Hexaemeron 2

Homily 2. On "The earth was invisible and unformed."

Having tarried this morning over a few small words, we found the depth of the meaning so hidden, that we wholly despaired of what follows.

For if the forecourts of the holy places are such, and the porches of the temple so venerable and so vast, dazzling the eyes of our understanding round about by the surpassing excellence of their beauty, of what sort is the Holy of Holies? And who is able to venture into the inner sanctuary? Or who shall look upon the ineffable things? For unapproachable is even the sight of them, and wholly hard to interpret is the account of the things conceived.

Nevertheless, since with the righteous Judge—even for the mere choosing of what is needful—the rewards set apart are not to be despised, let us not shrink back from the search.

For even if we fall short of its worth, yet if by the help of the Spirit we do not fall away from the intent of the Scripture, we ourselves shall not be judged wholly worthy of rejection, and by the cooperation of grace we shall furnish some edification to the Church of God.

"And the earth," he says, "was invisible and unformed."

How is it that, both heaven and earth having come to be in equal honour, the heaven was perfected, while the earth was still imperfect and unwrought? Or, in general, what is the unformedness of the earth? And for what cause was it invisible? Now the perfect furnishing of the earth is the abundance from it:

the sprouting of plants of every kind;

the putting forth of loftiest trees, both fruitful and unfruitful;

the fair colours and sweet fragrances of flowers;

and all that, a little later, at the command of God, was to spring up upon the earth and adorn her who had brought it forth.

Since none of these as yet was, the word fittingly named her "unformed."

And these same things we might say even concerning heaven;

that neither was it yet wrought, nor had it received its proper adornment, inasmuch as it was not yet lit up by moon or sun, nor crowned with the choirs of the stars.

So that you will not err from the truth, even if you call heaven too "unformed."

And he called the earth "invisible" for two reasons:

either because man, its beholder, was not yet; or because, being submerged beneath the water that lay upon its surface, it could not be seen.

For the waters were not yet gathered into their proper assemblages, which God afterward, having gathered them together, named seas.

What, then, is the invisible? That which is not by nature to be beheld by the eyes of the flesh, as is our mind;

and that which, being by nature visible, is hidden by the interposition of the body lying over it, as is iron in the deep.

In which sense we now hold the earth to have been called invisible, being covered over by the water.

Furthermore, light not yet having come to be, it was no wonder that the earth, lying in darkness because the air above it was unlit, was called invisible in this respect too by the Scripture.

But the falsifiers of the truth, who teach not their own mind to follow the Scripture, but wrest the meaning of the Scriptures toward their own will, say that matter is intimated by these words.

For this matter, they say, is both invisible by nature and unformed, being without quality by its own account, and separated from every form and shape; which the Craftsman, taking up, shaped by His own wisdom, and brought into order, and so, through it, gave substance to the things we see.

If, then, this matter be unbegotten, it is, first of all, of equal honour with God, deemed worthy of the same prerogatives.

Than which what could be more impious—that the quality-less, the formless, the utmost deformity, the unfashioned ugliness (for I use the very terms of those men themselves) should be deemed worthy of the same precedence as the wise and powerful and all-beautiful Demiurge and Creator of all things? Next, if it be so great as to receive the entire knowledge of God;

and thus, in a way, they set its subsistence over against the unsearchable power of God, if indeed it suffices to measure out by itself the whole understanding of God;

but if matter be less than the activity of God, then their argument will be turned about into a yet more absurd blasphemy, with God being held back from His proper works as idle and inactive through lack of matter.

But the poverty of human nature deceived them.

And since with us each art is busied about some determined matter—as the smith's art about iron, and the carpenter's about wood;

and in these one thing is the underlying subject, another the form, and another what is produced from the form;

and the matter is something taken from outside, while the form is supplied by the art, and the result is what is composed of both—of the form and the matter;

so they suppose it to be also in the divine creation: that the figure of the world was brought to it by the wisdom of the Maker of all, but the matter was supplied to the Creator from outside, and the world came to be composite, having its underlying subject and substance from elsewhere, but receiving its figure and form from God.

And from this it follows for them to deny that the great God presided over the constitution of the things that are, but, as a contributor to some common fund, that He brought from Himself only some small portion toward the genesis of things;

not being able, through the lowliness of their reasonings, to look up to the height of the truth;

namely, that here the arts are later than their materials, having been brought into life through the necessity of need.

