st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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172 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
would be a rising.
1
As against the theory of Plato in
the Timseus," that the heavenly bodies are animated,
or have a soul in-dwelling, he affirms that they are
devoid of soul and sense. Such passages of Scripture
as might appear to imply the contrary, such as the
Psalmist s Let the heavens rejoice,
and let the earth
be glad, must be regarded as instances "of a kind of
personification, often found in figurative language.
So in another psalm we may read The sea saw it
:
and fled ; Jordan was driven back. The mountains
skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.
Light, which is identical with fire, was called into
being by the Creator on the first day. Darkness is
not an essential property of matter, but an accident,
being nothing else than the absence of light.
The
moon and the stars were ordained to give light by
night ;
not that they are absent from the sky by day,
but the sun by its superior brilliancy then makes
them pale away and disappear. They are not lights
in themselves, but light-holders. Conspicuous among
these luminaries are the seven planets, called planets,
or erratic stars, because they move in an opposite
direction to the general motion of the heavens. Their
names in order of distance from the earth are, the
The peripatetics illustrated this by supposing the case of a
1
well, or shaft, bored diametrically through the earth. If a stone
was dropped down, they maintained that it must remain in
equilibrium at the centre. See "Johannis Velcurionis Commentarii"
(Lugd. 1558), p. 159. Erasmus also includes this
problema among his Colloquies, but more prudently leaves it as
an exercise for the scholar, to settle what the stone under such
circumstances would do.