Works (CSEL) 17 part 4/16

This is said to come about by a certain discrimination of the sun, which snatches for itself what is pure and light, and leaves what is heavy and earthy; from which there remains that salty and dry residue, which is without use and the pleasantness of drinking. But let us return to our subject. 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water.' Let it not disturb thee, as I have already said, that above he says 'heaven,' here he says 'firmament,' since David also says: 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the works of his hands'; that is, the work of the world, when it is beheld, praises its own author; for his invisible majesty is recognized through the things that are seen.

And it seems to me that the name 'heavens' is common, since Scripture testifies to many heavens, but that 'firmament' is a special name, since here too it has it thus: And he called the firmament heaven; so that above he seems to have said generally that heaven was made in the beginning, in order to comprehend the whole fabric of the celestial creation, while here he means the special solidity of this outer firmament, which is called the firmament of heaven, as we read in the prophetic hymn: 'Blessed art thou in the firmament of heaven.'

For 'heaven,' which in Greek is called οὐρανός, is called in Latin caelum because, as it were, it has the impressed lights of the stars as signs—as it were 'embossed' (caelatum)—just as we call silver 'embossed' (caelatum) when it gleams with raised figures. But οὐρανός is said by way of distinction from that which is seen. By contrast, then, to the earth, which is darker, it is named οὐρανός because it is bright, as being visible. Whence I think this too was said: 'The birds of heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven,' and the birds about the firmament of heaven, in that the powers which are in that visible place behold all these things and have things subject to their sight.

Finally, heaven is said to have been shut up in the times of Elijah, when faithlessness reigned under Ahab and Jezebel, while the people served the royal sacrilege, in that no one lifted up his eyes to heaven, no one venerated its author, but they worshiped wood and stones. Whence do we gather this? Because in the curses upon the people of Israel God also said: 'Thy heaven over thy head shall be of bronze, and thy earth of iron,' when the Jewish people, paying the price of their faithlessness, is punished with the inclemency of heaven and the barrenness of the earth; for from heaven comes the cause of fertility.

Finally Moses too, in his blessings, granted this to Joseph: from the bounds of heaven and the dew of the deep of the springs below, and according to the season from the course of the sun, and from the convenient months, and from the top of the mountains and the eternal hills; in that the fertility of the lands is nourished by heavenly governance. An iron heaven, then, is one that pours forth no moisture, when no rain bursts from the clouds. There is also an iron heaven: somewhat dark air, pressed down and cloudy, of a rust-colored hue, when the earth is bound by the rigor of cold. Then moisture seems to be suspended, as it were, over our head and at every moment to threaten. Often too, by the icy blasts of the winds, the stiffening waters are solidified into snow, and when the air is broken, snow is poured down.

For this firmament cannot be broken without some crash. Therefore it is also called the firmament, because it is not weak nor slack. Whence also concerning the thunders—which, when the spirit conceived within the bosom of the clouds dashes against them as it is about to burst forth violently, resound with a great crash—Scripture says: 'Establishing the thunder.' From firmness, then, the firmament is named, or because it has been made firm by divine power, as Scripture also teaches us, saying: 'Praise him in the firmament of his power.' Nor does it escape notice that some have referred the heavens of heavens to the intelligible powers, and the firmament to the operative ones.

And therefore the heavens praise, or declare the glory of God, and proclaim the firmament—yet not as spiritual beings, but as works of the world they declare it, as we said above. Others too have interpreted the waters which are above the heavens as purifying powers. We accept these things as it were for the adornment of our treatise; yet it seems to us not foreign nor absurd if we understand them to be real waters, for that cause which we have mentioned. For dew and frost and cold and heat, according to the prophetic hymn, bless the Lord, and the earth blesses, and the stars bless: and the stars we refer not to intelligible natures, but to the reality.

The dragons too praise the Lord, because their nature and form, when beheld, pour forth no little beauty, or show that reason is present in them. And God saw that it was good. The Son does what the Father wills, the Father praises what the Son does. Nothing of degenerate nature is found in him whose work does not degenerate from the paternal will. He saw, surely—not with bodily eyes did he gaze, but he determined that it befitted the fullness of grace, so that his judgment might be made known to me; for we are wont to dispute even about the things that are divine. And what wonder if those can reconsider concerning the work, who raise questions about the very generation of the Maker? Him they call into judgment; him they attempt to assert to be unequal and degenerate.

