day represents is, in my judgment, the start of creation's sharing in the quiet rest
260 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis fashioning of things, so that in them neither evening nor morning, neither light itself nor darkness, presented the same alternations as they do in these days through the circling round of the sun. This is something we are obliged to admit at least for those three days which were mentioned and counted before the fash ioning of the lamps in the sky.
34. And thus, whatever kind of evening and morning there may have been in those six days, in no way at least can the opinion be upheld that on the morning which was made after the evening of the sixth day God's rest was started off—we would be rashly and in fact nonsensically supposing in that case that some temporal good could accrue to that eternity, that unchangeable simplicity. No indeed, but on the contrary that quiet rest of God, by which he finds rest in himself and bliss in the good which he is for himself, neither starts for him nor terminates, while for the creation that has been finished and completed the same quiet rest of God does have a starting point. This is because the perfection of every single thing is established, according to the limited measure appropriate to it, not so much in the whole of which it is a part as in him from whom it derives, like the whole itself, its very being; and only there may it finally come to rest, may it attain, that is, the goal of its own momentum.
And thus the whole universe of creation, which was finished in six days, has one terminus in its own nature, another in the goal which it has in God; this, not like God himself, but still in such a way that it can come to no stable and properly established rest, except in the quiet rest of the one who does not have to make any effort to get anything beyond himself in order to find rest in it. And for this reason, while God abides in himself, he swings everything whatever that comes from him back to himself, like a boomerang,34 so that every creature might find in him the final terminus and goal for its nature, not to be what he is, but to find in him the place ofrest in which to preserve what by nature it is in itself. l know that l have not used the word "place" properly, its proper use being to refer to spaces occupied by bodies. But such bodies too only remain in a place when they reach it by the effort, as it were, of their own weight, in order to rest there once they have gained it; and for this reason we can not unsuitably transfer the word from bodily to spiritual matters, and talk about "place" there also, though the reality itself is totally different.
35. So then, what that morning that was made after the evening of the sixth day represents is, in my judgment, the start of creation's sharing in the quiet rest of the creator; after all it could not rest in him unless it had been perfected. Accordingly, when all things had been finished on the sixth day and evening had been made, there was also made the morning on which the finished creation would begin to rest in him by whom it had been made. At this start it found him resting in himself, the very place where it too could find rest, and stay in it all the
34. A comparison not actually found in the original Latin.