Ambrose
PL 14, col. 124B
English
Whence holy Moses, foreseeing by the divine Spirit that these errors of men would come, and had perhaps already begun, speaks thus at the opening of his discourse: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth' (Gen 1:1) — comprehending the beginning of things, the author of the world, and the creation of matter; so that you might know that God is before the beginning of the world, or that he himself is the beginning of all things, as in the Gospel the Son of God answered those who said to him 'Who are you?': 'The Beginning, who also speak to you' (John 8:25); and that he himself gave a beginning to the things to be brought forth, and that he himself is the creator of the world, not an imitator of matter with some idea for his guide, out of which he would shape his works, not at his own will, but to a form set before him. Beautifully too he says 'in the beginning he made', so as to express the incomprehensible speed of the work, since he set forth the effect of the operation completed before any sign of its being begun.
Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by
Latin
Unde divino spiritu praevidens sanctus Moyses hos hominum errores fore, et forte jam coepisse, in exordio sermonis sui sic ait, In principio fecit Deus coelum et terram (Gen. I, 1) ; initium rerum, auctorem mundi, creationem materiae comprehendens; ut Deum cognosceres ante initium mundi esse, vel ipsum esse initium universorum; sicut in Evangelio Dei Filius dicentibus sibi, Tu quis es? respondit: Initium quod et loquor vobis (Joan. VIII. 25) : et ipsum dedisse gignendis rebus initium, et ipsum esse creatorem mundi, non idea quadam duce imitatorem materiae, ex qua non ad arbitrium suum, sed ad speciem propositam sua opera formaret. Pulchre quoque ait, In principio fecit; ut incomprehensibilem celeritatem operis exprimeret, cum effectum prius operationis impletae, quam indicium coeptae explicuisset.
PL 14, col. 124B · pd
Notes
Ambrose gets all three answers into one sentence and does not choose between them. 'In the beginning' comprehends at once the beginning of things, the author of the world and the creation of matter; God is before the beginning of the world, 'or he himself is the beginning of all things' — and that vel is doing the work, because it holds the temporal and the personal readings side by side without ranking them. The Son's self-naming at John 8:25 is quoted here for the first time in the Latin bench, and after Ambrose no witness on this crux argues without it: Augustine, Isidore, Bede, Rabanus, Bruno, Rupert and Isidore's ecclesial allegory all rest on the same verse. Ambrose's word throughout is initium, not principium; the Vulgate's word had not yet displaced the Old Latin he preached from.
In the SonIn the beginning of timeThe world is not eternal
Threads
- ← echoes · Augustine
The John 8:25 answer, taken over from the man Augustine had been hearing preach at Milan a year or two before: 'or he himself is the beginning of all things … the Son of God answered, The Beginning, who also speak to you.' After Ambrose no Latin witness on this crux argues without that verse. - ← echoes · Isidore of Seville
'Principium Christus est', with John 8:25 attached and no argument at all. What Ambrose offered as one limb of a vel and Augustine as one of three readings has become a premise from which the allegory starts. - → parallel · Origen
Phase 6. The same conclusion from different verses, and the difference is the whole later history. Origen gets the Son out of in principio by John 1:1–3 and Col 1:15 — the Word through whom all things were made, the firstborn of every creature — and never says wisdom. Ambrose gets him out of John 8:25, 'The Beginning, who also speak to you', which makes Principium a name rather than an instrument. Ambrose's route is the one the Latin bench takes; and it is Ambrose, three columns later, who adds Ps 104:24 and so brings in the wisdom the rabbinic bench is arguing about at the same moment, meaning something else by it.