Confessions 12.23–12.41

For with these, my God, I want to speak for a little in your presence, those who grant that all these things are true which your Truth does not keep silent within my mind. As for those who deny them, let them bark as much as they like and deafen themselves; I will try to persuade them to be quiet and let your word find a way to them. But if they will not, and reject me, I beseech you, my God, "do not be silent to me." Speak truly in my heart, for you alone speak so; and I will leave them outside, blowing into the dust and raising earth into their own eyes; and I will enter my chamber and sing love songs to you, groaning with inexpressible groanings in my pilgrimage, and remembering Jerusalem, with my heart stretched up toward it: Jerusalem my homeland, Jerusalem my mother, and you who reign over it, its enlightener, father, guardian, husband, its chaste and strong delights and solid joy and all good things beyond telling, all at once, because you are the one supreme and true good. And I will not turn away until you gather all that I am from this dispersion and deformity into the peace of that dearest mother, where the first fruits of my spirit are, from which these things are certain to me; and you conform and confirm me for ever, my God, my mercy. But to those who do not say that all these true things are false, who honor your holy Scripture, published through holy Moses, and set it with us at the summit of authority to be followed, and yet contradict us in something, I speak thus. Be judge, our God, between my confessions and their contradictions.

For they say: "Although these things are true, yet Moses was not looking at those two things when, by the revelation of the Spirit, he said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth.' By the name of heaven he did not mean that spiritual or intellectual creation always contemplating the face of God, nor by the name of earth formless matter." What, then? "What we say," they say, "is what that man meant; this is what he expressed in those words." What is that? "By the name of heaven and earth," they say, "he wanted first to signify, universally and briefly, this whole visible world, so as afterward to set out, by the enumeration of the days, piece by piece as it were, all the things the Holy Spirit was pleased to express in this way. For the people to whom he spoke were such rough and carnal men that he judged that only the visible works of God should be commended to them." But they agree that the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss, from which, as is then shown, all these visible things known to everyone were made and set in order during those days, may not unfittingly be understood as this formless matter.

What if another says that this same formlessness and confusion of matter was first suggested by the name of heaven and earth, because from it this visible world, with all the natures that appear most plainly in it, which is often called by the name of heaven and earth, was established and completed? What if yet another says that invisible and visible nature is not unfittingly called heaven and earth, and so the whole creation, which God made in Wisdom, that is, in the Beginning, is comprised in these two words; but since all things were made not from God's own substance but from nothing, because they are not the Selfsame that God is, and there is a certain changeableness in all of them, whether they remain, like the eternal house of God, or change, like the soul and body of man, then the common matter of all things invisible and visible, still formless but certainly capable of form, from which heaven and earth would be made, that is, both creations, invisible and visible, once formed, is expressed by the words by which it is called "invisible and unformed earth" and "darkness over the abyss"; with this distinction, that the invisible and unformed earth is understood as bodily matter before the quality of form, and darkness over the abyss as spiritual matter before the restraining of its flowing, as it were, unboundedness, and before the enlightening of Wisdom?

There is yet another thing someone else may say, if he wishes: that when we read, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," what is signified by the name of heaven and earth is not invisible and visible natures already completed and formed, but the still formless beginning of things, matter capable of being formed and created, is called by these names, because in it those things were already present in confusion, not yet distinguished by qualities and forms, which now, arranged in their orders, are called heaven and earth, the one spiritual, the other bodily creation.

Having heard and considered all these views, I do not want to "contend about words; for that is useful for nothing but the ruin of the hearers." But "the law is good" for edification "if one uses it lawfully," because "its end is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned"; and our Teacher knows on which two commandments he hung the whole Law and the Prophets. As I confess these things ardently, my God, light of my eyes in secret, what harm is it to me if different things, which are nevertheless true, can be understood in these words? What harm is it to me, I say, if I think something other than another thinks the writer meant? All of us who read are striving to trace and grasp what the one we read intended; and since we believe him truthful, we do not dare to think that he said anything we know or think to be false. While, then, each one tries to understand in the holy Scriptures what the writer understood in them, what harm is there if he understands what you, the light of all truthful minds, show to be true, even if the one he reads did not understand it, since that writer too understood something true, though not this?