Therefore thou readest both 'God said' and 'God made': by the same name of majesty the Father and the Son are honored. And God saw that it was good. He said, as one knowing all things that the Father willed, and he saw, as one holding in knowledge all things that the Son would make, and effecting them by a shared operation. He saw that it was good. He did not, surely, come to know what he did not know, but he approved what was pleasing. The work pleased not as something unknown, since neither was the Father as it were unknown, who was well pleased in the Son, as it is written: 'This is my most beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' But the Son always knows the will of the Father, and the Father that of the Son, and the Son always hears the Father, and the Father the Son, through the unity of nature, of will, and of substance.

Finally the Son testifies to this in his Gospel, saying to the Father: 'I knew that thou always hearest me.' For the Son is the image of those who praise God. As an image he expresses all things of the Father; as the splendor of glory he illuminates and manifests to us all things of him. The Son too sees the work of the Father, just as the Father sees that of the Son, as the Lord himself declared: 'The Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing.' He sees, then, the Father doing, and he sees through the secret of the invisible nature, and he likewise hears. Finally he says: 'As I hear, so I judge, and my judgment is true, because I am not alone, but I and the Father who sent me.' This is mystical, that is moral. He saw for me, he approved for me.

What God has approved, do not call reprehensible, since thou rememberest it is written for thee: 'What God has cleansed, do not thou call common.' Therefore let no one blaspheme the good of God. And if the firmament is good, how much more is its Creator good—even though the Arians be unwilling and the Eunomians protest, the fruit of a degenerate root being worse. 'God saw,' it says, 'that it was good.' Craftsmen are wont to make the single parts first and afterward to connect them by a fitting joining—as those who chisel the faces or bodies of men out of marble, or fashion them from bronze, or model them from clay—yet they do not know how the individual members can fit together for them, and what grace the future connection will bring.

And therefore they either dare not praise, or praise only in part; but God, as the estimator of the universe, foreseeing the things that are to be, praises as though already perfected the things that are still in the beginning of the first work, anticipating by his knowledge the end of the work. Nor is it any wonder in him with whom the perfection of things is not in the consummation of the work, but in the predestination of his own will. He praises the single things as fitting for what is to come; he praises the fullness composed of the loveliness of the single things. For this is true beauty: that there be in the single members what is becoming, and in the whole, so that in the single things grace, and in all things the fullness of fitting form, may be praised.

But let our second day now be closed, lest, while we build up the work of the firmament, we make those who hear weaker through flowery speech, while the discourse is drawn out into the night—which, still lacking the light of the moon and stars (for the luminaries of heaven are not yet created), might bring obscurity upon those returning home; and at the same time that bodies may be cared for with food and drink, lest, while the souls are feasting, the frailty of the flesh should complain even of the nocturnal fast. THE THIRD DAY. The third day is born for us today in discourse, which arose in the reading—a glorious day, which freed the earth from shipwreck when God said: 'Let the water which is under heaven be gathered together into one gathering.' Concerning which it pleases us to undertake a preface.

'Let the water be gathered together,' it was said, and it was gathered together; yet often it is said, 'let the people be gathered together,' and they are not gathered. It is no slight shame that the insensible elements obey the command of God, while men, to whom sense was bestowed by that very Author, do not obey. And perhaps it was this shame that brought it about that today you have assembled in greater number, lest, on the very day on which the water was gathered into one gathering, the people should be seen in no way gathered into the Church of the Lord. Nor in the obedience of the water alone do we have an example; for elsewhere also it is written: 'The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee and were afraid.' For it does not seem unlike the truth that this was said of the waters, since elsewhere too the prophet likewise says:

'The sea saw it and fled, Jordan was turned back.' For who does not know that this truly came to pass, that at the crossing of the Hebrews the sea fled? When the wave divided itself, the people passed through with dusty footprints, believing the sea had perished and the waves had fled. Then the Egyptian believed it too, and entered in; but upon him returned the wave that had fled. The water therefore knows how both to be gathered together and to fear and to flee, when God commands. Let us imitate this water, and the one gathering of the Lord, the one Church free of all malice. Here once was water gathered from every valley, from every marsh, from every lake. The valley is heresy, the valley is heathendom, since God is the God of the mountains, not of the valleys.

Indeed, in the Church there is exultation, but in heresy and heathendom there is weeping and mourning. Hence he says: 'He has appointed it in the valley of weeping.' From every valley therefore the catholic people has been gathered. Now there are not many gatherings, but there is one gathering, one Church. Here too it was said: 'Let the water be gathered from every valley,' and a spiritual gathering came to be, one people came to be. From heretics and the nations the Church has been filled. The valley is the stage, the valley is the circus, where the lying horse runs for prize-money, where there is base and abject contention, where strife is a foul deformity. From these therefore, who had been accustomed to cling to the circus, the faith of the Church has grown, and the assembly of the singing flock is increased.

