Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume I/Confessions/Book XII/Chapter 7

by Philip Schaff et al.

Chapter VII.—Out of Nothing God Made Heaven and Earth.

7. And whence and in what manner was this, unless from Thee, from whom are all things, in so far as they are? But by how much the farther from Thee, so much the more unlike unto Thee; for it is not distance of place. Thou, therefore, O Lord, who art not one thing in one place, and otherwise in another, but the Self-same, and the Self-same, and the Self-same,^[1] Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, didst in the beginning,^[2] which is of Thee, in Thy Wisdom, which was born of Thy Substance, create something, and that out of nothing.^[3] For Thou didst create heaven and earth, not out of Thyself, for then they would be equal to Thine Only-begotten, and thereby even to Thee;^[4] and in no wise would it be right that anything should be equal to Thee which was not of Thee. And aught else except Thee there was not whence Thou mightest create these things, O God, One Trinity, and Trine Unity; and, therefore, out of nothing didst Thou create heaven and earth,—a great thing and a small,because Thou art Almighty and Good, to make all things good, even the great heaven and the small earth. Thou wast, and there was nought else from which Thou didst create heaven and earth; two such things, one near unto Thee, the other near to nothing,^[5]—one to which Thou shouldest be superior, the other to which nothing should be inferior.

Footnotes

1. See ix. sec. 11, above.
2. See p. 166, note, above.
3. See p. 165, note 2, above.
4. In the beginning of sec. 10, book xi. of his De Civ. Dei, he similarly argues that the world was, not like the Son, “begotten of the simple good,” but “created.” See also note 8, p. 76, above.
5. “Because at the first creation, it had no form nor thing in it.”—W. W.