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| What the Scriptures Teach Us to Believe Concerning the Creation of the Angels.
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Chapter 9.—What the Scriptures
Teach Us to Believe Concerning the Creation of the
Angels.
At present, since I have undertaken
to treat of the origin of the holy city, and first of the holy
angels, who constitute a large part of this city, and indeed the
more blessed part, since they have never been expatriated, I will
give myself to the task of explaining, by God’s help, and as far
as seems suitable, the Scriptures which relate to this point.
Where Scripture speaks of the world’s creation, it is not plainly
said whether or when the angels were created; but if mention of
them is made, it is implicitly under the name of “heaven,” when
it is said, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth,” or perhaps rather under the name of “light,” of which
presently. But that they were wholly omitted, I am unable to
believe, because it is written that God on the seventh day rested
from all His works which He made; and this very book itself begins,
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” so
that before heaven and earth God seems to have made nothing.
Since, therefore, He began with the heavens and the earth,—and
the earth itself, as Scripture adds, was at first invisible and
formless, light not being as yet made, and darkness covering the
face of the deep (that is to say, covering an undefined chaos of
earth and sea, for where light is not, darkness must needs
be),—and then when all things, which are recorded to have been
completed in six days, were created and arranged,
how should
the angels be omitted, as if they were not among the works of God,
from which on the seventh day He rested? Yet, though the fact
that the angels are the work of God is not omitted here, it is
indeed not explicitly mentioned; but elsewhere Holy Scripture
asserts it in the clearest manner. For in the Hymn of the Three
Children in the Furnace it was said, “O all ye works of the Lord
bless ye the Lord;”462
and among these works mentioned
afterwards in detail, the angels are named. And in the psalm it
is said, “Praise ye the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the
heights. Praise ye Him, all His angels; praise ye Him, all His
hosts. Praise ye Him, sun and moon; praise him, all ye stars of
light. Praise Him, ye heaven of heavens; and ye waters that be
above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord; for He
commanded, and they were created.”463
Here the angels are most
expressly and by divine authority said to have been made by God,
for of them among the other heavenly things it is said, “He
commanded, and they were created.” Who, then, will be bold
enough to suggest that the angels were made after the six days’
creation? If any one is so foolish, his folly is disposed of by a
scripture of like authority, where God says, “When the stars were
made, the angels praised me with a loud voice.”464
The angels therefore existed
before the stars; and the stars were made the fourth day. Shall
we then say that they were made the third day? Far from it; for
we know what was made that day. The earth was separated from the
water, and each element took its own distinct form, and the earth
produced all that grows on it. On the second day, then? Not
even on this; for on it the firmament was made between the waters
above and beneath, and was called “Heaven,” in which firmament
the stars were made on the fourth day. There is no question,
then, that if the angels are included in the works of God during
these six days, they are that light which was called “Day,” and
whose unity Scripture signalizes by calling that day not the
“first day,” but “one day.”465
| 465 Vives here notes that the Greek
theologians and Jerome held, with Plato, that spiritual creatures
were made first, and used by God in the creation of things
material. The Latin theologians and Basil held that God made all
things at once. | For the second day, the third,
and the rest are not other days; but the same “one” day is
repeated to complete the number six or seven, so that there should
be knowledge both of God’s works and of His rest. For when God
said, “Let there be light, and there was light,” if we are
justified in understanding in this light the creation of the
angels, then certainly they were created partakers of the eternal
light which is the unchangeable Wisdom of God, by which all things
were made, and whom we call the only-begotten Son of God; so that
they, being illumined by the Light that created them, might
themselves become light and be called “Day,” in participation
of that unchangeable Light and Day which is the Word of God, by
whom both themselves and all else were made. “The true Light,
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,”466
—this Light
lighteth also every pure angel, that he may be light not in
himself, but in God; from whom if an angel turn away, he becomes
impure, as are all those who are called unclean spirits, and are no
longer light in the Lord, but darkness in themselves, being
deprived of the participation of Light eternal. For evil has no
positive nature; but the loss of good has received the name
“evil.”467
| 467 Mali enim nulla natura est:
sed amissio boni, mali nomen accepit. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
