Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 37 part 8/28

And because nothing else remained to be founded, after that evening a morning came to be in such a way that it was not the beginning of another creature to be founded, but the beginning of the rest of the whole creation in the repose of the Creator. For neither heaven and earth, nor all things that are in them—that is, the whole spiritual and bodily creation—abide in themselves, but assuredly in Him of whom it is said, 'For in Him we live and move and have our being'; because, although each single part can be within the whole of which it is a part, yet that whole itself is not save in Him by whom it was founded.

And therefore it is not absurdly understood that, the sixth day being completed, after its evening a morning came to be—not that thereby the beginning of another creature to be founded might be signified, as in the other cases, but that thereby might be signified the beginning of the abiding and resting of the whole that was founded in the rest of Him who founded it. This rest has for God neither beginning nor ending; but for the creature it has a beginning, though it has no ending. And therefore the seventh day, for that same creature, began from a morning, but is terminated by no evening. For if, on the other days, evening and morning signify alternations of such times as are now completed through these daily intervals, I do not see what would have prevented even the seventh day from being concluded by an evening and by the morning of its night, so that it might likewise be said:

'And there was evening, and there was morning, the seventh day.' Since it too is one of the days which are all seven in number, by the repetition of which months and years and ages are accomplished, so that the morning which would be placed after the evening of the seventh would be the beginning of the eighth day—concerning which thereafter silence had to be kept, because that same is the first day, to which there is a return, and from which the series of the week begins anew.

Hence it is more probable that these seven days—succeeding one another with their several names and number as they run their course—accomplish temporal spans, but that those first six days were unfolded in a form to us untried and unaccustomed, in the very foundings of things, in which both evening and morning, like light and darkness themselves, that is, day and night, did not present that alternation which these present through the circuits of the sun. This at any rate we are compelled to confess concerning those first three days, which were recorded and numbered before the luminaries were founded.

And through this, whatever kind of evening and morning there was in those days, it must by no means be supposed that God's rest took its beginning from that morning which came to be after the evening of the sixth day—lest by rash vanity we suspect that some temporal good befell that eternity and immutability. Rather, that rest of God, whereby He rests in Himself and is blessed by that good which He Himself is to Himself, has for Himself neither beginning nor ending; but the completed creature does have a beginning of that same rest of God, since the perfection of each thing lies not so much in the whole of which it is a part, as in Him from whom it is, in whom the whole itself also exists. According to the measure of its own kind it is established, that it may rest—that is, that it may keep the order of its own moment.

And through this, the very universe of creation, which was completed in six days, has one thing in its nature, another in the order by which it exists in God—not as God, yet in such a way that it does not have the rest of its own stability except in the rest of Him who seeks nothing beyond Himself, and having attained which He rests. And therefore, while He Himself abides in Himself, He turns back to Himself whatever is from Him, so that every creature has in itself the boundary of its own nature, whereby it is not what He Himself is, but has in Him the place of rest, whereby it may preserve what it itself is. I know that I have not properly spoken of 'place'; for it is properly used of the spaces occupied by bodies.

But because bodies themselves do not abide in a place except where, as it were by the appetite of their own weight, they arrive, so that having found it they may rest, therefore not incongruously the word is transferred from bodily things to spiritual, so that 'place' is spoken of, although the thing itself differs very greatly. The beginning, then, of the creature's rest in the rest of the Creator I judge to be signified by that morning which came to be after the evening of the sixth day; for it could not rest in Him unless it were perfected. Accordingly, on the sixth day, all things being completed and evening having come, a morning also came to be, whereby the completed creature might begin to rest in Him by whom it was made.

By this beginning it found Him resting in Himself, where it too might be able to rest—so much the more stably and firmly, in that it needed Him for its rest, whereas He did not need it for His. But since the whole creation, whatever it shall be amid whatsoever changes of its own, will assuredly not be nothing, therefore the whole creation will abide forever in its Creator; and through this, after that morning there was thereafter no evening. This we have said, showing why the seventh day, on which God rested from all His works, had a morning after the evening of the sixth, but did not have an evening.