For it is true, Lord, that you made heaven and earth. It is true that the Beginning is your Wisdom, in which you made all things. Likewise it is true that this visible world has as its great parts heaven and earth, a brief summary of all the natures made and established. And it is true that everything changeable suggests to our knowledge a certain formlessness, by which it receives form, or by which it is changed and turned. It is true that what so clings to the unchangeable form that, though changeable, it does not change, undergoes no times. It is true that formlessness, which is almost nothing, cannot have successions of times. It is true that that from which something is made can, by a certain manner of speaking, already have the name of the thing that is made from it; so any formlessness from which heaven and earth were made could be called heaven and earth. It is true that of all formed things nothing is closer to the formless than earth and the abyss. It is true that you made not only what is created and formed, but also whatever can be created and formed, you from whom are all things. It is true that everything that is formed from the formless is first formless and then formed.

From all these truths, which are not doubted by those to whose inner eye you have granted to see such things, and who firmly believe that Moses your servant spoke in the Spirit of truth, from all these, then, one takes one sense who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the intelligible and the sensible, or spiritual and bodily, creation. Another who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in his Word, coeternal with himself, God made this whole mass of the bodily world with all the evident and known natures that it contains. Another who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the formless matter of spiritual and bodily creation. Another who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in his Word, coeternal with himself, God made the formless matter of bodily creation, in which heaven and earth were still confused, which we now perceive distinguished and formed in the mass of this world. Another who says: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," that is, in the very first beginning of making and working, God made formless matter containing heaven and earth confusedly, from which, now formed, they stand out and appear with all that is in them.

Likewise, as regards the understanding of the words that follow, from all those truths one takes one sense who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," that is, that bodily thing which God made was still the formless matter of bodily things, without order, without light. Another who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," that is, this whole which has been called heaven and earth was still formless and dark matter, from which would be made the bodily heaven and the bodily earth with all that is in them, known to the bodily senses. Another who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," that is, this whole which has been called heaven and earth was still formless and dark matter, from which would be made the intelligible heaven (which elsewhere is called the heaven of heaven) and the earth, namely all bodily nature, under which name this bodily heaven too is to be understood; that is, from which all invisible and visible creation would be made. Another who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss": Scripture did not call that formlessness by the name of heaven and earth, but, he says, that formlessness already existed which it named the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss, from which it had said before that God made heaven and earth, namely the spiritual and bodily creation. Another who says: "But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss," that is, there was already a certain formless matter, from which Scripture said before that God made heaven and earth, namely the whole bodily mass of the world, divided into two very great parts, upper and lower, with all the familiar and known creatures that are in them.

For suppose someone tries to oppose the last two opinions in this way: "If you do not want this formlessness of matter to be seen as called by the name of heaven and earth, then there was something which God had not made, from which he made heaven and earth; for Scripture has not told that God made this matter, unless we understand it to be signified by the word heaven and earth, or earth alone, when it was said, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth'; so that what follows, 'But the earth was invisible and unformed,' although it pleased Scripture to call formless matter so, we should understand only of that which God made in what is written, 'He made heaven and earth.'" The defenders of those two opinions which we put last, one or the other, when they hear this, will answer and say: "We do not deny that this formless matter was made by God, the God from whom all things are very good; for as we say that what is created and formed is a greater good, so we confess that what is made capable of being created and formed is a lesser good, but still good. But Scripture has not recorded that God made this formlessness, just as it has not recorded many other things, such as the cherubim and seraphim, and those that the apostle names distinctly, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, all of which it is nevertheless plain that God made. Or if everything is included in what was said, 'He made heaven and earth,' what do we say of the waters over which the Spirit of God was moving? For if they are understood as included when earth is named, how is formless matter to be taken by the name of earth, when we see the waters so beautiful? Or if it is taken so, why is it written that the firmament was made from the same formlessness and called heaven, and it is not written that the waters were made? For they are no longer formless and invisible, since we see them flowing in such a lovely form. Or if they received this form when God said, 'Let the water under the firmament be gathered together,' so that the gathering is itself the forming, what will be answered about the waters above the firmament? For neither would they have deserved so honorable a place if they were formless, nor is it written by what word they were formed. So if Genesis is silent about something that God made, which yet neither sound faith nor sure understanding doubts that God made, and no sober teaching will therefore dare to say that these waters are coeternal with God because we hear them mentioned in the book of Genesis but do not find where they were made, why should we not also understand, as truth teaches, that that formless matter, which this Scripture calls the invisible and unformed earth and the dark abyss, was made by God from nothing and is therefore not coeternal with him, even though this account has omitted to say where it was made?"

