Probably the best example of this comes early in the commentary, when Olivi discusses the six days of creation (and final day of rest) as a historical model. The six days of creation (and the day of rest) had been a model of salvation history since the patristic era, so Olivi is hardly breaking new ground, but he builds a more complex picture than seven phases of history corresponding with the seven days. For example, Olivi argues that the pattern of seven asserts itself in both Testaments. In the Old, history occurs in seven distinct phases, which Peter calls both a tempus and an opus: 1) the ornamentation of nature (that is, creation), 2) the events leading up to and including the Flood, 3) the covenant with Abraham, 4) the establishment of the Law, 5) the glory of the kings of Israel, 6) the time of the prophets, and 7) a time of quiet in which the Temple was rebuilt.
Likewise the seven days set a pattern for the tempora or opera of the New Testament and the period after it. Since not all this era is yet consigned to history, Peter uses the events of the first seven days to mystically (mystice) explain the unfolding of salvation history both past and future. On the first day, God created light; hence, the first opus or tempus of the New Testament is the sowing of grace, that is, the time of Christ and the apostles. The separation of the waters on the second day provides a metaphor for the “baptism” of the blood of the martyrs. On the third day, dry land appeared, corresponding to the early Church from Pope Sylvester through the general councils of late antiquity. Here the close visual and visceral connection to the days of creation and eras of breaks down, as the fourth and fifth ages belong to Justinian and Charlemagne respectively. The sixth opus is somewhat vague from a temporal standpoint, as it is the era in which Olivi positions himself, a time of deepening faith and the emergence of a Christ-like way of life. In regard to the latter, Olivi probably had in mind his own Order, but likely also other friars and monastic orders. He sees this period as having begun with the growth of formal theology as a discipline. Finally, the day of rest is a future event, the opening of the seventh seal as described in the Apocalypse.63 While one might expect similar and very spiritual readings of Genesis to follow, instead we find that Olivi changes course quite quickly, and focuses almost exclusively on natural philosophy for the rest of his discussion of the Hexaemeron. The commentary on the six days alone is quite long, and summarizing its contents is difficult, as Olivi tackles a range of subjects. Instead, a few examples will serve to show how Olivi used his Genesis commentary as a means of explicating natural philosophy and truths regarding the natural world.
At times it seems that Olivi is using Genesis as an excuse to tackle ad hoc philosophical questions. One such example comes from the second of his two chapters on the six days of creation. Taking up Genesis 1:3 (And let there be light), Olivi jumps into a discussion of optics, specifically whether rays of light retract or not. “Some people” says Olivi, not naming his philosophical adversary whether real or imagined, “think that light does not move from its place—that after the space of a usual day when it has illuminated the world it retracts its rays and thus it becomes night in the whole world.”64 Olivi naturally thinks this is impossible, and argues that light rays are accidents of luminous bodies that do not retract themselves. Olivi argues that such an action would require a miracle of God, but he doubts this has ever occurred. Light emanates from its source, argues Olivi, and the kind of mutation required to make light retract itself would be unnatural. Olivi later connects this argument to the kind of light emanated by saintly bodies and by Christ, but they are examples of his theoretical claims rather than their aim.
In Olivi’s desire to connect the seven days to salvation history, the Trinity, and other Christian truths, he never considers the notion that the six days were metaphorical nor only meant to be understood allegorically or spiritually. Olivi understood creation literally, as a six/seven day event in which God formally created the universe. It is this literal view that informs the naturalist aspect of his commentary, and also prompts him to take on the Augustinian reading of Genesis as a spiritual text rather than as an accurate account of the physical nature of the world. Olivi takes on Augustine early in his commentary, again when discussing Genesis 1:3. Here Olivi argues that the light of Genesis 1:3 refers to actual light and the division of the days rather than the enlightenment of angelic or human nature. Augustine was deeply interested in drawing out the spiritual dimensions and lessons of Genesis, a general sentiment to which Olivi was quite friendly, but did so at the expense of what Olivi considered to be a representation of the physical composition of the cosmos. This allows Olivi to agree with some of Augustine’s more specific assertions, such as the fact that the Hexaemeron suggests the Trinity, and pay lip service to Augustine’s insight. Both authors agree that Genesis is a meditation on the relationship between the divine and the human, but disagreement on the details overshadows Peter’s claims of broad thematic agreements.65 Augustine for his part sees Trinitarian unity expressed in the first two verses of Genesis. The pericope “In the beginning God made heaven and earth” contains two persons of the Trinity—the Father (God) and the Son or Word (the beginning).66 The third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, is found in Gen 1:2, “And the Spirit of God was being borne over the water.”67 This is, to Augustine, a “complete reference (conpletam commemorationem)” to the Trinity, already established before the work of creation, which is signified by lux fiat in Gen 1:3.68 At issue for Augustine is the coeternal nature of the persons of the Trinity, a much debated point of theology in the early Church. Augustine therefore considers that the six-day course of creation was nothing more than an allegory and that creation occurred all at once. Olivi, for his part, sees the Trinity as being revealed over time. This is not to say that he denies the coeternality of the Trinity (he does not). This was, in Olivi’s era, assumed to be true. For Olivi, the Trinity always existed, but scripture reveals the nature of the three persons gradually over the six-day work of creation, as part of a series of patterns of threes.69 Temporality thus becomes the crux of Olivi’s dispute with Augustine.
What bothers Olivi is that Augustine’s contemplation of the text—that is, a broadly allegorical reading—does not meet Olivi’s understanding of a literal commentary.70 Olivi is so put off by Augustine’s reading of Genesis 1:3 that he cannot help but blurt out that Augustine’s reading is just flat out untrue according to any reasonable interpretation of the text. Taking an implied shot at the title of Augustine’s work, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Olivi continues, “It certainly isn’t literal, since the whole of scripture prior to the first day up through the seventh clearly points out that it is talking about real days and nights.” To be clear, Olivi stresses his agreement with Augustine that Genesis has a spiritual message, as his Joachite approach would suggest, and he often validates mystical readings of Genesis and relies on Augustine elsewhere.71 Yet, Olivi makes a clear break with exegesis that, in his mind, appears to twist the words of scripture to mean something that a plain reading would not suggest, that is, Augustine’s claim that everything was created in an instant and that the subsequent description of creation existed only to assert certain theological truths.
Where earlier generations of exegetes had passed over literal readings of the scriptures as a kind of preamble to the meat of exegesis, the drawing out of the moral and spiritual meanings of a text, Olivi was keen to suggest the value of the literal. Some of his concern likely stemmed from his attachment to Joachism. For one, the Joachite principle of concordia relied heavily on the chronology or chronologies of the Bible. Seeing harmony between the texts relies not only on a typology of persons, but also on typologies of events—chronological and numerical patterns that emerge over and over within the text and, hence, within history. Augustine’s compression of creation to a single moment of “God created the heavens and the earth” is antithetical to the parallelism of Joachite readings.
Olivi was also concerned with demonstrating