Why the earth is called invisible; against those who posit uncreated matter

For none of these things had yet come to be. So you will not stray from the truth if you say that the heaven too was unformed. Scripture calls the earth invisible for two reasons: either because there was not yet a human being to see it, or because it lay submerged beneath the water spreading over its surface and could not be seen. The waters had not yet been gathered into their own gatherings, which God later gathered together and named seas. What then is invisible? One kind is what is not by nature able to be seen by the eyes of flesh, like our mind. Another kind is what is visible by nature but is hidden because a body covering it stands in the way, like iron in the deep. In this latter sense we understand the earth to be called invisible now, since it was covered by the water. And further, since light had not yet come to be, it was no wonder that Scripture also called the earth invisible for this reason: it lay in darkness, because the air above it was unlit.

But the counterfeiters of the truth—those who do not train their own minds to follow Scripture, but twist the meaning of the Scriptures toward their own wish—say that matter is indicated by these words. For this, they say, is by nature both invisible and unformed: without quality in its own right, separated from every form and shape. The craftsman, they say, took it in hand, shaped it by his own wisdom, brought it into order, and so through it gave being to the visible world. Now if this matter is unbegotten, then first of all it is equal in honor to God, deemed worthy of the same privileges. What could be more impious than this—that the qualityless, the formless, the uttermost formlessness, the unformed ugliness (I am using their own terms) should be deemed worthy of the same preeminence as the wise and powerful and all-beautiful craftsman and creator of all things? And further, if matter is so great as to receive the whole knowledge of God, then in some way they set its substance alongside the unsearchable power of God—if indeed it is sufficient to measure out through itself the whole understanding of God. But if matter is less than God's activity, then their argument turns into an even more absurd blasphemy: they would have God held back from his own works, ineffective and inactive, for lack of matter.

But the poverty of human nature has deceived them. Among us, every craft is occupied with some particular matter—metalworking with iron, carpentry with wood—and in these things one thing is the underlying material, another the form, and another the finished product that results from the form. The matter is taken from outside, the form is applied by the craft, and the finished product is what is composed from both, from the form and the matter. So they suppose it is also with the divine creation: the shape of the world was brought in by the wisdom of the maker of all things, but the matter was supplied from outside to the creator, and the world came to be composite—having its underlying substance and being from elsewhere, but receiving its shape and form from God.