Augustine

English

Whether, then, this sentence would have us understand the ethereal light, or the sensitive light in which animals share, or the rational light which angels and men have, to have been made by God first in the nature of things — that God divided between light and darkness, by the very fact that light was made, must be taken to mean that light is one thing and those privations of light another, which God set in order under the name of their contrary, darkness. For it is not said that God made the darkness: since God made the forms themselves, not the privations, which belong to nothing, whence all things were made by God the craftsman; yet we understand that they were set in order by him, when it is said, And God divided between light and darkness — lest even those privations should not have their own order, God ruling and administering all things. As in singing, the interpositions of silences at fixed and measured intervals, although they are privations of sound, are nevertheless well ordered by those who know how to sing, and contribute something to the sweetness of the whole song. And the shadows in paintings set off whatever is more prominent, and please not by their form but by their order. For God is not the author of our vices either; yet he is their orderer, when he sets sinners in that place and compels them to suffer what they deserve. To this belongs it that the sheep are set on the right hand and the goats on the left (Matt 25:33). Some things, then, God both makes and orders; some he only orders. The just he both makes and orders; sinners, in so far as they are sinners, he does not make but only orders. Since when he sets these on the right and those on the left, and bids them go into eternal fire, it belongs to the order of their deserts. So he both makes and orders the forms and natures themselves; but the privations of forms and the defects of natures he does not make, but only orders. And so he said, Let there be light; and light was made. He did not say, Let there be darkness; and darkness was made. Of these, then, he made one and did not make the other, yet ordered both, when God divided between light and darkness. And so, by his making, the several things are beautiful; and by his ordering, all things are beautiful.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Latin

PL 34, col. 229 · pd

Notes

The best thing said on this crux in Latin, and the one place where Augustine's privation doctrine stops being a piece of metaphysics and becomes an aesthetic. God did not make the darkness; but he ordered it, and the dividing is the ordering — 'lest even those privations should not have their own order'. Then the two analogies, which are not decoration but the argument: the rests in a song, which are privations of sound and are nevertheless placed at measured intervals by anyone who knows how to sing and add to the sweetness of the whole; and the shadows in a painting, which set off what is prominent and 'please not by their form but by their order'. And then the step that makes the reading moral without making the darkness a substance: God is not the author of our vices, but he is their orderer, when he puts sinners in the place they deserve — sheep on the right and goats on the left. The rabbinic bench's moral reading of this verse (R. Yanai, R. Abahu) reaches the same pairing of righteous and wicked at the same clause and never has to make the darkness nothing to do it, because it never took up the question of whether darkness is a thing.

Threads

• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  Augustine reaches the righteous and the wicked at this clause too, and gets there by a route the rabbinic bench does not need: God is not the author of our vices but is their orderer, when he sets sinners in the place they deserve — sheep on the right, goats on the left. Because he has made the darkness a privation he cannot let the wicked be the darkness outright, only be ordered under it; R. Yanai, under no such constraint, simply says the darkness is their deeds.
• → echoes · Augustine
  The privation doctrine completed. The earlier work says God does not make the darkness but is rightly said to make it by withholding light; the later adds the term that the whole tradition will use — he does not make it, but he orders it, 'lest even those privations should not have their own order' — and supplies the rests in music and the shadows in painting to show what ordering a nothing can mean.
• ← contests · Augustine
  Augustine against Augustine, and he knows it: the earlier work takes the light of day one as possibly ethereal, sensitive or rational and the darkness as the privation of whichever it is; the City of God offers the reading in which the light is the angels and the darkness the apostate spirits, and hedges it — 'it does not seem to me an opinion at odds with the works of God'. Every later Latin witness on this crux has to hold both, and Hugh's solution is to say that both divisions happened at the same instant.
• ← contests · Peter Abelard
  Both make the division an ordering rather than a making, and they mean opposite things by it. Augustine orders privations, so that even a nothing has its place. Abelard orders works, so that the distinction of the works just is the light and the confusion before them is the darkness — which leaves nothing for the privation doctrine to be about.
• ← contests · Bereshit Rabbah
  The two benches at their furthest apart on the same clause. Augustine: God did not make the darkness, he ordered it, as a singer orders his silences. R. Tanḥuma, on Isa 45:7, 'who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace': after they were created he made peace between them — the darkness is created, the making of peace is the dividing, and both are works. The rabbinic text has no term for a privation and never needs one.