Creation in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

God's making of the world and of all things, creation from nothing, the days of creation, and the goodness of what was made. Part of God.

1 Clement 20.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The heavens obey God in peace.
1 Clement 20.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Day and night keep their order.
1 Clement 20.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Sun, moon, and stars move in concord.
1 Clement 20.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The earth yields food in its seasons.
1 Clement 20.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The sea keeps within its bounds.
1 Clement 27.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God made all things by his word.
1 Clement 33.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God made and ordered heaven, earth, and sea.
1 Clement 33.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God blessed his creation.
Epistle of Barnabas 6.13Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · In the last days God makes a new creation like the first.
Epistle of Barnabas 15.3Anonymous · ca. 70–135 (often ca. 130) · God finished creation in six days and rested on the seventh.
Odes of Solomon 16Anonymous · ca. 100–200
2 Clement 1.8Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · God called us into being from nothing.
Acts of Paul (Coptic Heidelberg papyrus), page 45Anonymous · ca. 150-200 · The Corinthians fear for Paul because two teachers, Simon and Cleobius, are denying the resurrection of the flesh, God's creation of man and the world, and Christ's real crucifixion and birth.
Sibylline Oracles 8.441ff.Anonymous · 2nd-3rd cent. · The hymn tells how God said to the Word, "Let us make man in our form," and how all the elements obeyed his command.
Sentence 31 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · All that God made, he made for the sake of human beings.
Oration to the Greeks 5Tatian · ca. 165–172 · Tatian's doctrine of the Word: begotten from the Father's power without diminishing him, like a torch lit from a torch, and the maker of the world; matter itself was created, not eternal.
To Autolycus 1.4Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The titles of God explained: uncreated, unchangeable, Lord, Father, Creator, Almighty; he made all things out of nothing.
To Autolycus 1.6Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God is known through the order and beauty of creation, the seasons, the stars, and the storm, as the Scriptures describe them.
To Autolycus 2.4Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The philosophers disagree about God; Plato's uncreated matter would make it equal to God, but God's power is shown in creating out of nothing.
To Autolycus 2.6Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Hesiod's account of creation begins from Chaos but never says who shaped it; only God can have made and ordered matter.
To Autolycus 2.10Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God made all things from nothing through his Word, whom he had within himself and “uttered” with his Wisdom before creation; this Word spoke through the prophets, and Genesis begins with “In the beginning.”
To Autolycus 2.11Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The whole account of the six days of creation (Gen 1:3–2:3) is quoted from the Septuagint.
To Autolycus 2.12Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · No one can fully explain the six days of creation; the philosophers' imitations mix truth with error; the seventh day, the sabbath, is known to all peoples though they do not know why.
To Autolycus 2.13Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Theophilus explains the first days of creation: God began with heaven, not with foundations as a builder does; the Spirit moved over the waters to give life; the Word shone like a lamp.
To Autolycus 2.15Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The sun and moon are types of God and humanity; the three days before the lights are types of the “Triad” of God, his Word, and his Wisdom; the stars represent the prophets, the righteous, and the apostate.
To Autolycus 2.20Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Genesis 2:8–25 is quoted: the garden, its rivers, the command about the tree of knowledge, the creation of the woman, and the first marriage.
A Plea for the Christians 16Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The beautiful world is an instrument, not the musician: Christians worship its Maker, not the world or the elements.
Against Heresies 1.22.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The rule of truth confesses one God who made all things by his Word and Spirit, the God of Abraham and Father of Jesus Christ; against it the heresies are easily shown to err.
Against Heresies 2.1.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Irenaeus begins his refutation with the one God, Creator of all, above whom there is nothing.
Against Heresies 2.2.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · To say angels made the world against the Father's will makes them stronger than God or God careless.
Against Heresies 2.2.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · If the world was made with God's will, he is its true maker, as the craftsman, not the tool, is said to cut.
Against Heresies 2.2.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God, needing nothing, made all things by his Word, giving each its fitting nature and order.
Against Heresies 2.2.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God made the world by his Word, as John, Genesis, David, Moses and Paul testify, not by angels or other gods.
Against Heresies 2.3.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · What God conceived he made, so the world as it is is worthy of the Father, not the fruit of ignorance.
Against Heresies 2.7.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The countless, conflicting creatures of the world cannot be images of thirty uniform Aeons.
Against Heresies 2.10.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The heretics, not believing that God made all things from nothing by his will, invent vain explanations of matter.
Against Heresies 2.10.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God, unlike men, made the very matter of creation from nothing; the heretics' account is incredible.
Against Heresies 2.25.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Like the notes of a lyre, the varied and contrary things of creation form one harmony made by one artist.
Against Heresies 2.30.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The heretics can point to no work of their own to compare with the Creator's heavens, earth, and creatures.
Against Heresies 2.30.6Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Scripture teaches that one God made things visible and invisible; the heretics cannot even describe the heavenly powers they claim to have made.
Against Heresies 2.30.9Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · There is one God, Creator and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, revealed through his Son, and no Pleroma or second God.
Against Heresies 2.34.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Created things endure by God's will; eternal life is God's gift to the grateful, which the ungrateful forfeit.
Against Heresies 3.8.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · All creatures, including the angelic powers, were made by God through his Word; only the Creator with his Word is properly called God and Lord.
Against Heresies 3.10.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The angels at the Nativity announced the birth of the Savior in David's city and glorified the one Creator, refuting the Gnostic account.
Against Heresies 3.11.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · John wrote against Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans: one God made all things through his Word, including our creation.
Against Heresies 3.12.9Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Paul's preaching at Damascus, Athens, and Lystra proclaimed the Creator of heaven and earth and Jesus the Son of God.
Against Heresies 4.20.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God cannot be known in his greatness but is known through his love; he made man with his own hands, the Son and the Spirit, not through angels.
Against Heresies 4.32.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The elder taught that both covenants come from the one Creator; whoever believes this and reads the Scriptures with the Church’s presbyters will find them consistent.
Against Heresies 5.3.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The God who formed man from clay can much more easily raise the dissolved body, and the flesh that received his wise craftsmanship can receive his power.
Against Heresies 5.15.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · By making clay to give sight to the man born blind, Christ showed himself to be the hand of God that formed man from the earth and seeks out the lost.
Against Heresies 5.18.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Since creation bore the crucified Word, it must be God’s own work, not a product of ignorance, of angels, or of something outside the Pleroma.
Against Heresies 5.18.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Father over all, the Word through all, and the Spirit in us all show one God; John’s prologue proves the world was made by the Word, not by angels or a Gnostic power.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 30Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Plato misread Genesis to posit ideas of earth, heaven, and man; Homer echoes Genesis in calling the dead body "earth".
Miscellanies 5.14.126Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Orphic hymn's “mother-father” points to creation from nothing (though Gnostics misuse it to imagine a consort of God), and its verses paraphrase the prophets' God who makes the thunder and alone kills and makes alive.
Miscellanies 6.16.142Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God's rest means he fixed the order of creation and ended the ancient disorder; all things were made together by one will, the days showing rank rather than time, since time itself was created with the world.
Octavius 17.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The regular seasons testify to their Creator.
Apology 17Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians worship the one Creator, who is known both from his works and from the testimony of the soul, which naturally calls on God.
To the Nations 2.3Tertullian · 197 · The elements cannot be gods: the world either had a beginning and so is not eternal, or else Varro's reasons for calling the elements living beings point instead to an unseen mover behind them.
On the Shows 2Tertullian · ca. 197–202 · It is argued that the materials of the shows are God's good creation, but everything God made can be perverted by the devil, who corrupted man and his use of creation from the beginning.
On Baptism 3Tertullian · ca. 198–206 · Water has great authority from the creation: it was the seat of the Spirit, the instrument by which God ordered the world, the first bearer of life, and a partner in forming man.
6 Ezra 16.56Anonymous · 3rd century
6 Ezra 16.62Anonymous · 3rd century
On the Holy Theophany 1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · The homily on the Theophany opens by praising the goodness of creation and the necessity of water, then marvels that Christ was baptized in the Jordan, and gives John the Baptist's confession of his own lowliness before Christ.
Against Hermogenes 1Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Tertullian introduces Hermogenes, a painter and recent heretic, whose chief error, borrowed from the philosophers, is that matter is eternal alongside God and that God made the world from it rather than from nothing.
Against Hermogenes 2Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Hermogenes argues that God could not have made the world from himself, since God is indivisible and unchangeable, nor from nothing, since the evil in the world would then come from God; so it must have come from pre-existing matter.
Against Hermogenes 8Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Tertullian argues that if God needed matter to make the world, matter becomes God's superior and benefactor, and God is no longer almighty, a doctrine known only to Hermogenes and the philosophers.
Against Hermogenes 9Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · If God used eternal matter, he used it either as its lord (and so he permitted its evil), or by leave, or by force, all of which are unworthy of God.
Against Hermogenes 14Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Making things from matter would make God a slave to necessity; it is worthier of God to create freely from nothing, and even on Hermogenes' terms the good must come from nothing.
Against Hermogenes 15Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Whether good comes from matter, from God, or from nothing, Hermogenes' scheme breaks down, and God still appears as the author of the evils he made from matter.
Against Hermogenes 16Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Whether good and evil are assigned to God, to matter, or to both, matter fails to clear God of evil; so the reason for positing it falls, and creation from nothing remains.
Against Hermogenes 17Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · The one God is one because he is alone; as Scripture says, no one counselled him, so nothing co-existed with him from which he made the world.
Against Hermogenes 18Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · If God needed any material, he had his own Wisdom, born within him before creation; but Hermogenes, by making matter unborn, ranks it above the Son, God's Word.
Against Hermogenes 19Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · The “beginning” of Genesis 1:1 is not a substance from which God made the world but the start of his works, or, in the Greek sense of archē, his sovereign power.
Against Hermogenes 20Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · God made heaven and earth “in the beginning”, that is, in his Wisdom; since neither Genesis nor John's Gospel names any material, he made them from nothing.
Against Hermogenes 21Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Scripture had no need to say that the world was made from nothing, but it would have had to say so if it had been made from matter.
Against Hermogenes 22Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Where Genesis makes things from other things it says so; since it names no material for heaven and earth, they were made from nothing, and adding to Scripture brings a woe.
Against Hermogenes 29Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · God made the earth first and furnished it afterwards; covered by water it was “invisible” until he said “let the dry land be seen”, so the unformed earth of Genesis is our earth, not matter.
Against Hermogenes 31Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Naming heaven and earth as made includes their parts (darkness, abyss, spirit, waters), just as the making of man includes his limbs.
Against Hermogenes 32Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Other Scriptures state that the abyss, darkness, spirit, and waters of Genesis 1:2 were made by God; so either they are not matter, or matter is shown nowhere.
Against Hermogenes 34Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Scripture foretells that heaven and earth will pass away; what ends in nothing began from nothing, and God's promise to raise our flesh shows he makes the greater from the lesser.
Against Hermogenes 45Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Scripture teaches that God made the world through his Wisdom and Word with his own power, from nothing; Hermogenes' chaotic matter is really a portrait of himself.
Prescription against Heretics 34Tertullian · ca. 203 · No heresy in the apostles' day questioned the Creator; Marcion, Apelles, and Valentinus were the first, so they are either condemned with the older heresies or condemned by their lateness.
Fragment 2 on Genesis (Gen: 1, 1)Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-235 · At creation God divided the waters into three parts: one congealed in the middle, one taken up with the firmament, and one left below for human use.
Commentary on Daniel 2.30Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · The fourth in the furnace was the Word who spoke through the youths; their hymn shows all creation to be God's servant, against heretics who invent aeons and emanations.
Against Marcion 1.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god who created nothing, owns nothing, and has left no works by which to be known cannot be proved God; if Marcion's god wished to be known, he should have made himself known through works greater than the Creator's.
Against Marcion 1.13Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Marcionites scorn the world as unworthy of God, yet even pagan philosophers found it so splendid that they made its elements into gods, and the smallest flower or shell refutes them.
Against Marcion 1.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Even tiny creatures show the Creator's skill; Marcion's own Christ loved the Creator's man and uses the Creator's water, oil, milk, honey, and bread in his sacraments, and the Marcionites themselves live on the Creator's world.
Against Marcion 1.16Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Creation is full of contrasting pairs, so the invisible world belongs to the same Creator as the visible one, not to a god who has made nothing that can be seen.
Against Marcion 2.3Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's goodness is eternal: before anything existed he willed to make a world through which he could be known, so his goodness is older than time itself, unlike the late-arriving goodness of Marcion's god.
Against Marcion 2.4Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's goodness shows in the whole creation, made through his Word and pronounced good, and above all in man, formed in God's image, given dominion, a helper, and a law with a kind warning attached.
Against Marcion 2.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Goodness and justice cannot be split between two gods: from the first days of creation the Creator's justice was at work, separating light from darkness and ordering every part of the world.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 5Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Even on heretical views the flesh owes its being to some divine will, but in truth God himself formed man by his own hand and gave the flesh the very name of man.
On the Resurrection of the Flesh 11Tertullian · ca. 208–212 · Those who deny the resurrection live most carnally; God, who made the world out of nothing (or even from matter), can surely remake the flesh.
Against Praxeas 12Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · God's plural “Let us make man” and “one of us” show that the Word and the Spirit were with him; in creation one person commands and another makes, one substance in three persons, distinct but not divided.
On First Principles 1.0.7Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The church teaches that the world had a beginning and will be dissolved, but not what came before or will come after it.
On First Principles 1.2.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Wisdom, the Son, is a real subsistence, begotten of the Father without any beginning in time or thought, and contains beforehand the forms of all creation.
On First Principles 1.7.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · According to the church's faith all souls and rational natures, though incorporeal, were created through Christ, as John and Paul declare.
On First Principles 1.7.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The creation subjected to vanity (Rom 8) is the heavenly bodies bound to material bodies to serve humanity; like Paul they long to be with Christ, and will be freed when Christ hands the kingdom to the Father.
