The Contest of Wisdom with Folly

Finally, what else besides this spirit of Wisdom could Moses have understood, who was borne above the waters, imparting to them a fiery vigor, as Augustine says along with others. We do not therefore say (Marinus) that some created light performed such wonderful works, but that uncreated light—the pure emanation (I say) of God Almighty—donning the supreme spirit of the world as if it were a garment. Whence that spirit, thus animated by divine splendor, is named created light and the Empyrean or fiery spirit. And this spirit (contrary to your obstinate mind and opinion) we call the soul of the world without any hesitation, whose internal act is GOD, as is evident from what has been said, but this will also be explained more clearly in what follows where we shall treat of the soul of the world. These things, therefore (my Lord), seem to differ entirely from your Peripatetic philosophy, which asserts in a profane manner that light is an accident and by no means a substance. And you yourself are a philosopher of the same flour, for you hold the same sense as the heathens against the sacred letters, which we shall show more clearly in the following sections—not in your manner of quibbling and slander, but with infallible arguments leaning upon the sacred page—where we shall declare the subject of that Aristotelian philosophy to be most opposed to the intention of the Sacred Scripture.

From these things, therefore, unless you are entirely blinded by vain opinions, you could put aside all that doubt which you seemed to have in your text. Consequently, it appears, and that clearly, that my foundations regarding the method of fabricating the world are not as futile and ridiculous as you vainly imagine, and consequently not so empty and weak that they can be overcome by such uncertain and doubtful reasons.

I would produce very many testimonies of authors, both in Philosophy and the Cabala Jewish mystical tradition and Philosophy, to confirm these foundations of ours, were it not that I had perceived (led by some insanity) that you had rejected, cast aside, and held for nothing the opinions of almost all of them in many of your writings. Wherefore I am compelled to bring forward the authority of scripture to prove them, which if you also deny in an impious manner, or have attempted to twist into a contrary sense, the title of Atheist, or at least heretic, will deservedly fall not upon me, but upon yourself.

Col. 712.

Therefore, if the aforementioned opinions which hold that the light of the three days subsequently transferred itself into the sun, or fashioned the Empyrean, or was diffused into individual creatures in each one according to its measure and aptitude, and by the power of the sun the water was separated from the earth, and the air and the heavens from both, can be accommodated to the sacred text, I do not reject them, provided I admit them in another way.

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We find and possess in the resolution of the Theologians that the Light of the three days subsequently contracted itself into the substance of the sun. Similarly, it is likely that it fashioned the Empyrean or fiery heaven by its presence, since when the supreme spirit of the world is informed by divine light, it is necessary that it be most luminous in condition and altogether fiery, since that holy spirit of wisdom informing this created spirit is clothed in ineffable splendor, which even the Wise Man seems to assert in these words: The spirit of Wisdom, he says, is the brightness of eternal light, fairer than the sun, and compared with the light of all the disposition of the stars.

Wisdom 1

That this luminous spirit is diffused into each one according to its measure and aptitude is taught by the holy testimony by which we are instructed that this incorruptible spirit is in all things.