For wool pre-existed, and weaving came after, supplying from itself what was lacking in nature.

And wood there was, and carpentry, taking it up and shaping the material toward whatever need was sought at each occasion, showed us the usefulness of wood, supplying an oar to sailors, a winnowing-fork to farmers, and a spear to soldiers.

But God, before any of the things now seen had come to be, casting into His mind and setting out to bring into being the things that were not, conceived at one and the same time what sort of thing the world ought to be, and brought into being together with its form the matter befitting it.

And to heaven He assigned the nature befitting heaven;

and to the figure of the earth He laid as foundation the substance proper and owed to it.

And fire and water and air He shaped as He willed, and brought into substance as the account of each of the things coming to be required.

And the whole world, being of dissimilar parts, He bound together by some unbreakable bond of friendship into one fellowship and harmony;

so that even the things most widely separated from one another in position seem to be united through their sympathy.

Let them cease, then, from their mythical fabrications, measuring out by the weakness of their own reasonings the power that is incomprehensible to our understandings and wholly unutterable by human speech.

"God made the heaven and the earth";

not each one by halves, but the whole heaven and the whole earth—the very substance grasped together with the form.

For He is not a discoverer of figures, but the Demiurge of the very nature of the things that are.

Since let them answer us, how did the active power of God and the passive nature of matter chance to meet one another:

the one furnishing the underlying subject without form;

the other having the knowledge of figures, without matter—so that to each what was lacking might come from the other:

to the Demiurge, that He might have wherein to display His art; to matter, that it might lay aside its formlessness and the privation of form.

But concerning these things, thus far.

But let us return to the point from which we began.

"And the earth was invisible and unformed."

Having said, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,"

he passed over many things in silence: water, air, fire, and the affections begotten from these;

all of which, as things that fill out the world, clearly co-subsisted with the universe;

but the narrative left them out, exercising our mind toward keenness, supplying from a few starting-points the means to reason out the things that are lacking.

Since, then, it has not been said of the water that God made it, but it has been said that the earth was invisible;

consider you with yourself by what kind of curtain it was covered so as not to appear.

Now fire could not have covered it.

For fire is illuminating, and affords plain visibility to whatever it comes near, rather than darkness.

Nor indeed was air then a veil before the earth.

For the nature of air is rare and transparent, receiving all the forms of visible things, and passing them on to the sight of those who behold.

It remains, therefore, for us to understand that water lay upon the surface of the earth, the moist substance not yet having been separated off into its proper lot.

And from this, not only was the earth invisible, but also unformed.

For the excess of moisture is even now an impediment to fruit-bearing in the earth.

The same cause, then, is also that both of its not being seen and of its being unformed;

if indeed the furnishing of the earth is the adornment proper and natural to it—crops billowing in the hollows, meadows growing green and teeming with varied flowers, flourishing glens, and mountain peaks shaded with woods;

she travailing to bring forth the genesis of all things, through the power deposited in her by the Demiurge, but awaiting the due times, that at the divine command she might bring forth her offspring into the light.

"But darkness also," he says, "was upon the deep."

Again, other occasions for myths, and beginnings of yet more impious fabrications, on the part of those who twist the words toward their own private surmises.

For they do not expound "darkness" as it naturally is—some unlit air, or a place shadowed by the interposing obstruction of a body, or in general a place deprived of light from any cause whatsoever—but they expound the darkness as an evil power, or rather as evil itself, having its origin from itself, set over against and contrary to the goodness of God.

For if God is light, then clearly, he says, the power warring against Him would be darkness, according to the logical consequence of the thought.

Darkness, not having its being from another, but a self-begotten evil.

Darkness, the foe of souls, the producer of death, the opposite of virtue;

which, they are deceived into thinking, is shown by the very words of the prophet both to subsist and not to have come to be from God.

From this, then, what evil and godless doctrine has not been fabricated? What grievous wolves, tearing apart the flock of God, did not take their start from this small phrase and overrun souls? Were not the Marcionites from here? The Valentinians from here? Was not the abominable heresy of the Manichaeans, which one would not err in calling a gangrene of the Churches? Why do you run far away from the truth, O man, devising for yourself occasions of perdition? The word is simple, and easily grasped by all.

What is the cause? Since it had a deep lying upon its surface.

And what is the notion of "the deep"? Much water, having its limit downward hard to reach.