On First Principles 2.1.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The world's great variety, of rational beings, bodies, animals and places, is caused by the different movements and falls of rational beings from their original unity with God.
On First Principles 2.1.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The variety of the world requires bodies; matter, which takes on qualities, was made by God and is not unbegotten or coeternal with him, as some philosophers held.
On First Principles 2.1.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Second Maccabees, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Psalms confirm that God created all things out of nothing.
On First Principles 2.9.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · God created all rational beings equal and alike out of his goodness; their diversity comes from their own free choices, and God justly arranges them in one world like vessels in one house.
On First Principles 3.5.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Scripture (Moses, Jacob, the Psalms, Christ and Paul) teaches that the world had a beginning in time and will come to an end.
On First Principles 3.5.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · To the question what God did before the world, Origen answers that there were other worlds before this one and will be others after it, though not several at once.
On First Principles 3.5.4Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Scripture's word καταβολή for the founding of the world suggests a “casting down” of rational beings from the invisible to the visible, some by merit and some, like the stars, for service.
On First Principles 4.4.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · All things were created through the Son, as Colossians, John and Psalm 33 show; in the incarnation his divinity was neither confined to his body nor separated from the Father, as the Baptist's words 'among you stands one' imply.
On First Principles 4.4.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The word 'matter' for the substrate of bodies is not used in the canonical Scriptures, only in Wisdom; matter is not unmade, and bodily substance can change from any quality to any other.
On First Principles 4.4.8Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Scripture hints at formless matter (the Psalm's “imperfect,” Enoch's walk to the imperfect); God made all things in number and measure, and bodily nature, changeable at his will, will last as long as rational beings need bodies.
Fragments on Genesis, column 47Origen · ca. 220-254 · Against those who hold that matter is unbegotten, Origen argues that God's will is able to bring substance itself into being, not only its qualities.
Fragments on Genesis, column 49Origen · ca. 220-254 · If matter were unbegotten and fit for God's work by itself, Providence would add nothing to chance; human craftsmen are no parallel, since Providence supplies their material.
Fragments on Genesis, column 97Origen · ca. 220-254 · Scripture counts snakes among wild beasts; some take the six days as an order of telling, not of time; “book” in Gen 2:4 came in from Gen 5:1.
PG 12:1081 (Ps 1 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The Holy Spirit has placed wisdom in every letter of Scripture, as the Creator has in the smallest creatures; difficulties in Scripture, like those in creation, do not justify the heretics’ rejection of the Creator.
PG 12:1089 (Ps 1 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Christ, the tree of life transplanted to paradise, gives his fruit in season according to the fitness of those who receive it; fruits and leaves are the primary and the secondary things of creation, of Scripture, and of the blessed man’s life.
PG 12:1649 (Ps 135 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 136:2–16 (LXX 135): God of gods by love and by creation, the Saviour God by essence and not by participation, the wonders of goodness, and the psalm read as the soul's journey from Egypt to knowledge.
Fragment 1Julius Africanus · after 221 · Africanus held that the first day of creation was an intelligible day, since the first light was not yet formed into bodies.
Refutation of All Heresies 1.26.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The philosophers, amazed by creation, took parts of it for God and did not know the Creator.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.43.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Overawed by creation, the philosophers took parts of it for God and could not reach the true God.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The two Bears represent two creations: Adam's, and the new creation in Christ.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.21.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · When nothing existed, Basilides says, the “non-existent God,” without thought or will, willed to make a world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides rejects emanation or pre-existing matter as the way God made the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.22.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Basilides reads “Let there be light” as creation from nothing by the word of a God who “was not.”
Refutation of All Heresies 8.17.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hermogenes taught that God made everything out of eternal, unbegotten matter.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.30.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Jews confess one God who created all things from nothing by his will, and angels made to serve creation.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.32.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The one God, alone from eternity with nothing beside him, made all things from nothing by his will, foreknowing all.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.32.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · God first made the elements, fire, air, water, earth, and composed creatures from one or more of them.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Word alone is from God himself and so is God; the world, made from nothing, is not God, and God made nothing evil.
Fragment 1 on John 1:1Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 1:1: the Son is called Word as maker of all; ‘was’ (not ‘became’) signifies his eternal existence before the incarnation; he was in the beginning of all creatures, and is the Wisdom ‘created as the beginning of God's ways’ in relation to creation.
Commentary on John 1.95Origen · ca. 230–248 · “Beginning” can mean the start of creation, as in Genesis 1:1 and Job 40:19.
Commentary on John 1.98Origen · ca. 230–248 · Not all embodied beings are like the dragon: the sun and the whole creation are also in bodies.
Commentary on John 1.99Origen · ca. 230–248 · Creation's subjection to futility may mean embodied existence, which souls bear unwillingly.
Commentary on John 1.103Origen · ca. 230–248 · Matter is not an uncreated beginning, for God made all things out of nothing, as 2 Maccabees and Hermas teach.
Commentary on John 1.110Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Word may be the beginning as the agent through whom God created.
Commentary on John 1.114Origen · ca. 230–248 · As a house follows the builder's plan, all things are made according to the patterns God set in Wisdom.
Commentary on John 1.177Origen · ca. 230–248 · Others answer that creation too is afflicted, serving futility far longer than humans.
Commentary on John 6.200Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon made the world's Creator inferior to Christ; Origen answers that the Creator is the Father, the only good God, greater than the Son he sent.
Commentary on John 13.280Origen · ca. 230–248 · Creation too is a field white for harvest: God saw each creature was good by seeing the reason (logos) of each.
Commentary on John 13.281Origen · ca. 230–248 · Otherwise, how could God call sea creatures and monsters “good”?
Commentary on John 13.282Origen · ca. 230–248 · What God saw as good was the reason of each creature, including beasts and creeping things.
Commentary on John 13.283Origen · ca. 230–248 · Their goodness lies in the reason by which they were made.
Commentary on John 32.187Origen · ca. 230–248 · The first article of faith: one God, creator of all from nothing.
On Prayer 24.5Origen · ca. 233–234 · The Lord's Prayer uses imperatives that express wishes; Origen refutes Tatian, who wrongly took God's “Let there be light” as a prayer rather than a command.
Homilies on Ezekiel 4.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Ezekiel’s “sinful land” leads Origen to suggest tentatively that the earth itself is a living being, capable of good and evil and subject to judgment, and also that the land is the soul.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 8.10Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Human substance, created from nothing, is nothing before God, though not in comparison with other creatures; “every man living” is vanity in this present life, even for Moses and the prophets, who know only in part, so we should hasten in mind toward the true life of heaven.
On the Trinity 1Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The rule of truth begins with faith in God the Father, the Creator of heaven, earth, sea, and man, whom he made free and gave a command, and of unseen realms above and below.
On the Trinity 3Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Scripture shows God as the one Creator who measures heaven and earth, admits no rival, cannot be contained in a temple, and is known from his works though unseen.
On the Trinity 8Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The church worships the God whom all creation praises, who guided sacred history from paradise to Christ and the apostles, and whose providence reaches every smallest thing, as Ezekiel's vision of his chariot shows.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.208Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Visible creatures bear likenesses of heavenly realities, as the mustard seed images the kingdom and faith, so that the soul may rise from the visible to the invisible.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.209Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · Wisdom 7 shows that knowledge of visible things points to hidden ones; God made the visible creation to teach the invisible.
On the Computation of Easter 3Anonymous · 243 · Genesis shows that on the first day of creation God divided day and night equally, which marks the equinox.
On the Computation of Easter 5Anonymous · 243 · From the fourth day of creation the sun and moon were appointed to mark days, seasons, and years.
Against Celsus 2.9Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not call Jesus' visible body or human soul God, but the divine Word who spoke in him, who created all things at the Father's command and is not confined to Jesus' body, though united with it.
Against Celsus 4.54Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus borrows from Plato's Timaeus the claim that God made only souls and lesser gods made bodies, but he gives no argument, whereas the Stoics and reason point to one God who made all things for a purpose.
Against Celsus 4.55Origen · ca. 248 · Had Celsus read Genesis carefully, he would have noticed that “God made” is used for some creatures and not others, and asked to whom God's creative commands were addressed, rather than dismissing the account as meaningless.
Against Celsus 6.49Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus dismisses the Genesis creation story as silly without argument; Origen points to his own commentaries on Genesis and insists that Moses wrote with deep meaning, not as a comic poet.
Against Celsus 6.50Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus calls the creation account nonsense without argument; Origen notes that Moses himself shows the six “days” are not ordinary days, since light and the sun came after the first day.
Against Celsus 6.51Origen · ca. 248 · Origen declines to repeat his earlier commentary on the six days and dismisses Celsus's jibes about the Creator borrowing light as attacks on heretical sects that Christians themselves reject.
Against Celsus 6.60Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus again mocks the six days of creation, and Origen again answers that the Father made the world through the Word and that the “days” are not literal periods of time.
Commentary on Romans 7.3Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains why present sufferings cannot compare with the glory to come and interprets the creation subjected to vanity as rational creatures, including the soul bound to the body and the heavenly bodies and angels, who groan in sympathy and await the revelation of God’s sons.
On the Making of the World 1Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · Victorinus announces that he will reflect on the seven days of creation, since everything is governed by the number seven.
On the Making of the World 2Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · God made light divided into twelve hours of day and night, and on the fourth day the sun, moon, and stars to mark times.
On the Making of the World 7Victorinus of Pettau · late 3rd century · The seven heavens correspond to the seven gifts of the Spirit on Christ, and the Word, the author of creation, bears these seven names in the seven days.
On Free Will 2.8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · From the order of nature he concluded that a divine power governs all things, and praised the Creator.
On Free Will 2.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The Valentinian wavers between creation from nothing and from a pre-existing substance.
On Free Will 7.4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Qualities must therefore have come from nothing, so creation from nothing is not impossible.
On Free Will 7.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · So God can make substances, not only qualities, from nothing.
On Free Will 10.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If matter always had qualities, God made nothing and is no creator.
On Free Will 22.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Asked why God began to create the world if matter did not exist beside him, the speaker says God's reasons cannot be fully known, but offers what he thinks he knows.
On Free Will 22.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God created because his knowledge and goodness were not meant to remain idle.
On Free Will 22.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God created to display his art and goodness in his works.
On Free Will 22.7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God showed his goodness by creating from nothing and by promising better things.
On Free Will 22.8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God created to be known; the world exists for man, and man for God.
On Free Will 22.10Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius concludes that God gave all things their very being, not merely form.
Creat. 2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Photius reports Origen's argument, as Methodius presents it, that the universe must be co-eternal with God, since God is always Creator and Almighty and cannot change.
Creat. 4Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Since God has ceased creating without being changed, his beginning to create did not change him either, so the world need not be eternal.
Creat. 5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Whatever has come into being has a cause and a beginning, so the world, made by God, cannot be co-infinite with him.
Creat. 6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius presses the Origenists: if God shaped pre-existing matter, matter had a beginning of its ordering, which they will not admit.
Creat. 7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · By the image of a statue, Methodius argues that a work without beginning would need no maker, so an eternal world would be uncreated, unchangeable, and equal to God, which is absurd.
Creat. 9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Methodius distinguishes two creative powers: the Father, who creates from nothing by his will, and the Son, the Father's hand, who orders and adorns what was made.
Creat. 11Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The "beginning" of Genesis 1:1 is Wisdom, the Word, who was with the Father before creation and through whom all things were made.
Res. 1.47Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The narrator refutes the argument that whatever is born must perish, and maintains that the world will be purified by fire and renewed, not destroyed, citing Wisdom, Romans 8 and Isaiah.
Against the Nations 2.46Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · It is impious to think that the good and perfect God made man, a wretched creature, or is the cause of any evil.
Church History 1.2.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Moses shows the Father creating through his Word, speaking with him at man's creation: “Let us make man.”
Church History 5.13.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Rhodon, once Tatian's pupil, promised to answer Tatian's Problems and wrote on the six days of creation.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 16Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes sets out his doctrine of two natures and two places and argues from the variety of human faces that man was made by the rulers and matter, not by God.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 25Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · The judges argue that light fills the world; Archelaus explains darkness as the shadow cast by created bodies, chiefly the earth, so that it is not unbegotten.
Homilies 3.33Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · God alone made the four elements, the angels, the stars, earth, sea, Hades, and air.
Homilies 3.34Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter marvels at the variety of birds, plants, animals, and landscapes made by God.
Recognitions 1.27Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter recounts the creation: the world as one house divided by the firmament into an upper region for angels and a lower one for men.
Recognitions 4.24Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · God created even those he foresaw would sin, since to refrain out of fear of their future wickedness would show weakness in the Creator.
Recognitions 6.7Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Tracing images back through iron, fire, water, and spirit to God, Peter recounts how God made heaven and earth for humanity, who ungratefully ignore their giver.
Recognitions 8.12Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Niceta argues that belief in fixed fate contradicts prayer and sacrifice and abolishes worship, and asserts that God made the world and will dissolve it to reveal the eternal world.
Recognitions 8.14Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Since the world's bodies are mixed and dissoluble, they are composite, and whoever combined their elements is God, the author of the universe.
Recognitions 8.16Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The mutual dependence of the elements shows they were made from nothing, so God is the founder of all, leaving no room for Epicurus's atoms.
Recognitions 8.20Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · What is called nature is really God the maker, as Plato's Timaeus testifies; the ordered heavens, like a painted domed house, proclaim a wise maker.
Recognitions 8.29Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The symmetry and fitness of bones, limbs, eyes, ears, tongue, and teeth show the Craftsman's design.
Recognitions 8.32Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The difference of male and female only in the organs of generation, and the use of the breasts in women, show the Founder's wise design.
Recognitions 8.34Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Asking why the world was made when it was is idle, for the wise Maker had his reasons, and calling the maker “nature” only renames the divine Reason or Logos.
