One Earth, Not Two

But, you will say to me, if you settle it that all things were made out of nothing, on the ground that we are nowhere told that anything was made out of pre-existing Matter, then watch out that the same ground is not turned back against you: that all things were made out of Matter, since it is not expressly said either that anything was made out of nothing. Arguments can be thrown back like that easily enough, to be sure. It does not follow that they are fair to admit, when the two cases are not alike. [a]

My case is this. Even if Scripture has not declared in so many words that all things were made out of nothing — just as it refrains from saying that they were formed out of Matter — there was nothing like the same need to state creation out of nothing plainly as there would have been to state creation out of Matter, if Matter had been their origin. When a thing is made out of nothing, the very fact that no particular thing is named as its source shows that it was made out of nothing; and there is no danger of anyone supposing it was made out of something, when there is no indication at all of what it was made of. But when a thing is made out of something, then unless that fact is plainly declared — that it was made out of something — there is a danger, until the source is shown, first of its looking as though it were made out of nothing, since nothing is said about what it was made of; and then, if it is of a kind that certainly looks made out of something, there is the further risk of its seeming to have been made out of quite a different material from the real one, so long as no statement of the material is given.

Then again: if God had not been able to make all things out of nothing, Scripture could not possibly have gone on to say that he had made all things out of nothing — there would have been no room for such a statement. It would have had to inform us instead that he had made all things out of Matter, since Matter would have had to be the source. For the one case is fully understood even when it is not stated, whereas the other would be left in doubt unless it were stated.

The Holy Spirit has made this the rule of his Scripture to such a degree that whenever anything is made out of anything, he names both the thing that is made and the thing it is made of. “Let the earth,” he says, “bring forth grass, the plant yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, after its kind. And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and the plant yielding seed after its kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after its kind.” And again: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth in swarms the moving creatures that have life, and birds that may fly above the earth across the expanse of heaven. And it was so. And God created the great sea creatures, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth in swarms, after their kind.” And again, later on: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind — cattle, and creeping things, and the beasts of the earth after their kind.” [b]

So then: when God produced other things out of things that had already been made, he points them out through the prophet and tells us what he produced and where he produced it from — even though we might have supposed for ourselves that they came from some source or other short of nothing, since certain things had already been created out of which they might easily seem to have been made. If the Holy Spirit took on so much concern for our instruction that we might know what everything was produced from, would he not have kept us just as well informed about the heaven and the earth, pointing out what it was that he made them of, if their origin lay in any material substance at all? For at that point the less there was as yet made out of which he could be supposed to have made them, the more plainly he would seem to have made them out of nothing.

So, just as he shows us the source out of which he drew the things that came from a given source, in the same way, with the things where he does not point out what he produced them from, that silence of his confirms what we say: that they were produced out of nothing. “In the beginning,” then, “God made the heaven and the earth.” I revere the fullness of his Scripture, in which he shows me both the Creator and the creation. And in the Gospel I find a servant and a witness of the Creator: his Word. But that all things were made out of some underlying Matter — that I have so far failed to find anywhere. If it is written somewhere, Hermogenes’ workshop will have to tell us. If it is written nowhere, then let that shop fear the woe hanging over everyone who adds to the written word or takes anything away from it.

But he draws an argument from the words that follow, where it is written: “And the earth was without form, and void.” He reduces the word earth to Matter, on the ground that what is made out of it is earth. And he steers the word was the same way, as if it pointed to something that had always existed, unbegotten and unmade. It was without form, moreover, and void, because he will have Matter be shapeless and confused, with no maker’s hand ever laid on it. [g]

I will refute these opinions of his one at a time; but first I want to say something to him by way of a general answer. Grant that Matter is what these words point to. Does Scripture then so much as hint that, because Matter existed before everything else, anything of the sort was actually formed out of it? Nothing of the kind. Matter might have existed, if it liked — or rather, if Hermogenes liked. It might, I say, have existed, and God still have made nothing out of it, either because it did not befit him to have needed the help of anything, or at any rate because he is nowhere shown to have made anything out of Matter.

Then its existence has no cause, you will say. Oh, it has a cause, certainly. For even if the world was not made out of it, a heresy has been hatched out of it — and a particularly impudent one, since it was not Matter that produced the heresy, but rather the heresy that produced Matter.

I come back now to the separate points by which he supposed Matter was signified, and first I will ask about the terms themselves. We read only one of them, Earth; the other, Matter, we never meet at all. So I ask: since Matter is not mentioned in Scripture, how can the word earth be applied to it, when earth marks out a substance of another kind altogether? There was all the more need for Matter to have been mentioned as well, if it has picked up Earth as a second name, so that I could be sure that Earth and Matter are one and the same name — and so not claim the word for one substance only, as the proper name of that substance, the one it is better known by; or else find myself unable, should I wish, to apply it to some particular kind of Matter instead of making it the common term for all Matter. For when there is no proper name for the thing to which a common term is given, then the less clear it is what object the term belongs to, the more freely it can be applied to any other object whatever. So even supposing Hermogenes could show us the name Matter, he is bound to prove to us further that the same thing carries Earth as its surname, if he is to claim both titles for it alike. [j]

He maintains, then, that two earths are set before us in the passage in question: one that God made in the beginning, and another that is the Matter God made the world out of — the one it is said of, “And the earth was without form, and void.” Now if I were to ask which of the two earths the name earth suits better, I will be told that the earth which was made got the name from the earth it was made out of, on the ground that the offspring is more likely to take its name from the original than the original from the offspring. [l]

If that is so, another question comes up: is it right and proper that this earth which God made should have taken its name from the thing he made it out of? For I gather from Hermogenes and the rest of the heretics who make Matter eternal that while the one earth was indeed “without form, and void,” this earth of ours received from God, in equal measure, form and beauty and proportion; and therefore that the earth which was created was a different thing from the one it was created out of. And having become a different thing, it could not possibly have shared the other’s name, once it had left the other’s condition behind. If earth was the proper name of the original Matter, then this world of ours, which is not Matter because it has become something else, is unfit to bear the name earth, seeing that the name belongs to something else and is a stranger to its nature.