But we know that many bodies are often seen through water that is finer and clearer.

How, then, was no part of the earth shown through the waters? Because the air poured out over it was still lightless and darkened.

For a ray of the sun, penetrating through waters, often reveals the pebbles in the depth;

but in a deep night no one could by any means discern the things beneath the water.

So that what is added contributes to the earth's being invisible: namely, that there was also a deep covering it, and this darkened.

Neither, then, is "the deep" a multitude of opposing powers, as some have imagined;

nor is "darkness" some original and evil power set up against the Good.

For two things equally matched against one another in opposition will surely be destructive of each other's constitution;

and being continually locked together in war, they will both ceaselessly have trouble and unceasingly give trouble to one another.

And if one of the opposing things exceeds in power, it becomes utterly destructive of the one overcome.

So that if they say the opposition of evil to good is evenly balanced, they introduce an unceasing war and perpetual destruction, with the one and the other now conquering and now being conquered.

But if the good exceeds in power, what is the cause that the nature of evil has not been wholly done away with? But if—what it is not lawful to say—I marvel how they themselves do not flee from themselves, borne along into such unlawful blasphemies.

Nor indeed is it godly to say that evil has its genesis from God, because none of contraries comes to be from its contrary.

For neither does life beget death, nor is darkness the origin of light, nor is sickness the creator of health; but in the changes of dispositions there are transitions from contraries to contraries;

but in genesis, each of the things that come to be proceeds not from its contraries, but from its own kind.

If then, he says, it is neither unbegotten nor having come to be from God, whence has it its nature? For that evils exist, none of those who partake of life will deny.

What then do we say? That evil is not a living and animate substance, but a disposition in the soul standing contrary to virtue, arising in the slothful through the falling-away from the good.

Do not, then, look round about for evil from outside;

nor imagine some primal nature of wickedness;

but let each one recognise himself as the author of the wickedness within him.

For always, of the things that befall us, some come upon us from nature, such as old age and sicknesses;

others come from chance, such as the irrational mischances befalling us from causes outside us—often things gloomy, or even more cheerful;

as the finding of treasure to the man digging a well, or the meeting with a mad dog to one who has set out toward the marketplace;

but others are within our own power, such as to master the desires, or not to chasten the pleasures;

such as to restrain anger, or to lay hands upon him who provoked us;

to be of fair and moderate character, or puffed up and lifted high with boastings.

Of those things, then, of which you yourself are lord, do not seek the origins from elsewhere, but recognise that evil properly so called has taken its beginning from the lapses of free choice.

For, had it been involuntary and not within our power, neither would so great a fear from the laws have hung over wrongdoers, nor would the punishments of the courts be so inexorable, meting out to evildoers according to their deserts.

But let these things have been said by me concerning evil properly so called.

For sickness and poverty and ill repute and death, and all that is grievous to men, it is not yet right to reckon in the lot of evils, because we do not number their opposites among the greatest of goods;

of which some are from nature, and others are seen even to have met many advantageously.

Silencing, therefore, every figurative and conjectural interpretation, at least for the present, let us accept the notion of "darkness" simply and without over-elaboration, following the intent of the Scripture.

But the argument inquires whether darkness was co-created with the world, and whether it is older than the light, and why the worse is the elder. We say, then, that this darkness too does not subsist according to substance, but is an affection about the air, supervening upon the privation of light.

Of what light, then, was the place in the world suddenly found bereft, so that the darkness was upon the water? We reason, then, that if anything existed before the constitution of this sensible and corruptible world, it would clearly have been in light.

For neither the dignities of the angels, nor all the heavenly hosts, nor in general anything of the rational natures—named or unnamed—and of the ministering spirits, passed its existence in darkness, but in light and in all spiritual gladness held the condition befitting them.

And to these no one will gainsay—at least no one who awaits the supercelestial light in the promises of good things, concerning which Solomon says:

"Giving thanks unto the Father who has made us meet to be partakers in the portion of the inheritance of the saints in light."

For if those who are condemned are sent into the outer darkness, then clearly those who have wrought things worthy of acceptance have their rest in the supercosmic light.

Since, then, the heaven came into being by the command of God, suddenly stretched around the things enclosed within its own circumference, having a continuous body capable of separating what is outside from what is within, it necessarily made the space left within it lightless, having cut off the radiance from outside.

