Annotatio V

”In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” — Genesis 1:1

Basil, in the first homily of the Hexaemeron, narrating this passage, seems to hold that God, many ages before this visible world, created another invisible world, and in it founded the angelic nature long before the creation of this visible world.¹ For he speaks in this manner: “Moses set this word in front, saying In the beginning he made: because even before this world there was (as is likely) something which indeed our intelligence is permitted to contemplate. But he omitted to narrate it, because that knowledge is little suited to those still being introduced [to the faith] and to babes. There was surely a certain state of the world, older in origin — suited to those powers withdrawn from the concretion of matter and more excellent than the [material] world — prior also in the condition of time; eternal, namely, and everlasting, that is, never subject to any corruption and destruction. And in it the Founder of all perfected his works: a spiritual light befitting the beatitude of those who love the Lord, rational and invisible natures, and every adornment of intelligible things which exceed our understanding, whose very names it is not possible to find. For these fill up the essence of the invisible world — as Paul teaches us, saying that in him were founded all things, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominations or principalities or powers or might, whether the hosts of angels or the prefectures of archangels.² In the beginning, therefore, he says — [meaning] that which is ‘with respect to time’ — narrating, after the invisible and intelligible things, the beginning of the origin of these visible things and of the principles apprehensible by sense.” Again in the second homily, explaining that The earth was void and empty, he confirms the same with these words: “Let us consider, then, that whatever existed before the constitution of this sensible and corruptible world was surely in light. For neither the dignities of the angels, nor all the celestial hosts, nor, in sum, anything named among the rational and ministering spirits, dwelt in darkness, but in light, and possessed a state agreeable to themselves with all spiritual gladness.”

These opinions, which of old among the Greeks Acacius, Bishop of Caesarea, and Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, had refuted with many argumentations,³ the Lateran Council — celebrated at Rome under Innocent III in the year 1215 — seems among the Latins to have condemned, from the words which it placed in the first chapter of its decrees.⁴ They are these: “The Creator of all things invisible and visible, spiritual and corporeal, by his omnipotent power together from the beginning of time founded out of nothing both creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal — namely the angelic and the mundane.”

Thus far the words of the Council. On whose occasion one must beware not to determine anything rashly about this opinion, accusing of heresy very many illustrious men who assert it: among whom (to pass over Origen for the moment, who first asserted this in the books Peri Archōn [On First Principles] and in homily 4 on Isaiah) there is, foremost, Gregory Nazianzen,⁵ who in his sermon On the Nativity speaks thus: “God first indeed devised the angelic and celestial powers; and the thing devised was straightway fulfilled by the Word and consummated by the Spirit; and thus subsisted the second splendors, ministers of that first Splendor. But after these had first rightly succeeded, he secondarily devised the material and visible world: this is the mingling of heaven and earth and of the things that are in between.” Thus Gregory: whom his disciple Jerome followed, writing thus in his commentaries on the Epistle to Titus: “Six thousand years of our time are not yet complete — and how great times, and how many origins of ages, must we suppose there were, in which the angels, the Thrones, the dominations, and the other orders served God?” Coming to the same opinion, Ambrose, in the first book of the Hexaemeron, chapter 5, expounding this passage, brought forth these words: “The world therefore was made, and that which was not began to be. But the Word of God was in the beginning, and always: yet also the angels, dominations, and powers, although they began to be at some time, nevertheless were [already in being] when this world was made.” Likewise in his preface to the first Psalm: “The angels praise the Lord,” he says, “and before the very beginning of the world the Cherubim and Seraphim, with the sweetness of a melodious voice, were saying: Holy, Holy, Holy.” To these is added Hilary in the twelfth book On the Trinity, not far from the end, and in the little book [Hilary] — in the little book against Auxentius, a little before the end. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, in the first book On the Highest Good, ch. 12; and John Damascene in the second volume of the Orthodox Faith, ch. 3; together with very many others, both Greek and Latin — whom, since it would be long to enumerate them, it may suffice that John Cassian, in the 8th book of the Collations, indicates that this was in his time the common opinion of all catholics,⁶ in these plain words: “That before the constitution of this visible creature God made the spiritual and celestial powers — which, for this very reason, that they knew themselves to have been produced out of nothing to so great a glory of beatitude by the Creator’s benefit, giving thanks to him, cling unceasingly to his praises — no one of the faithful doubts.” Bede, in the little book of Separate Questions, q. 9: “The angels (he says) were created before the creation of the world; and before all creation of angels, the Devil was founded [created]: as it is written, ‘He is the beginning of the ways of God.’”

Accordingly, as Thomas Cajetan says, we ought to interpret the aforesaid opinion of the synodal decree rather according to the Council’s intention than according to the sense of the words.⁷ And the Council’s purpose is — as St. Thomas says in his exposition of the first Decretal — to refute the error either of Origen, or of those who said that spiritual substances were first produced by God so that they might enjoy spiritual dignity, and then, when they had sinned, that all bodies were created, into which, thrust as into prisons, they might pay the penalties of their crimes. Although St. Augustine rather approves the opinion of those who assert the angels were created together with the world, yet in the 11th book of The City of God, chapter 32, he permits everyone to hold freely in this matter what he wishes⁸ — provided only that he does not make spiritual substances coeternal with God, and affirms all things, visible as well as invisible, to have been founded by God in time. Subscribing to him, Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus [Cyrrhus], in question 3 on Genesis, after disputing much against Basil, finally added this: “Further, it is necessary to know that all things whatsoever that exist, except the holy Trinity, have a nature liable to corruption. And this being granted, if anyone says that the throngs of angels were created before heaven and earth, he will not offend against the word of piety.”