The Days of Creation
65. The Creation of Bodies
1. God is the source of being, bodily and spiritual, substantial and accidental. God is therefore the Creator of bodies as well as of spirits. And while some bodies can propagate and reproduce their kind, God had to give first beginnings and the power to propagate; God must also support the process of propagating in its being and effectiveness. Scripture says (Ps. 145) that God is the Creator "who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them."
2. The entire universe, bodily and spiritual, is the work of God's goodness. All creatures manifest the divine goodness and tend to it as to their goal or final cause.
3. The theory that God made the angels, and then the angels made the bodily world, cannot stand. For, as we have seen elsewhere, only God can create. No secondary cause (that is, no creature) can produce anything without having something to work on. But creation is total production of a thing from nothing.
4. A body is made of primal matter and substantial form. Some have said that the substantial forms of bodies were taken from the angels. This is false doctrine. Bodies come in first instance from God the Creator; no bodily element is supplied by angels or other creatures.
66. The Order of Bodily Creation
1. God did not make a supply of formless matter out of which bodily creatures were afterwards made. For existing formless matter is a contradiction in terms; existence itself is a form, that is, a determinateness of being. The Scripture phrase about the earth being "void and empty," or, as some translators put it, "without form," does not indicate the utter absence of form, but the incompleteness of the work; for the earth was still covered with water, and was in darkness, and was unadorned with its finished beauty.
2. God created the matter and form of bodies together. Matter considered in itself is formless (the only contradiction in the concept of formless matter is found in the notion of existing formless matter). There can therefore be no interval of time between the creation of primal matter and the substantial forms which gave it existence in the first bodies created.
3. The heaven of the blessed was probably created at the same time as the bodily universe. It is suitable that the glorious heaven should be created with the lower world which looks to it as the hope and promise of its own ultimate renovation.
4. It is the opinion of many wise and holy writers that the first things created were created at the same instant: angels, heaven, the bodily world, and time.
67. Light: Work of the First Day of Creation
1. Light means what the eye requires so that it may see and also what the mind requires that it may understand. We constantly use the word light in both senses; we speak of the light of day, and we also say that an explanation of a problem or difficulty "throws light on the subject."
2. Light in its meaning as the illumination of the bodily universe is not a substance.
3. Bodily light is an active quality which pertains to a luminous bodily substance. The effect of light is different according to the different substances from which it comes.
4. It is suitable that the creation of light be the work of the first day, for in light other works may fittingly proceed.
68. Work of the Second Day of Creation
1. The firmament was made on the second day. Some say that the firmament means the starry heavens; others say it means the skyey mass of clouds and air.
2. At all events, the firmament lies between "the waters above and the waters below." And the term waters may mean bodily matter, or transparent bodies, or watery vapors.
3. Whatever the nature of these waters, the firmament is the dividing element between the upper and lower kinds of them. Scripture says (Gen. 1:24-27), "And God said: 'Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.' And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under the firmament from those that were above the firmament."
4. Scripture speaks of a plurality of heavens. For instance, in Psalm 148, we read: "Praise Him, ye heaven of heavens." And St. Paul (II Cor. 12:2) "was caught up to the third heaven." The word heaven may mean the heaven of the blessed, or the starry firmament, or the space beyond the stars; it may mean any real or imaginary region in what we call outer space. And the word heaven may be used by metaphor for God himself, as in the expressions, "Heaven bless you," "Pray to heaven for guidance." St. Augustine says there are three types of supernatural visions-visions manifested to the eye, visions manifested to the imagination, visions manifested to the intellect-and these are three heavens. This is one explanation of the "third heaven" to which St. Paul was caught up.
69. Work of the Third Day of Creation
1. In the various days of creation some see an order of origin or of nature, and not of time. Others say that the days indicate an order of time. In any case, the work of the third day was suitably the forming of the ordered earth by the gathering together of waters and the appearing of land. For it seems logical and right that, after the creation of light and the heavens or firmament, the earth should be given perfected form.
2. And it appears suitable that on the same day there should come to the perfected earth the adornment of living plants.
70. Work of the Fourth Day of Creation
1. The light that was created first was not the light of the luminous heavenly bodies, for these were not created until the fourth day. After the earth was formed and adorned with plants, it was fittingly furnished with the illumination that came with the creation of the luminous heavenly bodies.
2. These luminaries are accounted for in scripture which speaks of their usefulness to man, and they were provided for him before he was placed on the earth. They enable man to see with bodily sight; they support life in living bodies; they mark and occasion the changes of season; they are conveniences as signs and forecastings.
3. The luminous heavenly bodies are not living bodies.
71. Work of the Fifth Day of Creation
1. The work of the fifth day was the production of fowls and fishes and things that creep in the waters. As the fourth day sees the firmament adorned with light-giving bodies, the fifth day sees the lower elements of air and water made fruitful with living things.
72. Work of the Sixth Day of Creation
1. The sixth day sees the land furnished with living bodies, and its chief living creatures placed in charge. Scripture (Gen. 1:24,27) says, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. . . . And God created man to His own image."
73. The Seventh Day
1. The perfection of the universe is ascribed to the seventh day when the work of creation is seen completed. Perfection in a thing is either (a) its being completed as a thing, or (b) its doing what it was made to do. And the first perfection is the cause of the second. By the seventh day creation was complete, and, in this sense, perfect. But its purpose in existence, the salvation of men through Christ and his grace, will be fulfilled at the end of time, when it will have given all the help that bodily creatures can give to the serving and saving of mankind.
2. We read (Gen. 2:2) that "God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work." God rested, not as one tired out by labor, but as one who ceases from his operation. And rest as referred to God means his complete blessedness or beatitude in himself which needs no creatures.
3. Scripture tells us (Gen. 2:2) that "God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it." God sanctified all creatures. And the special blessing and sanctification of creatures is their rest in God. The day itself is blessed and sanctified; it is properly a day of rest for creatures. Further, the blessing of creatures is expressed to them in God's word, "Increase and multiply."
74. Meaning of the Seven Days
1. There are different interpretations of the term day as used in the scriptural account of creation. Some say the six days of active creation are not periods of time but a listing of the order in which creatures were made. Others think these days have time significance, but hardly in the sense of our twenty-four hour day, for that day is measured by the sun, and the sun was not created until the fourth day. In any case, the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest give an adequate account of the works of creation and their sanctification.
2. St. Augustine makes the days of creation into one period in which God manifests worldly creatures to the angels in seven ways.
3. It must be acknowledged that Scripture uses suitable words to express the works of creation, and to suggest or imply the operation of the three Persons of the divine Trinity in these works.