For three things must concur for a shadow to exist: the light, the body, and the unlit place.

The darkness within the world, therefore, came into being as a by-product of the shadow of the heavenly body.

Understand what I say from a clear example: imagine someone at high noon setting up around himself a tent made of thick, impervious material, and shutting himself up in a self-made darkness.

Suppose, then, that that darkness too was of this sort: not subsisting in its own right beforehand, but following upon other things.

This darkness, indeed, is said also to rest upon the abyss, since the lowest regions of the air are naturally joined to the surfaces of bodies.

And at that time water lay spread over all things.

For this reason it was necessarily said that the darkness was above the abyss.

"And the Spirit of God," Scripture says, "was being borne above the water."

If by this "spirit" it means the diffusion of the air, take it that the writer is enumerating for you the parts of the world — that God made heaven, earth, water, air, and this last already poured out and flowing.

Or — and this is both truer and was approved by those before us — "the Spirit of God" means the Holy Spirit;

because this Spirit is observed to be deemed worthy by Scripture of such mention in a distinct and special way, and no other is named "Spirit of God" except the Holy One, who completes the divine and blessed Trinity.

And if you accept this understanding, you will find from it the greater profit.

How, then, was this Spirit being borne above the water? I will tell you a saying not my own, but of a Syrian man, one as far removed from worldly wisdom as he was near to the knowledge of true things.

He used to say that the Syrian tongue is more expressive, and that, on account of its kinship with Hebrew, it somehow comes nearer to the sense of the Scriptures.

The meaning of the passage, then, he said is as follows.

"It was being borne," he says, they interpret as equivalent to "it was warming and quickening the nature of the waters," after the image of a bird brooding upon eggs and infusing a certain life-giving power into the things kept warm.

Such, they say, is the sense intimated by this word: as of the Spirit being borne along —

that is, preparing the nature of the water for the bringing-forth of life;

so that from this is sufficiently shown what some inquire after, namely that not even from the creative working is the Holy Spirit left out.

"And God said, Let there be light."

The first voice of God created the nature of light, made the darkness vanish, dispelled the gloom, brightened the world, and suddenly brought to all a pleasing and delightful aspect.

For the heaven, hitherto veiled by the darkness, appeared, and its beauty was as great as eyes even now bear witness to.

And the air was illuminated round about; or rather, it held the light wholly mingled with itself throughout, sending the swift transmissions of its radiance everywhere to its own boundaries.

For upward it reached as far as the very aether and heaven;

and in its breadth it lit up all the parts of the world — north and south, east and west — in a swift instant of time.

For such is its nature, fine and transparent, so that the light passing through it needs no extension of time.

For just as it conveys our sight to the things seen without lapse of time, so also it receives the impacts of light instantaneously, and at every one of its limits in a span less than anyone could conceive.

And the aether grew more delightful after the light;

and the waters more luminous, not only receiving the radiance, but also sending it back of themselves by the reflection of the light, as flashes darted off the water on every side.

The divine voice transformed all things into what is most delightful and most precious.

For just as those who let oil down into the deep produce a clearness in that place,

so the Maker of all, by His utterance, suddenly implanted in the world the grace of light.

And the command was a deed;

and there came into being a nature than which it is not possible for human reasonings even to conceive anything more delightful for enjoyment.

But when we speak of voice and word and command in the case of God, we do not understand the divine Word as a sound sent forth through vocal organs, nor as air shaped by the tongue; rather, for the sake of what is easily grasped by learners, we hold that the inclination within His will is figured in the form of a command.

"And God saw the light, that it was good."

What praise worthy of the light could we ourselves utter, since it has already received the testimony of its Maker, that it is good? Even among us, reason refers the judgment to the eyes, having nothing so great to say as the perception bears witness to, which has gone before.

But if beauty in a body comes from the due proportion of its parts to one another and from the comeliness of color that appears upon it, how, in the case of light, which is simple in nature and uniform throughout, is the principle of beauty preserved? Is it not that for light proportion is witnessed not in its own parts, but in its being painless and agreeable to the sight? For in this way gold too is beautiful, possessing what is attractive and pleasing to the sight not from the proportion of its parts, but from its fine color alone.

And the evening star is the most beautiful of the stars, not because the parts of which it is composed are well-proportioned, but because the radiance from it falls upon the eyes painlessly and pleasantly.

