"It shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you"—so that the earth, even bearing these before, nonetheless did not bear them for man unto labor, but as food suited to animals of every kind—for there are creatures which feed conveniently and pleasantly upon these kinds, both the softer and the drier—but that it then began to bring these forth for man unto toilsome labor, when after sin he began to labor upon the earth; not that these grew before in other places and afterwards in the fields which man cultivated to gather crops, but both before and afterwards in the same places, yet before not for man, and afterwards for man; that this might be signified which is added: for you—since it was not said: It shall bring forth thorns and thistles, but:
"It shall bring forth for you"—that is, that now these things should begin to be born for you unto labor, which before were born only for the food of other animals. And God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness; and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all cattle, and all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. And God made man; to the image of God he made him; male and female he made them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and have dominion over it, and rule over the fish of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all cattle, and all the earth, and every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. And God said:
"Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing herb sowing seed, which is upon all the earth, and every tree which has in itself the fruit of seed-bearing seed—to you it shall be for food, and to all the beasts of the earth, and to all the fowls of the air, and to every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth, which has in itself the spirit of life—and every green herb for food. And it was so. And God saw all the things that he had made, and behold, they were very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day." Concerning the nature of man there will yet again and again be a fuller place for considering and discussing it more diligently.
Now nevertheless, so that our inquiry and treatment may conclude the works of the six days, we say this first, briefly, that it is not to be received with indifference that in the other works it is said: God said, Let it be made; but here: God said, Let us make man to our image and likeness—namely to intimate, so to speak, a plurality of persons on account of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yet that this unity of the Godhead is to be understood, it at once admonishes by saying: And God made man to the image of God—not as though the Father to the image of the Son, or the Son to the image of the Father—otherwise it was not truly said: to our image, if man was made to the image of the Father alone or of the Son alone—but it is so said:
"God made man to the image of God," as though it were said: God made man to his own image. But now, when it is said: to the image of God, whereas above it had been said: to our image, it is signified that this plurality of persons does not bring it about that we should either say or believe or understand many gods, but rather that—since it was on account of that Trinity that it was said: to our image—we should receive the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit as one God, on account of which it was said: to the image of God. Here too this must not be passed over: that, when he had said: to our image, he at once added:
"And let him have power over the fish of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the rest of the animals devoid of reason"—so that we may clearly understand that man was made to the image of God in that whereby he excels the irrational living creatures. And this is reason itself, or mind, or intelligence, or by whatever other term it may more suitably be called. Whence the Apostle also says: Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who is renewed unto the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him—showing sufficiently in what part man was created to the image of God: namely not in the lineaments of the body, but in a certain intelligible form of the enlightened mind.
And through this, just as in that first light—if by that name is rightly understood the making of an intellectual light, a partaker of the eternal and unchangeable Wisdom of God—it was not said: And so it was done, so that thereafter it should be repeated: And God made; because, as we have already discussed as far as we could, there was no cognition of the Word of God coming to be in the first creature, such that after that cognition there should be created below it what was being created in that Word; but rather that light itself was first created, in which the cognition of the Word of God, through which it was being created, should come to be; and that very cognition was for it to be turned from its own formlessness to the God who forms it, and to be created and formed—but afterward, in the rest of the creatures, it is said:
"And so it was done," where it is signified that in that light—that is, in the intellectual creature—the cognition of the Word was first made; and then, when it is said: And God made, the coming-to-be of the very kind of creature is shown, which had been spoken in the Word of God that it should come to be. This is observed also in the fashioning of man; for God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness, and the rest. And then it is not said: And so it was done, but there is at once inferred: And God made man to the image of God—because this nature too is, of course, intellectual, like that light, and therefore for it to come to be is the same as to acknowledge the Word of God through which it comes to be. For if it were said: And so it was done, and afterward there were inferred:
"And God made," it would be as though the thing were understood to have been made first in the cognition of the rational creature, and then in some creature which was not rational; but since this too is a rational creature, it also was perfected by that same acknowledgment. For just as, after the fall of sin, man is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him, so in that very knowledge he was created, before he grew old through transgression, so that he might again be renewed in that same knowledge. But those things which were not created in that cognition—because either bodies or irrational souls were being created—first there was made, in the intellectual creature, the cognition of them from the Word by which it was spoken that they should come to be; and on account of that cognition it was first said:
"And so it was done," that it might be shown that the very cognition was made in that nature which was able to know this beforehand in the Word of God; and then those very corporeal and irrational creatures came to be, on account of which was thereupon added: And God made. But how man was made immortal, and received for food, along with the other animals, the herb of fodder bearing seed, and the fruitful tree, and the green herb, is difficult to say. For if he was made mortal by sin, then surely before sin he did not need such foods. Nor could that body be corrupted by hunger. For that which was said:
"Increase and multiply, and fill the earth"—although it seems it could not come about except through the intercourse of male and female (whence from this too there arises an indication of mortal bodies)—can nevertheless be said to have been able to have another mode in immortal bodies, so that by the affection of piety alone, with no concupiscence of corruption, sons might be born, neither to succeed dying parents nor themselves destined to die, until the earth should be filled with immortal men; and thus, a just and holy people having been established, such as we believe will exist after the resurrection, the mode of being born would also come to an end. It can indeed be said; but how it is to be said is another consideration.
