Water and darkness explained literally, against heretical myths

Nor was air the covering of the earth at that time. The nature of air is thin and transparent: it receives every form of visible things and passes them on to the eyes of those who see. What remains, then, is for us to understand that water lay spread over the surface of the earth, since the moist substance had not yet been separated off to its own proper place. And for this reason the earth was not only invisible but also unformed. For even now an excess of moisture hinders the earth from bearing fruit. The same cause, then, accounts both for its not being seen and for its being unformed—if indeed the furnishing of the earth is the order proper to it and according to nature: grain fields swelling in the hollows, meadows green and bursting with varied flowers, fertile glens, and mountain peaks shaded by forests. None of these it yet possessed. It was in labor with the birth of all things through the power placed in it by the Creator, but it was waiting for the appointed times, so that at the divine command it might bring forth its offspring into the open.

But “darkness,” it says, “was over the deep” (Genesis 1:2). Here again are other starting points for myths and beginnings of more impious fabrications, for those who twist the words to their own private notions. They do not explain darkness as it actually is—air without light, or a place shadowed by the blocking of a body, or in general a place deprived of light for whatever reason—but they explain darkness as an evil power, or rather evil itself, having its origin from itself, opposed and contrary to the goodness of God. For if God is light, they say, then clearly the power arrayed against him would be darkness, according to the logic of their thought. Darkness, they say, that does not have its being from another, but is a self-begotten evil. Darkness, an enemy of souls, a maker of death, the opposite of virtue. And they are deceived into thinking that this darkness both exists and was not made by God, on the basis of the very words of the prophet. From this, what wicked and godless doctrines have not been fabricated? What heavy wolves, tearing apart the flock of God, have not taken their start from this little phrase and spread over souls? Were not the Marcionites from here? Were not the Valentinians from here? Was not the abominable heresy of the Manichaeans from here—which one would not be wrong to call a gangrene of the churches? Why do you run so far from the truth, O man, devising for yourself starting points of destruction? The word is simple and easy for all to grasp. The earth was invisible, it says. What is the cause? Because it had the deep spread over it. And what is the meaning of “the deep”? Much water, hard to reach, whose limit is downward. But we know that many bodies often appear through water that is thinner and clear. How then was no part of the earth shown through the waters? Because the air poured over it was still without light and darkened. A ray of the sun passing through waters often shows the pebbles in the depths; but in deep night no one could in any way see what is under the water. So the statement that follows confirms that the earth was invisible: because the deep was what covered it, and this deep was darkened. Therefore the deep is not a multitude of opposing powers, as some have imagined; nor is darkness an original and evil power arrayed against the good.