Prophetic Extracts 2.16Eusebius of Caesarea · before 325 (probably ca. 310–320) · Eusebius reads “he commanded, and they were created” in Psalm 148 as the Father commanding and the Word carrying out creation, and closes the extracts from the Psalms.
Divine Institutes 1.5.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Matter itself must have a maker, namely God.
Divine Institutes 2.5.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God arranged the stars' courses to produce the seasons.
Divine Institutes 2.5.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If Archimedes could model the heavens, God can certainly make and move them.
Divine Institutes 2.5.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God made the heavens move to give day and night and the seasons.
Divine Institutes 2.5.23Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God made the stars so night would not be utterly dark.
Divine Institutes 2.8.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God made everything from nothing, not from a pre-existing chaos.
Divine Institutes 2.8.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If God needed materials from another, that other would be more powerful than God.
Divine Institutes 2.8.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Since nothing surpasses God, he made matter as well as the things made from it.
Divine Institutes 2.8.28Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Man makes from existing things, God from nothing.
Divine Institutes 2.8.29Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God first made the matter of the world out of nothing.
Divine Institutes 2.8.62Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Man could not have survived creation's process, so he was made last.
Divine Institutes 2.8.63Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Scripture teaches man was made last, into a world prepared for him.
Divine Institutes 2.9.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God first made heaven as his seat, then the earth for man, surrounded by water.
Divine Institutes 2.10.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Aristotle claimed the world and humankind always existed.
Divine Institutes 2.11.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Since nothing arises without reason, God made man.
Divine Institutes 4.4.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Gods who did not make man cannot be his father or god.
Divine Institutes 7.3.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Plato rightly said God made the world, but not why.
Divine Institutes 7.4.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The world was made for man.
Divine Institutes 7.4.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God made all things for man and set him over them.
Divine Institutes 7.14.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh.
On the Anger of God 10.37Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Only God can be this maker; mindless nature can do nothing.
On the Anger of God 10.51Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The world's vastness, order, and constancy require a provident maker and ruler.
On the Anger of God 13.1Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The Stoics rightly say the world was made for man, since everything in it serves him.
On the Anger of God 13.8Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The animals too were made for man's use, as food, clothing, and labor.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.6.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The gospel teaches all people to worship the Creator of the sun and moon.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture calls the heavens the work of God's hands.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.24Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If Zeus were the creator, his supposed father and grandfather would have to come after him.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The creator must precede heaven and time, so he cannot be the grandson of Ouranus.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.30Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God is the maker of all things, whether free, natural, or accidental, as Scripture says.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.3.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · From the order and beauty of creation the Hebrew fathers inferred and worshiped the Creator.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.10.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · By God's word and law the heavens, earth, seasons, sea, and living things are ordered.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.10.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Nature obeys God's laws; the world is the work of a wise architect, not chance.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.11.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius quotes the creative words of Genesis 1.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.11.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Hebrews teach that God both created the world by his Word and governs it by providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.11.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Isaiah proclaims God as the sole Creator of heaven and earth.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.19.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Dionysius: it is impious to make matter unbegotten.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.19.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Dionysius: God gave matter its form by his wisdom and is the sole unbegotten source.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.20.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Origen: as God creates qualities, so he can create the substance itself.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.20.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Origen: on their view God would depend on luckily finding uncreated matter.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.20.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Origen: matter so fitted to God's Word cannot be unbegotten.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · So God made qualities from nothing, contradicting the opponent's principle.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If humans produce arts from nothing, God can make substances from nothing.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If matter had eternal qualities, God made nothing.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.40Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Maximus asks whether God changed matter's substances or only its qualities.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.13.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: some wrongly declared the world eternal, slighting its Maker.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.13.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: Moses taught an active divine Mind and passive matter; an eternal world would abolish providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.13.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses ascribed eternity to the intelligible and becoming to the visible.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.13.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The visible world must have had a beginning, as Moses recorded.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.23.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses taught a light, day, and night made before the visible sun.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.24.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: “beginning” in Genesis is not temporal.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.24.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: first came the incorporeal heaven, earth, air, and void.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.24.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Then incorporeal water, spirit, and light.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.25.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Genesis 1 describes first an invisible and then a visible creation.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.29.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses taught that the universe was made by God; Plato agrees.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.30.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses: God made the sun, moon, and stars and set them in the firmament.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.30.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: God made the sun, moon, and planets and set them in their orbits.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.31.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Genesis calls creation good; Plato calls the cosmos most beautiful and its maker best.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.13.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Clement: Plato taught that the world came into being from one maker out of nothing.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.15.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Either the daimones are ungenerated rivals of God, or God creates from nothing, as the Hebrews teach.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.25.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The ordered cosmos cannot come from disordered atoms.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.25.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Whether atoms are senseless, irrational, or willing, they require a craftsman, a herdsman, or a general.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.26.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Some ascribe the design of the body to chance atoms rather than divine wisdom.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Against Moses and Plato, Aristotle held the world uncreated; Atticus refutes him.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Atticus: Plato made the world generated so as not to deprive it of providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s Timaeus plainly says God brought the world into order, and so teaches its generation.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s world is generated yet imperishable by God’s will; no Peripatetic supports this.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Aristotle denies God the power to create anything new.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If human craftsmen can make what did not exist, so can God.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God can preserve what he made, as craftsmen repair theirs.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The good Maker both creates and preserves.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If human works outlast their makers, God’s works endure by his presence.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.6.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Nothing can force God to let his work perish.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.32.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch: the atomists’ account of how the world was formed.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.35.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Xenophanes: the world is ungenerated and eternal.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.37.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: soul came first, then the body of the world from the elements.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 22.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God created the world from nothing, made man in his image, and forbade him the tree of knowledge.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 64.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · All creation serves humans, so it was made for them.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.3.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Christ taught that the world was created and that its Maker alone is to be worshiped.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.1.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God, wishing to share his goodness with a free rational creation, foresaw that it would need a head and appointed one ruler over all creation.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.1.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God’s good will is the only cause of everything that exists.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.1.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God’s own will and power, not nonbeing, are the source from which all things exist.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.4.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Son is the Father’s living instrument for every work of creation, providence, and salvation.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · There is one creative power, the Word who was with God in the beginning.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.5.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · One Wisdom, the Word of God, made all the elements.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.5.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The harmony of the elements, and the earth held above the waters, testify to one creator Word.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.5.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · As one sunlight has many effects, one power of God produces the whole varied universe, so there is no need for many gods.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Psalms 33, 107, and 147 speak of God’s Word creating, healing, and running over the earth.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.5.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Psalm 33 agrees with John 1: the Word through whom all was made is God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.5.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Psalm 148 likewise says all creation came to be at God’s command.
Demonstration of the Gospel 5.20.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The Lord speaks to Job from the whirlwind about creation.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 5.2Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Christ made the world and humankind, placed the first humans in paradise ignorant of good and evil, then gave them the earth and told them to multiply.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 5.4Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · God gave humans care of tame animals and struggle against wild ones, made the birds, and completed creation with a law for each kind.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 11.14Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Christ created all from nothing, and in love makes the virtuous share their goodness with others; human corruption made his descent necessary, since no other physician could cure it.
Against the Heathen 27Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Against those who worship the cosmos, Athanasius argues that each part of creation, from the sun to the winds and the elements, depends on the others and so points to its Maker.
Against the Heathen 35Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · God, invisible by nature, ordered creation through his Word so that he might be known from his works, as Paul teaches in Romans 1 and Acts 14.
Against the Heathen 36Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The harmony of opposite elements, seasons, waters, earth, and sexes shows one power above them that joins and governs them.
Against the Heathen 37Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Opposite elements could not combine into an ordered world unless a superior Lord bound them together; left to strife they would produce only chaos.
Against the Heathen 38Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · As an orderly city implies a ruler and a harmonious lyre one musician, the ordered cosmos shows one ruler, the Word, not many gods.
Against the Heathen 39Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · There is one world, and so one maker; many makers would imply weakness, vanity, and disorder, like a ship with many helmsmen.
Against the Heathen 40Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The one Maker is the Father of Christ, who orders all things through his own Word and Wisdom, not a seminal principle or a spoken word but the living God the Word.
Against the Heathen 41Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word, the unchanging image of the Father and not composite like a human word, holds creation in being, which by its own nature would dissolve into nothing.
Against the Heathen 46Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Scripture teaches the one God and his providence through the Word, to whom the Father spoke at creation (“Let us make man”); the Son is the Father’s own Wisdom, Word, and Power, not by participation.
On the Incarnation 1.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Athanasius will begin with creation, since the Father saves the world through the same Word through whom he made it.
On the Incarnation 2.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The variety and order of the world show that it did not arise by chance but has a cause, God.
On the Incarnation 2.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Athanasius states Plato's view that God made the world from pre-existing uncreated matter.
On the Incarnation 2.4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Creation from pre-existing matter would make God weak, a mere artisan rather than a creator.
On the Incarnation 3.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Christian faith holds that God made all things from nothing through the Word, as Genesis and the Shepherd of Hermas teach.
On the Incarnation 3.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Hebrews 11:3 confirms creation from nothing by God's word.
On the Incarnation 12.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Besides the image, God provided the works of creation so that careless humans could still know their Maker.
On the Incarnation 12.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The order of creation reveals the Word, who governs all so that through him all may know God.
Theophany 1.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.17Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.43Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 6.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · Eusebius describes creation in numerical terms: matter, quality, body, the four elements, the decad, the month and the year.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 6.6Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · God gives time measured intervals, adorns day and night with sun, moon and stars, and sets earth in the midst surrounded by the sea.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 11.15Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The Word formed animals, plants and sea creatures, shapes life in the womb, and gives the rain.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 12.14Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · As one potter shapes all the parts of a figure, so one creative power, the Word, made and sustains the whole world.
Demonstration 13.10Aphrahat · 337-345 · God's 'rest' on the seventh day does not mean he was tired, for he creates by his word without labour; the expression, like his 'repenting', is accommodated speech.
Demonstration 14.34Aphrahat · 337-345 · God's works in creation surpass all understanding; true wisdom is hidden from the world but given to those who seek it, making the wise man a temple of God whose mind contemplates the heavenly throne.
Demonstration 14.36Aphrahat · 337-345 · All creation obeys God's command, as the sea, the flood, the plagues, the sun at Gibeon, the stars, beasts, birds, and fish show; only humans disobey.
Demonstration 17.7Aphrahat · 337-345
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.9.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Scripture says all things came into being through the Son.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.20.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · John 1:8–11 shows the light was in the world and made the world.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.20.70Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Col 1:15–17 describes the Son as image and agent of all creation.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.2.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The Son, through whom all things and ages were made, existed with the Father before the world.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.14.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The Son is creator; the law through Moses taught only that God made the world.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.14.18Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Grace through Christ revealed what Moses kept silent: creation through the Word.
Life of Constantine 2.58.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The order of the heavens, the seasons, the earth, and the sea testifies to God.
Oration I Against the Arians 12Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius argues from creation and from many texts (Isaiah, Baruch, Hebrews, the Psalms, the “I am” sayings) that the Son is eternal, as radiance is never without light.
Oration I Against the Arians 13Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius shows that Scripture uses “before” and “when” of creatures, but “always” of the Son, so that the Arian phrases imply a time before the Word, through whom time itself was made.
Oration I Against the Arians 29Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius answers that God's being always a maker does not make creatures eternal, since a work depends on will but the Son belongs to the Father's substance.
Oration II Against the Arians 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · If the Son were only a work, God would be a barren creator without Word or Wisdom; his begetting by nature must come before his creating by will.
Oration II Against the Arians 19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Arian formula “a creature, but not as one of the creatures” is a pretense: every creature differs from every other, so the phrase leaves the Son one creature among many.
Oration II Against the Arians 20Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Creatures differ in glory but share the nature of creatures and praise their creator; the Word is that creator, the truth whom all creation hymns, and works eternally with the Father.
Oration II Against the Arians 21Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · If the Son were a creature he could not create, for no creature brings being out of nothing; only God fashions, while human beings merely rework existing matter.
Oration II Against the Arians 22Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · God calls things into being through his Word, so the Word cannot be one of them; only the Son knows and sees the Father, which no creature can do.
Oration II Against the Arians 25Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · God neither tires nor disdains to make lesser things, since his providence reaches even sparrows and grass; so he did not need a created Son as a helper.
Oration II Against the Arians 26Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · If the created nature needed a mediator to receive God's working, the created Word would need one too, and so on without end; nothing could ever have been made.
Oration II Against the Arians 27Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Moses only ministered, which many creatures do; creating belongs to God's one Word alone, and even the unique sun is not sufficient by itself for its task.
Oration II Against the Arians 29Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · A taught creator would imply envy and weakness in God; the Father still works, his will suffices, and the Son was not made merely as a tool for creating us.
Oration II Against the Arians 31Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · We exist for the Word, not he for us; the Father creates through his own Word as light shines by its radiance, and the Word needs no instruction, unlike the creatures who question God.
Oration II Against the Arians 49Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Creatures, even the angelic powers, come into being together by kinds; the Word, who is “before all” and alone Son, is therefore not the first of creatures but their creator, like none of them.
Oration II Against the Arians 57Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Scripture says “made” of creatures and “begot” of the Son, and “in the beginning was” of the Word; creatures began to be, but the Word has his being without beginning in the Father.
Oration II Against the Arians 63Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · “Firstborn of all creation” sets the Son apart from creation; he is firstborn among brothers by the flesh, from the dead by the resurrection, and of creation by the Father's love that will set creation free.
Oration II Against the Arians 64Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · If “firstborn” meant a creature among creatures, the Son would be brother to beasts and stones; he is firstborn because he condescended to creation both in making it and in entering the world to make all sons.
Oration II Against the Arians 71Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · “For works” shows the Word to be other than the works, as one who enters a house is not the house; he is God's hand and wisdom, and the three youths call on all works to praise but never the Word.