But this no one will dare to say: that the need of foods, by which they might be refreshed, could belong to any but mortal bodies. Yet some have even conjectured that then the inner man was made, but the body of man afterward, when Scripture says: And God formed man of the slime of the earth—so that what was said: he made, should pertain to the spirit, and what was said: he formed, to the body; nor did they consider that male and female could not be made except according to the body.
For although it may be discussed most subtly that the very mind of man—in which he was made to the image of God, namely a certain rational life—is distributed into the truth of eternal contemplation and into the administration of temporal things, and that thus it comes to be, as it were, male and female, that part counseling, this part obeying: yet in this distribution the image of God is not rightly said to be except that which cleaves to the contemplation of the unchangeable truth. In figure of which thing the Apostle Paul says that the man alone is the image and glory of God;
but the woman, he says, is the glory of the man. And so, although this was outwardly figured according to the body in two human beings of different sex, which is understood also in the single inner mind of one human being, nevertheless the woman too—because in body she is a woman—is herself also renewed in the spirit of her mind unto the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created, where there is neither male nor female.
For just as from this grace of renewal and the reformation of the image of God women are not excluded—although in the sex of their body something else is figured, according to which the man alone is said to be the image and glory of God—so also in that very first fashioning of man, in respect of that whereby the woman too was a human being, she surely had her own mind, and that same rational, according to which she too was made to the image of God. But on account of the unity of the conjunction, God made man, it says, to the image of God. And lest anyone should suppose that only the spirit of man was made—although it was according to the spirit alone that he was made to the image of God—he made him, it says, male and female he made them, so that now the body too might be understood to have been made.
Again, lest anyone should think it was so made that in a single human being both sexes should be expressed—as are sometimes born those whom they call androgynes—Scripture shows that it set down the singular number on account of the unity of the conjunction, and that the woman was made from the man, as will afterward be made manifest, when what is here briefly said shall begin to be more diligently explained; and therefore it at once subjoined the plural number, saying: he made them and blessed them. But, as I have already said, we shall inquire more diligently, in the subsequent Scripture, concerning the creation of man. Now it must be observed that, after it said: And so it was done, it at once subjoined:
"And God saw all the things that he had made, and behold, they were very good," where is understood the very power and faculty given to human nature of taking for food the fodder of the field and the fruit of the tree. For to this end he brought in: And so it was done, which he had begun from that place where he says: And God said: Behold, I have given you seed-bearing fodder, and the rest. For if we should refer to all the things said above that which he says: And so it was done, it will follow that we must confess that they had already increased and, being multiplied, had filled the earth on that same sixth day—which we find, by the testimony of the same Scripture, was done after many years. Wherefore, when this faculty of eating had been given, and man had come to know it by God's speaking, it is said:
"And so it was done"—namely in this, that by God's speaking man came to know it. For if he had also then done it—that is, had taken for food those things which were given, also consuming them by eating—there would have been observed that custom of Scripture, so that, after it had been said: And so it was done, which pertains to expressing the preceding cognition, then the action itself would also be inferred and it would be said: And they took and ate. For it could have been so said, even if God were not again named, as in that place where, after it had been said: Let the water which is under heaven be gathered together into one gathering, and let the dry land appear, there is subjoined: And so it was done; and then it is not said: And God made, but nevertheless it is thus repeated:
"And the water was gathered together into its gathering," and the rest. But that concerning the human creature he did not, as in the others, say singly: And God saw that it was good, but after man was made and power was given him either of ruling or of eating, he brought in concerning all things: And God saw all the things that he had made, and behold, they were very good—this can rightly be inquired into. For it could first have been rendered to man singly, as was rendered singly to the others which had been made before; and then at last it might be said of all the things which God had made: Behold, they were very good. Or is it perhaps because on the sixth day all things are perfected, that therefore it had to be said of all: God saw all the things that he had made, and behold, they were very good—not singly of those things which were made on that day itself?
Why then was it said concerning the cattle and beasts and creeping things of the earth—which belong to the same sixth day? Unless perhaps those things deserved to be called good both singly in their kind and, together with the rest, universally, while man, made to the image of God, deserved to have this said of him only together with the rest. Or is it because he was not yet perfect, because he was not yet established in paradise? As though indeed, after he was there established, that was said which is here omitted. What then shall we say? Is it because God foreknew that man would sin and would not remain in the perfection of his image, that he willed to call him good not singly but together with the rest, as though intimating what was to be?
