be above the heaven of the constellations, because their proper specific gravity
Book 11
Genesis 1:6-19: The second, third, and fourth days of creation
How there can be water above the solid structure of the sky
1,1. And God said: Let a solid structure be made in the midst of the waters, and let it be dividing between water and water. And thus it was made. And God made a solidstructure, anddivided between the water which was below the solid structure and the water which was above the solid structure. And God called the solid structure heaven. And God saw that it was good. And there was made evening and there was made morning, a second day (Gn 1 :6-8). About the word of God which God spoke, saying Let a solid structure be made, etc., and about the pleasure he took in it on seeing that it was good, and about evening and about morning, there is no need to go over the same discussion again; and so from now on, as often as these phrases are repeated, I give the reader notice that for the most part they are to be interpreted in accordance with our previous inquiry. Whether that is the heaven, however, being made now which soars above all the spaces of the air and all its height, where too the lamps and the stars are set on the fourth day, or whether the air itself is also being called the solid structure, is a question that can properly be asked.
2. Many people, you see, insist that these waters by their very nature cannot be above the heaven of the constellations, because their proper specific gravity dictates that they must either flow and float over the earth, or be carried up as vapor into the air that is nearest the earth. Nor should anybody try to refute them by appealing to the omnipotence of God,/or whom all things are possible (Mk
10:27), and saying we just have to believe that he can cause even water, as heavy as what we know by our own experience, to spread over the substance of the heaven or sky in which the stars have their place. Our business now, after all, is to inquire how God's scriptures say he established things according to their proper natures, and not what he might wish to work in them or out of them as a miracle of his power.
Yes, to be sure, if God wished oil to remain sometimes under water, then it would; but that would not mean that we remained ignorant of the nature of oil, that it had been made such that if it were poured out underneath some water, it