Oration II Against the Arians 72Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Scripture distinguishes the Word from all works: he judges and sets free, while all creation groans for freedom; Athanasius then turns to Prov 8:23, “before the age he founded me.”
Oration II Against the Arians 78Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · A second reading of Prov 8:22: the Wisdom that is “created” is the image of divine Wisdom stamped on creation and on us, which the true Wisdom speaks of as its own.
Oration II Against the Arians 79Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Scripture speaks of a wisdom poured out on creation and on human beings; the true Wisdom calls this impress of itself “created,” as a prince might say his name was built into his father's city.
Oration II Against the Arians 81Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Wisdom harmonized her impress with creation so that the world might know God; when the world failed, the same Wisdom became flesh and died on the cross to reveal the Father more fully.
Oration III Against the Arians 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · “The only true God” excludes false gods, not the Son, whom Christ joins with the Father (John 17:3); “I alone,” “one,” and “first” include the Word, through whom God made all things.
Oration III Against the Arians 61Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · God deliberates about creatures, which once were not, but his will for all things is in his Word; so the Word cannot himself come into being by a will, which would imply time before him and another Word.
Oration IV Against the Arians 12Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author argues that the idea of the Word going forth from God for creation and returning at the end would make God change and creation come and go without end.
Oration IV Against the Arians 19Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author argues from John 1 and John 14 that the world was made through the Son as through the Word, so the Son and the Word are one and the same, existing before the world.
Catechetical Lecture 4.2Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Godliness needs both right doctrine and good deeds; Cyril gives a summary of doctrines before the Creed, beginning with the one God, maker of souls and bodies and Father of one Son.
Catechetical Lecture 9.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The firmament, made from water yet holding the fiery heavenly bodies, shows the Creator's wisdom, as the fire within the hail of Egypt did.
Catechetical Lecture 9.6Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The sun and the orderly succession of days and nights proclaim that there is no God but the Creator who appointed their courses.
Catechetical Lecture 9.7Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Darkness and night are good gifts of the one Creator, and the stars, clouds, rain, snow and the fruits of the earth all display his wisdom.
Catechetical Lecture 9.8Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The variety of plants, sea creatures, birds and beasts produced from one earth and one water by one command shows the Creator, and the ant and the bee teach diligence.
Catechetical Lecture 9.9Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Even if we do not know the use of every creature, the varied powers of animals and the structure of our own bodies reveal a wise Creator; the members are not the cause of sin.
Catechetical Lecture 11.21Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · All things, visible and invisible, were made through the Son, against heretics who teach other creators, identify Christ with the sun, or ascribe the world to angels.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Athanasius refutes the Arian claim that the Son alone was made by God directly and everything else through him, showing that it leads to an infinite regress of mediators.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 17Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · God has one Word, who is also called Son, Wisdom, Image, Hand, and Power; Scripture shows that all things were made through and in him.
Cento, lines 50–73Proba · ca. 360 · After calling for silence, the poem tells the first works of creation: heaven and earth, the separation of light from darkness, and the setting of sun, moon and stars.
Cento, lines 74–98Proba · ca. 360 · The cycle of seasons is set, then dry land, the creatures of the sea, the plants, and the birds are created.
Cento, lines 99–123Proba · ca. 360 · God creates the land animals, then, wishing for a ruler over creation, forms man from the clay in his own likeness, and finds no fit companion for him.
To the Bishops of Egypt 15Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius argues from John, Paul and the order of creation that the Word through whom all things were made is the one true Word, and that the Arians can show no work of their other “word.”
On the Trinity 1.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · From the beauty of creation the mind infers that its Creator is supremely beautiful, beyond comprehension yet not beyond perception.
On the Trinity 4.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · In Genesis 1 God speaks and God makes: the Father commands and the Son, through whom all things were made, carries it out.
On the Trinity 5.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Son, through whom all things were made from nothing, has the nature and power of God and so is true God.
On the Trinity 5.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · In creation God speaks and God makes; the Son who carries out the Father's word has the same power and nature and so is true God.
On the Trinity 12.16Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Every human birth and creature begins after not existing, both in time and in cause, back to Adam formed from earth made from nothing.
On the Trinity 12.39Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God's preparation of creation is eternal, nothing being new to him (Ps 33:6); Wisdom, present at that preparing, is co-eternal with it.
Letters to Serapion 4.21Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Ascribing Christ’s healings to Beelzebul would make Beelzebul the author of the messianic signs foretold by Isaiah and even the creator of human nature.
Against Arius 1.36Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues that the Son of Colossians 1, through whom all things were created, is the Word of John 1, since both texts ascribe creation “through him”.
Against Arius 1.39Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus explains that the Word, acting by the Father's power, made and governs all things from creation to the final abolition of death, after which his activity rests and God is all in all.
On the Generation of the Divine Word 14Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus argues that God begot the existent from himself, as a hidden child is brought to light at birth, and that this begotten existent is Jesus Christ, He who is.
To Justinus the Manichaean 3Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the Manichaean account of Christ's heavenly flesh and of a flesh-maker hostile to God is incoherent, and professes one creator of all things, light, truth and the whole.
On the Words of Scripture 2Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that darkness, being created by God, is a substance, and that the light of the first day illuminated only half the world, the other half remaining in darkness, so that day and night move around the earth.
On the Words of Scripture 3Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that God's separating light from darkness and calling the light “day” means a span of twelve hours that moves around the world, and appeals to Ecclesiastes 1:9 that things were then as they are now.
On the Words of Scripture 4Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the morning mentioned after each evening belongs to the next day, so that God's works were done by day, and tests this against the creation of the firmament, the dry land and the lights.
On the Words of Scripture 5Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the sun and moon, made on the fourth day, circle the earth without ceasing, as Ecclesiastes 1:5–6 says, so that the day passes from place to place and each morning begins a new day.
On the Words of Scripture 6Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that light covers only half the globe, so that morning and evening pass round the earth, and that since light was made and named day before night, the day begins with morning, not evening.
On the Words of Scripture 7Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues from the creation of man and the seventh day of rest that each day began with morning, the morning after the sixth evening being the seventh day, since no seventh evening is mentioned.
On the Synods 17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 358–359 · Proverbs 8 joins "created" and "begot" to show that the Son's birth is real yet without bodily change in the Father.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 35Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · Since “God” and “Father” signify God’s very essence, to say the Son is “from God” is to say he is “from the essence,” while creatures are works made by God’s will.
Homilies on the Psalms 32.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 33:8–10 Basil teaches that fear begins and love perfects; “came to be” refers to the body and first creation, “was created” to the soul and new creation in Christ; and God scatters the counsels of nations, as at the cross and resurrection, at Samaria's siege, and with Ahithophel.
Tractates on the Psalms 2.14Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God created all things through Christ not for his own gain but for the good of what he made.
Tractates on the Psalms 68.29Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Hilary asks how heaven, earth, and sea, so wonderful in themselves, could be called to praise God merely for rebuilding earthly Zion and the cities of Judah.
Tractates on the Psalms 91.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Beyond the visible works Moses described, Paul teaches that all things, visible and invisible, were made through Christ, in whom the Father works daily.
Tractates on the Psalms 135.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God made the heavens out of mercy and with order, tempering the highest heaven with the waters above so that creatures could bear his presence.
Tractates on the Psalms 135.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The earth hangs balanced in the middle, held within God's all-pervading Spirit, in whom we live and move.
Tractates on the Psalms 135.12Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The earth hangs firmly on the waters beneath the firmament, which divides the upper and lower waters, all by God's mercy.
Tractates on the Psalms 146.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalm praises the God of Israel as Creator who provides for all creatures, refuting any division between the God of the law and of creation; the images also carry a figurative sense.
Tractates on the Psalms 148.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · In Psalm 148 all creation, freed from bondage to vanity and sharing the glory of God's children, joins the heavenly powers in praise, as Paul and Peter foretold.
Tractates on the Psalms 148.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · In calling all heavenly things to praise their Creator who made them by command, the psalm refutes chance origins, pantheism, and worship of the elements.
Tractates on the Psalms 148.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God created by command through the Son, as Genesis, John, Paul, and Wisdom in Proverbs testify; the Son was with the Father from before the ages.
Tractates on the Psalms 148.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The heavenly creatures endure for ever not by their own nature but by God's unfailing command; the visible heaven and earth, by contrast, will pass away and be made new.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.44Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Wild animals add fear and variety to creation; every creature is equipped to survive, and no plant is deadly by nature, since animals discern what suits them.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.61Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Animals were given to humans for food and use by their Creator; Manichaean objections to slaughtering them insult the good they claim to honour.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.63Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The harmony of heaven and earth, sun and seasons, day and night, sea and land shows one law and one Creator, not two warring principles.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.65Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The four opposed elements are blended into harmony in every body and came into being together, proclaiming the wisdom of the one unbegotten Creator.
Commentary on Ephesians 3.9Marius Victorinus · ca. 360–363 · Paul enlightens all about the mystery hidden from the ages in God: that Christ, begotten of the Father without beginning in time and through whom all things were created, would come in the flesh to save humanity.
Oration 32.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory urges moderation by pointing to the order in which God created the world step by step.
Oration 32.8Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory describes the order that holds together heaven, stars, seasons, and elements, and attributes natural disasters, wars, disease, and sin to disorder.
Oration 38.10Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · After the intelligible world God made the visible, material world, harmonious in its parts, to show that he could create natures both akin and alien to himself.
Oration 40.45Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory writes on the hearts of the candidates a “new decalogue” of faith: creation from nothing, evil not created by God, the incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension and return of the Son, judgment, and good works; the rest is taught after baptism.
Oration 44.4Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God created light before the sun, and made the world in an ordered sequence of days, bringing in man last as a king into a prepared palace; had man kept the commandment, he would have advanced further.
Oration 45.6Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · After the intelligible world God made the visible, material world, harmonious in its parts, to show that he could create natures both akin and alien to himself.
Tractates 1.12.2Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno tells how God made the world for man, made man in his image, and how the devil's deceit brought death on the whole race.
Tractates 2.2.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno refutes the view that matter is eternal and teaches that God alone is the principle, the Father begetting the Son with the Spirit in one co-eternity, illustrated by two seas joined by a strait.
Against Eunomius 1.21Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil refutes Eunomius's definition of time as a motion of the stars, citing the days before the stars were made and the day the sun stood still, and defines time as the interval coextensive with the world.
Hexaemeron 1.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The first words of Genesis name God as the maker, against Greek theories that ascribe the world to elements or atoms and chance.
Hexaemeron 1.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Circular motion does not prove the world eternal: what began in time will end in time, and the philosophers who made the heaven eternal or divine became fools.
Hexaemeron 1.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Before the visible world God made the invisible, intelligible creation; the visible world and time began together; and "beginning" has several senses.
Hexaemeron 1.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · "In the beginning" fits all senses of "beginning" and may also mean that creation was instantaneous and timeless.
Hexaemeron 1.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Moses says God "made" the world, as a craftsman makes a lasting work, against those who made the world an involuntary shadow of God; heaven and earth imply everything between them.
Hexaemeron 1.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The substance of heaven and earth and what the earth rests on are not worth searching out; Scripture's plain words suffice.
Hexaemeron 1.11Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The philosophers contradict one another about the substance of heaven; believers should leave the question and glorify the Creator from the beauty of his works.
Hexaemeron 2.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The earth was "invisible and unformed" because it was not yet furnished with plants and lay hidden under water and darkness.
Hexaemeron 2.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Basil rejects the view that "invisible and unformed" means an eternal, uncreated matter: God created matter together with form.
Hexaemeron 2.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God created both substance and form; Moses leaves the elements to be inferred, and the earth was hidden by water and not yet adorned with growth.
Hexaemeron 2.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God's first word created light, which instantly filled the air; God's "word" is the inclination of his will, and light is good both in its pleasantness and its future usefulness.
Hexaemeron 2.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Day and night first came from the primal light; Moses says "one day," not "first day," to fix the measure of a day and to point to the one eternal day, the Lord's day of the resurrection.
Hexaemeron 3.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The firmament is a second heaven distinct from the first; the philosophers who deny more than one heaven, or teach the music of the spheres, refute themselves.
Hexaemeron 3.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The vast quantity of water was created to be consumed little by little by fire, which the world needs, until the appointed end of the world.
Hexaemeron 3.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God spread water over the earth in seas, springs, and great rivers so that it could hold out against fire until the end.
Hexaemeron 3.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God calls each work good as a craftsman judges parts by their purpose; Basil closes the second homily with a prayer that his hearers see the invisible God through creation.
Hexaemeron 4.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Instead of the theater and the races, Basil invites his hearers to the spectacle of God's works.
Hexaemeron 4.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God's command to gather the waters made the earth visible, and gave water its nature to flow, as his word gives every created nature its course.
Hexaemeron 4.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The first command set the waters running and confined the sea within its bounds, as the failed attempts to join the Red Sea to the Mediterranean show.
Hexaemeron 4.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The many waters were gathered into one great sea, with basins made for it; lakes are not "the gathering," and the separate gulfs of the one sea are called seas.
Hexaemeron 4.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God made the dry land appear before the sun existed; the extra clause in many copies is marked as spurious; dryness, the earth's defining property, gives it its name, and the paired qualities bind the four elements in a circle.
Hexaemeron 4.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God judges the sea good not by its beauty but by its use: it feeds the springs of the earth through hidden channels.
Hexaemeron 4.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The sea is good because it feeds springs and rain, receives the rivers, and links lands and peoples; the praying church is more beautiful still.
Hexaemeron 5.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The earth was commanded to sprout before the sun existed, so that no one would worship the sun as the source of life.
Hexaemeron 5.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · "According to its kind" means that every plant keeps its kind through seed or root; the grass of the field is the image of the brevity of human life and glory.
Hexaemeron 5.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Every plant grows by the same ordered stages as at the first; the structure of a single stalk of wheat displays the Creator's art.
Hexaemeron 5.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Poisonous plants are not a charge against the Creator: they feed some animals, serve medicine, and can be avoided by reason.
