Ambrose
PL 14, col. 126A
English
'In the beginning,' he says. What a good order — that he should assert first the very thing they are accustomed to deny, and that they might know the world has a beginning, lest men should think the world is without a beginning. Whence David also, when he was speaking of heaven and earth and sea, said, 'You have made all things in wisdom' (Ps 104:24 [Vg 103:25]). He gave the world a beginning, then, and gave the creature weakness too, lest we should believe it uncaused, uncreated, and a partaker of the divine substance. And beautifully he added 'he made', lest it be supposed there was any delay in the making; that in this way at least men might understand how incomparable a worker he is, who completed so great a work in the brief and slender moment of his operating, so that the effect of his will outran the sense of time.
Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by
Latin
In principio, inquit. Quam bonus ordo, ut illud primum assereret, quod negare consueverunt, et cognoscerent principium esse mundi, ne sine principio mundum esse homines arbitrarentur. Unde et David cum de coelo, et terra, et mari loqueretur, ait, Omnia in sapientia fecisti (Ps. CIII, 25) . Dedit ergo principium mundo, dedit etiam creaturae infirmitatem, ne anarchon, ne increatum, et divinae consortem substantiae crederemus. Et pulchre addidit, Fecit, ne mora in faciendo fuisse existimaretur; ut vel sic intelligerent homines quam incomparabilis operator esset, qui tantum opus brevi 5 exiguoque momento suae operationis absolveret, ut voluntatis effectus sensum temporis praeveniret.
PL 14, col. 126A · pd
Notes
The other Latin answer, and the polemical one: the beginning is the world's own, and the point of saying so is that the world is not eternal — anarchon, uncaused, a sharer in the divine substance. Remigius will make this the whole content of the verse and name Plato and Aristotle as the opponents; Ramban, from the other bench, says the same thing in the same place, that whoever thinks the world eternal 'denies the essential principle and has no Torah at all'. Note the proof text: Ps 104:24, 'you have made all things in wisdom' — the verse the Latin bench uses to get from in principio to in Sapientia, and so to the Son. The rabbinic bench gets to wisdom from Prov 8:22 and Prov 3:19 and arrives at the Torah.
The world is not eternalIn Wisdom
Threads
- ← echoes · Augustine
Ps 104:24 is Ambrose's proof text on this verse before it is Augustine's, and it does different work for each: Ambrose cites it to show that the world was given a beginning at all, Augustine to show that the beginning is the Son. - ← echoes · Remigius of Auxerre
Ambrose's polemical use of the verse, given names: what Ambrose argued against those who would make the world anarchon, Remigius argues against Plato's three principles and Aristotle's two, and supplies the missing word out loud — 'In principio, and of time is understood'. - ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
Ambrose's Hexaemeron is substantially Philo's De opificio and rarely says so, which makes every agreement between them a question rather than a fact. Here the agreement is on the point Ambrose most cares about: that the world has a beginning, against those who make it eternal. Philo's route is the argument from motion and time; Ambrose's is that the world is visible and what is visible has come to be. That second argument is also Philo's, at section 12, which is not built here. Where Ambrose has the doctrine, the possibility of a channel is real; where he has the argument in Philo's order, it is more than a possibility.