The Contest of Wisdom with Folly

Finally, that it disposes all things, and separates all elements in the world from one another, and by means of the firmament distinguishes waters from waters, is to be collected from these words of the Prophet: He who made the earth by His strength, and prepared the world by His wisdom, and by His prudence stretched out the heavens. And elsewhere: God by His wisdom adapts the weight to the air, and weighs the waters in measure, etc. By these it is clear that all proportions in the mundane spirit, from which the elements arise, are disposed by this divine spirit. Hence you see, therefore, that all these things are most fittingly accommodated to the sacred Scriptures, and consequently are by no means to be repudiated or mocked by Marinus. But he proceeds thus.

3. Marinus' text. ibid.

For I know that God confers such power to the sun, that He could draw forth all bodies which are referred to on the 5th day from the bosom of matter, if you except man, whose soul, since it is immortal and spiritual, is created by God alone. But this neither ought to be nor can be said, because the sacred text cannot suffer that sense, since on both days it is said that God produced, or if you prefer, created this and that, nor do we read one single word that in that primary production of all things, He used the power of the sun.

Robert’s examination.

2 Peter 3:5

But indeed, all good Christians confessing that God did this by His word, which the Apostle also declares in express words: It escapes them, he says, that the heavens were before, and the earth consisting of water and through water by the word of God: By which we are taught that even that formless matter of Solomon, or the void and empty earth of Moses (so called because the divinity filling all things had not yet shone forth from the darkness for the creation of the world), or the darkness or nothingness of Job, was the first matter from which the world was created; and thus also the waters (which are nothing other than the dark abyss, shining forth by divine act and reduced to the appearance of waters) are the second matter of things from which the heaven and earth, and consequently the whole world, were fashioned. Here, therefore, we have those two true Mosaic matters, namely the first and the second, which the Peripatetic philosophers falsely attributed to themselves, having merely changed the names of void and empty earth, or darkness, into prime matter—as being not yet produced into act by the brilliance and emanation of divine clarity. Whence the Peripatetics recognize that this potentiality must be reduced into act, which is done immediately and as if in the twinkling of an eye by the appearance of the luminous spirit of Jehovah. But concerning solar power, I wish you to understand first that under that word commonly used as "Sun," I understood the eternal sun, in which the Prophet teaches us that God placed His tabernacle in the temporal Sun, according to the interpretation of Hieronymus.

Isaiah 44:24; Eph 4; Wisdom 1

Has it not also been demonstrated by us in the preceding pages that that most clear spirit existing from eternity was clothed in light—that is, illustrated and illuminated by the presence of the mundane spirit—which, when it had been expanded everywhere for the space of the first three days, on the fourth day contracted itself with its garment into the mass of the sun? Wherefore, although it is common speech that the sun acts upon inferior things by motion, light, and influence, nevertheless in truth it is that central Sun which dwells in the material sun, which is also said to fill all things and consequently to admit no vacuum in the world. This the Prophet also seems to declare excellently in these words, speaking in the person of God: I am the Lord making all things, stretching out the heavens alone, establishing the earth, and no one is with Me. And elsewhere it is said that Christ fills all things: and elsewhere, the holy spirit of discipline fills the world, etc. Whence I say to you (O vain Peripatetic) that all formal subordinate causes are to be destroyed and relegated to exile from the Christian world, since all action, as much mediated as immediate, is to be referred to the one and only God, who is indeed the act of acts. For this, says the Prophet, says God creating the heavens, stretching them out alone, establishing...