Hexaemeron 5.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The earth brings forth according to kind; smutted wheat is a disease and darnel a distinct kind, an image of heretics; the first growth was perfect, before the curse.
Hexaemeron 5.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The same water becomes bitter, sweet, and colored in different plants; God foresaw every use of plants; the tamarisk, at home in water and desert, is Jeremiah's image of a double character.
Hexaemeron 5.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The first command still works in the earth like the first blow that keeps a top spinning, until the end of the world; Basil closes the homily.
Hexaemeron 6.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Basil asks his hearers to come prepared to contemplate creation as fellow contestants, and draws from the sun's beauty the greater beauty of the sun of righteousness.
Hexaemeron 6.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The sun and moon were made after the plants so that no one would think them the source of light or growth; they are vehicles for the light already created, and "God said … God made" points to two persons.
Hexaemeron 6.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Light and the body of a luminary are distinct, as the burning bush and the phases of the moon show; night is the shadow of the earth, and sun and moon were set to rule day and night.
Hexaemeron 6.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The lights mark the four seasons, which Basil describes with the sun's yearly course, and they rule the days and years.
Hexaemeron 6.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The sun and moon are "great" in absolute terms: they light the whole world and look the same size everywhere, and sight shrinks distant objects.
Hexaemeron 6.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The sun's power and the moon's phases show their greatness; the waxing and waning moon teaches the instability of human fortune and of the careless soul.
Hexaemeron 6.11Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The moon governs weather and tides; no syllable of Scripture is idle; the moon's size is shown by its equal light everywhere; even sun and moon are tiny beside their Creator.
Hexaemeron 7.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The waters are commanded to bring forth the first animate creatures, the swimming things, whose many kinds were all included in God's one command.
Hexaemeron 7.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Each kind of sea creature was created as firstfruits that reproduce unmixed; Basil surveys their varieties, breeding, and teeth.
Hexaemeron 8.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Night birds, the bat, the owl, the rooster, the geese of Rome, vultures, locusts, cicadas, insects, and water birds all display the Creator's wisdom.
Hexaemeron 9.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God's command still works in the earth, preserving the kinds; man, made upright, should live for heaven, not like the beasts bent toward the belly.
Hexaemeron 9.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Prey animals are prolific and predators few; every limb, from the camel's neck to the elephant's trunk, is fitted to its use; even venomous creatures serve to discipline us.
Homilies 12.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil explains the three books of Solomon, the meaning of “proverb,” why the author's name and kingship are given, and what wisdom is, divine and human, beginning with the fear of the Lord.
Commentary on Colossians 1:16Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ is begotten, not created, before all creation; all things, including the angelic powers, were made through him from nothing and hold together in him; as he made all, so he restores all, first from the dead.
Question 2, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God made the world from nothing; there was no prior space for it, since, as Paul says, all things are in God, who is everywhere and before all.
Question 2, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God refuted the devil by reason, making an ordered world from confused matter and creating one man, of heavenly and earthly parts, whose image proclaims the one God.
Question 3, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Moses’ order of creation shows that nothing is coeternal with God: earlier things are weaker, stronger things later; the first heaven is the spiritual one and the earth is matter.
Question 3, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · “God saw that the light was good” was written to refute those who called creation evil.
Question 28, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The world cannot be eternal, since it is composite, changeable, and subject to decay, whereas the eternal is simple and unchanging.
Question 106, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ambrosiaster begins his discussion of Genesis 1:1 by noting the problem of “heaven” and the firmament, and explains that Moses wrote to correct false views of the world’s origin current in Egypt.
Question 106, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · “Heaven and earth” in Gen 1:1 means the upper and lower substances from which the world was made, created so that matter would not be thought eternal alongside God.
Question 106, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The elements were created first, then light, and day and night together make one day, the night being counted under the day because darkness is only the absence of light.
Question 106, section 4Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ambrosiaster dates creation to the spring equinox, 22 March, and ties the reckoning of the Passover moon to the days of creation.
Question 106, section 6Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The earth was “invisible” because covered by water and “unformed” because still fluid and unfit for cultivation.
Question 106, section 9Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Ambrosiaster holds that the “spirit of God” over the waters in Gen 1:2 is not the Holy Spirit but a created spirit governing matter, called God’s because all things are God’s.
Question 106, section 18Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God created in six days, not all at once, so that creatures would recognize that they had a beginning and none would think itself eternal.
Question 106, section 19Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The six days of creation prefigure six thousand years of history, with Christ coming in the sixth millennium and the seventh bringing rest; the tree of life is the Lord’s body and the tree of knowledge the law.
Question 107, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Water, earth, and darkness, the materials of the world, were themselves created by God, as Wisdom, Isaiah, the Psalms, and the apostles attest.
Question 107, section 5Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Scripture and ordinary speech always count by days and name day before night, which shows that night is part of and subordinate to the day.
Question 107, section 6Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The day always takes precedence over the night, and the Jewish practice of beginning the Sabbath at evening is only a practical arrangement; Roman reckoning also runs from morning to morning.
Question 107, section 7Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Spiritually understood, light is prior to darkness, which is only the fading of light, as earth is the settling of water.
Question 122, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · “In the beginning was the Word” means that the Word did not begin but already existed, unlike heaven and earth, which God made first “in the beginning.”
Question 122, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · The Word existed before all creation began and so always existed.
Letter 96.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus rejects Origen's teachings that souls fell into bodies, that the cosmos arose from sin, and that bodily nature is 'vanity'.
Letter 98.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus rejects Origen's teaching that the material world and bodies came into being because of the fall of rational beings.
Letter 98.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus rejects Origen's view that the angelic ranks earned their names by merit after creation, citing Colossians 1:16.
Letter 98.17Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus rejects Origen's claim that God created only as many rational beings as he could govern, arguing that God's power exceeds all that he made.
Letter 98.18Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus continues that God's power is not limited by the matter or number of creatures he made.
Letter 100.10Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Fasting is the angelic life with an eternal reward; Theophilus then describes the ordered alternation of day and night, the moon's phases, and the sun's yearly course, which he finds in Ecclesiastes.
Letter 131.12Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine answers that creating each new soul multiplies what God already made on the sixth day and so does not contradict his rest.
On the Holy Spirit 5.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · Paul uses "from him" and "through him" together of the same subject, so the prepositions do not mark different natures.
On the Holy Spirit 8.19Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · All the Father's gifts come to us through the Son, who works with the Father's own power, not as a servant or tool.
Ancoratus 15.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “Let us make man” includes the Son and the Spirit.
Ancoratus 15.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Word and the Spirit create with the Father.
Ancoratus 24.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “All the works of the Lord” includes every creature.
Ancoratus 24.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Spirit enumerated all creatures to distinguish them from God.
Ancoratus 24.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · All creatures were made by God through the Word and the Spirit.
Ancoratus 28.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Before the incarnation the Father said “Let us make man.”
Ancoratus 28.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · “Let us make” shows the Son was with the Father.
Ancoratus 28.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Son is fellow creator, not a mere instrument.
Ancoratus 28.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Father and Son work together.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 5.2.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If matter were eternal, God would not be its creator.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 5.2.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · A creator dependent on pre-existing matter would be powerless.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 21.6.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Scripture affirms that God made heaven and earth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 21.6.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God the Father is the creator, so Simon's teaching is vain.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 23.5.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Father created man with the Son.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.18.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Demiurge separated the substances and made heaven and earth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.18.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Demiurge created without knowing what he made.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 32.1.13Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · There is one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with no deficiency; all else is his good creation.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.3.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The world was made through the Saviour, by a just God, not a corrupt one.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 34.21.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The church confesses one uncreated Trinity and a creation from nothing.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 36.6.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The consubstantial Trinity created all things good from nothing.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.1.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Angels, not the highest power, made the world.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.10.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · One principle means one Creator.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 43.1.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · John 1:1–3 shows that the Word made all things.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.1.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Either way, the God above becomes responsible for creation.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 54.6.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Creation through Christ disproves that he is a mere man.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.26.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God made man last, as the crown of creation.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.26.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Other creatures were brought forth by the elements.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.39.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God made the world to last.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.39.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Creation will be freed from corruption.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.39.12Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Isaiah foretells a lasting new creation.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.66.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Creation out of nothing is itself wonderful.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.66.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Rhetorical questions on creation.
Apostolic Constitutions 5.7.14Anonymous · ca. 380 · Even pagan stories of the phoenix and the Scriptures' witness to God as Creator show that God can and will raise the dead, as the apostles who saw Christ risen testify.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.34.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · God is blessed for creating all things through Christ.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.34.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · God's design made the heavens, sun, moon, day and night, and gathered the waters.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.12.4Anonymous · ca. 380 · The anaphora praises God for creation and the history of salvation, joins the angels' Holy, recalls Christ's incarnation and passion, offers the bread and cup, calls down the Holy Spirit, and intercedes for the whole church and world.
On the Christian Faith 1.14Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that Christ is not a creature: he is the Creator to whom the Gospel to every creature is entrusted, the begotten and only-begotten Son, and “made” only according to the flesh born of Mary.
On the Christian Faith 4.4Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose answers the Arian use of John 5:19 (“the Son can do nothing of himself”) by the verse’s own sequel and by showing that the Son, as the power and wisdom of God, created the world and worked his miracles without copying any pattern of the Father.
On the Christian Faith 4.6Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that the Son never acts against the Father’s will, as creation and the raising of Lazarus show, so that John 5:19 refers to the unity of their love and operation, not to weakness.
On the Christian Faith 5.2Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that calling the Father “the only true God” does not exclude the Son, since Scripture uses “alone” of God where both Father and Son act, as in creation, and the Son alone shares the Father’s life, immortality, and work.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 25Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina answers that creation itself proclaims its Maker: the harmony of opposed elements, the movements of heat and water, rain, and the heavens show a divine power at work.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 121Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · How the soul or anything came into being is beyond inquiry, as Hebrews 11:3 shows; creation cannot be from God’s substance, nor from some other eternal matter.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 123Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina leaves aside how creation happened, saying only that God’s will becomes reality at once; bodies are a concurrence of qualities that are themselves intelligible, so an intellectual God can produce them.
On the Making of Man 1Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Gregory describes how God bound the world together through rest and motion and through intermediate elements, and how the finished creation stood ready, rich and beautiful, before man appeared.
On the Making of Man 2Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Man came last because the king’s palace and banquet had to be prepared first; he was made of divine and earthly elements so that he could enjoy both God and the goods of the earth.
On the Making of Man 3Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Unlike the rest of creation, which God made by a bare command, man was made after deliberation, which shows that he is more precious than everything visible.
On the Making of Man 23Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Whoever accepts that the world had a beginning must accept its end; just as we believe by faith that God made matter, against those who make matter eternal, we believe he will bring the world to its appointed end.
On the Making of Man 24Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Matter can come from the immaterial God because bodies are a concurrence of qualities that are themselves intelligible; faith accepts both creation from nothing and the world’s future transformation.
Psalm 103Apollinaris of Laodicea · uncertain (fourth to sixth century) · A paraphrase of Psalm 103 of the Septuagint (Psalm 104): praise of the Creator, clothed in light, who set the bounds of the waters and feeds every creature.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 16Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Reason, starting from creation’s order and preservation, leads us to God as its maker and sustainer.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 23Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The endless variety of animal life is another mystery beyond our full understanding.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 24Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Fish, songbirds, the cicada, the swan, and the peacock testify to a wisdom we cannot fathom.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 25Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The instinctive skill of birds, bees, spiders, cranes, and ants surpasses the greatest human geometers and artists.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 26Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Plants, springs, hot baths, and the shape of the earth show God’s bounty and power, and the earth rests on nothing but his will.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 27Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The sea kept within its bounds, the sailor’s crossing, springs, and rivers all proclaim God’s command over the waters.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 28Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The air, winds, snow, rain, and thunder surpass the natural philosophers’ explanations and call for faith beyond reason.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 29Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Astronomy observes the motions of the stars but cannot explain their cause; the sun above all shows the Creator’s power.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 30Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The sun, the seasons, the moon, and the stars remain mysteries; astrologers who read human destinies in them turn creation against its Creator.
On the Lord's Prayer 1125Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · God’s benefits span past, present, and future, so we can never thank him enough; yet we give him no time, though he made the world for us, formed us in his image, and restores us to paradise, while we stay awake only for gain.
Chapter 2Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas explains the first article: God the Father almighty is unbegotten, invisible, unchangeable and Creator, and is truly Father of his eternally begotten Son, through whom all was made.
Chapter 7Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · Nicetas argues that if the Spirit renews man in baptism he also created him, citing Psalm 33:6, where the Lord, his Word and his Spirit appear together.
Chapter 8Nicetas, bishop of Remesiana · ca. 380–414 · From Job 33:4 and Psalm 104:30 Nicetas shows that the Spirit creates, rejects the claim that “Spirit” there means the Son, and says this honours the Father, who creates through his Word and Spirit.
Book of Heresies 31.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Saturnilus taught that angels made the world and planned to make man.
Book of Heresies 55.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · They deny creation from nothing and say the soul is from the earth.
Book of Heresies 94.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Genesis speaks of heaven made on the first day and the firmament called heaven.
Book of Heresies 95.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Philastrius distinguishes a first, invisible earth, the matter of all things.
Book of Heresies 96.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Water too was made by God.
Eleven Tractates 5.83Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Moses foresaw heretics who would deny that the world was made, or blame the devil for their own sins and ascribe their bodies to him.
Eleven Tractates 5.85Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · The creation was ordered to serve man; Christians should reject worldly philosophy and believe that God made all things, as Genesis 1:1 says.
Eleven Tractates 5.86Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · God's Word ordered light, sky, seasons, and earth; the elements have no power of their own but serve the divine word.
Eleven Tractates 11.144Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · The prayer praises God as maker of angels, elements, and living things out of nothing.