Because, when those things which were made remain in that which they were made, so far as they received—like those which have not sinned, or those which cannot sin—both the individual things are good, and in the whole all things are very good. For not without reason was there added: very; because the members of the body too, even if they are each beautiful singly, are nevertheless all far more beautiful in the frame of the whole body; for the eye, for example, though pleasing and praised, we would nevertheless, if we saw it separated from the body, not call so beautiful as in that connection of the members, when, set in its own place, it were discerned within the whole body.
But those things which by sinning lose their proper comeliness nevertheless in no way bring it about that they too, being rightly ordered, are not good together with the whole and the universe. Man therefore, before sin, was surely good also in his kind; but Scripture omitted to say this, in order rather to say that which would foretell something future. For nothing false was said of him. For he who is good singly is surely more good together with all. But it does not follow that, when he is good together with all, he is therefore also good singly. It was therefore a measured thing that that should be said which would both be true in the present and signify a foreknowledge of the future.
For God is the best founder of natures, but the most just ordainer of sinners, so that even if some things become misshapen singly by transgressing, nevertheless the whole together with them is always beautiful. But let us now treat, in the following volume, of the things that follow. And the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the array of them. And God finished on the sixth day his works which he had made; and God rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his works which God had begun to make. It is indeed arduous and most difficult, by the powers of our attention, to penetrate with the vigor of the mind the will of the writer concerning these six days.
Whether those days passed away, and, with the seventh added, are now repeated through the cycles of times not in reality but in name. For in all time many days come that are like those past, but none returns the same.
Whether then those days passed away, or whether—while these days, which are reckoned by their names and number, run by daily in the order of times—those first days abide in the very conditions of things; so that not only in those first three, before the luminaries were made, but also likewise in the remaining three, we may understand the name of "day" in the species of the thing which was created, and its "night" in the privation or defect, or by whatever other name it is better signified, when some species is lost by some change declining and inclining from form toward formlessness—which change is present in every creature either in possibility, even if it be lacking in effect, as in the higher heavenly beings, or is carried out, for the fulfilling of temporal beauty in the lowest things, through the ordained alternations, by the yieldings and successions of whatever mutable things, as is manifest in earthly and mortal things—but "evening," in all things, is as it were a certain terminus of the perfected condition.
But "morning" is the beginning of what commences—for every created nature is contained by its own fixed beginnings and ends—: this is difficult to trace out. But whether this, or that, or even some third thing more probable can be found to be said—which perhaps will appear in the progress of the discussion, in what manner in those days both night and evening and morning are to be understood—it is nonetheless not beside the point that we should consider the perfection of the number six in the very inner nature of numbers: which, beholding with the mind, we number and dispose numerically the things which lie also before the bodily senses. We find, then, that the number six is the first to be perfect, by this reasoning: that it is completed by its own parts;
for there are also other numbers perfect by other causes and reasons. Accordingly we have called this six perfect by this reasoning, that it is completed by its own parts—by such parts, at least, as multiplied can make up the number of which they are parts; for such a part of a number can be called a certain fraction of it. For the number three can be called a part not only of six, of which it is the half, but of all numbers larger than three itself. For three is the larger part both of four and of five; for four can be divided into three and one, and five into three and two. And of seven and eight and nine, and whatever numbers are beyond, three is a part not larger than a half, but smaller.
For seven too can be divided into three and four, and eight into three and five, and nine into three and six; but of none of these can it be said what fraction three is, except only of nine, of which it is the third part, as it is the half of six. And so of all these which I have mentioned, none is made up out of a certain number of threes except six and nine. For the former consists of two threes, but the latter of three. The number six, then, as I had begun to say, when its parts are counted together and led into a sum, is itself completed. For some numbers there are whose parts, taken together, make a smaller sum, and others a larger;
but by fixed ratios of intervals, fewer are found which are completed by their own parts, whose sum neither stops short nor grows beyond, but reaches to just so much as is the very number of which they are parts. Of these the first is six. For of one there are no parts in numbers. For "one" in the numbers by which we count is so called that it has no half or any part, but is truly and purely and simply one. But of two the part is one, and that a half, nor any other. Three indeed has two parts: one which can be said to be a fraction—which is one, for it is its third—and another larger, which cannot be said to be a fraction, that is, two; nor therefore can those parts of it be reckoned.
—those of which we are treating, that is, which can be said to be fractions. Further, four has two such parts: for one is its fourth, and two its half; but both led into a sum, that is, one and two together, make three, not four. Its own parts therefore do not complete it, because they consist in a smaller sum. Five has no such part except one, that is, one itself, which is its fifth part; for two, although it is a smaller part of it, and three a larger, neither of them can be said to be a fraction of it. But six has three such parts: a sixth, a third, a half. Its sixth is one, its third two, its half three.
