Dist. 12, Art. 2, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/2/d/12/q/bon-sent-II-d12-a2-q2
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### Question II. *Whether primary matter was produced on a day, or before every day.*

Secondly, the question is asked concerning unformed matter as regards the time of its production, and the question is whether it was produced on a day, or before every day. And that [it was produced] before every day seems [to be the case]:

*Foundations.*

1. First, by the text of Genesis: *In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth*; it is established that this took place before the production of light, as Scripture itself intimates; but the day began with light: therefore the production of unformed matter was before every day.

2. Likewise, Augustine in the twelfth book of the *Confessions*: «*Thou hast made unformed matter before every day*».

3. Likewise, Hugh of Saint Victor in his book *On the Sacraments*: «*In the first moment of time, in which the nature of all visible and invisible things was created, there was neither night nor day*».

4. Likewise, by reason it appears so. The quality of time ought to correspond to the quality of the thing produced; but primary matter is produced neither wholly under privation of form nor under complete distinction: therefore its production was fitting neither to day nor to night, therefore [it was produced] before every day.

*For the opposite.*

**On the contrary:** 1. Genesis chapter 2: *These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day in which God made the heaven and the earth*; but when God made the heaven and the earth, then He created that primordial matter: therefore He created it on a day.

2. Likewise, the Creator of all is the God of light, therefore all things which He makes, He makes in light: therefore if He created matter, He created it in light, and so on a day.

3. Likewise, the Manichee argues: if God created anything in darkness, He was in darkness; how then does He *inhabit inaccessible light*? If therefore this is unfitting, it is unfitting that He created [matter] in darkness; and He created it either in darkness or on a day: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, night and day immediately divide time; but the matter of corporeal things was produced together with time, therefore [it was produced] together with night or together with day; but not with night: therefore on a day.

### Conclusion.

> *Matter was certainly produced before every day according to the order of nature, and more probably also according to the order of time.*

**I respond:** It must be said that the creation of heaven and earth, according to all [doctors], was before every day as regards the order of *nature*; but as regards the order of *time* or of duration, different [doctors] have thought differently.

*Opinion 1.* For some have thought that there was no delay between the creation and the beginning of distinction; nay rather, as soon as that matter was produced, the light too, which made the day, was produced, and there was no intervening pause.

*Opinion 2 and Conclusion 2.* But to others it seems that there was an intervening delay of time between the creation of the earth and the making of light; and this seems more consonant with the view of the expositors, as will become clear in the following distinction. Yet either could have been true, and none of these [views] is altogether certain.

*Solution of the opposing arguments.* 1. Maintaining however the latter [view], a reply must be given to the first objection drawn from the text of Genesis, [namely] that *to create* is taken equivocally in Scripture, and there the creation of heaven and earth is called the making or formation of both; and thus Augustine expounds in *On Genesis according to the Letter*, book five, where he intimates that *to create* heaven and earth is said in two ways: either to make unformed matter, or to distinguish [things] through forms and species.

2. 3. To that which is objected, that God is in light: it must be said that this is to be understood [as meaning] that God is *spiritual* light, not corporeal — namely the light of wisdom — and in this [light] He made whatever He produced, because *He made all things in wisdom*. — And therefore what is objected concerning corporeal darkness has nothing to do with the matter, because God is no more in darkness in a corporeally dark place than in an illumined one.

4. To that which is objected, that night and day immediately divide time: it must be said that this is true as regards the *being* which they have *now*, which indeed is reckoned according to the revolution of the celestial bodies. But *then* time was reckoned according to the changeability which was in the parts of matter — which changeability was without the presence of a luminous body and without the shadow of an opaque body; and therefore that time did not have the vicissitude of day and night before the formation of light.

*Solution according to the other opinion.* But if anyone wishes to maintain the opposite, he will plainly be able to respond to the reasons and authorities [adduced] for the opposite [view] by saying that they are to be understood as intimating the order of *nature*, not of *time*, according to which unformed matter preceded every day.