The marsh is luxury, the marsh is intemperance, the marsh is incontinence, in which are the wallowing-places of lusts, the murmurings of beasts, the lurking-dens of passions, where whoever has fallen in is sunk and does not rise again, where the footsteps of the feet slip, the gait of each one drifts, where the coots defile themselves even while they wash, where from above come the mournful moans of doves, where the sluggish tortoise clings in the miry whirlpool; in short, the boar in the marsh, the stag at the springs. From every marsh therefore, where as it were the frogs croaked their old complaint, faith has been gathered, purity has been gathered, and simplicity of soul and mind.

The water was gathered from every lake and from every pit, so that no one might dig a pit for his brother into which he himself should fall, but that all might love one another, all cherish one another, and like one body the diverse members sustain one another. These are men whom delight not the deadly songs of theatrical entertainments, which soften the mind toward loves, but the harmony of the Church, the concordant voice of the people around the praises of God, and a holy life; men to whom it is no pleasure to gaze on purple hangings or costly tapestries, but rather on this most beautiful fabric of the world, this bond of elements differing among themselves, the heaven stretched out like a vault to cover those dwelling in this world, the earth given to be worked, the diffused air, the enclosed seas, this people, the instrument of the divine working, in which the melody of the divine oracle resounds and the Spirit of God works within—that temple, the shrine of the Trinity, the dwelling-place of holiness, the holy Church, in which the heavenly hangings shine forth, of which it was said:

'Enlarge the place of thy tents and of thy hangings; fasten them, spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes; stretch out yet further to the right and to the left; and thy seed shall possess the nations for an inheritance, and thou shalt inhabit the desolate cities.' She has therefore hangings with which she lifts up the good life, covers sins, and overshadows guilt. This is the Church, which is founded upon the seas and prepared upon the rivers. For she has been confirmed and prepared upon you, who like rivers flow down into her from the pure fountain of the world, of whom it was said: 'The rivers have lifted up, O Lord, the rivers have lifted up their voices, from the voice of many waters.' And he added: 'Wonderful are the surgings of the sea; wonderful is the Lord on high.' Good are the rivers;

for you have drawn from that perennial and full fountain, from which he drew who says to you: 'He that believes in me, as the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.' But this he said of the Spirit, whom they that were to believe in him were beginning to receive. But now, like the streams of the good Jordan, return with me to the source. 'Let the water that is under the heaven,' he says, 'be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land appear.' And it was so. Perhaps someone has placed too little credence in our earlier discourses, in which we treated of how the earth was invisible for this reason, that it was covered and concealed by the waters, so that it could not be seen by bodily eyes.

For the prophet referred this to himself, that is, to our condition, not to the nature of the divine majesty, which assuredly sees all things. But that you may perceive that we have undertaken this labour of exposition not, as it were, for the sake of displaying our own talent, but for the sake of your instruction, we call to witness the sequence of the reading itself, which plainly proves that after the gathering of the water which was over the earth, and after its diversion into the seas, the dry land appeared. Let them therefore cease to stir up trouble for us with dialectical disputations, saying: How was the earth invisible, when by nature every body has form and colour, and all colour is subject to sight? The voice of God cries out: 'Let the water be gathered together, and let the dry land appear.'

And again the Scripture says: 'The water was gathered into one gathering, and the dry land appeared.' What need was there to repeat it, except that the prophet was meeting the objections of those who watch for them? Does he not seem to say: I did not call it invisible according to its nature, but according to the overspreading of the waters? For at last he added that, the veil being lifted, the dry land appeared which before was not seen. Again they sow other questions, saying: If the water was in diverse gatherings, how—if those gatherings were in higher places—did the water not flow down to that place to which, after the Lord's command, it was diverted?

— for the nature of waters spontaneously slides downward — but if those gatherings were in lower places, how did the water, contrary to its own nature, climb up to higher ones? And so either the natural course had no need of a command, or against nature it could not have advanced by command. To this question I shall easily reply, if they first reply to me whether before the Lord's command the waters had this nature, that they should glide and flow. For this it does not have from the usage of the other elements, but as something special and proper, not from any fixed order, but rather from the will and operation of God most high. They hear what God commanded. But the voice of God is the efficient cause of nature. The effect of his working fulfilled that voice.

