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| Of God and His Exclusive Eternity.
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Chapter 2.—Of God and His
Exclusive Eternity.
2. For certain parties have
attempted to gain acceptance for the opinion that God the Father is not
Almighty: not that they have been bold enough expressly to
affirm this, but in their traditions they are convicted of
entertaining and crediting such a notion. For when they affirm that
there is a nature1523
which God Almighty did not create,
but of which at the same time He fashioned this world, which they
admit to have been disposed in beauty,1524
| 1524 Reading pulchre ordinatum.
Some editions give pulchre ornatum = beautifully
adorned. | they thereby deny that God is
almighty, to the effect of not believing that He could have created
the world without employing, for the purpose of its construction,
another nature, which had been in existence previously, and which
He Himself had not made. Thus, forsooth, [they reason] from their
carnal familiarity with the sight of craftsmen and house-builders,
and artisans of all descriptions, who have no power to make good
the effect of their own art unless they get the help of materials
already prepared. And so these parties in like manner understand
the Maker of the world not to be almighty, if1525
| 1525 Si mundum fabricare non
posset. For si some mss. give qui = inasmuch as He could not,
etc. | thus He could not fashion the said
world without the help of some other nature, not framed by Himself,
which He had to use as His materials. Or if indeed they do allow
God, the Maker of the world, to be almighty, it becomes matter of
course that they must also acknowledge that He made out of nothing
the things which He did make. For, granting that He is almighty,
there cannot exist anything of which He should not be the Creator.
For although He made something out of something, as man out of
clay,1526
nevertheless He certainly did not make any object out of aught
which He Himself had not made; for the earth from which the clay
comes He had made out of nothing. And even if He had made out of
some material the heavens and the earth themselves, that is to say,
the universe and all things which are in it, according as it is
written, “Thou who didst make the world out of matter
unseen,”1527
| 1527 Wisdom 11.17" id="iv.iv.iii-p7.1" parsed="|Wis|11|17|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Wis.11.17">Wisd. xi. 17 | or also
“without form,” as some copies give it; yet we are under no
manner of necessity to believe that this very material of which the
universe was made, although it might be “without form,”
although it might be “unseen,” whatever might be the mode of
its subsistence, could possibly have subsisted of itself, as if it
were co-eternal and co-eval with God. But whatsoever that mode was
which it possessed to the effect of subsisting in some manner,
whatever that manner might be, and of being capable of taking on
the forms of distinct things, this it did not possess except by the
hand of Almighty God, by whose goodness it is that everything
exists,—not only every object which is already formed, but also
every object which is formable. This, moreover, is the difference
between the formed and the formable, that the formed has already
taken on form, while the formable is capable of taking the same.
But the same Being who imparts form to objects, also imparts the
capability of being formed. For of Him and in Him is the fairest
figure1528
| 1528 Speciosissima
species = the seemliest
semblance. | of all
things, unchangeable; and therefore He Himself is One, who
communicates to everything its possibilities, not only that it be
beautiful actually, but also that it be capable of being beautiful.
For which reason we do most right to believe that God made all
things of nothing. For, even although the world was made of some
sort of material, this self-same material itself was made of
nothing; so that, in accordance with the most orderly gift of God,
there was to enter first the capacity of taking forms, and then
that all things should be formed which have been formed. This,
however, we have said, in order that no one might suppose that the
utterances of the divine Scriptures are contrary the one to the
other, in so far as it is written at once that God made all things
of nothing, and that the world was made of matter without
form.
3. As we believe, therefore, in
God the Father
Almighty, we ought to uphold the opinion that there is no
creature which has not been created by the Almighty. And since He
created all things by the Word,1529
which Word is also designated the
Truth, and the Power, and the Wisdom of God,1530
—as also under many other
appellations the Lord Jesus Christ, who1531
| 1531 For qui several mss. give quibus here = "under" many
other appellations is the Lord Jesus Christ introduced to our
mental apprehensions, by which He is commended to our
faith. | is commended to our faith, is
presented likewise to our mental apprehensions, to wit, our
Deliverer and Ruler,1532
| 1532 For Rector we also find
Creator = Creator. | the Son of God; for that Word, by
whose means all things were founded, could not have been begotten
by any other than by Him who founded all things by His
instrumentality;—E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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