But these parts led into a sum, that is, one and two and three, together make up and complete the same six. Now seven has no such part except a seventh, which is one; eight has three: an eighth, a fourth, a half, that is, one, two, and four; but these, similarly led together, make seven, which stops short below, and therefore they do not fill up the same eight. Nine has two: a ninth, which is one, and a third, which is three; but these together make four, far smaller than nine. Ten has three such parts: one its tenth, two its fifth, five its half; which numbers led together arrive at eight, not at ten.
Eleven has only an eleventh, just as seven has only a seventh, and five only a fifth, and three only a third, and two only a half, which in all these is one. But twelve, its such parts being led together, is not itself completed but exceeded; for they make a number larger than twelve: for they arrive as far as sixteen. For it has five of them: a twelfth, a sixth, a fourth, a third, a half. For its twelfth is one, its sixth two, its fourth three, its third four, its half six: but one and two and three and four and six led into a sum make sixteen.
And, not to delay with many words, in the infinite series of numbers more numbers are found which either do not have such parts except single ones—like three and five and the rest of that kind—or have several such parts in such a way that, led into one and reduced into a sum, they either stop short, as is the case with eight and nine and very many others, or exceed beyond, as with twelve and eighteen and many such. More, therefore, of any of these are found than those which are called perfect, in that they are completed by their own such parts led together. For after six the number twenty-eight is found, which similarly consists of its such parts; for it has five of them:
a twenty-eighth, a fourteenth, a seventh, a fourth, a half; that is, one and two and four and seven and fourteen; which led together complete the same twenty-eight, for they come to twenty-eight. And the further the order of numbers proceeds, by so much—in due proportion—at more extended intervals are found these numbers which, by their such parts reduced into a sum, meet themselves, and are called perfect. For those numbers whose such parts led together do not fill up the same numbers of which they are parts are called imperfect; but those which even exceed are called more than perfect. By the perfect number of days, then, that is, by six, God perfected his works which he made. For thus it is written:
"And God finished on the sixth day his works which he had made." But I become still more intent upon this number when I also consider the order of the works themselves. For just as that same number gradually rises by its parts into a triangle—for one, two, three follow so that no other can be interposed, which are the individual parts of six, of which it consists: one the sixth, two the third, three the half—so on one day light was made, but on the two following the fabric of this world: on one the upper part, that is, the firmament; on the other the lower, that is, the sea and the earth. But the upper part he filled with no kinds of bodily nourishments, because he was not going to place there bodies needing such refreshment.
But the lower part, which he was going to adorn with animals suited to it, he first enriched with foods necessary for their need. In the remaining three days, then, were created those things which, within the world—that is, within this visible universe made out of all the elements—should be moved as visible things by their own fitting motions: first in the firmament the luminaries, because the firmament had been made first; then in the lower part living creatures, as the order itself demanded, on one day those of the waters, on another those of the lands. Nor is anyone so mad as to dare to say that God could not have made all things in one day, if he had willed, or, if he had willed, in two days:
On one day the spiritual creature and on another the corporeal; or on one day the heaven with all that pertains to it, and on another the earth with all that is in it; and, in short, whenever He willed and for however long He willed and in whatever manner He willed. Who is there that would say anything could have resisted His will? Wherefore, when we read that He completed all things in six days, and, considering the number six, find it to be perfect, and find moreover that the order of creatures so runs that even of the very parts by which this number is made perfect there appears as it were a graded distinction, let there also come to mind that which is said to Him in another place of the Scriptures: 'Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight'; and thus let the soul ponder, as far as it is able.
Having called upon God for help, and He imparting and inspiring strength, let us ask whether these three—measure, number, weight—by which it is written that God ordered all things, existed anywhere before the whole of nature was created, or whether they too were themselves created. And if they existed beforehand, where did they exist? For before the creature there was nothing except the Creator. Therefore they existed in Him. But in what manner? For we also read that those things which have been created exist in Him. Do those three exist as He Himself is, while these others exist as things within Him, ruled and governed by Him? And how could those three be He Himself? For God is neither measure nor number nor weight nor all these things.
Is it, according to that whereby we know measure in the things we measure, and number in the things we count, and weight in the things we weigh, that God is not these things? But according to that whereby measure sets a limit to everything, and number bestows a form upon everything, and weight draws everything toward rest and stability, He is these things primordially and truly and singularly—He who bounds all things and forms all things and orders all things; and nothing else is understood to be meant, in the manner in which it could be uttered through the human heart and tongue, by 'Thou hast ordered all things in measure and number and weight,' than: 'Thou hast ordered all things in Thyself.'