4. See Jn 10:30.
Book I 171
God said, Let light be made; and light was made (Gn 1:3), should be understood as its being converted and enlightened, by its creator calling it back to himself.
8. And why is it put like this: ln the beginning God made heaven and earth, and not like this: ln the beginning God said, Let heaven and earth be made; and heaven and earth were made, in the same way as the account of light is given: God said, Let light be made; and light was made? Is it that first of all what God made had to be universally embraced and presented under the name of "heaven and earth," and then this had to be followed up piecemeal by how he made it, when it says of things one by one, God said; meaning that it was through his Word that he made whatever he did make?
Why God did not say "Let it be made" about the unformed basic material
4, 9. Or is it that when the unformed basic material, whether of spiritual or bodily being, was first being made, it was not appropriate to say God said, Let it be made, because it is by the Word, always adhering to the Father, that God eter nally says everything, not with the sound of a voice nor with thoughts running through the time which sounds take, but with the light, co-eternal with himself, of the Wisdom he has begotten; and imperfection or incompleteness does not imitate the form of this Word, being unlike that which supremely and originally is, and tending by its very want of form toward nothing? Rather, it is when it turns, everything in the way suited to its kind, to that which truly and always is, to the creator that is to say of its own being, that it really imitates the form of the Word which always and unchangingly adheres to the Father, and receives its own form, and becomes a perfect, complete creature. Accordingly, where scrip ture states, God said, Let it be made, we should understand an incorporeal utter ance of God in the substance of his co-eternal Word, calling back to himself the imperfection of the creation, so that it should not be formless, but should be formed, each element on the particular lines which follow in due order.
By so turning back and being formed creation imitates, every element in its own way, God the Word, that is the Son of God who always adheres to the Father in complete likeness and equality of being, by which he and the Father are one;4 but it does not imitate this form of the Word if it turns away from the creator and remains formless and imperfect, incomplete. That is why allusion is made to the Son, not because he is the Word but only because he is the beginning, when it says, ln the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gn 1:1); here he is being suggested as the source ofcreation still in its formless imperfection. But the Son is being alluded to as being also the Word where the text runs God said, Let it be made. Thus his being the beginning implies his being the source of creation as it
4. See Jn 10:30.