Dist. 15
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/15/q/bon-sent-II-d15-littera
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### DISTINCTION XV.

### Cap. I. *On the work of the fifth day, on which the swimming and flying creatures were made.*

God also said: *Let the waters bring forth the creeping thing of living soul and that which flies above the earth* etc. *Dubium 1.* The work of the fifth day is the formation of fishes and birds, by which two elements are adorned; and from the same matter, that is, from the waters, he created fishes and birds, lifting the flying things into the air and entrusting the swimming things to the deep.

### Cap. II. *On the work of the sixth day, on which the animals and reptiles of the earth were created.*

There follows: *God said: Let the earth bring forth the living soul, cattle and reptiles and beasts of the earth according to their kinds* etc. *Dubium 2.* The work of the sixth day is described, when the earth is said to be adorned with its animals.

### Cap. III. *On venomous and noxious animals.*

It is accustomed to be asked « concerning venomous and pernicious living creatures, *Augustine.* whether they were created after the sin of man for vengeance, or rather were created harmless and began to harm sinners. Indeed it can be said that, [though] created, they would have done no harm to man if he had not sinned; for they began to harm for the punishing and terrifying of vices, or for the proving and perfecting of virtue. They were therefore created harmless, but on account of sin they became noxious ».

### Cap. IV. *Whether the smallest animals were then created.*

« Concerning certain minute living things also there is a question, *Augustine.* whether they were created in the first foundings, or sprang up afterward from corrupted things. For most are generated from defects of moist bodies, or from exhalations of the earth, or from cadavers; and some also from the corruption of woods and herbs and fruits; and God is the author of all. It can however be said that those which are born from the bodies of animals, especially from dead ones, were not created with the animals except potentially and materially; but those which are born from the earth or the waters, or from those things which sprang from the earth's germinating, can not incongruously be said to have been then created ».

### Cap. V. *Why man was made after all things.*

When all things, however, had been created and disposed, last of all man was made, as lord and possessor, who was also to be set before all things; whence there follows: *God saw that it was good, and said: Let us make man to our image* etc. But before we treat of the creation of man, let us, by turning over more fully what we touched on briefly above, make it more clear. For in this distinction of things, *Dubium 3.* the Catholic commentators are found to disagree, as we said above, with some saying *Opinion 1.* that things were created and distinguished according to their species through the intervals of six days. Since the opinion of these seems rather to serve the letter of Genesis and the Catholic Church rather approves it, therefore up to now we have diligently taught how, from that common matter, first made formlessly, afterward the kinds of corporeal things were distinctly formed through the courses of six days.

### Cap. VI. *On the opinion of those who contend that all things were made simultaneously.*

But to others it seems that they were not made through *Opinion 2.* intervals of time, but that, simultaneously so formed, they came forth into being. Augustine on Genesis strives to show this in several ways, *Augustine.* saying: « The four elements, formed as they now appear, existed from the beginning, and the heaven was adorned with stars; but certain things were then made not for-

mally, but materially, which afterward, through the passage of time, were distinguished formally — as herbs, trees, and perhaps animals. Therefore they say that all things were made in the very beginning of time, but some *formally* and according to the *species* which we see them to have, as the larger parts of the world, but others only *materially* ». But, as they say, Moses, speaking to a rude and carnal people, tempered the manner of speech, speaking of God after the likeness of a man who through the delays of time completes his works, although he himself made his works simultaneously. *Augustine.* Whence Augustine: « Therefore, he says, Moses reports divisively that God made those works, because what could be done simultaneously by God could not be said simultaneously by a man ». Likewise: « Scripture could divide by the times of speaking what God did not divide by the times of working ». Those who, adhering to these authorities and others of this kind, say that the four elements and the luminaries of heaven were so formed simultaneously, call those six days, which Scripture commemorates, six *kinds* of things — that is, *distinctions* — which were made simultaneously, partly *formally,* partly *causally.*

### Cap. VII. *How the rest of God is to be understood.*

Now we must speak something about the rest of the seventh day. It is written that *God completed his work on the seventh day... and he rested on the seventh day from every work which he had wrought*. *Augustine.* « God is said to have rested on the seventh day, not as if wearied by working, but he rested from every work, because he ceased to make a new creature. *Dubium 4.* For *to rest* is said [to mean] to cease ». Hence in the Apocalypse: *They had no rest, saying: Holy, holy, holy* — that is, they did not cease to say so. *Augustine.* Therefore God is said to have rested, because « he ceased from making kinds of creature, since he founded no new ones beyond [those]. Yet even now, as the Truth says in the Gospel, the Father works together with the Son, namely the administration of the same kinds which were then instituted. For the power of the Creator is the cause of subsistence for every creature. Therefore that which is said: *My Father works even until now, and I work,* shows the continuous administration of the whole creature. On the seventh day, therefore, *he rested,* so that he might no longer make a new creature whose matter or likeness had not preceded; but *he works even until now,* so that he may not cease to contain and govern what he founded ».

### Cap. VIII. *How it is to be understood that God is said to have completed his work on the seventh day, when then he rested.*

But it is asked how God is said on the seventh day to have completed his work, when on that day he rested from every work and made no new kind of things. « Another translation has: *God consummated his works on the sixth day;* which raises no question, since the things which were done on it are manifest »; and on that day the consummation of all things was perfected, as Scripture shows, when it says: *God saw all the things which he had made, and they were very good.*

### Cap. IX. *How all things made by God are called very good.*

« All things indeed were naturally good, having nothing of vice in their nature. *Augustine.* And the things which God founded are good, even *singly;* but at the same time the universe taken together [is] very good, because from all of them consists the admirable beauty of the totality », « in which even that which is called evil, being well ordered and placed in its place, more eminently commends the good things, so that they may more please and be more praiseworthy, while they are compared with evils ». On the sixth day, therefore, the consummation of all the works was made. — Hence the foregoing question arises: how is God said on the seventh day to have completed his work, which « the Hebrew truth has, in which however he is said to have created nothing new, unless perhaps it be said that on the seventh day he completed his work because he blessed and sanctified it itself », as Scripture adds: *He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.* « For blessing and sanctification is a work, just as Solomon did a certain work when he dedicated the temple ».

### Cap. X. *On the sanctification of the seventh day.*

But he is said to have sanctified and blessed that day, *Dubium 5.* because by a mystical blessing and sanctification beyond the others he endowed it. Whence in the Law it is said: *Remember to sanctify the day of the sabbath.* And from that it is, that, numbering the days up to the seventh, we proceed and say *Dubium 6.* that there are seven days, by whose repetition all

time is reckoned; not because the eighth day is some other than these, and the ninth, and so of the rest, but because in six days the kinds of things were distinguished, and in the seventh, although there was no new kind of things instituted, yet there was in it, as it were, a certain new state of the sanctification of the works and of the rest of the Maker. It can also be expounded thus: *God completed his work on the seventh day,* that is, he saw it completed and consummated.

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