Against Hermogenes.
Suppose now I should say the city built a theatre and a circus, but the stage was of such and such a kind, and the statues were on the canal, and the obelisk was reared above them all, would it follow that, because I did not distinctly state that these specific things were made by the city, they were therefore not made by it along with the circus and the theatre? Did I not, indeed, refrain from specially mentioning the formation of these particular things because they were implied in the things which I had already said were made, and might be understood to be inherent in the things in which they were contained? But this example may be an idle one as being derived from a human circumstance; I will take another, which has the authority of Scripture itself. It says that “God made man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Now, although it here mentions the nostrils, it does not say that they were made by God; so again it speaks of skin and bones, and flesh and eyes, and sweat and blood, in subsequent passages, and yet it never intimated that they had been created by God. What will Hermogenes have to answer? That the human limbs must belong to Matter, because they are not specially mentioned as objects of creation? Or are they included in the formation of man? In like manner, the deep and the darkness, and the spirit and the waters, were as members of the heaven and the earth. For in the bodies the limbs were made, in the bodies the limbs too were mentioned. No element but what is a member of that element in which it is contained. But all elements are contained in the heaven and the earth.
Chapter XXXII.—The Account of the Creation in Genesis a General One, Corroborated, However, by Many Other Passages of the Old Testament, Which Give Account of Specific Creations. Further Cavillings Confuted.
This is the answer I should give in defence of the Scripture before us, for seeming here to set forth the formation of the heaven and the earth, as if (they were) the sole bodies made. It could not but know that there were those who would at once in the bodies understand their several members also, and therefore it employed this concise mode of speech. But, at the same time, it foresaw that there would be stupid and crafty men, who, after paltering with the virtual meaning, would require for the several members a word descriptive of their formation too. It is therefore because of such persons, that Scripture in other passages teaches us of the creation of the individual parts. You have Wisdom saying, “But before the depths was I brought forth,” in order that you may believe that the depths were also “brought forth”—that is, created—just as we create sons also, though we “bring them forth.” It matters not whether the depth was made or born, so that a beginning be accorded to it, which however would not be, if it were subjoined to matter. Of darkness, indeed, the Lord Himself by Isaiah says, “I formed the light, and I created darkness.” Of the wind also Amos says, “He that strengtheneth the thunder, and createth the wind, and declareth His Christ unto men;” thus showing that that wind was created which was reckoned with the formation of the earth, which was wafted over the waters, balancing and refreshing and animating all things: not (as some suppose) meaning God Himself by the spirit , on the ground that “God is a Spirit,” because the waters would not be able to bear up their Lord; but He speaks of that spirit of which the winds consist, as He says by Isaiah, “Because my spirit went forth from me, and I made every blast.” In like manner the same Wisdom says of the waters, “Also when He made the fountains strong, things which are under the sky, I was fashioning them along with Him.”
Now, when we prove that these particular things were created by God, although they are only mentioned in Genesis, without any intimation of their having been made, we shall perhaps receive from the other side the reply, that these were made, it is true, but out of Matter, since the very statement of Moses, “And darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters,” refers to Matter, as indeed do all those other Scriptures here and there, which demonstrate that the separate parts were made out of Matter.
It must follow, then, that as earth consisted of earth, so also depth consisted of depth, and darkness of darkness, and the wind and waters of wind and waters. And, as we said above, Matter could not have been without form, since it had specific parts, which were formed out of it—although as separate things —unless, indeed, they were not separate, but were the very same with those out of which they came. For it is really impossible that those specific things, which are set forth under the same names, should have been diverse; because in that case the operation of God might seem to be useless, if it made things which existed already; since that alone would be a creation, when things came into being, which had not been (previously) made.
Therefore, to conclude, either Moses then pointed to Matter when he wrote the words: “And darkness was on the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters;” or else, inasmuch as these specific parts of creation are afterwards shown in other passages to have been made by God, they ought to have been with equal explicitness shown to have been made out of the Matter which, according to you, Moses had previously mentioned; or else, finally, if Moses pointed to those specific parts, and not to Matter, I want to know where Matter has been pointed out at all.
Chapter XXXIII.—Statement of the True Doctrine Concerning Matter. Its Relation to God’s Creation of the World.
But although Hermogenes finds it amongst his own colourable pretences (for it was not in his power to discover it in the Scriptures of God), it is enough for us, both that it is certain that all things were made by God, and that there is no certainty whatever that they were made out of Matter. And even if Matter had previously existed, we must have believed that it had been really made by God, since we maintained (no less) when we held the rule of faith to be, that nothing except God was uncreated. Up to this point there is room for controversy, until Matter is brought to the test of the Scriptures, and fails to make good its case. The conclusion of the whole is this: I find that there was nothing made, except out of nothing; because that which I find was made, I know did not once exist. Whatever was made out of something, has its origin in something made: for instance, out of the ground was made the grass, and the fruit, and the cattle, and the form of man himself; so from the waters were produced the animals which swim and fly. The original fabrics out of which such creatures were produced I may call their materials, but then even these were created by God.
Chapter XXXIV.—A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes’ Charge of Being Merely Figurative.
Besides, the belief that everything was made from nothing will be impressed upon us by that ultimate dispensation of God which will bring back all things to nothing. For “the very heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll;” nay, it shall come to nothing along with the earth itself, with which it was made in the beginning. “Heaven and earth shall pass away,” says He. “The first heaven and the first earth passed away,” “and there was found no place for them,” because, of course, that which comes to an end loses locality. In like manner David says, “The heavens, the works of Thine hands, shall themselves perish. For even as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed.” Now to be changed is to fall from that primitive state which they lose whilst undergoing the change. “And the stars too shall fall from heaven, even as a fig-tree casteth her green figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind.” “The mountains shall melt like wax at the presence of the Lord;” that is, “when He riseth to shake terribly the earth.” “But I will dry up the pools;” and “they shall seek water, and they shall find none.” Even “the sea shall be no more.” Now if any person should go so far as to suppose that all these passages ought to be spiritually interpreted, he will yet be unable to deprive them of the true accomplishment of those issues which must come to pass just as they have been written. For all figures of speech necessarily arise out of real things, not out of chimerical ones; because nothing is capable of imparting anything of its own for a similitude, except it actually be that very thing which it imparts in the similitude. I return therefore to the principle which defines that all things which have come from nothing shall return at last to nothing. For God would not have made any perishable thing out of what was eternal, that is to say, out of Matter; neither out of greater things would He have created inferior ones, to whose character it would be more agreeable to produce greater things out of inferior ones,—in other words, what is eternal out of what is perishable. This is the promise He makes even to our flesh, and it has been His will to deposit within us this pledge of His own virtue and power, in order that we may believe that He has actually awakened the universe out of nothing, as if it had been steeped in death, in the sense, of course, of its previous non-existence for the purpose of its coming into existence.