Altercatio, chapter 2, speech 13Evagrius of Gaul · ca. 400 · Simon objects that Genesis names only God as Creator.
Altercatio, chapter 2, speech 14Evagrius of Gaul · ca. 400 · Theophilus reads “in the beginning” as “in Christ” and points to “Let us make man”.
Catechetical Oration 1Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Since God is not without reason (logos), he has a Word, which, unlike ours, is eternal, living, all-powerful, and creative, distinct from the Father yet one with him in nature.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.8.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God made man last, in his image and likeness, above all creatures.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.9.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · God made the animals by a word but formed man with his own hands.
Letter 166.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine answers that the creation of new souls does not contradict God's rest, since God is multiplying a kind he already made on the sixth day, man in his image.
Letter 205.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine affirms that God still forms each body individually, since he continues to work in governing creation, as Scripture shows.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.1Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose opens by setting out the philosophers' theories of the first principles of the world, Plato's three and Aristotle's.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.2Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · To make the world eternal with God, or divine, leads to the worship of its parts.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.3Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The philosophers disagree about how many worlds there are and whether the world is eternal.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.5Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Moses' opening words answer the philosophers: God is the maker of matter itself, and he made the world at once.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.7Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Moses spoke by God's Spirit, not by philosophy, and rejected the atomists' world of chance.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.8Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · “In the beginning” teaches that the world began; “made” teaches that God created instantly by his will.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.9Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Scripture repeatedly names God as maker of heaven and earth, against human speculation.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.10Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · That a circle has no visible beginning does not mean the world had none; Christ teaches that it will end.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.11Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · A world whose parts are corruptible cannot itself be eternal or equal to God.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.12Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose distinguishes the senses of “beginning”: time, number, foundation, discipline, and others.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.13Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose argues that the world was created in spring, the month of Passover, the beginning of months.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.15Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · In a mystical sense the “beginning” is Christ, through whom and in whom all things were made.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.16Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · “In the beginning” may mean before time, or “in sum”; the visible heaven and earth point to the invisible creator.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.17Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Like a building or a woven cloth, the world remains as a witness to the wisdom of its maker.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.18Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God made the world by his will; it is not a shadow cast necessarily by God.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.19Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The Son is the invisible image of the invisible Father; all things were created through him and return to God.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.20Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Time begins with the world; heaven and earth contain the four elements, but such physics matters less than eternal life.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.21Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Isaiah describes heaven as fine like smoke and as a vault stretched out like a tent or a book.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.22Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The earth's stability depends not on physical balance but on God's will, as Scripture teaches.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.25Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · “The earth was” does not mean that matter was eternal; uncreated matter would need an eternal place, or God himself.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.26Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The earth was “invisible” because it was covered by water and there was no light yet, or because it was not yet visited by God.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.27Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God first made, then adorned the world, to prevent belief in uncreated forms and to lead faith step by step, as at the raising of Lazarus.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.28Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The earth was unformed because it was flooded and unadorned; the darkness was the absence of light, not evil powers.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.29Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The Spirit over the waters is the Holy Spirit, so that the whole Trinity is at work in creation.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.32Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The primeval darkness was the shadow of heaven's vault, and the “abyss” is a mass of deep water.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.33Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God's first word creates light, the first grace of the world's building; his speaking is his will made effective, not a sound.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.35Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Day was made by light before the sun existed; the sun only brightens the day.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.36Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Day comes first: evening ends the day, morning ends the night, and “day” includes both.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.37Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Scripture says “one day,” not “first day,” to set the twenty-four-hour day as a unit and to point to the one eternal day.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.1Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose recalls the work of the first day, done by Father, Son, and Spirit, and marvels at the harmony of the world.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.2Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Uncreated matter would make God dependent on it; the first day is “one day,” the foundation of all the rest.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.4Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God's command “Let there be a firmament” overrides the nature of water; his word is the law of nature.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.5Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Against philosophers who deny that God could make more than one heaven, Scripture says God does whatever he wills.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.6Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Scripture speaks of several heavens; the philosophers borrowed this and invented the music of the spheres.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.8Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose asks whether the firmament is the same as the heaven of Gen 1:1, and leans to its being distinct.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.9Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Against the claim that water could not stay on a revolving heavenly sphere, Ambrose argues the heaven may have flat surfaces.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.10Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ps 148 confirms waters above the heavens; God's command, carried out by the Son, keeps them there.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.12Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God set water above and within the world to balance the heat of fire; the great rivers show this balance, which will one day end.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.13Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fire consumes much moisture, as cupping vessels show, so a great store of water is needed to temper the heavenly fire.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.15Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · “Heaven” is the general name and “firmament” the particular; Ambrose explains the Latin and Greek words for heaven.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.17Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Allegories of the heavens and waters as spiritual powers are allowed, but Ambrose takes the waters above as real.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.7Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The appearance of the dry land confirms that the earth was “invisible” only because water covered it.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.8Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Water's tendency to flow was itself given by God's command, which became the law of its nature.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.9Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Springs, aqueducts, the rock in the desert, Christ's stilling of the storm, and Elisha's axe show God's power over water.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.10Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The sea receives all rivers without overflowing, held in by the sand at God's command.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.11Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The failed canals of Sesostris and Darius show that the higher Red Sea is held back from flooding Egypt.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.12Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Ambrose asks how there can be “one gathering” when there are many seas.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.13Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · All the seas form one continuous body of water, as many lands form one earth.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.14Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · If the primeval waters covered even the mountains, where did they all go?
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.15Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God could have widened the earth or deepened the sea; the ocean's extent and the inland lakes absorb much water.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.16Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Separate lakes do not contradict “one gathering,” as the stars do not contradict “two great lights.”
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.17Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Scripture says “dry land,” not “earth,” to name the earth's proper quality and to show it was dried by God before the sun.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.18Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Each element has a proper quality, and paired qualities link them in a harmonious circle.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.19Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God named the earth by its principal property, dryness.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.21Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · However beautiful the sea looks, God judged it good by its fitness for its purpose.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.22Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The sea is good because it waters the land, carries trade, protects, and supplies the rain.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.25Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The earth's form is its vegetation, which God commands so that it ceases to be “invisible and unformed.”
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.26Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God's first command became the lasting law by which the earth sprouts of itself.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.27Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Plants were made before the sun, so that no one should worship the sun as the cause of growth.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.33Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Every plant grows from seed or root, and always after its kind.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.36Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The beauty and fragrance of the flowering field, especially the lily, show the incomparable craftsmanship of God.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.39Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Poisonous plants feed some animals and provide medicines for men: hemlock, hellebore, mandrake, opium.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.42Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God ordered sprouting, greening, and then seed, so that the fields give first beauty and then fruit.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.43Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Seeds that seem to degenerate are only damaged, not changed in kind; God's command of reproduction after kind still holds.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.47Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · At God's word the trees sprang up, each keeping for ever the properties then given, like the evergreen laurel and holm oak.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.64Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Even Solomon, who spoke of trees and roots, could not explain all of creation; Ambrose restrains his account.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.65Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · At God's word, more abundant than any water, all plants sprang up for food, shade, and medicine, foreseen from the beginning.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.66Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Even trees that seem seedless, like the willow, have something with the power of seed, so God's command holds.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.67Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God calls the locust his great power in judgment; how much more is his power shown in fruitful plants.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.68Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The ordered pine cone is an image of nature, keeping its law from the beginning until the end of time.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.72Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God created the vine; Noah only planted it, and its abuse is man's fault, while its fruit serves salvation in the Eucharist.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.1Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Before speaking of the sun, Ambrose bids his hearers cleanse their minds and remember that light and plants came before the sun, which is no god.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.3Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Plants preceded the sun to show that the earth's fruitfulness does not depend on it.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.4Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Nature speaks: the sun is its fellow servant and helper, not its creator, groaning with creation for redemption.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.5Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The Father commanded and the Son, the Sun of Righteousness, made the sun; the lights, richly endowed, serve and owe the more.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.6Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Scripture teaches that fruitfulness comes from God the Father through Christ, not from sun or moon.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.8Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The light of the first day differs from the light of the sun, which adds brilliance to the day.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.9Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Light and the sun are distinct; fire both lights and burns, as the burning bush, which gave light without consuming, shows.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.26Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The sun looks small only because of its distance and the weakness of our sight, as distant herds look like ants.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.27Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The sun's size is shown by how it outshines all the stars and lights the whole world.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.28Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God set the sun at just the distance that it neither burns nor fails to warm the earth.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.29Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The moon shares the sun's ministry, brings dew, and its waxing and waning affect living things, a sign of its God-given power.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.31Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The moon's waning teaches the instability of earthly things; the fool, not the wise man, changes like the moon, and creation waits on our conversion.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.1Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · On the fifth day the sea, idle until now, was given the privilege of bringing forth the first creatures with living souls.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.2Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · At God's word the waters teemed with life; the delicacies of the sea existed before man, who was not content with them and ate the forbidden fruit.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.3Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · All creatures of the waters came alive at once at God's command.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.4Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · All swimming creatures “creep” through water, even amphibians such as seals and hippopotamuses.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.5Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · One word produced the smallest and greatest sea creatures, and the sea has more kinds than the land, whose names were borrowed from it.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.8Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Egg-laying fish leave their eggs to the water, which hatches them without labour.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.9Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fish keep to their own kind, rebuking men who breed mules and make eunuchs against nature.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.10Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Water is to fish what air is to us; fish cannot be separated from their “mother,” a lesson to unloving human parents.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.11Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fish breathe through gills as we do with lungs, and so have a separate nature that cannot be tamed.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.12Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Fish have sharp teeth in both jaws so as to swallow quickly; only the parrot-fish chews the cud.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.33Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The sea yields salt, coral, pearls, the golden “sea wool” of the pinna, and royal purple.
On the Immortality of the Soul 8Augustine of Hippo · 387 · Since body is made and kept in being by an incorporeal Maker who never lets it lose its form entirely, much less can the mind, which is better than any body, lose what makes it mind; so it never dies.
On Free Choice of the Will 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Wisdom meets its seekers in the numbered beauty of creatures and of human art, which points beyond itself to everlasting number and to an eternal, unchangeable form; those who love the signs instead of wisdom fall into darkness.
On Free Choice of the Will 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Since nothing can form itself, all changeable things, body and life alike, are formed by an unchangeable form that is their providence; so every good, great or small, is from God.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Sinful souls are still better than the brightest bodies, and God is to be praised for creating every grade of being, from unsinning angels to souls that sin and may repent; the unwise judge creatures by use rather than by reason.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers the Manichaean question about what God did before creation: the beginning is Christ, time itself was created, and God's will, the cause of all things, has no prior cause.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains that the earth God made was at first invisible and unformed, and that the light in which God dwells is not the sun the Manichees worship but the true light that enlightens every person.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains that the Spirit was borne over the waters by power, not by place, and that “heaven and earth” and “water” name the formless matter God first created.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine teaches that God made even formless matter from nothing, since an almighty God needs no material he did not make himself.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains that formless matter is called “heaven and earth,” “invisible earth,” “abyss” and “water” because of what would be made from it, as a seed is named by the tree it will become.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine tentatively suggests that the waters above and below the firmament signify invisible and visible matter, while warning against rash assertion.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers objections to the creation of sun, moon and stars on the fourth day: the evenings and mornings before them mark the completion and beginning of works, and the lights were made to mark times and to rule day and night.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains why birds are said to come from the waters: the moist lower air in which they fly is counted with water, as the reports about the summit of Mount Olympus illustrate.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers the objection that many animals are useless or harmful: like tools in a workshop, all have their place in the beauty of the universe, which shows measure, number and order from God.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains why creation as a whole is called “very good”: the beauty of the parts is far greater in the ordered whole, as in a body or a well-composed speech.
On True Religion 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine argues that all life and all bodies, insofar as they exist, come from God and are good, while wickedness is the soul's voluntary turning from God toward bodies and so toward nothingness.
On True Religion 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that created things can fail because they are made from nothing, yet whatever has any form, and even the capacity for form, is good and comes from God.
Sermon 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine answers that the "beginning" in which God made heaven and earth is the Son, as Christ himself says.
Sermon 26.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In the plain sense, “the Lord who made us” means that God creates every human being, and so will hear those he made when they weep before him.
Sermon 29.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God alone is good of himself and the source of all made goods; “confession” in Scripture means praise as well as confession of sin, as when the sinless Christ confesses to the Father.
Sermon 125.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Jews took God’s sabbath rest literally, as if he had tired, but he who created by a word does not labor; his rest signifies the future rest of the saints after the six ages of the world, and he still works by governing creation without effort.
Sermon 126.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Faith concerns things unseen, but the visible creation leads to its unseen maker; because people had stopped wondering at God’s daily works, Christ came to do unusual miracles.
Sermon 214.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Believing God almighty means that he made every kind of creature, and the very matter of the world, out of nothing; sin alone he did not make.
Sermon 215.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God the Father almighty made all things from nothing and is a perfect eternity beyond thought and speech.
Sermon 225.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Before his birth from Mary, Christ existed as the eternal Word, not made but through whom all things were made.
Sermon 290.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Church celebrates the birthday of John alone among the saints; announced by the same angel as Christ, he went before as servant, while Christ, his creator and Mary’s, followed in birth but goes before in rule.
Sermon 291.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · ‘What will this child be?’ If John was so great because the Lord’s hand was with him, how great is that hand itself, the eternal Word through whom all things were made, who became flesh without ceasing to be God?
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 13Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine answers that God, being almighty, made the soul and all things from nothing.
On Illustrious Men 48Jerome · 392–393 · Candidus wrote on the six days of creation.
On Illustrious Men 49Jerome · 392–393 · Appion wrote on the six days of creation.