Furthermore, God's judgment now concerning what is good was made not by regarding only what is pleasing to the eye, but by foreseeing the benefit that would come from it afterward.

For there were as yet no eyes able to judge of the beauty in light.

"And God divided between the light and the darkness."

That is, God made their natures unmixed and set in opposition to each other.

For He set them apart and separated them by the greatest distance from one another.

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night."

Now indeed, after the sun's coming into being, day is the air illuminated by the sun shining in the hemisphere above the earth, and night is the shadow of the earth that comes about when the sun is hidden.

But at that time, not by the sun's motion, but as that first-born light was poured forth and again withdrawn according to the measure appointed by God, day came to be, and night succeeded in turn.

"And there was evening, and there was morning, one day."

Evening, then, is the common boundary of day and night;

and morning likewise is the bordering of night upon day.

In order, therefore, that he might assign to the day the precedence of generation, he spoke first of the close of the day, then of that of the night, as though night followed upon day.

For the condition in the world before the coming into being of the light was not night, but darkness;

that, however, which was set in contrast to the day — this was named night;

which received also its appellation as something newer, after the day.

"There was evening, then, and there was morning."

And he no longer called it "day and night," but assigned the whole appellation to the prevailing one.

You will find this same usage throughout all Scripture: in the measuring of time, days are counted, but not nights along with the days.

"The days of our years," says the psalmist.

"The days of my life are few and evil."

And again, "All the days of my life."

So that what has now been delivered in the form of a history is a law for what follows.

"And there was evening, and there was morning, one day."

For what reason did he not say "first," but "one"? And yet it would have been more consistent for one about to add a second, a third, and a fourth day to call "first" the one that began the series that follows.

But he said "one," either delimiting the measure of day and night and joining together the time of the day-and-night cycle — since the twenty-four hours fill out the span of one day, the night, of course, being understood together with the day — so that even if, in the solstices, one of them happens to exceed the other, yet within the appointed time the intervals of both are altogether comprehended;

as if he were saying: the measure of twenty-four hours is the span of one day;

or: the heaven's return from the same point back again to the same point takes place in one day;

so that as often as evening and morning, according to the revolution of the sun, lay hold upon the world, the cycle is completed not in a longer time, but within the span of one day.

Or more authoritative is the account handed down in mysteries: that God, who fashioned the nature of time, set the intervals of the days as its measures and signs, and measuring it out by the week, commands the week ever to revolve back upon itself, numbering the motion of time.

And the week, in turn, fulfills the one day, turning seven times back upon itself; and this is the circular figure: to begin from itself and to end in itself.

Which indeed is also proper to eternity: to turn back upon itself and nowhere to come to an end.

For this reason he named the head of time not "first day," but "one";

that even from its name it might have kinship with eternity.

For that which is solitary and incommunicable with another, showing forth its character, was fittingly and properly called "one."

And if Scripture sets before us many ages, speaking in many places of "age of age" and "ages of ages," yet even there no first, nor second, nor third age is numbered for us;

so that rather differences of conditions and of various states of affairs, and not delimitations and ends and successions of ages, are thereby shown to us.

"For the day of the Lord," it says, "is great and manifest."

And again: "Why do you seek the day of the Lord? It is darkness and not light."

Darkness, that is, plainly, to those worthy of darkness.

For the Word knows that day to be without evening, without succession, and without end — the day which the psalmist also called the eighth, because it lies outside this sevenfold time.

So that whether you say "day" or "age," you will be expressing the same notion.

Whether, then, that condition be called a day, it is one and not many;

or if it be named an age, it would be solitary and not one among many.

In order, therefore, to lead the mind toward the life to come, he named "one" the image of eternity, the firstfruits of days, the contemporary of light, the holy Lord's Day, honored by the resurrection of the Lord.

"There was evening, then," it says, "and there was morning, one day."

But indeed the discourses concerning that evening, being overtaken by the present evening, here set a limit to our discourse.

And may the Father of the true Light, who adorned the day with the heavenly light, who brightened the night with the gleams of fire, who has prepared the rest of the age to come with the spiritual and unceasing light — may He illumine your hearts in the knowledge of the truth, and keep your life without stumbling, granting us to walk becomingly as in the day, that you may shine forth as the sun in the splendor of the saints, unto my boasting in the day of Christ, to whom be the glory and the might unto the ages of the ages.