scale. At the highest the rationes of things are in the Word; at the middle level in the
210 The Literal Meaning of Genesis natural development through periods of time that are suited to it, it contained it beforehand as something hidden, if not in specific form and bodily mass, at least by the force and reckoning of nature,37 unless of course a tree, void of fruit and stripped of its leaves throughout the winter, is then to be called imperfect, or unless again at its origins, when it had still not yet borne any fruit, its nature was also imperfect. It is not only about the tree, but about its seed also that this could not rightly be said; there everything that with the passage of time is somehow or other going to appear is already latent in invisible ways. Although, if God were to make anything imperfect, which he would then himself bring to perfection, what would be reprehensible about such an idea? But you would be quite within your rights to disapprove if what had been begun by him were said to be completed and perfected by any other.
3 1 . These people do not complain about the earth, which God made when in the beginning he made heaven and earth, that it was invisible and shapeless, and is only later on the third day rendered visible and licked into shape. So why do they wrap themselves in the darkness of their questions about the moon? Or if they understand what was said about the earth, not as meaning any interval of time, since God created things simultaneously with their basic material, but as said to put it in the form of a story, why in this case, which is something that can be seen with the eyes, do they not notice that the moon has a complete body, perfect in all its roundness, even when its light is shaped like horns, as it begins or as it ceases to shine on the earth?
So then, ifthe light in it waxes and wanes, it is not the lamp itselfbut what is lit in it that varies; if, however, it is always shining out of one side of its globe, but seems to wax while it gradually turns that side toward the earth until it has turned it completely, which happens from the first to the fourteenth day, it is always full, but does not always appear so to the inhabitants of the earth.38 The same is true even if it derives its light from the rays of the sun; you see, even in this case it cannot but appear with shining horns when it is next to the sun, because the other side, which is being lit up in its whole orb, is not turned towards the earth so that it can be seen. This only happens when it is opposite the sun, so that the whole side that is reflecting the sun's light is visible from the earth.
37. Ratione naturae; this difficult word ratio again, now, one may say, at the lowest end of its scale. At the highest the rationes of things are in the Word; at the middle level in the understanding of the spiritual creation, the angels; at the lowest in the nature of things, themselves. 38. This is on the theory that the moon has in itself its own source of light, that it is rather like a lighthouse with a revolving shutter, one half of its globe being blacked out, the other transparent. There can be little doubt. 1 think, that Augustine himself accepted what contemporary astronomers knew to be the case, that the moon's light is reflected from the sun, as he goes on to describe.