On Faith and the Creed 2Augustine of Hippo · 393 · Against those who posit an uncreated matter, Augustine argues that the almighty God made all things, even formless matter, out of nothing.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine 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.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine 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.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine 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.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine 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.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine 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.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine 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.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine 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.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Against the Manichaean claim that Genesis 1 conflicts with John 1:10, Augustine argues that the Son, the Word through whom God said “Let it be,” is present in the creation account.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 41Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · The choice is between a weak god needing matter to free his part and the almighty God who creates by his word.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 49Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Evodius concludes: human beings are God's works, not his parts, and Mani's system leaves even God helpless; the Manichees should flee to catholic truth.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Whether the land of light is of God’s nature, begotten, alien, or made from another substance, the Manichaean account leads to absurdity unless God made it from nothing.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · If God can make good things from nothing, the Manichaeans should learn in the Catholic Church that all natures are good in their degrees; whatever shape they give the two lands, Mani’s own words remain.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani asked where evil comes from before asking what it is; corruption arises because creatures were made by God from nothing, not begotten of him.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Only the Son, begotten of the Father, is supremely good; creatures made from nothing are lesser goods, and the rational soul should accept its place below God, while earthly things that now trouble it are a just punishment and a call to return.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Natures are from God, their corruptibility from the nothing from which they were made; God orders corruption to punish sinners and train those returning to him.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Growth in form moves a thing toward being and corruption toward not being; so form is from God, who supremely is, and corruption from nothing, and no nature is contrary to God.
Confessions 7.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Picturing creation as a finite sponge within the infinite sea of God, Augustine asked in anguish where evil could come from if a good God made all things good, while still holding to the faith of Christ in the catholic church.
Confessions 11.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · God did not create as a craftsman does, from existing material; he spoke, and made all things in his Word.
Confessions 12.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine once imagined formless matter as ugly forms; he came to see it as the changeableness beneath all change, a formless near-nothing.
Confessions 12.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · God made formless matter before any day, and from it made the visible heaven and earth, in which change and time appear.
Confessions 12.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Five interpretations of Gen 1:2, "the earth was invisible and unformed."
Confessions 12.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Genesis does not mention the making of formless matter, as it does not mention the angels or the waters; yet God made all these from nothing.
Confessions 12.40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Formless matter is prior to formed things not in time but in origin, as sound is prior to song.
Confessions 13.47Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine surveys the whole of creation in the order of Genesis 1 and sees it all very good.
Confessions 13.48Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Creatures have beginning and end; they were made from nothing, matter and form together without interval.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 14.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the Manichaeans worship the sun and moon and imaginary beings, while Moses rightly praised the sun and moon as God's creatures without making them parts of God.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine praises the Creator’s art even in the lowest mortal creatures and argues that every soul naturally loves its body, as even Manichaeans show by caring for their own flesh.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the order, measure, and harmony of the body point to the true God as its maker.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that God did not dwell in darkness before creating light, distinguishing the light that God is from the light God made.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says it is uncertain which light God made on the first day, but certain that created light was made by the creating light, who is God.
Canon 21.1Anonymous · ca. 397–400 · Anathema on those who deny that God made the world.
On Catechizing the Uninstructed 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–405 · The narration begins with creation: God made all things good and made man in his image with woman as his helper, set them in paradise under a commandment, and permitted the fall of the devil and of man, whose sin harmed only themselves.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues that the lights over which Christ reigns were made neither from God's own substance nor from pre-existing matter, but ultimately from nothing, by God's word.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · From Romans 1:25 Augustine argues that Creator and creature are of different substances, while the Son, being of one substance with the Father, is not a creature, and explains “only-begotten” and “firstborn” accordingly.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues that creation, being changeable, was made from nothing by the Trinity, and uses Secundinus's own account of the soul choosing between the spirits of virtue and vice to show that the soul is changeable and so not of God's substance.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine rejects Secundinus's claim that the soul sins only through mingling with flesh: an unchangeable soul could not be changed by mingling, and only the confession that creation was made from nothing avoids making God changeable.
On the Trinity 3.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that neither evil nor good angels are creators: God alone creates, having placed hidden 'seeds' in the elements which angels, men or animals can only bring to light, as Jacob's rods affected the colors of the flocks without his creating them.
On the Trinity 3.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine distinguishes God, who alone creates from the inmost causes, from angels and men, who only apply outward causes to the 'seeds' God placed in the world; evil angels can do this only as far as God permits, which is why Pharaoh's magicians failed at the gnats.
On the Trinity 5.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each called “beginning” in relation to creation, yet together they are one beginning, as one Creator and one God.
On the Trinity 15.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The whole of nature, as well as Scripture, proclaims a Maker who must be confessed to be supremely living, wise, unchangeable, spiritual, and good.
Verses to the Grace of the Lord 61–90Pomponius · 5th century(?) · Tityrus teaches that contempt of wealth and faith lead to the blessed abodes while the greedy are punished, and then begins to sing of the Father's work from the creation.
Verses to the Grace of the Lord 91–120Pomponius · 5th century(?) · Tityrus sings in Virgil's lines of the creation, the giving of the law, the exodus and manna, Israel's decline into idolatry, and the folly of idols.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 0Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Addressing the presbyter Paul, the author proposes to show from Aristotle's Physics that the Greeks reasoned about God and creation by conjecture, while the prophets, taught by God, agree that the one unoriginated God made all things by his will.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 1Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Aristotle's claim that there is always an underlying thing from which what comes to be comes is turned into a series of questions against the eternity of matter.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 2Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Aristotle's account of the underlying thing as one in number but two in form is turned against him: if matter has no being as a “this” of its own, it cannot be an eternal principle.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 3Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · On the number of the principles of natural things (Physics 1.7): if form makes matter formed by its presence, matter without form cannot be ungenerated.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 5Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The author quotes Aristotle's claim that things come to be from not-being only accidentally and argues that this abolishes generation as much as the early philosophers did, that matter cannot be ungenerated, and that his principles should be four, not three.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 6Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Against Aristotle's distinction of matter and privation (Physics 1.9): matter that never is in itself cannot be an ungenerated principle beside God.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 7Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Against Aristotle's matter as a joint cause and “mother” of what comes to be: matter that is ungenerated and imperishable would rival God.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 41Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Against Aristotle's argument that time, and so motion, has no beginning, since there is no time without a now (Physics 8.1).
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 44Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Against the primacy of locomotion (Physics 8.7): if circular motion is first and eternal, it cannot also be said to have a before and after.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 50Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Against Aristotle's distinction between the form apart from matter and the form in matter (On the Heaven 1.9).
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 52Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Against “each thing that has a work is for the sake of the work” and God's activity as eternal motion (On the Heaven 2.3).
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 55Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · On what the stars are made of and how they move (On the Heaven 2.7): the author argues that this too implies their generation.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 2Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks how God can be God if the world is unbegotten; the Greek answers that nothing is temporal with God, who eternally makes and guards the world; the Christian replies that making is temporal, that God's activity can begin and end without change in his power, and that the world exists by God's will.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 3Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks how a God who makes by his very being, as fire heats, can be simple yet make many different things; the Greek answers that God's being and will are identical and that he makes all things timelessly as things co-subsisting with him; the Christian replies with a long series of arguments that God's essence and will differ and that the world is made and begotten, not co-eternal with God.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 4Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks how a begotten world can be co-eternal with God; the Greek answers that the ancients, rightly understood, taught an unbegotten world, since craftsman and product, exemplar and image, are relatives that exist together; the Christian replies that the example of right and left is inappropriate and that God is not made imperfect by creating the world when he willed.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 5Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks how God can dwell in an unbegotten heaven that is not his; the Greek answers that God does not dwell in heaven at all, explaining Homer's language as a figure; the Christian replies that the heaven is called God's house and throne to mark it as his creature, imperishable now by his will until the renewal of all things.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 6.1Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Nature itself cannot exist or act unless it is brought into being by a maker who does not work by nature.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 6.14Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The sun's double motion, the mutual need of sun and eye, and the originated year show that the heavens and the things in time are not unoriginated.
Greek Questions to the Christians 2.4Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · God made, sustains, and will renew the world by his will, decided before creation; that he made one sun when he could have made many shows that he acts by will.
Greek Questions to the Christians 2.9Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · What is imperishable by another's will is not unoriginated: God alone has immortality by nature, while imperishable creatures, composed of originated elements, remain originated.
Greek Questions to the Christians 3.9Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Since individual human beings are created, so is humanity and the world; an eternal world would admit no re-creation, but the world is not eternal.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 47–49Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Three questions: Scripture's addresses to heaven and earth are meant for their rational inhabitants; “Do not touch me” told Mary not to cling to Christ as before, since he was weaning the disciples from his bodily presence; and God made one pair of each kind and created Adam's garments of skin directly, not from slaughtered animals.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 57Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Scripture's many heavens do not contradict Moses: there are two heavens in substance, the first heaven and the firmament, but the regions of the air are also called heavens.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 62Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The first three days, before the sun was made, were real days of twelve hours, measured by the alternation of light and darkness that God fixed and later assigned to the sun and moon.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 69–70Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The number seven has no power of its own over nature's processes; it is honored in Scripture as the number of creation and God's rest; and joy in God's gifts is permitted when joined with humility rather than pride.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 72Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · God is not grudging for not making all creatures gods: a created god is impossible, since God is by definition uncreated, and a world needs different parts, as a body needs feet as well as eyes.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 93–94Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The waters above the firmament protect it from the luminaries' heat, steady it, and temper the air; at the end the present heaven and earth will pass away for a new creation, as Scripture's images of the rolled-up scroll and worn-out garment show, refuting those who call the heaven eternal.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 113Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Creating did not add to God's perfection, which lies in what he is in himself; creation adds only relations to him, as being the beginning of number adds nothing to the number one.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 127–128Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Animals that prey on one another and on men do not prove two creators, as the Manichaeans claim: one good God made them for human service, food, and discipline, and their mortality shows they are not gods; irrational nature cannot be evil.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 130–131Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The heaven is a vault resting on the waters, the waters on the earth, and the earth on God's command, so Christians are not caught in the Greeks' difficulties about place; and Luke's genealogy does not contradict Matthew's, since only Heli was Joseph's father by law, all others being natural fathers.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine sets out the questions raised by Genesis 1:1–2 when it is read as a record of events and not only figuratively.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine asks how God said “Let there be light” and concludes that God speaks in his eternal Word, not by a sounding voice.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that “in the beginning” names the Son as Beginning of still-formless creation, while “God said” names him as the Word who forms it by turning it to himself.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine finds the Trinity in the opening of Genesis: the Father in “God,” the Son in “Beginning” and “said,” and the Holy Spirit in the Spirit borne over the waters and in God’s seeing that it was good.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that the Spirit is mentioned after the unformed earth so that his being “borne over” it shows God’s love as abundance, not need.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine rules out a sounding voice before light and proposes that “Let there be light” was spoken in the eternal Word and impressed on the spiritual creation, possibly itself the light.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine raises the difficulty of evening and morning on the first day, before the sun, given that day and night always coexist on different sides of the round earth.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explores how day and night could alternate before the sun and where the waters were gathered on the third day.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine argues that the formless matter God created is what Genesis 1:1–2 describes in simple words before the days begin.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that formless matter is prior to formed things in origin, not in time; Scripture narrates in sequence what God made at once.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · If Genesis 1:2 describes formless matter, there was no formed mass to cast night’s shadow, and Augustine finds no model for light alternately sent out and drawn in.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine proposes that the first light may be the spiritual creation enlightened by Wisdom, sets aside an allegorical reading of evening and morning, and explains them as the end of one work and the sign of the next.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · On the second day, Augustine sets out the natural-philosophical objection to waters above the heavens and warns against using Psalm 136:6 against what is known of the weights of the elements.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine praises one writer’s explanation of the waters above the firmament as clouds above the air and adds that infinitely divisible water could also rest as vapour above the highest heaven.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine reports an argument that the coldness of Saturn shows waters above the heavens and affirms that, whatever their nature, the waters are there on Scripture’s authority.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine rejects a reading that splits “God said” and “God made” between Father and Son and explains each formula as referring to the eternal Word, the creature’s bounds, and the Spirit’s goodness.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine proposes that each work exists first in the Word, then in the knowledge of the angels (the first light), and then in its own kind, which explains the threefold formula “God said,” “so it was done,” “God made.”
Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains why earth and water are not said to be made by “Let there be” but only separated on the third day: Genesis 1:2 had already named their formless matter.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine asks why the lights come on the fourth day and proposes that the first day is the spiritual creation, days two and three heaven and earth, and days four to six the moving parts that fill them.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · On the fifth day Augustine notes that the air, nearest to heaven, is also called “heaven” and “heavens.”