There is another thing which, concerning this matter, can, as I judge, be understood more properly and better, but explained somewhat more difficultly—namely, that not for the creature only, but even for Himself, God's rest on the seventh day had a morning without an evening, that is, a beginning without an end. For if it were merely said, 'God rested on the seventh day,' and there were not added, 'from all His works which He made,' we should seek in vain for the beginning of this rest. For God does not begin to rest, whose rest is everlasting, without beginning, without end. But since He rested from all His works which He made, by having no need of them, God's rest is indeed understood to be neither begun nor terminated; but His rest from all His works,

which He made, began from that point at which He completed those works. For He would not have rested by having no need of His works before they existed, of which, when perfected, He had no need; and because He never at all had need of them, nor is this blessedness, whereby He has no need of them, as it were perfected by making progress, therefore no evening was added to the seventh day. But it can plainly be asked, and it moves one to worthy consideration, how it is to be understood that God rested in Himself from all His works which He made, when it is written, 'And God rested on the seventh day.' For it was not said 'in Himself,' but 'on the seventh day.' What, then, is the seventh day? Is it some creature, or only a span of time? But even a span of time was created together with the temporal creature.

And through this, it too is without doubt a creature. For there neither are, nor could have been, nor will be any times of which God is not the Creator. And through this, even this seventh day, if it is a time, who created it, save the Creator of all times? But with what creatures those six days were created, or in which they were created, the earlier discourse of Holy Scripture indicates. Wherefore, among these seven days, whose form is known to us—which indeed pass away in reality itself, but as others succeed hand on, as it were, their names, so that those six days are named—we know when the first of them was created; but the seventh day, which is called by the name of Sabbath, we do not see when God created it.

For on that very day He made nothing; rather, on that same seventh day He rested from the things which He had made in six days. How, then, did He rest on a day which He did not create? Or how did He create it immediately after the six days, since on the sixth day He completed all that He created, and created nothing on the seventh day, but rather on it rested from all that He had created? Or did God create only one single day, so that by its repetition the many that are called days might pass and run their course, and there was no need for Him to create a seventh day, because the seventh repetition of that day which He had created was precisely what made this one? For the light of which it is written, 'And God said: Let there be light,'

and light was made, He separated from the darkness, and called it day, and He called the darkness night. Then, therefore, God made the day, whose repetition Scripture calls the second day, then the third, and so on up to the sixth, on which God completed His works; and thence the seventh repetition of that day first created received the name of the seventh day, on which God rested. And through this, the seventh day is no creature save that same one returning seven times, which was founded when God called the light day and the darkness night.

Again, therefore, we slip back into that question from which in the first book we seemed to have escaped, so that we likewise ask how light could have gone its circuit to display the alternation of day and night, not only before the luminaries of heaven, but before heaven itself—which was called the firmament—was made, and before, finally, there was any form of earth or sea which might admit the circuit of light, with night following, whither that light had passed on.

Compelled by the difficulty of this question, we ventured to bring our discussion to a close, as it were, with this opinion: that we should say that that light which was first made is the giving of form to the spiritual creature, while the night is the matter of things, still to be given form in the remaining works, which had been established when in the beginning God made heaven and earth, before He made the day by His word.

But now, admonished by consideration of the seventh day, it is easier for us to confess our ignorance of what lies remote from our senses—namely, in what manner that light which was called day, whether by its own circuit, or by contraction and emission (if it is bodily), accomplished the alternations of day and night; or, if it is spiritual, was presented to the founding of all creatures, and by its own presence made the day, but by its absence the night, made the evening at the beginning of its absence, and the morning at the beginning of its presence—rather than that we should attempt to say, in a matter so plain, against the words of divine Scripture, that the seventh day is something other than the seventh repetition of that day which God made.

Otherwise, either God did not create the seventh day, or He created something after those six days, namely the seventh day itself; and it would be false that it is written that on the sixth day He completed all His works, and on the seventh rested from all His works. And since this assuredly cannot be false, it remains that the presence of that light, which God made day, was repeated through all His works, as often as a day was named, and on that very seventh day too, on which He rested from His works. But since the bodily light—before there was made the heaven which is called the firmament, in which the luminaries too were made—

by what circuit, or by what advance and withdrawal, it could have displayed the alternations of day and night, we do not find; therefore we ought not to leave this question without some putting forth of our own opinion: that, if that light which was first created is not bodily but spiritual, then, just as it was made after the darkness—where it is understood to have been turned from a certain formlessness of its own toward the Creator and given form—so too after the evening let there come a morning, when, after the knowledge of its own proper nature (whereby it is not what God is), it turns itself to praising the Light, which is God Himself, by whose contemplation it is given form.

