38. The darkness that was over the abyss. Gn 1 :2.
Book IV 263 and having to ask again how light could circulate to produce the alternations of day and night, not only before the lamps of heaven but even before heaven itself, called the solid structure, was made; before finally there was any specific form ofearth or sea, round which the light would circulate, with night following when it had passed along. Driven on by the difficulty of this problem, we ventured to decide at the end of our discussion that we should say the light created originally is the forming and shaping of the spiritual creation, while the night is the material of things still to be formed and shaped in the remaining works, material that had been laid down when in the beginning God made heaven and earth, before he made the day by a word.
But now at this stage we have been forcibly reminded by our reflection on the seventh day that the easy and sensible thing to do is to admit our ignorance about what is so remote from any experience of ours, and say that we simply do not know how that light which was called day, if it means bodily light, affected the alternations of night and day whether by its circulation or by contraction and emission; or how, if it is spiritual, it was made present to the fashioning of all creatures, and by its presence made day, by its absence night, evening at the start of its absence, morning at the start of its presence. Much rather this, than that we should pit our strength in a matter that is plain as daylight against the words of divine scripture, and say that the seventh day is something different from the seventh repetition of that day which God made. If that is the case, you see, either God did not create the seventh day, or else he created something after those six days, that is, the seventh day itself; and so what is written will be untrue, that on the sixth day he finished all his works and on the seventh rested from all his works. But of course this cannot be untrue; and so it remains that the presence of that light, the day which God made, was repeated through all his works, as often as a day was mentioned, and again on the seventh day on which he rested from his works.
How spiritual light may be understood to have manifested the alternation of day and night
22, 39. But we did not find out by what kind of circulation, or advance and retreat, bodily light could display the changes of night and day before the heaven was made which is called the solid structure, in which the lamps in the sky were also made; so we ought not to leave this question without some statement of our own considered judgment, that that light which was first created is a spiritual, not a bodily light, and that just as it was made after darkness,38 by which one understands that it turned from its own formlessness towards the creator and thus was formed, so too, after evening, morning was made, meaning that after
38. The darkness that was over the abyss. Gn 1 :2.
264 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis acknowledgment of its own proper nature, of its not being what God is, it goes back to praising the light which God himself is, and by which it is formed as it gazes upon it. And because the other creatures which are made below it are not made without its knowledge, that surely is why the same day is repeated every time, so that by its repetition as many days may be made as there are distinct kinds ofthings created, to be brought to an end with the perfection of the number six.
Thus the evening of the first day is also its self-knowledge, that it is not what God is; while the morning after that evening, which marks the conclusion of the one day and the beginning of the second, means its turning to refer what it was created as to the praise of the creator, and to receive from the Word of God knowledge of the creature which is made after itself, that is, of the solid struc ture. This happens first in its knowledge, when the text says. And thus it was made (Gn 1:6); and then in the actual solid structure itself, when after "and thus it was made," the text goes on to add, And God made a solid structure (Gn 1 :7). Then comes the evening of that light, when it knows the solid structure, not in the Word of God as before, but in its own nature; this being a lesser degree ofknowl edge, it is rightly known by the name of "evening."
After this there is made morning, which concludes the second day and starts off the third; this morning again marks the conversion of this light in the same way, that is, the turning of this day to the praise of God for his work of making the solid structure, and to its reception from his Word of knowledge of the crea ture to be fashioned after the solid structure. And thus when God says. Let the water which is under the heavens be collected together into one collection, and let the dry land appear (Gn 1 :9), that light knows this in the Word of God, by which the utterance is made; and that is why it continues. And thus it was made, that is, in its own knowledge derived from the Word of God; next, when it adds, and the water was collected together, etc., after already saying and thus it was made, the creature itself is made in its own specific kind; and when it is again known in its own specific kind by that light, which had already known in the Word of God that it was to be made, there is made evening for the third time; and in this manner from then on until the morning after the evening of the sixth day.
Angelic knowledge ofthings in the Word of God, and in the things themselves
23, 40. There is, of course, a very great difference between knowledge of a thing, whatever it may be, in the Word of God and knowledge of it in its own specific nature. The former rightly belongs to the day, the latter to the evening, since in comparison with that light that is to be contemplated in the Word of God, all knowledge by which we know any creature at all in itself can be called, not in the least improperly, night. This in its turn differs so much from the error or igno