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine interprets 2 Peter’s statement that the heavens perished in the flood as referring to the lower air, and explains why water creatures and birds come first.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that air is not omitted from Genesis: its upper part belongs with heaven and its lower, moist part with earth and water, from which the birds were brought forth.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine argues that the Genesis order of lights, water creatures and land creatures reflects the order of the elements, the higher air counting as heaven and the lower, moist air as earth.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that birds come from the waters because the air they fly in is moist, and that they fly “along” the firmament, not in it.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine asks whether tiny creatures born from decay were created in the six days and suggests that the beginnings of those born from bodies were present in those bodies from the start.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine suggests that harmful creatures were created harmless and harm human beings only to punish vice or to test and perfect virtue, citing Paul and Daniel.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that “fruit” includes every benefit and that thorns and thistles may have existed before the fall but became a burden to man afterward.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine opens his treatment of the seventh day by asking whether the six days passed away or remain in the created things themselves, and turns to the perfection of the number six.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains why six is the first perfect number (equal to the sum of its divisors 1, 2, 3) and relates its parts to the order of the works of the six days.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · From Wisdom 11:20 Augustine asks where measure, number, and weight existed before creation, and suggests that in their highest sense God himself is measure, number, and weight.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Even if Wisdom 11:20 means only that things were made to have measure, number, and weight, their reasons were in God's Wisdom, and his counsel does not change as they do.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God rested in that he established no new kinds of creature, but he never ceases to govern and sustain what he made; otherwise it would collapse at once.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The seventh day has a morning but no evening because creation, once perfected, begins to rest in God's rest and will never cease to remain in him; the first six days were not ordinary solar days.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine asks what the seventh day is, since God created nothing on it, and proposes that it is the seventh repetition of the one day God created when he made light.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Rather than contradict Scripture, Augustine prefers to admit ignorance of how the first light made day and night, and holds that the seventh day is the seventh repetition of the day God made.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Knowledge of things in the Word of God is day, knowledge of them in their own nature is evening; so too the life of the faithful is day compared with unbelief but night compared with the vision of God.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The one day God made is repeated through the six days by the angels' spiritual knowledge, not by the sun's circuit; the day of Genesis 1:4–5 differs from the solar day of Genesis 1:14.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Even without intervals of time, angelic knowledge follows an order of causes: things are known first in the Word, then made in their nature and known in themselves, then referred to God's praise.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God created all things at once through his Wisdom, implanting seminal reasons that unfold over time; the six days are narrated in order for those who cannot grasp simultaneous creation.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · All things were made both at once and in an order of earlier and later, as the eye's gaze reaches the sun instantly yet passes first through nearer spaces; both Scriptures are true.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Opening Book 5 with Genesis 2:4–6, Augustine argues that “when the day was made, God made heaven and earth and every green thing” confirms that God made one day, repeated as the seven days.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The unusual wording of Genesis 2:4 brings all creation back to one day, confirming from the neighboring page that God made all things at once, while Scripture walks slowly with the weak.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Plants were made “before they sprang up” causally, as the earth received the power to bring them forth; God now works in time from what already exists, as when he planted paradise.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Time began with the motions of creatures; God made all things at once in a causal, not temporal, order, the earth and waters receiving their creatures potentially, to unfold over time.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · “God had not rained… and there was no man to work the earth” means that God first made plants not as now, through rain and human work over time, but all at once by his word.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Genesis 2:4–5 closes the account of God's simultaneous first works; from the spring of 2:6 onward Scripture narrates his works through time.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine turns to the works God made all at once, the world made through the Word “from formless matter,” finished in six days yet made “when the day was made.”
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God still works in creation, not by making new kinds, which were all established at the first, but by moving and governing all things so that they unfold the ages folded into them.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · As a whole tree is contained causally in its seed, so the world, created all at once, contained causally all that water and earth would later bring forth in time.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · If Adam and Eve were formed visibly on the sixth day, the planting of paradise, Adam's sleep, and the naming would all fall on that day, but these require time and so were not made with the simultaneous creation.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Since speech and the events of Genesis 2 require time, the forming of Adam from clay and of Eve from his side belong to God's work in time, not to the simultaneous creation.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · “He brought forth further” shows that the trees of paradise grew visibly in time from what had been made causally on the third day; no kind of creature was left out of the six days.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Because the animals were “formed further” from the earth when Adam named them, Adam and Eve were formed visibly in ordinary solar days, while both had been made causally, as seeds, on the sixth day.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that on the sixth day man existed not as a living person or even a visible seed but invisibly and causally, and was later formed visibly from clay, Eve from his rib.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God's words to the first humans on the sixth day were not sounds in time but the Word inserting into creation the causes of things to come, including man to be formed in his time.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine distinguishes four modes in which creatures exist: eternally in the Word, causally in the world's elements, visibly in their own time, and again in seeds that carry the power of generation.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God's first works were both completed (nothing new would be created) and begun (they were seeds to unfold); so Adam was created in his own time, visibly in body and invisibly in soul.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Whether Adam was made at full age or grew as in the womb, God is not bound by the numbers of time he gave to creation, as the water made wine and the rod made serpent show.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The causal reasons were created fit both for ordinary gradual growth and for sudden, wonderful works, as God pleases.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Adam was formed from clay as the first causes held; whether those causes fixed the manner of his forming or only its possibility, God's will decided it, and his will is the necessity of things.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 7.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine asks whether God made the first soul from nothing or from some spiritual material created in the six days, as the body was made from earth.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 7.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine shows the difficulties of holding the soul made only when breathed into the body, restates his view that God created all things together, and affirms only that the soul is from God, not God's substance, bodiless, made from nothing, and immortal in its own way.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The trees of paradise were brought forth in time from the power given the earth on the third day; God's words on the sixth day were spoken by his eternal Word and told to men in temporal sounds.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine quotes Gen 2:18–24 and explains “besides” by his doctrine of causal creation, and the birds “from the earth” by the wide sense of “earth.”
Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Only God, the Trinity, creates natures; angels may have served in Adam's sleep and the removal of the rib, as farmers and physicians serve nature, but the woman herself was made by God alone.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Created things have seminal reasons for their natural course; God can make from them what exceeds that course, as with Aaron's rod, Sarah's child, and Balaam's donkey, but only what he made possible in them.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine sets out three possible views of the origin of souls, shows that none contradicts the six-day creation, and undertakes to examine them without rash affirmation.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Eccl 12:7 supports neither view against the other, but shows that the first soul was made from nothing and returns to God, not to a created source.
Apology against Jerome 1.25Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus quotes Jerome's Commentary on Ephesians on "before the foundation of the world," in which Jerome explains katabolē and speaks of election before birth.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.17Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · On Mani's “bright and blessed land,” Felix reads Genesis 1:1–2 as two earths; Augustine explains that verse 2 describes the one earth God made and asks whether the land of light was made, begotten, or coeternal.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.18Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine explains three kinds of making — from oneself (begetting), from something, and from nothing — and argues that the soul and all creation, made from nothing, are changeable while God alone is unchangeable.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.19Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine repeats that God begot a Son equal to himself but made the world from nothing, and presses Felix either to anathematize Mani or share his condemnation.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · As a builder's unseen plan is admired through the building, so the Word of God, God's 'plan', is known from the beauty of the created world, visible and invisible.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · 'Nothing' in John 1:3 is not something: sin and idols were not made through the Word, but every creature from angel to worm was, and the Word became a 'worm' for our sake.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · As a chest exists invisibly and alive in the craftsman's art before it is made, so all things exist as life in the Wisdom of God; the weak should cling to Christ in the flesh until they reach the eternal Word.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 2.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Word is in the world not as one creature among others, nor as a craftsman outside his work, but as the Maker present everywhere, governing what he made.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 8.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's turning water into wine is no greater than God's yearly turning of rain into wine in the vine; God, who made all things through the Word, works unusual miracles to awaken people dulled to the wonders of creation.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 17.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Both that God rested on the seventh day and that he is working until now are true; how God works at rest and rests in working is beyond words and must be seen by those who advance.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 18.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · If the Son only imitated what he saw the Father do, like an apprentice, not all things would be made through the Word, contrary to John 1:3; the Father does nothing except through the Son.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 20.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ healed on the sabbath because God never labors or ceases from work; Christians keep the sabbath spiritually by resting from sin, in hope of rest after good works.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 20.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · There is no second light, firmament, or world made by the Son; the one world was made by the Father through the Son.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 20.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · “These same things likewise” excludes the picture of a master and pupil making two chests: Father, Son, and Spirit made one world.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Father does not show the Son finished works to copy; by showing he makes through the Son, and the creature so made is beneath both.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · “Before Abraham came to be, I am” contrasts the creature's coming to be with the Creator's eternal being.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 2.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Created things are good, but to love them in place of their Creator is like a bride who loves the ring more than the bridegroom who gave it.
On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins 2.35Augustine of Hippo · 411–412 · Adam and Eve ate of the tree of life, which kept them from aging and signified wisdom; the forbidden tree was not evil, and their punishment came only from violated obedience.
City of God 7.30Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine lists the works that Varro divided among many gods and ascribes them all to the one true God, present everywhere, from whom alone eternal life is hoped.
City of God 11.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The world's beauty and order proclaim that God made it; its beginning in time implies no change in God's eternal will, as the Platonists themselves must grant regarding the soul's new happiness.
City of God 11.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Asking why God made the world at one time rather than earlier is as empty as asking why it is in one place rather than another; there is neither time before nor place outside the world.
City of God 11.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Since time is the measure of change in creatures, the world was made not in time but with time.
City of God 11.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The light and the evenings and mornings of the first days may signify the angels' knowledge of creatures, dim in itself and bright when referred to the Creator.
City of God 11.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The angels were created as the light of the first day, enlightened by the eternal Word; those who turned away became darkness, for evil is only the loss of good.
City of God 11.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Creatures are ranked by nature above one another, but human valuation follows use, and in rational beings the will decides: good men rank above evil angels.
City of God 11.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God knows all times in one unchanging present; “God saw that it was good” teaches that God, through his Word, made things for no cause but his goodness, as even Plato saw.
City of God 11.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine rejects Origen's view that the world was made to imprison souls fallen from God, since Scripture calls creation very good and bodies do not match the deserts of souls.
City of God 11.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine states the faith in the Trinity and suggests that the Father, the Word, and the Spirit as goodness are signified in every work of creation and in the holy city's being, wisdom, and joy.
City of God 11.29Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The holy angels know God and all creatures in the Word as in a “day” knowledge, more clearly than in the creatures themselves, their “evening” knowledge.
City of God 11.30Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The six days signify perfection, since six is the first number equal to the sum of its divisors.
City of God 11.32Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · If some place the angels' creation before heaven and earth, Augustine will not dispute it, gladly noting the Trinity in Genesis 1:1–2, provided the angels' secure happiness is held.
City of God 11.34Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine notes views that the waters above the firmament are angels, rejects the claim that the waters were uncreated, and closes the book on the two angelic societies.
City of God 12.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The decay of irrational things is part of the order of the universe; natures that harm us are good in themselves, as fire is both useful and destructive.
City of God 12.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Egyptian chronologies of many thousands of years, as in Alexander's letter to Olympias, disagree even with Greek history and deserve no credit against Scripture's reckoning of under six thousand years.
City of God 12.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Any finite span of human history, however long, is nothing beside eternity, so the complaint that man was created late could be raised at any time.
City of God 12.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God created man in time by an eternal and unchanging counsel, a depth beyond human search, as the psalm says: “According to your depth you have multiplied the sons of men.”
City of God 12.16Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine tentatively discusses how God can always have been Lord without any creature being coeternal with him, concluding that such questions exceed his powers and counseling sober restraint.
City of God 12.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Against philosophers who argue that God's infinite knowledge and unceasing goodness require eternal cycles, Augustine answers that God's unchangeable will created in time without any change in himself, out of sheer goodness.
City of God 12.25Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Against Plato's lesser gods as makers of mortal creatures, Augustine holds that only God creates any nature; angels who assist are no more creators than farmers are of crops.
City of God 12.26Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Only God gives natures and their inner forms; angels, farmers, the earth, and mothers are not creators, as Rome and Alexandria are credited to their kings rather than their builders.
City of God 12.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The Platonist view that lesser gods made our bodies as prisons for punishment is self-contradictory, since Plato also calls the world with its mortal creatures most good, and God's mind contains the forms of all.
City of God 22.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Even in condemned humanity God preserves fruitfulness, forms each body, and endows the mind and body with gifts and the world with beauty; if these console the condemned, the rewards of the blessed will be far greater.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.89Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God, Creator through his Son, his power and wisdom, stands against idols and heresies that will perish; Jerusalem must gather its goods for the siege, for God will hurl out its people.
Commentary on Jeremiah 5.46Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jeremiah sends yokes to the neighboring kings, with the same message to Zedekiah; Jerome rejects Origen's reading about souls descending into bodies, and identifies God's 'strength' and 'arm' with Christ (Jer 27:2–5).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.37Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jeremiah's prayer praises God as Creator, merciful and just, whose strength and arm are Christ and whose delayed punishments give time for repentance; it leads to his question why he must buy a field when the city is lost (Jer 32:16–19).
Reminder concerning the Error of the Priscillianists and Origenists 3Orosius · 414 · Orosius reports how Origenist teachings came into Spain through the two Aviti and lists the doctrines they taught.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.25Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Creation has at last come to know its Creator.
On the Soul and Its Origin 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Augustine argues that if the soul is made from God himself, it would be God’s changeable nature; it was made by God from nothing.
On the Soul and Its Origin 2.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Augustine distinguishes what is from God by begetting or procession (the Son and the Spirit, of one nature with the Father) from creatures made by God from nothing or from other creatures.
On the Soul and Its Origin 2.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · The first soul was made from nothing; to hold it was made from God’s nature is a blasphemous error, less excusable in a presbyter than in a recent convert.
On the Soul and Its Origin 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Victor avoids Tertullian’s corporeal God but makes the incorporeal God breathe out a corporeal soul from himself, unlike the Son who is begotten of the same nature.
On the Soul and Its Origin 3.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · The soul must be made by God, not from God; a particle of God’s breath would be of God’s nature, as a flame lit from a lamp is of the same nature.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · A Christian need not know natural science, but must believe that the goodness of the one God, the Trinity, is the cause of all created things.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The supremely good Trinity created all things good, and together very good.
The Conferences 8.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · God created the angels before the visible world, since they praised him at the creation of the stars; Christ is the true “beginning” in whom all things, including all ranks of angels, were made.
Verses on the Birthday of the Maccabees 301–330Hilary of Arles · ca. 430-449 · The sixth son dies; the mother, prostrate, prays to God the Creator, recalling creation and the exodus.
Poem on Genesis 1–30Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · The poem opens with thanks to God the Father, eternal and uncreated, who before the creation was at work within the formless chaos.
Poem on Genesis 31–60Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · God rouses the sluggish matter, sets heaven above and earth below, gathers the seas, and creates light, day, and night.
Poem on Genesis 61–90Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · God sets the sun, moon, and stars in heaven, whose courses give order and knowledge to farmers and sailors.
Poem on Genesis 91–120Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · God adorns the earth with plants, beasts, and birds, and then, speaking with his Son, makes man in his image and woman from his rib.