And because the other creatures, which are made beneath it, are not made without its knowledge, therefore doubtless that same day is everywhere repeated, so that by its repetition there come to be as many days as there are distinct kinds of created things, to be terminated by the perfection of the number six: so that the evening of the first day is also its knowledge that it is not what God is, while the morning after this evening—by which the first day is concluded and the second begun—is its conversion, whereby it refers what it was created to the praise of the Creator, and receives from the Word of God the knowledge of the creature which comes to be after itself, that is, of the firmament: which comes to be first in its knowledge, when it is said, 'and so it was made,' and then in the very nature of the firmament, which is founded.

When there is added, after it had already been said, 'and so it was made,' the words 'and God made the firmament.' Then there comes to be the evening of that light, when it knows the firmament itself not in the Word of God as before, but in its own nature: which knowledge, because it is lesser, is rightly signified by the name of evening. After this comes the morning, by which the second day is concluded and the third begins: in which morning there is likewise a conversion of this light, that is, of this day, toward praising God, because He has wrought the firmament, and toward receiving from His Word the knowledge of the creature which is to be founded after the firmament. And through this, when God says:

'Let the water which is under heaven be gathered together into one collection, and let the dry land appear,' that light knows this in the Word of God, by which it is said; and therefore there follows, 'and so it was made,' that is, in its knowledge from the Word of God. Then, when there is added, 'and the water was gathered together,' and the rest—after it had already been said, 'and so it was made'—the creature itself comes to be in its own kind: which likewise, when it is known, having come to be in its own kind, by that light which had already known in the Word of God that it was to be made, there comes to be the third evening; and thence in this manner the rest, up to the morning after the evening of the sixth day. For there is a great difference between the knowledge of each thing in the Word of God, and the knowledge of it in its own nature, so that the former rightly pertains to the day, the latter to the evening.

For in comparison with that light which is beheld in the Word of God, all knowledge whereby we know any creature whatsoever in itself may not undeservedly be called night; which in turn differs so greatly from the error or ignorance of those who do not even know the creature itself, that in comparison with this it is not incongruously called day. Just as the very life of the faithful, which is led in this flesh and in this age, in comparison with the life of the unbelieving and impious, is not irrationally called light and day, the Apostle saying, 'For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord,' and that other saying, 'Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, so that we may walk honorably as in the day.'

Yet this day, unless again in comparison with that day on which, made equal to the angels, we shall see God as He is, would itself also be night, we should not here need the lamp of prophecy. Hence the Apostle Peter says, 'We have the more sure word of prophecy, whereunto you do well to take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in your hearts.' Wherefore, since the holy angels, to whom after the resurrection we shall be made equal—if we hold to the way which Christ became for us, even to the end—always behold the face of God, and enjoy His only-begotten Son the Word, even as He is equal to the Father, among whom first of all was created Wisdom:

without doubt they first knew the whole creation, in which they themselves were principally founded, in the very Word of God, in whom are the eternal reasons of all things, even of those which were made in time, as in Him through whom all things were made; and then in the creature itself, which they thus knew, as it were looking down upon it from beneath and referring it to the praise of Him in whose immutable Truth they principally behold the reasons according to which it was made. There, therefore, as though through the day—whence too their most harmonious unity, by participation in the same Truth, is the day first created; but here, as though through the evening;

but immediately there comes to be the morning—which can be observed in all the six days—because the angelic knowledge does not remain in that which was created, but immediately refers it to the praise and love of Him in whom it is known that it was not made, but was to be made: in which Truth, by standing fast, there is day. For if the angelic nature were to turn to itself and to take more delight in itself than in Him by participation in whom it is blessed, it would, swelling with pride, fall, as did the devil: of whom we must speak in its proper place, when the due discourse concerning the serpent, the seducer of man, shall be demanded.

