all He has made pleased Him in the eternal design as well as in
the actual result._
For what else is to be understood by that invariable refrain, "And
God saw that it was good," than the approval of the work in its
design, which is the wisdom of God? For certainly God did not in the
actual achievement of the work first learn that it was good, but,
on the contrary, nothing would have been made had it not been first
known by Him. While, therefore, He sees that that is good which, had
He not seen it before it was made, would never have been made, it
is plain that He is not discovering, but teaching that it is good.
Plato, indeed, was bold enough to say that, when the universe was
completed, God was, as it were, elated with joy.[487] And Plato was
not so foolish as to mean by this that God was rendered more blessed
by the novelty of His creation; but he wished thus to indicate that
the work now completed met with its Maker's approval, as it had while
yet in design. It is not as if the knowledge of God were of various
kinds, knowing in different ways things which as yet are not, things
which are, and things which have been. For not in our fashion does He
look forward to what is future, nor at what is present, nor back upon
what is past; but in a manner quite different and far and profoundly
remote from our way of thinking. For He does not pass from this to
that by transition of thought, but beholds all things with absolute
unchangeableness; so that of those things which emerge in time, the
future, indeed, are not yet, and the present are now, and the past no
longer are; but all of these are by Him comprehended in His stable
and eternal presence. Neither does He see in one fashion by the eye,
in another by the mind, for He is not composed of mind and body; nor
does His present knowledge differ from that which it ever was or
shall be, for those variations of time, past, present, and future,
though they alter our knowledge, do not affect His, "with whom is
no variableness, neither shadow of turning."[488] Neither is there
any growth from thought to thought in the conceptions of Him whose
spiritual vision all things which He knows are at once embraced. For
as without any movement that time can measure, He Himself moves all
temporal things, so He knows all times with a knowledge that time
cannot measure. And therefore He saw that what He had made was good,
when He saw that it was good to make it. And when He saw it made, He
had not on that account a twofold nor any way increased knowledge
of it; as if He had less knowledge before He made what He saw. For
certainly He would not be the perfect worker He is, unless His
knowledge were so perfect as to receive no addition from His finished
works. Wherefore, if the only object had been to inform us who made
the light, it had been enough to say, "God made the light;" and if
further information regarding the means by which it was made had been
intended, it would have sufficed to say, "And God said, Let there be
light, and there was light," that we might know not only that God
had made the world, but also that He had made it by the word. But
because it was right that three leading truths regarding the creature
be intimated to us, viz., who made it, by what means, and why, it is
written, "God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God
saw the light that it was good." If, then, we ask who made it, it
was "God." If, by what means, He said "Let it be," and it was. If we
ask, why He made it, "it was good." Neither is there any author more
excellent than God, nor any skill more efficacious than the word of
God, nor any cause better than that good might be created by the good
God. This also Plato has assigned as the most sufficient reason for
the creation of the world, that good works might be made by a good
God;[489] whether he read this passage, or, perhaps, was informed of
these things by those who had read them, or, by his quick-sighted
genius, penetrated to things spiritual and invisible through the
things that are created, or was instructed regarding them by those
who had discerned them.