Having heard and considered these things, then, as far as my weakness allows, which I confess to you, my God, who know it, I see that two kinds of disagreement can arise when something is reported in signs by truthful messengers: one, if the disagreement concerns the truth of the things; the other, if it concerns the intention of the one who reports. For it is one thing to ask what is true about the establishing of creation, another to ask what Moses, that outstanding servant of your household of faith, intended the reader and hearer to understand by these words. In the first kind, let all depart from me who think they know things that are false. In the second, likewise, let all depart from me who think that Moses said things that are false. But let me be joined with those, Lord, in you, and delight with them in you, who feed on your truth in the breadth of love; and let us approach together the words of your book and seek in them your intention through the intention of your servant, by whose pen you dispensed them.

But which of us has so found it among so many true things, which occur to those who seek in those words understood now one way and now another, that he can say as confidently that Moses meant this and wanted this to be understood in that account as he confidently says that this is true, whether Moses meant it or something else? For see, my God, I your servant, who have vowed to you a sacrifice of confession in this writing, and pray that by your mercy I may pay you my vows: see, I say confidently that in your unchangeable Word you made all things, invisible and visible; but do I say as confidently that Moses had nothing else in mind than this when he wrote, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth"? For I do not see in his mind that he thought this when he wrote these words, as I see it to be certain in your truth. For he could have been thinking of the very start of making when he said "in the beginning"; he could also have wanted "heaven and earth" in this place to be understood not of any nature already formed and completed, whether spiritual or bodily, but of both only begun and still formless. For I see that whichever of these were said could truly be said; but which of these he had in mind in these words I do not see in the same way; although, whether that great man saw in his mind one of these or something else that I have not mentioned when he uttered these words, I do not doubt that he saw what was true and expressed it fittingly.

Let no one now trouble me by saying to me, "Moses did not mean what you say, but what I say." For if he said to me, "How do you know that Moses meant what you say about these words of his?" I ought to bear it calmly, and answer perhaps what I answered above, or somewhat more fully if he were more stubborn. But when he says, "He did not mean what you say, but what I say," and yet does not deny that what each of us says is true, then, O life of the poor, my God, in whose bosom there is no contradiction, rain softening into my heart, so that I may bear such people patiently. They say this to me not because they are godly and have seen in the heart of your servant what they say, but because they are proud; they do not know Moses' meaning, but they love their own, not because it is true but because it is theirs. Otherwise they would equally love another true meaning, as I love what they say when they say what is true, not because it is theirs but because it is true; and for that very reason it is no longer theirs, because it is true. But if they love it because it is true, it is both theirs and mine, since it is the common property of all lovers of truth. But their contention that Moses did not mean what I say but what they say, I do not want and do not love; because even if it is so, that rashness is born not of knowledge but of audacity, not of vision but of pride. And therefore, Lord, your judgments are to be feared, because your truth is neither mine nor his nor another's, but belongs to all of us whom you publicly call to share in it, warning us terribly not to want to hold it privately, lest we be deprived of it. For whoever claims as his own what you set before all to enjoy, and wants to be his own what belongs to all, is driven from the common to his own, that is, from truth to a lie. For "he who speaks a lie speaks from his own."

