seminales, insitae rationes.
280 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis and all the greenery ofthefield before it was upon the earth, and all the hay of the field before it sprang up (Gn 2:4-5). What do we have here? The question must surely be asked, must it not, where he made these things before they were on the earth and before they sprang up? Is there any of us who would not be more inclined to believe that the time God made them was when they sprang up, not before they did so, unless we were assured by this divine utterance that God made these things before they sprang up? So even if you are unable to work out where they were made, you will at least take it on faith that they were made before they sprang up, if you believe this text of scripture, being the God-fearing sort of person you are. The godless, of course, do not believe it.
8. So what are we to say? What several people have thought, that what is meant is that all things were made in the very Word of God before they sprang up on the earth? But if that is how they were made, it was not when the day was made, but before it was made that they were made. Scripture, however, says quite openly,
When the day was made God made heaven and earth, and all the greenery of the field before it was upon the earth, andall the hay ofthefield before it sprang up. So if it was when the day was made, it was certainly not before the day was made, accordingly not in the Word, which is co-eternal with the Father, before the day, before absolutely anything was made, but when the day was made. Whatever is in the Word, after all, before every creature, was assuredly not made; but these things were made, when the day was made, as the words of scripture make very clear, but nonetheless before they were upon the earth and before they sprang up. That is what is said of the greenery and the hay of the field.
9. So then, where? Was it in the earth itself, in their causal formulae,5 in the way they are all there already in their seeds, before they evolve somehow or other and unfold their growths and their various manifestations in their proper time? But these seeds that we can observe are already upon the earth, they have already sprung up. Or is it that they were not upon the earth but below the surface of the earth, and the reason they were made before they sprang up is that the time they sprang up was precisely when the seeds sprouted and broke out with their first growths into the open air, which we now see happening through the periods of time accorded to each kind of plant? So is it seeds that were then made "when the day was made," and was it in them that all the greenery of the field and all the hay was to be found, and not yet in that form and appearance in which they have now sprung up over the earth, but in the energy of the formulae with which the seeds are programmed? So were seeds the first thing that the earth produced?
But that is not how scripture was talking when it said, And the earthproduced grassforfodder, or grass for hay, sowing seed according to kind and according to likeness, andfruit trees makingfruit, ofwhich its seed is in it according to kind
5. Causaliter et rationaliter, in what he will elsewhere call their seminal or ingrafted formulae: seminales, insitae rationes.