Annotatio VII

”The Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters.” — Genesis 1:2

Thomas Cajetan, in his exposition of this sentence, has been gravely reprehended by Ambrose [Catharinus], Archbishop of Compsa. For in the fourth volume against Cajetan he accuses him of having asserted that the aforesaid passage, “The Spirit of the Lord,” etc., pertains not to the Holy Spirit but to some wind or other that blows — and this against the sense of the saints, against the decrees of the Pontiffs, and against the authority of the Church, which on the holy day of Pentecost sings of the Holy Spirit: “Thou who wast to be over the waters didst bear them,” etc.¹ I think that Ambrose, when he wrote this, did not have at hand Cajetan’s commentaries on Genesis, in which he might read the exposition of the present passage. For he would have seen there that not a word — nay, not a syllable — is written about wind, whether blowing or not blowing. Although I do not see why Cajetan should have been so bitterly branded, even if he had referred this passage to wind, since many Greek and Latin expositors did the same before him. Of these, Basil, expounding Moses’s words both of the Holy Spirit and of wind and air, in the second homily of the Hexaemeron writes thus: “Whether one call this a ‘spirit’ — namely a diffusion of air — recognize the writer [Moses] as enumerating for you the parts of the whole world; or rather (which is truer, and approved by our elders) [understand] the Spirit of God — here it is called the Holy Spirit.” Augustine, in the unfinished book On Genesis to the Letter, chapter 4, having said that three things can be understood by “the Spirit of God” — namely the Holy Spirit, and a certain vital creature by which the whole visible world is contained and moved — straightway added this: “A third opinion about this spirit can arise: that by the name ‘spirit’ the element of air is expressed, so that the four elements are intimated, out of which this visible world arises — namely heaven, earth, water, and air. And any one of these opinions is true.” Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, judges that these words are to be fitted first to air and wind, then to the Holy Spirit, saying thus: “By ‘the Spirit of God’ understand the wind, which by its motion alters the nature of the waters, whence too it draws its origin. And he added ‘of God’ in order to ascribe the cause of this work to God. But if anyone understands ‘the Spirit of God’ as the Paraclete Spirit, he will not stray from the truth; for the Spirit adorns all things that are.” St. John Chrysostom, the disciple of Diodore,² in homily 3 on Genesis, says that the Spirit of the Lord is a certain vital operation, implanted in the waters by God, from which the waters had not only motion but the power of procreating animals. Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, constantly affirms that Moses spoke more of air than of the Holy Spirit, writing in this manner in the Questions on the book of Genesis, question 8: “To some it seems to have been the Holy Spirit, who vivified and made fruitful the nature of the waters, prefiguring in a way the water of baptism. But I should reckon it truer that here you understand ‘spirit’ as air. For when he had said that God created heaven and earth, and had mentioned the waters under the name of ‘the abyss,’ he necessarily made mention also of air, permeating from the surface of the water all the way to heaven. For it is the nature of air to be borne and agitated about the lower bodies. And most fittingly that word ‘was borne [moved]’ indicates the mobile substance of air. But if anyone does not assent to this interpretation, because it is written ‘The Spirit of God was borne over the waters,’ let him hear blessed David saying of God, the Founder of all: ‘His spirit [breath] shall blow, and the waters shall flow.’”³ Origen, in the first book of the Peri Archōn [On First Principles], says that this passage — [Origen says] this passage is to be understood according to allegory concerning the Holy Spirit, but according to the letter, by no means.