Augustine

English

And God divided between the light and the darkness, and God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. It is not said here, God made the darkness; because the darkness, as was said above, is the absence of light: yet a distinction was made between light and darkness. Just as we make a voice by crying out, but make silence by not sounding, because the ceasing of the voice is silence — yet we distinguish by a kind of sense between voice and silence, and call the one voice and the other silence: as therefore we are rightly said to make silence, so in many places of the divine Scriptures God is rightly said to make darkness, because he either does not give light, or withdraws it, at what times and in what places he wills.

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

Latin

PL 34, col. 180 · pd

Notes

The sentence that decided the question for eight hundred years, and the analogy that carried it. Scripture does not say God made the darkness, because darkness is the absence of light; but a distinction was nevertheless made — as we make a voice by crying out and make silence by not sounding, and yet distinguish the two and name them. The care of the argument is in the last clause, which concedes the whole difficulty: Scripture does in many places say that God makes darkness, and Augustine will not deny it, so he redefines the making — God makes darkness by not giving light, or by taking it away, where and when he chooses. Angelomus copies the analogy verbatim without the concession and with 'gives or withdraws' in place of 'does not give or withdraws'; Wigbod's compiler puts the opposite doctrine into Augustine's mouth on the same page.

Threads

• → echoes · Augustine
  Four years apart, the same doctrine argued from two different angles: at De Genesi contra Manichaeos from the analogy of silence, which explains how Scripture can say God makes darkness; at De Genesi ad litteram imperfectus from the analogy of the garment and nakedness, which explains why no separate act of dividing was needed.
• ← 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 · Wigbod
  The sharpest disagreement on the Latin bench, and it is invisible because it is filed under Augustine's name. Augustine: Scripture does not say God made the darkness, because darkness is the absence of light. Wigbod's pupil: everything that is divided can also be, so as there is an essence of light, so there is an essence of darkness. The inference is valid on its own terms and it destroys the doctrine the same compilation is transmitting.
• ← cites · Angelomus of Luxeuil
  The silence analogy copied close enough to be certain — clamando vocem, silentium autem non clamando, cessatio vocis silentium est — with one word altered: Augustine writes that God makes darkness because he 'either does not give light or withdraws it', Angelomus that he 'either gives or withdraws light'. The change turns a withholding into a conferring, and Angelomus names Augustine two sentences later as the authority he is following.
• ← contests · Remigius of Auxerre
  The flattest contradiction of Augustine on this crux, without naming him and without argument from authority: 'God made both, the light and the darkness … therefore the darkness too is a work of God', proved from the Benedicite, where light and darkness are called together to bless the Lord (Dan 3:72). If darkness is the absence of light it cannot be summoned to praise; the canticle summons it.
• ← parallel · Abraham ibn Ezra
  Both come to the possibility that the dividing and the naming are one act, and only one of them takes it. Augustine: 'perhaps, then, the dividing between light and darkness just is the calling of the light day and the darkness night, so that to have ordered these is to have named them' — and he leaves it as a perhaps and goes on. Ibn Ezra states it flatly as the meaning of the word: 'and the sense of and he divided is by the calling of names.' Nothing else on the Latin bench even entertains it.
• ← contests · Glossa ordinaria (school of Laon)
  The Glossa's own gloss on Gen 1:2, three columns earlier, is 'and there were darknesses, namely the privation of true light'; its gloss on Gen 1:4 is 'God made both the light and the darkness'. The standard schoolbook prints Augustine's doctrine on one verse and its contradiction on the next, and marks neither as disputed.
• ← contests · Nicholas of Lyra
  Augustine's darkness is the absence of light, as silence is the ceasing of voice, and the difficulty he then has to solve is how God can divide a nothing; his answer, that God ordered rather than made it, as a singer orders the rests, is the finest thing on this crux in either language. Lyra keeps the privation and dissolves the difficulty by putting a body in the middle. Nothing is divided from anything: the earth is opaque and stands between. The doctrine survives and the question it was invented to answer has gone.