_The Orthodox View_ Theodoric of Chartres, on the other hand, explicitly denied the coëxistence of the _materia primordialis_ with God before the Creation. In this respect he showed himself far less divergent than Bernard from the Christian point of view. The work of the first day, he said, was the creation from nothing of the _materia_ of the universe, out of which earth and heaven, fire and water and life were to be evolved.[589] This _materia_ was the _hyle_, or chaos, of the ancient philosophers, he explained, and was designated by Moses in the book of Genesis under various names.[590] For example, when Moses wrote, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. i, 1) the words “heaven” and “earth” referred to chaos; when Moses wrote, “And the earth was without form and void” (Gen. i, 2) the word “earth” referred to the primordial mixture of land and water, a mingling of land that was not solid and of water that was not liquid. Air and fire at that time were of about the density of water. Theodoric’s interpretation of the initial process of the Creation was entirely in keeping with the views of more orthodox writers. Peter Lombard, for instance, wrote as follows: “In the beginning God created the ‘heaven,’ that is to say the angels, and the ‘earth,’ by which is meant the material which composed the four elements. The latter were as yet in the confused and formless condition to which the Greeks gave the name of chaos, and this was before any day.”[591] Peter Comestor also set forth an orthodox view of the Creation. In his commentary on Genesis he revealed a love of the number three and classified every thing possible into groups of three.[592] He pointed out how Moses had avoided three errors. “First, that of Plato, who had conceived of three coëxistent things, God, _ile_ (_hyle_, or chaos), and time, and that the world was made out of _ile_; second, that of Aristotle, who had conceived of two coëxistent things, the world and the fashioner thereof (_mundus et opifex_); and third, that of Epicurus, who had also conceived of two, space (_inane_) and matter in the form of atoms, and that in the beginning natural processes had brought together certain atoms to form water, others to form earth, and others to form fire. Moses, however, had said that God alone was eternal and that the world was created out of nothing, for there was no matter in existence prior to the ‘Creation.’”[593] “In the beginning” meant in the beginning of time as well as of matter, for time and matter were coëternal.[594] _A Rational View_