Listen, best Judge, God, Truth itself, listen to what I say to this objector; listen, for I speak before you and before my brothers who use the law lawfully, to the end of love; listen and see what I say to him, if it pleases you. For this is the brotherly and peaceful word I give him: if we both see that what you say is true, and we both see that what I say is true, where, I ask, do we see it? Certainly I do not see it in you nor you in me, but both of us in the unchangeable Truth itself, which is above our minds. Since, then, we do not quarrel about the very light of the Lord our God, why do we quarrel about the thought of our neighbor, which we cannot see as the unchangeable Truth is seen? For even if Moses himself appeared to us and said, "This is what I meant," we would not see it even then, but believe it. So let us not "be puffed up one against another beyond what is written." "Let us love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves." Unless we believe that Moses meant whatever he meant in those books for the sake of these two commandments of love, we shall make the Lord a liar, when we think of our fellow servant's mind otherwise than he taught. See, then, how foolish it is, amid so great an abundance of very true meanings that can be drawn from those words, to assert rashly which of them Moses chiefly meant, and by harmful quarrels to offend love itself, for whose sake he said all the things we are trying to explain.

And yet, my God, height of my lowliness and rest of my labor, who hear my confessions and forgive my sins: since you command me to love my neighbor as myself, I cannot believe that you gave Moses, your most faithful servant, a lesser gift than I would wish and desire to be given to me by you, if I had been born at the time he was and you had placed me in that position, so that by the service of my heart and tongue those writings might be dispensed which were to benefit all nations so long afterward, and to surpass throughout the whole world, from so lofty a summit of authority, the words of all false and proud teachings. For I would have wished, if I had then been Moses (for we all come from the same lump; and "what is man, except that you are mindful of him?"), I would have wished, then, if I had been what he was and the book of Genesis had been assigned to me by you to write, that such a power of expression and such a manner of weaving words would be given me that those who cannot yet understand how God creates would not reject the words as beyond their powers, and those who can already do so would find, in the few words of your servant, whatever true meaning they had arrived at by thinking, not omitted; and if another saw another meaning in the light of truth, that too would not be missing from the same words for him to understand.

For as a spring in a small place is more abundant, and supplies its flow to more streams over wider spaces than any one of those streams that is led from the same spring through many places, so the account of your dispenser, which was to benefit many who would speak of it, pours out from a small measure of speech floods of clear truth, from which each may draw for himself, by the longer windings of discussion, what truth he can about these things, one this and another that. For some, when they read or hear these words, think of God as a man, or as some power endowed with an immense mass, which by some new and sudden decision made heaven and earth outside itself, as if in distant places, two great bodies above and below, in which all things would be contained; and when they hear, "God said, 'Let it be made,' and it was made," they think of words begun and ended, sounding in time and passing away, after whose passing what had been commanded to exist at once came into existence; and whatever else of this kind they perhaps imagine from their familiarity with the flesh. In these, who are still little animals, while their weakness is carried by this very humble kind of speech as in a mother's bosom, faith is healthily built up, by which they hold for certain that God made all the natures which their senses see around them in wonderful variety. If any of them, despising the words as if lowly, stretches himself out of his nursery cradle in proud weakness, alas, he will fall, poor thing; and, Lord God, have mercy, lest those who pass by on the road trample the unfledged chick, and send your angel to put it back in the nest, so that it may live until it can fly.

But others, for whom these words are no longer a nest but shady thickets, see hidden fruits in them, and fly about rejoicing, and chirp as they search them out and pluck them. For when they read or hear these words, they see that all past and future times are surpassed by your eternal, stable permanence, O God; and yet that there is nothing in temporal creation which you did not make; and that you, whose will is what you are, made all things by no changed will, nor by a will arising which had not been before; not from yourself, a likeness of yourself, the form of all things, but from nothing, a formless unlikeness, to be formed through your likeness, returning to you, the One, according to its ordered capacity, as much as has been given to each thing in its kind; and that all things were made very good, whether they remain close to you, or, at a distance increasing by degrees, through times and places, make or undergo beautiful variations. They see these things and rejoice in the light of your truth, as far as they are able here.

