Ambrose
PL 14, col. 130C
English
This world, then, is a specimen of the divine working; because while the work is seen, the worker is put forward. For as of these arts of ours some are active, which consist in the movement of the body or the sound of the voice — the movement or the sound ceased, nothing was left over, nothing remained to those who watched or listened; others are theoretical, which exercise the vigour of the mind; others of such a kind that, the office of working having ceased, the work's own service still appears, as building and weaving, which even when the craftsman is silent show his skill.
Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by
Latin
Est ergo hic mundus divinae specimen operationis; quia dum opus videtur, 9 praefertur operator. Namque ut istarum artium aliae sunt actuosae, quae sunt in corporis motu, aut sono vocis; cessavit motus aut sonus, nihil superfuit, nec remansit spectantibus vel audientibus: aliae theoreticae, quae vigorem mentis exerceant: aliae hujusmodi, ut cessante quoque operationis officio, operis munus appareat, ut aedificatio atque textura, quae etiam tacente artifice, peritiam ejus ostendunt
PL 14, col. 130C · pd
Notes
Why creation and not something else: because a made thing goes on saying who made it after the maker has stopped speaking. Ambrose sorts the arts into three — those that leave nothing behind when the movement or the sound stops, those that exercise the mind, and those whose product keeps working when the craftsman is silent, like building and weaving — and puts the world in the third class. The argument is Rom 1:20 turned into a workshop, and it answers the crux from the side of the reader rather than the writer: Scripture begins here because this is where God can be inferred from what is in front of anyone. Set against Rashi's answer, the two benches could hardly be further apart. For Ambrose the chapter is the most natural possible opening; for R. Isaac it is the one that has to be explained away.
The work shows the worker
Threads
- → echoes · Ambrose
Two answers a few columns apart and they are the two halves of one: Moses could write it because he was a witness of the divine work, and it is worth writing because a work goes on showing its worker after he has fallen silent, as building and weaving do. The first secures the text, the second secures the subject. - ← contests · Hugh of St Victor
Ambrose puts the world in the class of works that keep showing their maker when the maker is silent, which makes the creation the natural first subject of any book about God. Hugh assigns the works of foundation to secular writings and keeps the works of restoration for Scripture, which makes it the least natural. The Latin bench holds both, seven hundred years apart, and Hugh does not mention that anyone had thought otherwise. - ← parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
Both make the creation account public evidence, and for opposite audiences. R. Yehoshua of Sikhnin in R. Levi's name: God revealed what was made on each day because of the idolaters, so that Israel could answer the charge of robbery. Ambrose: the world is a specimen of the divine working, so that while the work is seen the worker is put forward, as a building shows its craftsman when he is silent. The rabbinic bench's evidence is a text and its jury is the nations; the Latin bench's evidence is the world and its jury is anyone with eyes.