Augustine

English

And therefore God is most rightly believed to have made all things out of nothing: because even if all formed things were made out of that matter, that matter itself was made out of nothing at all. For we ought not to be like those who do not believe that almighty God could make anything out of nothing, when they consider that craftsmen and workmen of any kind cannot make anything unless they have something to make it from. For wood helps the craftsman, and silver helps the silversmith, and gold the goldsmith, and earth helps the potter to be able to finish his works. If they are not helped by that matter out of which they make something, they can make nothing, since they do not themselves make the matter. For the craftsman does not make the wood, but makes something out of wood: and so all other workmen of this kind. But almighty God had no need to be helped by any thing that he had not himself made, in order to bring about what he willed. For if some thing that he had not himself made helped him towards the things he willed to make, he was not almighty: which it is sacrilege to believe.

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

Latin

PL 34, col. 178 · pd

Notes

The chapter Migne heads 'Formless matter out of nothing, and out of it all things', and the argument in it is the one this whole crux turns on. Augustine grants that everything formed was made out of the formless matter and then puts the doctrine one step further back: the matter itself was made out of nothing at all. The objection he answers is not a text but a habit of mind — people cannot believe God made anything out of nothing because they are watching craftsmen, and wood helps the carpenter, silver the silversmith, gold the goldsmith, earth the potter. It is the philosopher's sentence at Bereshit Rabbah 1:9 with the trades filled in, made in Thagaste sixty years before the Galilean compilation and independently of it; and the refutation turns on omnipotence rather than on Scripture — if anything God had not made helped him, he was not almighty. Wigbod copies this chapter to the last clause, and Angelomus rewrites it with the trades kept and the source dropped.

Threads

• ← parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  The philosopher: 'Your God was a great artist, but he found good materials that helped him.' Augustine: 'those who do not believe that almighty God could make anything out of nothing, when they consider that craftsmen and workmen cannot make anything unless they have something to make it from … wood helps the craftsman, silver the silversmith.' The same inference from the same analogy, and the verb is the same in both — the materials help. Thagaste 389, Galilee c. 450, no contact.
• → parallel · Basil of Caesarea
  Both answer the craftsman analogy by denying that God receives anything from outside: Basil, 'God is not the deviser of figures but the creator of the whole nature'; Augustine, 'if some thing that he had not himself made helped him, he was not almighty'. Augustine did not read Eustathius' Latin Basil in 389, and the arguments differ in kind — Basil's from the dignity of the unbegotten, Augustine's from omnipotence.
• ← transmits · Wigbod
  Verbatim to the last clause, including the four trades and 'quod sacrilegum est credere'; Wigbod reads 'de nihilo facta est' where Augustine has 'de omnino nihilo'. Wigbod does not name Augustine here, though he names Jerome elsewhere in the same work.
• ← echoes · Angelomus of Luxeuil
  'Aiunt enim: Lignum adjuvat fabrum, et argentum argentarium, et aurum aurificem … non enim faber facit lignum, sed de ligno aliquid facit' — Augustine's clauses reused without his name and recast as reported speech, with the potter dropped and a diagnosis added ('quia attendunt fabrum, et non Deum').
• ← parallel · Bede
  Both hang the difficulty on Wisdom 11:17, 'qui fecisti mundum de materia informi', and take opposite routes out of it: Augustine grants the formless matter and pushes creation one step behind it; Bede restricts the phrase to the earth and the waters before the light came, so that no substrate is conceded at all.
• ← echoes · Augustine
  'De nihilo fecisti coelum et terram' restates in prayer what De Genesi contra Manichaeos argued nine years earlier, with the same two-stage structure — formed things out of the matter, the matter out of nothing — now expressed as 'unum prope te, alterum prope nihil'.
• ← parallel · Alcuin
  Augustine's doctrine turned into an inventory: 'Quae creaturae de nihilo factae sunt? — Coelum, terra, angeli, lux, aer, aqua et anima hominis.' The list form has no Latin precedent on this crux and exact rabbinic counterparts (b. Chagigah 12a's ten things, PdRE 3's eight), and Alcuin's items are chosen so that no unformed substrate appears on it.
• ← contests · Philo of Alexandria
  The craftsman argument, from both sides. Augustine reports the objection that craftsmen and workmen of any kind cannot make anything unless they have something to make it from, and answers that God is not a craftsman. Philo is the position Augustine is answering, and he holds it as a description of God's goodness rather than of God's limits: the maker is good, and goodness is what makes him give form to what has none. The Latin bench inherits the objection without the argument that made it worth holding.