Since, therefore, the angels so know the creature in that creature itself, that by choice and love they set above it the fact that they know it in the Truth through whom all things were made, being made partakers of that Truth, therefore throughout all the six days night is not named, but 'after evening and morning, one day'; likewise 'after evening and morning, a second day'; then 'after evening and morning, a third day,' and so on up to the morning of the sixth day, whence begins the seventh of God's rest—although, together with their nights, they are yet narrated as days, not as nights.

For then the night pertains to the day, not the day to the night, when the sublime and holy angels refer that which they have known of the creature in the creature itself to the honor and love of Him in whom they contemplate the eternal reasons by which it was created, and by that most harmonious contemplation are the one day which the Lord has made, to which the Church too, freed from this pilgrimage, shall be joined, that we may also exult and rejoice in it. Of this day, then, whose evening and morning can be understood according to the reason stated above, by the sixth repetition the whole creation was completed, and there came to be a morning, whereby the sixth day would be ended, and whence would begin the seventh, which was not to have an evening, because God's rest is not a creature; which,

when it was being founded through the other days, was known otherwise as made in itself than as it was seen to be made in Him in whose Truth it appeared as to be made; of which knowledge the somewhat discolored form, as it were, made the evening. Not therefore should the form of the work itself be understood as the day, and the evening as the ending, and the morning as the beginning of another work, in this narration of the things founded—lest we be compelled to say, contrary to Scripture, that the creature of the seventh day was founded besides the six days, or that the seventh day itself is no creature; but that day which God made is itself repeated through His works, not by a bodily circuit, but by a spiritual knowledge, when that blessed society of angels both first contemplates in the Word of God, by which God says:

'Let it be made,' and therefore first it comes to be in the angels' knowledge, when it is said, 'and so it was made,' and afterward it knows the thing itself, made in that very thing—which is signified by the evening having come—and then refers that knowledge of the thing made to the praise of that Truth wherein it had seen the reason of the thing to be made, which is signified by the morning having come. And thus, through all those days, there is one day, to be understood not according to the custom of these days of ours, which we see determined and numbered by the circuit of the sun; but in some other way, from which those three days too, which were recorded before the founding of these luminaries, cannot be alien.

For this manner was carried on not merely up to the fourth day, so that from there onward we might think of these familiar days, but up to the sixth and seventh, so that far otherwise must be understood the day and night between which two God divided, and otherwise this day and night between which He said the luminaries, which He created, should divide, when He said, 'and let them divide between the day and the night.' For then He founded this day, when He founded the sun, by whose presence He displays that same day; but that day first founded had already passed through three days, when these luminaries were created by the fourth repetition of that day.

Wherefore, since that day, or those days which were numbered by its repetition, we cannot experience and perceive in this our earthly mortality, and, if we can attempt anything toward understanding them, we ought not to precipitate a rash opinion—as though concerning these things nothing more fitting and more probable could be perceived—let us believe that these seven days, which take the place of those for the week whose course and recurrence sweeps time along (in which one day is the circuit from the rising of the sun until its rising again), so display a certain likeness of those, that we do not doubt in the least that they are not like them, but very much unequal.

Nor let anyone suppose that what I have said about the spiritual light and the day founded in the spiritual and angelic creature, and about the contemplation which it has in the Word of God, and about the knowledge by which the creature is known in itself, and its reference to the praise of the immutable Truth—where first the reason of the thing to be made was seen, which, being known, was made—applies to the understanding of day and evening and morning not now properly but as it were figuratively and allegorically. Rather, it applies otherwise indeed than in this custom of our daily and bodily light, yet not as though here properly, there figuratively; for where there is a better and more certain light, there too is a truer day. Why then not also a truer evening and a truer morning?

For if in these days the light has a certain declining of its own toward setting, which we call by the name of evening, and again a return to its rising, which we call morning, why should we not there too speak of an evening, when the creature is looked down upon away from the contemplation of the Creator, and of a morning, when from the knowledge of the creature one rises up to the praise of the Creator? For neither is Christ called light in the same way as He is called a stone, but the former properly, the latter assuredly figuratively. Whoever, therefore, seeks in the enumeration of those days not the meaning which we, according to our measure, have been able either to investigate or to suppose, but another which can be understood not figuratively in prophecy, but properly and better in this founding of creatures—let him seek, and, divinely aided, let him find.

