order, with the CSEL text. The consistent patristic tradition, set out clearly by Saint Thomas at
Book II 207 these movable and visible parts which are being created within it, the remaining three days should be set aside.
As the sky or heaven was the first part to be made, so it is the first to be furnished;30 so on the fourth day the heavenly bodies are made to illuminate with their shining the lower habitable level, and thus save its inhabitants from being introduced into a dark and gloomy habitat. And because the feeble bodies of the denizens of the lower habitat need to recoup themselves with rest and quiet after their constant moving around, that is why arrangements were made for them to be able to alternate sleeping and waking with the alternation of day and night as the sun goes round and round on its course. This night, however, was not to remain without its own d'ecor, but with the light of moon and stars was to give both comfort to those people who are often obliged to work at night, and suffi cient time to meet the needs of some animals which cannot bear the light of the sun.
Problem of the luminaries beingfor signs and times
1 4, 28. As for the words, however, And let them befor signs andfor times and for days andfor years, who can fail to see how problematic is their implication that times began on the fourth day, as though the preceding three days could have passed without any time? What mind, therefore, is capable of penetrating the mystery ofhow those three days passed before times began, times which are said to have begun on the fourth day—or of whether indeed those days passed at all? Or is it with respect to the specific nature of the thing made11 that day was named, and with respect to the absence of it, night, so that the basic material not yet formed by any specific nature, but from which all the other things were to be formed, was called night, just as the formlessness of matter can be understood, from their very liability to change, even in things that have been formed; it is not, after all, to be distinguished from their specific forms as being either remote from them in space or as being anterior to them in time. Or rather, was the
30. Reading ornandum with one manuscript and the Maurists instead of ordinandum, to be set in order, with the CSEL text. The consistent patristic tradition, set out clearly by Saint Thomas at the beginning of his treatment of the days of creation, Summa Theologia, 1a,65, divided the divine creative acts into three kinds: actual creation, Gn 1:1-2: distinction, Gn 1:3-10; adornment or furnishing, Gn 1 : 1 1 -25; the creation of man falls outside this classification. So far in this work, however, Augustine has often spoken of order, and used the words ordo and ordinare, and not, so far, the word o/narf. So some copyists, or even some of his stenographers, may quite easily, and subsconsciously, have heard ordinandum when ornandum was read out. 31. The specific nature (species) of the spiritual creation is what 1 think he must mean here; because "day" and "night" are only mentioned in the work of the first day, when God said. "Let light be made."