because there was not yet the light of day, not yet the sun's ray, which usually reveals even what lies hidden under the waters. Why then do they say that God created evil, when things hostile to one another are in no way generated from opposites and contraries? Life does not generate death, nor light darkness. For the progressions of generation are not like the changes of the affections. These turn from contraries into contraries by a swerving of purpose; but the others are not turned from contraries into opposites, but, created from authors or causes of the same kind, are brought back to the likeness of their author.

What then shall we say? If evil is neither without beginning, as if uncreated, nor made by God, from where does nature have malice? For no wise man has denied that there are evils in this world, since the fall into death is so frequent in this age. But from what we have already said we can gather that it is not a living substance, but a depravity of mind and soul straying from the path of virtue, which often creeps into the souls of the careless. The danger to us, then, is not greater from outside than from ourselves. The adversary is within, the author of error is within, within, I say, shut up in our very selves. Look at your purpose, examine the state of your mind, set a watch against the thoughts of your mind and the desires of your soul. You yourself are the cause of your wickedness, you yourself the leader of your shameful deeds and the instigator of your crimes. Why do you summon another nature to excuse your falls? If only you did not drive yourself, if only you did not hurl yourself down, if only you did not entangle yourself in passions, or indignation, or desires, which hold us bound as in nets! And certainly it is in our power to moderate our passions, to check our anger, to restrain our desires; it is also in our power to indulge in luxury, to kindle lusts, to inflame anger or lend an ear to one who inflames it, to be lifted up in pride, to pour ourselves out in cruelty rather than to be held down in humility and to love gentleness. Why do you accuse nature, O man? It has certain hindrances, as it were, old age and weakness. But old age itself is in us sweeter in its ways, more useful in counsel, readier for the steadfast meeting of death, stronger for restraining lusts. Weakness of body, too, is sobriety of mind. So the apostle says: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” So he gloried not in his powers but in his weaknesses. And the divine answer shone forth in a saving oracle, that “power is made perfect in weakness.” What we must guard against are the faults that come from our own will, the sins of youth and the irrational passions of the body. Let us not, then, look outside ourselves for the beginnings of things of which we are masters, nor divert them to others, but let us acknowledge what is our own. What we can refrain from doing if we do not will it, we ought to ascribe the choice of that evil to ourselves rather than to others. That is why even in the courts of this world guilt binds and punishment condemns those who are guilty willingly, not those compelled by necessity. For if someone kills an innocent person in a fit of madness, he is not liable to death. Indeed, by the oracle of the divine law itself, if anyone causes a death unintentionally, he receives the hope of impunity and the means of refuge, so that he can escape. Let this be said about what is properly seen as evil; for nothing is evil except what entangles the mind in crime and binds the conscience. But poverty, low birth, sickness, death, no wise man would call evils or number among evils, since their opposites are not counted among the greatest goods either; some of these seem to befall us by nature, others by circumstance.

Not idly did we make this digression, to prove that “darkness” and “abyss” are to be taken simply. There was darkness from the shadow of heaven, because every body makes a shadow, by which it shades what is next to it or below it, and above all what it seems to cover and enclose. And the vault of heaven encloses, because heaven is stretched out like a vault, as we showed above. The dark substance, then, was not original; but the gloom of darkness followed the body of the world like a shadow. So, at the moment of the divine command, the world as it rose enclosed the shadow within itself. Just as if, in the middle of a field lit by the midday sun, someone suddenly fenced off a place and covered it with dense leafy branches: is it not true that the brighter the outside of that place shines, the darker the inside of its hut becomes under the bristling covering above? Or why have they called a cave closed on all sides a place of that kind, except that it bristles with black mould and an outpouring of darkness? This darkness, then, was upon the abysses of the waters. For that the multitude and depth of waters is called the abyss, the reading of the Gospel teaches, where the demons asked the Saviour not to order them to go into the abyss. But he who taught that the wishes of demons are not to be done commanded them to go into the swine; and the swine threw themselves into the lake, so that the demons did not escape what they refused but were plunged into it by a fitting headlong fall. This, then, was the unformed appearance and shape of the world.

“And the Spirit of God,” he says, “was borne over the waters, and God said: Let there be light.” Rightly, then, the Spirit of God was sent ahead where the divine operation was to begin. “Let there be light,” he says. Where should the voice of God in the divine Scripture begin, if not with light? From where should the adornment of the world take its start, if not from light? It would be in vain if it were not seen. God himself, indeed, was in light, because he dwells in light unapproachable, and there was the true light, which enlightens every man coming into this world; but he willed that light to be made which could be perceived by bodily eyes. Whoever wishes to build a building worthy to be the dwelling of the head of a household, before he lays the foundation, investigates how he may let light into it. And that is the first grace; if it is lacking, the whole house bristles in ugly neglect. It is light that sets off the other ornaments of a house. “Let there be light,” he says. The full voice of light does not signify the preparation of a plan but shines in the effect of an operation. The maker of nature spoke light and created it. God's word is his will, God's work is nature: he created light, he lit up the darkness. “And God said: Let there be light. And there was light.” He did not speak so that the operation would follow; by the word he completed the task. So David's saying is fitting, “He spoke and they were made,” because the effect fulfilled the word. God, then, is the author of light, while the world is the place and cause of darkness. But the good author spoke light in such a way that he opened the world itself by pouring in light and made its appearance beautiful. Suddenly, then, the air shone, and the darkness took fright at the brightness of the new light; the brilliance of light, poured suddenly through the whole world, drove it back and as it were plunged it into the abysses. Fittingly and properly, then, he said: “There was light.” For as light quickly illuminates heaven and the lands, and in a moment of time, without any grasping of it, when the regions have been uncovered by the splendour of the rising day, spreads itself around our sight, so its rising had to be told quickly. Why do we wonder if God spoke light and light flashed out on the darkened world, when, if someone under water lets oil out of his mouth, he makes clearer what was covered in the hidden places of the depth? God spoke, not so that some sound of speech went out through the organs of the voice, nor so that the motion of a tongue formed a heavenly address and some noise of words struck this air of ours, but so that he made known his will through the effect of his operation.

