II. According to the Theologians

12. According to the theologians matter must be posited in the heavens, because the ‘chaos’ which they posit [Genesis 1.2: ‘the earth was without form and void’] reached up to the empyrean heaven, and the matter of all corporeal things was contained under the empyrean heaven; and let the matter be posited to be - in itself and as concerns itself - of the same nature.

13. And thus the theologians have to disagree with the Philosopher in the proposition ‘the heaven is necessary and incorruptible’ [n.3]; for as far as its matter is concerned it would be simply corruptible, because the potency for contraries would be in it; but because the form of the heaven does not have a contrary able to overcome its form, therefore it cannot be corrupted by the natural agent from which it receives the form, nor corrupted into fire or water.

14. But in that case it seems that the heaven could at least corrupt fire and turn it into heaven, because the active power of the heaven surpasses the form of fire (the power comes from the form of the heaven), and the matter of fire is also capable of receiving the from of the heaven; therefore fire can be changed by such an agent into being heaven. Or perhaps the heaven cannot change an element into the qualities fit for such a heavenly body, and yet the heavenly form so much dominates the matter that the matter cannot be changed by anything else (by receiving passing impressions), and so cannot be corrupted either.

15. But as concerns the animation of the heaven, there is doubt, because Augustine Enchiridion ch.15 n.58 says hesitantly, “Nor do I hold for certain whether the sun and moon and all the stars belong to the city above, since it seems to some that the shining bodies do not possess intelligence.”

16. Similarly Literal Commentary on Genesis 2.18 n.38 [“A question is wont to be raised whether the luminaries evident in the heavens are only bodies or whether certain spirits of theirs direct them; and whether, if there are such spirits, the heavenly bodies are given life by them, the way flesh is animated by the souls of animals^ Although this cannot easily be understood, yet I think places more opportune for the purpose may arise in the course of our treating of the Scriptures^ For the present, however, while always preserving a pious moderation and gravity, we should believe nothing rashly about a matter obscure.”]

17. And in Retractions 1.11 n.4 when he makes mention of what he said in ibid. Genesis ch.5, he seems to say that the heavens do not have a soul; and to his remark in ibid. ch.10, “it is not retracted as false” he says, “Whether this world is a living thing I have not been able to track down either by authority or reason,” though he does not for this reason deny it.

18. Hence it seems manifest that in no book written prior to the Retractions does he say in the Retractions that he has retracted it. Therefore the authority is of no weight that is adduced from Augustine’s book On Recognizing True Life [really a book by one Honorius], namely “Now those who say that the heavens are rational beings are rightly themselves irrational.” It is agreed too that that book is not Augustine’s (or that he wrote it after the Retractions), because Augustine nowhere seems to have asserted what is denied in the Retractions.

19. Likewise Jerome on Isaiah 1.2 ‘Hear, O heavens’ says that the words are addressed to non-living things.

20. Likewise the Greek Augustine, namely Damascene Orthodox Faith ch.20, asserts that the heavens are not alive.

21. A reason given for this is that it would be pointless to unite a soul with such a body, because such a body has no senses and consequently the soul gets no perfection from it [d.11 n.7].

22. But to say that form is united to matter so that it may receive a perfection from matter does not seem fitting, but rather so that form may communicate a perfection to matter; nay more principally, so that the whole composed of these may be perfect.

23. Response: a form united to matter does receive some perfection from it, otherwise the blessed soul would in vain be united to the body, because it would not acquire perfection from it [d.11 n.8].