Paul of Burgos

English

From which presupposition it follows that the postillator conducts himself less fittingly in the introductory procedure of the literal exposition of this chapter. For he says that the understanding of the work of the six days depends on the variety of opinions about the nature of matter put forward by the philosophers, which seems unfittingly said. For it is agreed that the philosophers do not proceed demonstratively in this matter — otherwise it would not happen that they hold different or contrary opinions, as it does not in geometry and the like — but proceed only by opinion. Hence the sense of Scripture ought not to vary on this account; and this is why the holy doctors took little care about such various opinions in this matter.

Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson · cc-by

Latin

Koberger 1486-87, leaf n48, column 2, Additio i (archive.org biblia-sacra-lyra_202308, page/n48.jpg) · lyra-koberger-1487

Notes

Eight centuries of this crux answered by ruling it out of order. Every Latin witness before this one takes some position on the nature of the matter and argues it: Ambrose refutes the hyle of the philosophers, Augustine accepts a formless matter and insists God made it, Abelard defines what created properly means, Hugh distinguishes making from matter and creating the matter. Lyra opens his exposition of Genesis 1 by laying out the philosophers' opinions on matter and saying that the understanding of the six days' work depends on which is taken. Burgos says that is unfitting, and the reason he gives is a claim about what kind of knowledge natural philosophy is: the philosophers do not proceed demonstratively here, and the proof is that they disagree, which does not happen in geometry. Where a discipline yields only opinion, the sense of Scripture must not be made to move with it. He then reads the Latin bench's whole history on this crux as agreeing with him — sancti doctores modicum curaverunt de huiusmodi opinionibus — which is a striking thing to say about a bench that spent eight hundred years on the question, and is what makes the witness worth printing beside the men who did. This is his substantive addition on Gen 1:1, as against Additio iij, which is a quarrel about credit.

Threads

• → parallel · Ambrose
  Ambrose and Burgos both want the philosophers' matter kept out of Genesis, and they want it for opposite reasons. Ambrose argues against the doctrine: they say the world was made out of the matter they call hyle, and that makes God a craftsman rather than a creator. Burgos argues against the genre: the philosophers proceed only by opinion, as their disagreeing shows, so nothing in Scripture may be made to depend on which of them is right. The first is a refutation and the second is a ruling about jurisdiction, and only the second could have been written after the schools had spent three centuries on Aristotle.
• → contests · Chalcidius
  The two ends of this edition's Latin bench on the same question. Chalcidius in the fourth century reports what the Hebrews hold about hyle in order to agree with it, and takes the philosophers' vocabulary into the exposition without apology. Burgos in the fifteenth, himself born a Jew, rules that the philosophers' opinions about matter have no business determining the sense of the chapter at all. A thousand years apart, and it is the convert who fences the text off from philosophy.
• → contests · Augustine
  Augustine says that formless matter too was made by God and is not to be feared, and he reaches that by taking the philosophical question seriously enough to answer it. Burgos cites the holy doctors as having taken little care about such opinions, which is not what Confessions 12 looks like. The disagreement is about the Latin bench's own history: Burgos needs the fathers to have been uninterested in a question they in fact worked hard at, because his argument is that a Christian exposition should not have to wait on the philosophers.