But, you will tell me, Matter that has undergone creation — that is, our earth — shared a name with its original no less than it shared a kind. Not at all. A pitcher is formed out of clay, but I will no longer call it clay; I will call it a pitcher. Electrum is compounded of gold and silver, but I will call it neither gold nor silver; I will call it electrum. When a thing departs from its nature, it gives up its name as well — and the name and the condition alike require this. How great the change is from the condition of that earth which is Matter to the condition of this earth of ours is plain from this alone: ours has been given the testimony to its goodness in Genesis, “And God saw that it was good,” while the other, on Hermogenes’ account, is reckoned the origin and cause of all evils.

One last point. If the one is Earth because the other is, why is the one not Matter as well, since the other is? Indeed, by that rule the heaven and every creature ought to have been called Earth and Matter too, since they all consist of Matter. I have said enough about the word Earth, which he will have understood as Matter. Everybody knows it as the name of one of the elements; nature teaches us that first, and Scripture afterwards — unless of course credit must be given to that Silenus who talked so confidently in the presence of King Midas about another world, on the report of Theopompus. But the same author informs us that there are several gods as well.

We, however, have only one God, and only one earth as well — the earth God made in the beginning. Scripture, which sets out at its very start to run through the order of things, tells us first that the earth was created, and then goes on to set out what sort of earth it was. It does the same with the heaven. First it informs us of its creation — “In the beginning God made the heaven” — and then brings in its arrangement: how God separated “the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse,” and called the expanse heaven, the very thing he had created in the beginning. It treats man the same way later on: “And God created man; in the image of God he made him.” Then it reveals how he made him: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” [p]

This, beyond question, is the right and fitting way to tell a story: first the opening statement, then the details in full; first name your subject, then describe it. How absurd the other reading of the account is! On that reading, before ever mentioning his subject — Matter — before even giving us its name, the writer suddenly published its shape and condition, describing its quality before saying that it existed at all, pointing out the outline of the thing formed while keeping its name hidden. How much more believable our own view is, which holds that Scripture only added the arrangement of its subject after it had first properly stated how the subject came to be and given us its name.

Indeed, how full and complete the sense of these words is: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but the earth was without form, and void” — the very same earth, no doubt, that God made, the one Scripture had been speaking of at that very moment. For that little word but is set into the narrative like a clasp; being a connecting particle, it fastens the two sentences together so that they cannot be pulled apart: “But the earth.” The word carries the mind back to the earth just mentioned and binds the sense to it. Take the but away and the fastening is loosened — so much so that “But the earth was without form, and void” may then look as though it were meant for some other earth.

But now you preen — arching your eyebrows, tossing your head back, crooking a finger at me in that lordly way of yours — and say: “There is the was, looking as if it pointed to an eternal existence — making its subject unbegotten and unmade, of course, and on that account worthy of being supposed to be Matter.” [s]

For my own part I will use none of the tricks of delivery. I will simply reply that “was” can be said of everything — even of a thing that has been created, that was born, that once was not, and that is not your Matter. For of everything that has being, from whatever source it has it, whether it has it by a beginning or without a beginning, the word “was” will be said of it, from the very fact that it exists. Whatever the verb’s first form fits when you are defining a thing, its later form will fit as well when the account comes down to relation. “It is” is the head of a definition; “it was” is the head of a relation.

Such are the trifles and hair-splittings of heretics, who twist the plain sense of the commonest words and drag it into dispute. A grand question, to be sure, whether “the earth was” — the earth that was made! The real point at issue is whether being “without form, and void” is a state that suits better the thing which was created or the thing it was created out of, so that the was may belong to the same thing that the what-was belongs to.

But we will show not only that this condition fits this earth of ours, but that it does not fit that other earth of his. For since pure Matter lay there under God’s eye, with no element interposed at all — because as yet there existed nothing but Matter itself and God — it cannot of course have been invisible. Hermogenes does contend that darkness was inherent in the substance of Matter, a position we will have to meet in its proper place; but darkness is visible even to a human being, since the very fact that there is darkness is plain to see, and it is far more visible to God. If Matter really had been invisible, there would have been no way at all of discovering what it was like. So how did Hermogenes find out that this substance was “without form,” confused and disordered, when, being invisible, it was beyond the reach of his senses? If God revealed the secret to him, he ought to give us his proof. [v]

I want to know, too, whether it could have been described as “void.” What is void is certainly what is unfinished. And just as certainly, nothing can be unfinished except what is made; it is unfinished when it is not yet fully made. Quite so, you admit. Matter, then, which was not made at all, could not have been unfinished; and what was not unfinished was not “void.” Having no beginning, since it was not made, it could not be subject to any raw beginning-state either, for such a state belongs to a beginning. The earth, on the other hand, which was made, was deservedly called “void”: as soon as it was made, it was in the condition of being unfinished, before it was completed.