heaven. For this idea of a "heaven of heaven" see note 19 below.
1 74 The Literal Meaning of Genesis borne over the water, while in order that it should abide, God saw that it was good. And what was said about light was said about everything else. Some things, you see, abide by soaring over all the whole rolling wheel of time in the widest range of holiness under God; while other things do so according to the limits of their time, and thus it is through things giving way to and taking the place of one another that the beautiful tapestry of the ages is woven.
The question oftime; when did God say. Let light be made?
9, 15. So then, as for what God said: Let light be made; and light was made (Gn 1 :3); did he say it on some day, or before any day? lf, you see, he said it in the Word co-eternal with himself, he said it, clearly, in a timeless manner; but if he said it in a time-bound manner, he did not say it in the Word co-eternal with himself, but through some time-bound creation. And in this case light will not be the first thing created, because there was already another thing through which could be said, in time, Let light be made. Besides, what is understood to have been made before any day is that about which it says, ln the beginning Godmade heaven and earth (Gn 1:1), where by the name of "heaven" is to be understood the spiritual creation already made and formed, as being the heaven of this heaven, which is the highest thing among bodies. Now it was on the second day that the solid structure was made, which again he called "heaven";6 while by the name of earth, invisible and shapeless, and by the dark abyss7 the imcompleteness and lack of perfection of bodily reality was signified, out of which those time-bound things would be made, the first of them being light.
16. How, though, it was possible, through a creature which he made before time, for God to say in time Let light be made, it is rather difficult to work out. We do not, after all, accept that it was said with the utterance of a voice, because whatever such a thing as that is, it is certainly corporeal. Or did he make from that primal bodily substance in its incomplete state some corporeal voice with which to utter Let light be made? So then, some voice-producing body was created and formed before light. But ifthat is the case, there was already time for the voice to run through, and for the spaces occupied by the successive syllables to pass along. Now iftime was already there before light was made, in what time would the voice have been made with which to utter Let light be made; to what day did that time belong? The count, after all, begins with the one day, and that the first, on which light was made.8 Or does the whole space of time, on which both the voice-producing body was made through which to utter Let light be
6. See Gn 1:6-8. This is the "bodily heaven," not the spiritual heaven which is above it as its own heaven. For this idea of a "heaven of heaven" see note 19 below.
7. SeeGn 1:2. 8. SeeGn 1:5.