“And he divided between the light and the darkness, and God saw the light, that it was good.” He spoke, and no one heard the sound of a voice; he divided, and no one perceived the labours of the operation; he saw, and no one beheld the direction of his eyes. “And God saw the light,” he says, “that it was good.” He did not see what he did not know, nor approve what he had not known before or had not seen; but it is proper to good works that they need no outside praise but themselves bear witness to their own grace when they are seen. What is approved by sight is more than what is praised by speech. It uses its own testimony, not another's support. If with us judgment is given by the eyes, by which both the grace of beauty and the nature of things are grasped at once, how much more does God see all that he approves and approve all that he sees, according to what is written: “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous.” The nature of light is such that its whole grace lies not in number, not in measure, not in weight, as with other things, but in its appearance. So he expressed the nature of light in fitting words: it pleases by being seen, since it provides the very function of seeing. Nor without reason could it find so great a herald for itself. By him it is rightly praised first, since it has made the other members of the world also worthy of praise. God saw the light, then, and lit it up with his countenance, and saw that it was good. This is not a judgment on God's part alone, but a general one. So the grace of light is approved not only in its splendour but in all its usefulness. Hence also the division between light and darkness is made, so that, the nature of light and of darkness being separated, nothing seems to be confused between them.

“And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night,” so as to distinguish day and night by their very name. We notice, then, that the rising of light seems to open the day before that of the sun; for the beginnings of the day close the end of the night, and a fixed end of time and a boundary of state seems to have been prescribed for night and day. The sun makes the day bright; light makes the day. Often the sky is covered with clouds, so that the sun is hidden and none of its rays appears; yet the light shows the day and hides the darkness.

“And there was evening and there was morning, one day.” Some ask why Scripture mentioned evening first and then morning, lest perhaps it seem to signify night before day. They do not notice, first, that it put day first by saying, “And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night”; and then that evening is the end of the day and morning the end of the night. So, to give the day the prerogative and primacy of birth, it first signified the end of the day, after which night was to follow, and then added the end of the night. But Scripture could not so far put night before day as not to include the times of both day and night under the name of day and claim them by the authority of the principal name. And that it is Scripture's custom to give the name to the more important, we prove by frequent examples, since Jacob too said, “The days of my life are few and evil,” and again, “All the days of my life,” and David wrote, “The days of my years”; he did not say “and the nights.” From this we notice that the things now handed down in the form of history established the force of law for the future. The beginning of the day, then, is the voice of God: “Let there be light. And there was light.” The end of the day is evening. Then the following day succeeds from the end of the night. And God's judgment is clear, because first he called the light day and second he called the darkness night.

Excellently, too, he said “one” day, not “first” day. For since a second and third day and the rest in order were to follow, he could have said “first,” and this seemed to fit the order; but he established a law, that the twenty-four hours of day and night should be defined by the name of day alone, as if he said: “The measure of twenty-four hours is the time of one day.” For as when the generations of men are counted the women's are understood too, because what is secondary is bound to what is more important, so days are numbered and the nights are reckoned as joined to them. As there is one circuit, then, so there is one day. Indeed many call even a single week one day, because it returns into itself as into one day and runs back into itself seven times. This is the figure of a circuit, to begin from itself and return into itself. So Scripture sometimes speaks of one age (for though in other places it says “ages,” it seems rather to signify the differences of public conditions or affairs than to define certain successions of ages), because “the day of the Lord is great and glorious,” and elsewhere: “Why do you seek the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light.” For it is plain that to those with an evil conscience and to the unworthy that day is dark, in which innocence will shine and the guilty mind will be tormented. But Scripture teaches us that that perpetual day of eternal reward will be without the interruption of nights and the succession of darkness.

Beautifully, too, when he was about to call both turns one day, he closed it with the end of morning, to teach that the day begins with light and ends in light. For the time of a day and night is not whole unless it has been completed. So let us too always walk honestly as in the day and cast off the works of darkness. For we know that night was given for the rest of the body, not for the performance of any work, and that it passes in sleep and forgetfulness. Let there not be in us revelling and drunkenness, chambering and impurity; let us not say: “Darkness and walls cover us, and who knows if the Most High will see?” But let there be in us love of light and care for what is honourable, so that, walking as in the day, we may desire our works to shine before God, to whom be honour, praise, glory, and power, with our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, from the ages, now and always, and for all ages of ages. Amen.