about the other elements of this world, about the movements and revolutions or
1 86 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis of any one of them. Perhaps the truth, emerging from a more thorough discus sion of the point, may definitively overturn that opinion, and then we will find ourselves overthrown, championing what is not the cause of the divine scrip tures but our own, in such a way that we want it to be that of the scriptures, when we should rather be wanting the cause of the scriptures to be our own.
Augustine 's method in this commentary
19, 38. Now with this text, And God said, Let light be made; and light was made (Gn 1:3): let us suppose that one person was of the opinion that it was bodily light that was made, and another that it was the spiritual sort. That there is a spiritual light in the spiritual creation is something our faith has no doubts about, but that there is a special celestial or cosmic light, or even one that is above the sky or was there before the sky, which could be followed by night—well, it is not against the faith forjust as long as it is not proved with abso lute certainty to be untrue. lf this does happen, then this is not what divine scrip ture contained, but what human ignorance had opined.
Should reason, on the other hand, definitively demonstrate that this is true, it will still be uncertain whether it is what the writer wished to be understood by those words of the sacred books, or whether he had in mind something else that is no less true. While ifthe whole context of the passage proves that he did not have this in mind, that does not mean that what he did wish to be understood by them will be false; no, it will be both true and more worth knowing. If, however, the scriptural context does not tell against the writer having intended this meaning, it still remains to inquire whether he could not also have meant something else. And should we find that he could have done, then it will be uncertain which of them he actually did intend. And it can be held not unreasonably that he intended both meanings, if all the other details lend support to each of them.
39. There is knowledge to be had, after all, about the earth, about the sky, about the other elements of this world, about the movements and revolutions or even the magnitude and distances of the constellations, about the predictable eclipses ofmoon and sun, about the cycles of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, fruits, stones and everything else of this kind. And it frequently happens that even non-Christians will have knowledge of this sort in a way that they can substantiate with scientific arguments or experiments. Now it is quite disgraceful and disastrous, something to be on one's guard against at all costs, that they should ever hear Christians spouting what they claim our Christian literature has to say on these topics, and talking such nonsense that they can scarcely contain their laughter when they see them to be toto caelo, as the saying goes, wide of the mark. And what is so vexing is not that misguided people should be laughed at, as that our authors should be assumed by outsiders to have held such views and, to the great detriment ofthose about whose salvation we are