Chaos and first waters

Use in the book

The first theorem makes the order of creation depend on a disputed reading of Schamaym (pp. 4-5, I.004.1). In the author’s account, God first creates the waters, then earth from them, and only afterward the firmament and the distinction between upper and lower waters. The sequence is a foundation for his later assertion that the elements are themselves water. It is not introduced as a poetic image that may be freely detached from his theory of matter.

The following passage argues that even readers who take heaven and earth to mean the four elements cannot escape this watery beginning (pp. 5-6, I.005.1). The reason is that the elements are nothing other than water and arise from it. Notice the direction of explanation. The author is not beginning with four independent constituents and then combining them into water. He is using water to account for their common origin and continuing unity.

The apparently contrary phrase tohu va bohu appears in the answer to an objection about making living things (pp. 129-130, II.129.2). Here the author explains it through potentiality: earth and water possess animal and vegetable nature only potentially. The term is therefore recruited into a distinction between capacity and formed life. It does not, in this passage, license the claim that water was a chemically confused mixture or a mass wholly without ordered possibilities.

The ensuing creation commands establish living kinds in their perfection and give them an order of propagation through their own seed (pp. 130-131, II.130.1-II.130.2). The first waters contain the possibility of these natures, but potential possession is distinguished from the power to create them by human art. This is why the author can deny that an operator makes animals from elements while still maintaining that elements are the source from which such creatures were created.

At p. 165 the argument moves backward from the proposed result of art to the beginning (II.165.1). Water can undergo what the edition provisionally calls equal balancing; therefore its original nature must have been uniform, even though raw. Art improves nature but does not change it. A beginning genuinely alien to the perfected result would break the continuity that the author requires between the two. The denial of confused chaos serves that continuity.

The next paragraph anticipates the obvious difficulty. The separated elements are now contrary to one another and to water. Why does their present opposition not disprove their common beginning? The answer confines disproportion to qualities and accidents rather than essence (pp. 165-166, II.165.2). Removing superfluities can therefore perfect the magistery without adding a new essential substance. Present conflict and original unity coexist because they belong to different levels of description.²

That answer does not imply that every change can be reversed. The perfected magistery cannot be returned to its former rawness any more than flour can become grain again (p. 166, II.166.1). The text thus resists a simple cycle in which all products are endlessly restored to a primordial chaos. Continuity of essence, correction of qualities and irreversibility of certain transformations are all parts of the author’s account.

The first Latin correspondent offers a genuinely opposed description: earth and water begin as an unformed, unordered mass and light is added as an inhering luminous quality (pp. 207-208, II.207.3-II.208.1). The Second Letter rejects that description when it restates the priority of water and the separate creation of light (pp. 213-214, II.213.2-II.214.1). The contrast shows why chaos cannot be assigned indiscriminately to every voice in the book.

Places to read

1. Part I · I.004.1; I.005.12The priority of waters and their relation to the elements.
2. Part II · II.129.2; II.130.22Potential animal and vegetable nature interpreted through creation.
3. Part II · II.165.1; II.165.2; II.166.123The explicit denial of confused chaos and the restriction of reversal.
4. Part II · II.207.3; II.213.22Opposed accounts of the first mass in the two Latin letters.

Translation

Gewässer is usually rendered waters rather than one ordinary sample of water. The collective expression can name the initial body of waters before its spatial distinction. When the source says a uniform water, the singular preserves the claim of common nature without importing the modern concept of a chemically homogeneous pure substance.

Confusum chaos and Mischmasch are polemical expressions in II.165.1. Calling the author’s starting matter chaos without qualification reverses the force of the sentence. Tohu va bohu is kept as the source’s transliteration; the relevant entry Genesis can locate the scriptural argument without pretending that this philosophical explanation exhausts the Hebrew expression.

Connections

The strongest connections are internal. Anatisation explains why the author reasons from perfected water back to uniform beginning. Accident and Substance explain why present opposition is not allowed to destroy the identity of that beginning. Creation and imitation explains why the first waters’ capacities do not give human practitioners the whole creative activity ascribed to God.

The final discussion of cosmic renewal also distinguishes enduring substance from removable accidents. That later analogy should be approached through the local argument of its chapter, however, rather than treated as proof that the original waters and the renewed world are described in exactly the same terms. The book repeatedly returns to unity, but it does not place every stage in a single undifferentiated state.

Cautions

The entries’ words potential, uniform and essence describe the book’s argument. They do not identify a measured physical state of the early universe. Neither a modern cosmological model nor a modern definition of a chemical mixture should silently supply the missing explanation.

The theory is also more discriminating than a slogan that everything is water. The text distinguishes raw and perfected water, particular and universal natures, present qualities and enduring essence, and created powers from divine creative agency. Those distinctions do the argumentative work.

Gewässer

Gewässer — Attested source wording; spelling retained. I.004.1.

tohu va bohu

tohu va bohu — Attested source wording; spelling retained. II.129.2.

confusum chaos

confusum chaos — Attested source wording; spelling retained. II.165.1.

gleichförmiges

gleichförmiges — Attested source wording; spelling retained. II.165.1.