The water began to slide and to flow together into one gathering, which before had been spread out over the lands and clung in very many receptacles. I have not before read of its course, I have not before learned of its motion; neither has my eye seen it nor my ear heard it. The water stood in diverse places; at the voice of God it was moved. Does it not seem that the voice of God made for it a nature of this kind? The creature followed the command and made a usage out of the law; for the law of the first constitution left behind a form for the future. Thus once He made day and night: from that time there remains the daily succession of each and the daily renewal. The water too was commanded to run into a gathering:

from that time it runs; the springs glide down into rivers, the rivers run into the straits, the lakes are channelled into the seas; the water goes before itself, presses on, and follows. There is one channel, one body. And although its depth is various, yet the level of its surface is undivided. Hence I think it was called 'aequor' (the level), because its surface is even ('aequalis'). I have replied according to their proposition; let them now reply to me, if they have never seen springs bubbling up from below, water rising from the floor of the ground. What forces it? Whence does it burst out? How does it not fail? How does it come about that the lowest mouths of the soil pour forth the wave? These things are according to the secrets of hidden nature.

Moreover, who does not know that water, descending mostly with rapid force into the depths, raises itself up again into the heights and lifts itself onto the brow of a mountain, and often too, when channelled by the hand of a craftsman, ascends again as much as it has descended? So then, if water is borne by its own force or, by the craftsman's skill, is led and lifted against its own nature, do you marvel if, by the operation of the divine command, something accrued to the usage of its nature which was not in its usage before? Let them now tell me how He gathered together the waters of the sea as in a bottle, as it is written, how He brought forth waters from the rock. He who was able to bring forth from the rock water that was not there, was He not able to lead water that was there?

'He struck the rock, and the waters flowed,' cries David, 'and the torrents overflowed'; and elsewhere: 'The waters shall stand upon the mountains.' You have in the Gospel that, when there was a grave storm and great commotion in the sea, so that the apostles trembled at the peril of shipwreck, they roused the Lord Jesus sleeping in the stern, and rising He commanded the wind and the sea, and the tempest was stilled, and calm restored. He who was able to still the whole sea by His command, was He not able to move the waters by His command? And in the flood too we have received it thus, that the fountains of the deep burst forth, and that afterward He brought in a wind and dried up the water.

If they are unwilling to admit that the nature and usage of the element obeyed and was turned by the command of God, let them at least concede this, that the waters could run by a wind sent upon them, which we daily see in the sea, that the waters there run from whatever quarter the wind has blown. If in the time of Moses, when a strong south wind was stirred up, the sea was dried, in the same manner could not the gathering of the waters be dried, and the water flow into the sea, which afterward was divided from the deep? But let them learn that nature can be changed, since the rock adorned forth waters, and the iron floated upon the waters—which indeed it deserved to do, made passable by prayer, not by command. If then Elisha lifted iron against nature, could not Christ move the waters that yield to Him? Nay, He moved them who could say: 'Lazarus, come forth,' and raised the dead;

for God did what He commanded. And so, by a like example, take what was said: 'Let the water be gathered together,' and it was gathered together. But by saying 'let it be gathered,' He not only moved it from its place, but also established it in a place, that it should not flow past but should remain. And so this belongs to a greater miracle: how all the gatherings flowed down into one gathering, and the one gathering was not filled up. For the Scripture too sets this among the marvels, saying: 'All the torrents go into the sea, and the sea is not filled.' Both therefore are by the command of God: that the water should flow and yet not overflow. The seas, circumscribed therefore by a limit imposed upon them, are shut in, lest, overspread upon the lands, they cleanse all things away and, the tillage of the fields being destroyed, hinder the gift of earthly fruitfulness.

Let them therefore know that it is of the divine command and heavenly operation. For the Lord says through the cloud to Job, among other things also concerning the barrier of the sea: 'I set bounds to it, placing barriers and gates; and I said to it: Thus far shalt thou come and shalt not pass over, but in thyself shall thy waves be broken.' Do we not ourselves see the sea often billowy, so that its wave rises on high like a steep mountain of water, and where it has dashed its onset against the shore, it is dissolved into foam, beaten back by certain bars of low-lying sand, according to that which is written: 'Or will ye not fear me, says the Lord, who set the sand as bounds to the sea?'