For it can happen that even I may perhaps find another meaning more congruous to these words of divine Scripture. For neither do I so affirm this one that I contend that another, which ought to be preferred, cannot be found—just as I do affirm that Holy Scripture did not wish to insinuate to us God's rest as though after weariness or the trouble of care. Wherefore someone can perhaps contend with me in disputing, so as to say that the angels of the sublime heavens do not by turns first behold the reasons of creatures immutably in the immutable Truth of the Word of God, and then the creatures themselves, and thirdly refer even the knowledge of them in themselves to the praise of the Creator, but that their mind can, by a wonderful facility, do all these things at once.

Will he, however, say—or, if anyone should say it, is he to be heeded—that that heavenly city, among the thousands of angels, either does not contemplate the eternity of the Creator, or is ignorant of the mutability of the creature, or, from a certain lower knowledge of it too, does not praise the Creator? Let them be able to do this whole thing at once, let them do this whole thing at once; nevertheless they both can and do. At once, therefore, they have both day and evening and morning. For neither is it to be feared that perhaps he who is now fit to perceive those things should therefore think that this cannot happen there, because in these days, which are accomplished by the circuit of this sun, it cannot happen. And this indeed cannot happen in the same parts of the earth;

but who does not see, if he will attend to it, that the whole world has at once both the day, where the sun is, and the night, where it is not, and the evening, whence it departs, and the morning, whither it approaches? But we plainly, on earth, cannot have all these things at once.

Yet we ought not on this account to set this earthly condition and the temporal, local circuit of bodily light on a level with that spiritual homeland, where it is always day in the contemplation of unchangeable truth, always evening in the creature's knowledge of itself, and always morning also when, out of this self-knowledge, it rises to the praise of the Creator. For there evening comes to be, not by the withdrawal of a higher light, but by the distinction of a lower kind of knowledge; nor does a morning knowledge succeed as though upon a night of ignorance, but rather it raises up even the evening knowledge into the glory of the Founder. And so that psalmist too, without naming night, says: 'Evening and morning and at noon I will declare and proclaim';

'and thou shalt hear my voice' — perhaps speaking here in terms of the succession of times, yet, so far as I judge, signifying what would be done without any succession of times in that homeland for which his pilgrimage sighed. But is it the case that, if that angelic society and unity of the day which God first founded now performs and possesses all these things at once, it likewise possessed them all at once at the time when these works were being made? Did it not, throughout all the six days, while those things which it pleased God to create on each single day were being created, first receive them in the Word of God, so that they came to be first in His knowledge? When it was said:

'and so it was made,' and then, when they had been made in their own proper nature, in which they exist, and had pleased God because they are good — did it not then likewise know them by a certain other, lower knowledge, which is signified by the name of 'evening'; and then, when evening had come, did it not become morning, when God was praised for His work, and the knowledge of another creature, which was next to be made, was received from the Word of God before it came to be? Not, therefore, all things at once — both the day and the evening and the morning — but one by one, in the order which Scripture records.

Or was it even then all at once, since it was not according to the delays of times, as these days come to be, when the sun rises and sets and returns to its place to rise again, but according to the spiritual power of the angelic mind, which grasps by a most easy knowledge, all at once, whatever it wills? And yet not without an order, in which appears the connection of preceding and following causes. For knowledge cannot come to be unless the things to be known precede it; and these same things are prior in the Word, through which all things were made, than in all those things which were made.

Thus the human mind first experiences through the bodily senses these things which have been made, and grasps a knowledge of them according to the measure of human weakness; and then it seeks their causes, whether it can in any way attain to them as they abide principally and unchangeably in the Word of God, and so behold His invisible attributes, understood through the things that have been made. With what slowness and difficulty it does this, and with how great a delay of time, on account of the corruptible body which weighs down the soul — even the soul that is snatched up with the most fervent zeal, so as to do this urgently and perseveringly — who does not know?