44. SeeHeb 12:22.
Book IV 269 facility of being able to do all three things at once. All the same, they will surely not say—or if anyone does, we should certainly not pay any attention—that those thousands of angel citizens of the heavenly city44 either do not contemplate the eternity of the creator, or are unaware of the mutability ofcreatures, or are not prompted also by that lower kind of knowledge of theirs to praise the creator. Granted, they may be able to do all this simultaneously; let them do it all simulta neously. Then they can and they do; so then they simultaneously have day and evening and morning in themselves all together.
30, 47. Nor, I presume, is it to be feared that anyone already capable of reflecting on these matters should think this cannot happen in that sphere, on the grounds that it cannot happen with these days which are produced by the circuit of the sun. True, this cannot happen in one and the same part of the earth; but anyone surely can see, if they stop and think for a moment, that the world as a whole simultaneously has day where the sun is, and night where it is not, and evening where it is sinking, and morning where it is rising. We of course in our various countries cannot have all of them simultaneously; but that is no reason why we should equate this state of things on earth and the circling around of bodily light in time and space with that spiritual home country, where it is always day in the contemplation of unchangeable Truth, and always evening in the knowledge of creatures in themselves, always morning in praising the creator for this knowledge too.
That kind of evening, after all, is not caused by the withdrawal of light from up above but by the differentiation ofknowledge acquired down below; nordoes that kind of morning mean early knowledge dawning after a night of ignorance, but the raising up of evening knowledge also to the glory of the creator. Finally, without even naming night, the psalmist says, At evening and morning and noon l will declare and proclaim; and you will hear my voice (Ps 55:17), meaning maybe through successive times here, but still signifying, as I see it, what would be done without any succession of times in the home country, for which he was yearning and sighing in his exile.
More about the order ofday, evening, and morning in the angelic knowledge ofthings
31, 48. But granted that this angelic company, this unity of the one day which God originally fashioned, performs all these intellectual acts simultaneously now, did it also do this simultaneously then, at the time it was all being created? Surely throughout those six days, when the things which it pleased God to fashion in them one by one were being fashioned, this spiritual day first received
44. SeeHeb 12:22.
270 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis them in the Word of God, so that they would be made first in its own knowledge where scripture says, And thus it was made; next, after they had been made in their own proper nature to be what they are, and had pleased God because they are good, it got to know them once more with another, lower kind of knowledge, which is signified by the name of "evening;" and then "there was made evening and morning," when God would be praised for his work, and knowledge of another creature, which was to be made next, was received from the Word of God before it actually was made. So they were not then all simultaneous, day and evening and morning, but one after the other, in the order mentioned by scrip ture.
32, 49. Or were they all happening simultaneously even then, since there was no question of intervals of time such as these days mark, when the sun rises and sets and goes back to its place to rise again, but it was a matter of the spiritual power of the angelic mind, comprehending all that it wished in a simultaneous knowledge with the utmost facility—even so, not thereby without any orderly linking of preceding and following causes? Knowledge, after all, cannot arise unless it is preceded by objects to be known; and these again are first in the Word through which all things were made (Jn 1 :3), before they are in all the things that have been made.
And so the human mind first experiences through the senses of the body the things that have been made, and from there gains such knowledge of them as its human weakness allows; and next it looks for their causes, if by any manner of means it may attain them where they abide primordially and unchangingly in the Word of God, and may thus come to an understanding of his invisible things through those that have been made (Rom 1 :20). ls anyone unaware ofhow slow and dull the mind is at doing this, how difficult it finds it, and what a long time it takes, on account of the perishable body which weighs down the soul (Wis 9:15)—this, even when it is being hurried along by its fervent and eager desire to persevere in pressing on to this goal?
The angelic mind, on the other hand, adhered in unalloyed charity to the Word of God, after being created in due order before all the rest, and so it first saw in the Word of God the things to be made before they were made; and thus before being made in their own proper nature, they were first made in the knowl edge of that mind, when God said, "Let them be made." Once they were made like that, it also came to know them in themselves, with an inferior kind of knowledge of course, which was called evening. This knowledge was naturally preceded by the things that were made, because whatever can be known is there before knowledge of it; unless what is to be known is there first, after all, it cannot be known.
After that, if the angelic mind were to be pleased with its own knowledge in such a way that it took more delight in itself than in its creator, no morning would be made—that is, it would not rise up from its knowledge to the praise of the