And so by the dust of the cheapest sand, basest of all things, the untimely violence of the sea is restrained, and as if by certain reins of the heavenly command it is recalled by the limit prescribed to it, and the motion of the violent flood is broken upon itself and is split back into its receding bays. But unless the force of the heavenly decree restrained it, what would prevent the Red Sea from mingling with the Egyptian deep across the plains of Egypt, which, lying especially in lower valleys, is asserted to be level country? Indeed, they teach this who wished to join these two seas to each other and pour them into one another—Sesostris the Egyptian, who was the more ancient, and Darius the Mede, who, with an eye to greater power, wished to bring into effect what had earlier been attempted by a native.

This matter is an indication that the Indian Sea, in which the Red Sea lies, is higher than the Egyptian level which washes the lower regions. And perhaps it was lest the sea should pour itself out more widely, plunging from the higher to the lower, that each king for this reason recalled his undertakings. I now ask, when He has said: 'Let the water be collected into one gathering,' how could one collection receive the waters spread out through lakes, marshes, and pools, and overspread upon valleys and plains and all the more level places, running in springs and rivers; or how could there be one collection, when even today there are diverse seas?

For we call the ocean a sea, and the Tyrrhenian, and the Adriatic, and the Indian, and the Egyptian, and the Pontus, and the Propontis, and the Hellespont, and the Euxine, the Aegean, the Ionian, the Atlantic; very many also call the Cretan and the northern Caspian a sea. Hence let us consider the words of Scripture, which were weighed in a balanced scale. 'Let the water be collected,' it says, 'into one collection.' There is one continuous and perpetual gathering of the waters, but the bays of the sea are diverse, as a certain one of the secular writers says.

For the Pontus is a most ample bay of our sea, and deservedly in diverse places there are diverse names, because the appellations have clung to the waters from the appellations of the regions; but there is one gathering of the waters, in that the continuous and perpetual wave, from the Indian sea as far as the shore of the Gaditanian coast, and thence into the farthest Red Sea, encloses the circle of the lands by the ocean poured around it; within too the Adriatic is mingled with the Tyrrhenian, and the other seas with the Adriatic, distinct in names, not in waters. Hence you have it beautifully, that God called the gatherings of the waters 'seas.' Thus there is both one general collection, which is called 'sea,' and many collections, which are named 'seas' according to the regions.

For just as many lands, such as Africa, Spain, Thrace, Macedonia, Egypt, Gaul, and Italy, are named according to the appellations of the regions, and yet there is one earth, so many seas are spoken of according to the appellations of the places, and yet there is one sea, as the prophet says, declaring: 'Thine are the heavens, and thine is the earth; the world and the fullness thereof thou hast founded. The north and the sea thou hast created.' And to Job the Lord Himself says: 'I shut up the sea with gates.'

Now, since we have spoken of the one collection, this comes to mind: whether, when the waters had been spread out over nearly all the earth and above the earth—through the lowlands of the fields, the hollows of the mountains, and the level of the plains—the one gathering, now poured out in the manner of a sea, could receive all those waters and empty the lands which before were flooded by the stream spread over the whole. If all things were so covered—for He would not say 'the earth was seen' unless He wished to show it uncovered in all places—if the flood in Noah's time hid even the mountains, when there had already been made a separation of the waters both above the heavens and below the firmament: how much the more cannot it be doubted that even the peaks of the mountains lay hidden by that overspreading?

To what place therefore was all that overflowing of the waters diverted? What receptacles could absorb it, so continuous and connected? Concerning this much discourse could be available to us. First, because the Creator of all things could spread out even the spaces of the lands themselves—which some before us, affirming it, set down as their own opinion. I do not pass over what He could have done; but what He did, which I have not plainly learned from the authority of the Scriptures, I pass over as a secret, lest perchance from this too they should seek for themselves other questions. Yet I assert according to the Scriptures that He could spread out the low places of the regions and the open spaces of the plains, as He Himself says: 'I will go before thee, and I will make the mountains plain.'

The very force of the waters could also make deeper those places which it had occupied, by so great a motion of the waves and so great a surge of the more agitated element, which is wont daily to churn the depths of the sea and turn over the sands from the deep. Then, who can know how far that great sea—undared by sailors and untried by mariners—spreads itself, the sea which encloses the Britains with its frequent flood and stretches itself into the further reaches and the secret places inaccessible even to fables? Who, then, would not reckon how much the sea, poured in, has added to the Lucrine and Avernus in Italy, to Tiberias too in Palestine, and to that lake which between Palestine and Egypt borders on the deserts of Arabia, and to the diverse harbours of Augustus and Trajan and the rest throughout the whole world?