And one of them attends to what was said, "In the beginning God made," and looks to Wisdom as the Beginning, "because it also speaks to us." Another likewise attends to the same words and understands "the beginning" as the start of created things, and takes "In the beginning he made" as if it were said, "First he made." And among those who understand "in the beginning" to mean that he made heaven and earth in Wisdom, one believes that heaven and earth themselves, the matter capable of creating heaven and earth, were so named; another, natures already formed and distinguished; another, one formed and spiritual nature by the name of heaven, the other the formless nature of bodily matter by the name of earth. And those who understand by the names of heaven and earth the still formless matter from which heaven and earth would be formed do not understand it in one way either; but one understands the matter from which the intelligible and sensible creation would be completed, another only that from which this sensible bodily mass would be made, holding in its great bosom the visible and evident natures. Nor do those agree who believe that heaven and earth in this place are the creatures already arranged and set in order; but one understands the invisible and visible, another only the visible, in which we look up to the shining heaven and the dark earth and the things that are in them.

But he who takes "In the beginning he made" in no other way than as if it were said, "First he made," has no way to understand "heaven and earth" truly unless he understands the matter of heaven and earth, that is, of the whole creation, intelligible and bodily. For if he wants it to be the whole creation already formed, he could rightly be asked: if God made this first, what did he make next? And he will find nothing after the whole, and so will hear, against his will, "How is that first, if there is nothing after?" But when he says that God made it first formless and then formed, he is not absurd, provided he is able to discern what precedes by eternity, what by time, what by choice, and what by origin: by eternity, as God precedes all things; by time, as the flower precedes the fruit; by choice, as the fruit is preferred to the flower; by origin, as sound precedes song. Of these four, the first and last I have mentioned are very hard to understand, the two in the middle very easy. For it is a rare and very arduous vision, Lord, to behold your eternity unchangeably making changeable things, and therefore prior to them. Then who has so sharp a mind as to be able to discern without great labor how sound is prior to song, because song is formed sound, and something unformed can certainly exist, but what does not exist cannot be formed? So matter is prior to what is made from it, not because it makes it, since rather it is made, nor prior by an interval of time. For we do not first utter formless sounds without song and afterward fit or shape them into the form of a song, as with wood from which a chest is made, or silver from which a vessel is fashioned; for such materials do precede in time the forms of the things made from them. But with song it is not so. For when it is sung, its sound is heard; it does not first sound formlessly and then is formed into song. For whatever has sounded in any way passes away, and you will find nothing of it that you could take up again and compose by art; and so song is turned in its own sound, and that sound is its matter. For the sound itself is formed so as to be song. And so, as I said, the matter of sounding is prior to the form of singing: not prior by the power of making, for sound is not the maker of the song, but is supplied from the body to the singing soul, from which to make the song; nor prior in time, for it is uttered together with the song; nor prior by choice, for sound is not better than song, since song is not only sound but beautiful sound. But it is prior by origin, because song is not formed so as to be sound, but sound is formed so as to be song. By this example let whoever can understand that the matter of things was made first and called heaven and earth, because heaven and earth were made from it; and not made first in time, because the forms of things give rise to times, while it was formless, and is only perceived together with them in times; and yet nothing can be told of it except as if it were prior in time, although it is ranked last, because formed things are certainly better than formless ones; and it is preceded by the eternity of the Creator, so that it might exist from nothing, from which something could be made.

In this diversity of true opinions, let Truth itself bring forth concord, and "may our God have mercy on us," that we may use the law lawfully, for the end of the commandment, pure love. And so, if anyone asks me which of these Moses, your servant, meant, these are not the words of my confessions if I do not confess to you: I do not know. And yet I know that those opinions are true, except the carnal ones, about which I have said what I thought. Yet these words of your book, lofty in their lowliness and rich in their few words, do not frighten those little ones of good hope. But let all of us whom I acknowledge to see and speak what is true in these words love one another, and equally love you, our God, the fountain of truth, if we thirst not for vain things but for truth itself; and let us so honor your servant himself, the dispenser of this Scripture, full of your Spirit, as to believe that, when he wrote these things by your revelation, he attended to what is most excellent in them both in the light of truth and in the fruit of usefulness.