good"?1 1 What a hue and cry they would raise, what charges they would bring!
Book 1 47 things to be formed from it. But under all these names there was the unseen and formless material out of which God set up the cosmos.
Quibbles about God seeing that the light was good
8, 13. And God said, Let light be made; and light was made (Gn 1 :3). The Manichees are not in the habit of finding fault with this, but with what follows: And God saw the light that it was good (Gn 1 :4). They say, you see: "So then,
God did not know what light was before, or did not know what good was." Wretched creatures ! That God was satisfied with his works causes them dissatis faction, when they can see how a human craftsman, a carpenter for example, though in comparison with God's wisdom and power he is next to nothing, still takes such a long time over cutting and preparing his wood with axe and adze and plane, or turning it in a lathe and polishing it, until it measures up as far as it can to the standards of his craft and satisfies him as a craftsman. So then, because he is pleased with what he has made, does that mean that before he made it he did not know what good work was? Of course he knew in his mind, where the very knowledge of his craft is more beautiful than the things that are constructed by it. But what the craftsman sees inwardly in his knowledge of his craft he puts into effect outwardly in his work, and it is this, when perfectly finished, that satisfies him as a craftsman.
So then, God saw the light that it was good; these words indicate, not that some unfamiliar good suddenly dawned on God, but that something perfectly finished gave him satisfaction.
14. What if the text had said: "God observed with wonder that the light was good"?1 1 What a hue and cry they would raise, what charges they would bring! For wonder or astonishment indeed does usually arise from unexpected things. And yet these people read in the gospel about our Lord Jesus Christ having wondered at, been astonished at, the faith of believers,12 and they praise him for
1 1 . What if the text had said, in the Latin: Miratus est Deus lucem quia bona est? The meaning of miror is, to be sure, "to be astonished, surprised, to wonder," in the sense of "marveling." And the problem is: why should Augustine have raised this curious possibility? And the thought occurred to me, as it has done on more than one occasion, that modern Spanish might give a clue to the change of meaning in Latin words in Augustine's Africa; and in Spanish mirar means to look, to gaze at. So perhaps miror in African Latin had come to mean, not just to be astonished, but also to see something with astonishment or wonder. 1 consulted my friend Dr. Duncan Cloud on the point, and he cited some evidence from the classical poets for the word's being used in the sense ofcum admiratione videre, to see with astonishment or wonder; notably ViigiVsAeneid, V,35. Closer to Augustine, he referred me to Tertullian, De Oratione 22,9, addressing the Virgin: Nemo miretur in tuamfaciem, "Let no one gaze on your face." So it seems there was already before Augustine's time a move of the word's meaning to what it came to have in Spanish. And again, perhaps some of those old Latin versions ofGenesis circulating in North Africa did read here Miratus est Deus. But he does not suggest that here. 1 continue to find the section baffling. 12. See Mt 8:10.