{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-5568","native_reference":{"book_number":10,"chapter_from":1,"chapter_to":1,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":22,"verse_to":22},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Ambrose of Milan</b>: What pure and untarnished generations follow without intermingling one after another, so that a thymallus produces a thymallus; a sea-wolf, a sea-wolf. The sea-scorpion, too, preserves unstained its marriage bed.… Fish, therefore, know nothing of union with alien species. They do not have unnatural betrothals such as are designedly brought about between animals of two different species as, for instance, the donkey and the mare, or again the female donkey and the horse, both being examples of unnatural union. Certainly there are cases in which nature suffers more in the nature of defilement rather than that of injury to the individual. Man as an abettor of hybrid barrenness is responsible for this. He considers a mongrel animal more valuable than one of a genuine species. You mix together alien species and you mingle diverse seeds.<br/><i>— The Six Days of Creation</i></p><p><b>Ambrose of Milan</b>: Seeds of one kind cannot be changed into another kind of plant nor bring forth produce differing from its own seeds, so that men should spring from serpents and flesh from teeth. How much more, indeed, is it to be believed that whatever has been sown rises again in its own nature and that crops do not differ from their seed, that soft things do not spring from hard nor hard from soft, nor is poison changed into blood, but that flesh is restored from flesh, bone from bone, blood from blood, the humors of the body from humors.<br/><i>— On Belief in the Resurrection</i></p><p><b>Augustine of Hippo</b>: God wanted the blessing to have the power of fecundity, which is revealed in the succession of offspring. Thus, though the animals were made weak and mortal, they might by that blessing preserve their kind by giving birth.<br/><i>— ON THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION OF Genesis 15.50</i></p><p><b>Bede</b>: And God saw that it was good, and He blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth. And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. When He said, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, it pertains to both kinds of creatures made from the waters, that is, both to fish and to birds, because just as all fish can live only in the waters, so too there are many birds which, although they sometimes rest on the lands and propagate their offspring, not only feed from the land but also from the sea, and prefer to inhabit marine dwellings rather than terrestrial ones. But when He adds, and let birds multiply on the earth, it pertains to both kinds of birds, that is, both those that come from the waters and those that feed from the earth, because indeed even those birds which do not know how to live without waters often hide much of the time under the depths of the waters like fish, occasionally tend to come out onto the lands, especially when they are breeding and nurturing their young.<br/><i>— Commentary on Genesis (Hexaemeron)</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: For, whereas we learn from Scripture in the account of the first Creation, that first the earth brought forth \"the green herb\" (as the narrative says), and that then from this plant seed was yielded, from which, when it was shed on the ground, the same form of the original plant again sprang up, the Apostle, it is to be observed, declares that this very same thing happens in the Resurrection also; and so we learn from him the fact, not only that our humanity will be then changed into something nobler, but also that what we have therein to expect is nothing else than that which was at the beginning.<br/><i>— ON THE SOUL AND THE RESURRECTION</i></p><p><b>Gregory of Nyssa</b>: What, then, is to be said about these theories? This that those who would have it that the soul migrates into natures divergent from each other seem to me to obliterate all natural distinctions; to blend and confuse together, in every possible respect, the rational, the irrational, the sentient, and the insensate; if, that is, all these are to pass into each other, with no distinct natural order secluding them from mutual transition. To say that one and the same soul, on account of a particular environment of body, is at one time a rational and intellectual soul, and that then it is caverned along with the reptiles, or herds with the birds, or is a beast of burden, or a carnivorous one, or swims in the deep; or even drops down to an insensate thing, so as to strike out roots or become a complete tree, producing buds on branches, and from those buds a flower, or a thorn, or a fruit edible or noxious-to say this, is nothing short of making all things the same and believing that one single nature runs through all beings; that there is a connexion between them which blends and confuses hopelessly all the marks by which one could be distinguished from another.<br/><i>— ON THE SOUL AND THE RESURRECTION</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: \"And God saw that they are good, and blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the waters which are in the sea, and let the flying things be multiplied over the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning, the fifth day.\" In the sea indeed he commands \"the great whales\" and \"every soul of the creeping animals which the waters brought forth\" to dwell, where \"that dragon too, whom God formed to mock them,\" inhabits. But the birds he commands to be multiplied over the earth, which once was \"dry,\" but now is already called \"earth,\" as we explained above. But someone asks how the great whales and the creeping things are taken in an evil sense and the flying things in a good sense, when it was said of all together: \"And God saw that they are good\"? To the saints themselves those things are good which are opposed to them, because they can conquer them, and, when they have conquered them, they are made of greater glory before God. Indeed, when the devil had asked that power be given him against Job, the adversary, assailing him, became for him the cause of a double glory after victory. This is shown from the fact that the things which he had lost in the present he received in double, being about to receive them in like manner also, without doubt, in the heavenly things. And the Apostle says that \"no one is crowned unless he has striven lawfully.\" And indeed how will there be a contest, if there is no one who resists? How great is the beauty and splendor of light would not be discerned, unless the obscurity of night came between. Whence are some praised for chastity, unless because others are condemned for unchastity? Whence are brave men magnified, unless there existed the unwarlike and the timid? If you apply something bitter, then the sweet becomes more praiseworthy. If you consider the black, the things that are bright will seem more pleasing to you. And to say it briefly, from the consideration of evils the beauty of good things is shown more brightly. Therefore, then, concerning all these things Scripture says: \"And God saw that they are good.\" Yet why is it not written: And God said that they are good, but: \"God saw that they are good\"? That is, he saw their usefulness and that reason by which, although they were in themselves such, they could nevertheless make good men best. Therefore, then, he said: \"Increase and multiply, and fill the waters which are in the sea, and let the flying things be multiplied over the earth,\" that is, so that the great whales indeed and the creeping things should be in the sea, as we explained above, and the flying things over the earth.<br/><i>— HOMILIES ON Genesis 1.10</i></p><p><b>Tertullian</b>: I blame Matter with a like censure, because out of it, evil though it be—nay, very evil—good things have been created, nay, \"very good\" ones: \"And God saw that they were good, and God blessed them\" Genesis 1:21-22 —because, of course, of their very great goodness; certainly not because they were evil, or very evil. Change is therefore admissible in Matter; and this being the case, it has lost its condition of eternity; in short, its beauty is decayed in death.<br/><i>— Against Hermogenes</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"badb26777cc22ef8617de0d1084e572ac8bfd69930b12eccc99c83f089d5089d","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":5568,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"625ad4ae7fe87b57b5eb071832378831cd744f2fe400602842a4c086560e5634","translator":null,"work":null}