Redeeming Creation: Creatio ex nihilo and the Imago Dei in Augustine

*This article appears in the International Journal of Systematic Theology 15:2 (2013) 135-153

Redeeming Creation: Creatio ex nihilo and the

Imago Dei in Augustine

Abstract

Contemporary theology has sometimes been critical of the

perceived abstract, speculative intellectualism in

Augustine’s anthropology, especially in his understanding of

the imago dei. Within the larger context of Augustine’s

claims on the soul, however, and in particular the way he

conceives the soul created from nothing according to the

image of God, one finds an intimate binding of

soteriological and moral concerns to his claims on the

created origin of the soul. In this we see that Augustine’s

intellectualism does not remove the soul from time, history

and the relations with God and the world forged therein, but

rather underscores the soul’s sensitivity to and dependence

on its relations to God and the world.

I. Augustine Today

From the fallout of the Pelagian controversy, through

Reformation debates, and into contemporary discussions in

phenomenology, Augustine’s anthropology has continued to

exert a diverse and long-standing influence in Western

1

religious and philosophical discussions of the human

person.1 Despite this, his legacy and reception in

contemporary theology is far from unambiguous. One of the

significant developments that has shifted sentiment against

Augustine, and one that also represents a departure from

patristic and medieval theology, has been the incorporation

of new methodologies into contemporary theology.

Traditional theological reliance on philosophy has become

supplemented with, and in many cases eclipsed by, a turn to

the social sciences. In part, this is a result of a search

for more flexible, ethical, and socially and politically

minded methodologies. Attendant upon such methodological

shifts is also growing discontent with the supposed

1 In this essay, citations from Augustine’s Latin writings

are drawn from three different series: Patrologia Latina

[hereafter PL], ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1844-64); Corpus

Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter CSEL] (Vienna:

Tempsky, 1865—); and Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina

[hereafter CCSL] (Turnhout: Brepolis, 1953—). The PL is the

most complete series, but is becoming replaced by the more

recent CSEL and CCSL critical editions. I cite the CSEL or

CCSL where they are available. In each case, I have noted

in paranthesis the Latin source that is cited along with the

volume and page number of the reference. English

translations of Augustine’s writings, when available, are

noted with the first reference to each work.

2

rationalism of the Latin patristic and medieval traditions

and their reliance on philosophical methods that supposedly

abstract Christian doctrine from the world rather than

develop doctrine in response to its social and political

exigencies.2

Augustine has borne his share of such criticism, given

his primary place within Latin patristics. A wide-range of

recent scholarship has brought charges that Augustine’s

anthropology is mired in a Greek metaphysics averse to

Christian soteriological concerns. For example, some

contemporary feminist theologians have raised concerns that

Augustine relies too heavily on oppositional dualisms

inherent in Greek metaphysics (e.g., mind/ body, God/ world,

man/ woman), and that his views on God and the human person

2 William Harmless’ recent introduction to medieval mystical

literature offers a good prophylactic against 20th century

tendencies to read Latin medieval mysticism abstracted from

its historical and social context. Harmless roots this

tendency in William James’ treatment of religious

experience, and works effectively against it to show that

medieval mysticism is rooted in biblical thought and the

political dynamics of the time. While this article moves in

a different direction than Harmless, the point here is that

Augustine’s anthropology is likewise not guilty of the sins

of abstraction of which it is accused. William Harmless,

Mystics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

3

are imbued with an abstract intellectualism disconnected

from time, history, and material reality.3

In his Orthodox critique of Western (Latin)

Christianity, John Zizioulas brings a distinctive voice to

contemporary scholarship, but echoes the broad claim that

Augustine’s doctrine of God, anthropology, and ecclesiology

have an intellectualist, other-worldly character due in part

to his Neoplatonist heritage.4 Colin Gunton joins this

interpretation in his more focused critique of Augustine’s

so-called psychological model of the Trinity. Gunton argues

that Augustine’s analogy between the triadic structures of

the mind and the Trinity derives from a Neoplatonist

philosophy of mind, with the result that Augustine’s

trinitarian thought and its attendant anthropology is rooted

3 For example, see: Sallie McFague, Models of God. Theology for an

Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), pp.

109-110; Anne Primavesi, From Apocalypse to Genesis. Ecology,

Feminism and Christianity (Kent: Burnes & Oates, 1991), pp. 103-

4, 209-219; Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God. An

Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing (San Francisco: Harper

Collins, 1992), pp. 134-139, 184-8.4 John Zizioulas, Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the

Church (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985).

Zizioulas alludes to this claim in a variety of places. For

example, see: p. 25, 41 n. 35, 88, 95, 100, 104 n. 98.

4

in an abstract individualism and intellectualism that

undermines an ecclesiological and soteriological context.5

This sampling from diverse corners of contemporary

theology indicates the broad scope of contemporary critiques

of Augustine’s anthropology. Such critiques are as striking

in their harmony of voice as they are in their cacophony

when placed against the finer points of Augustine’s own

claims on the nature of the soul. As one delves into his

characterization of the human person, one admittedly finds

an intellectualism that centers claims on human existence

and identity around the soul. This intellectualism,

however, does not lead Augustine to abscond off with the

soul and hide it away from the flow of time, history, and

the economy of salvation. Rather, it leads him in the

reverse direction. His supposed intellectualism is one that

moves the soul’s relations with God and the world to the

heart of its identity, and brings moral and soteriological

issues into central focus.

When Augustine turns to questions of human identity

formation, one finds a soul highly sensitive to its

5 Colin Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T&T

Clark, 1997), pp. 42-43, 45. Brad Green offers a good

critique of Colin Gunton’s interpretation of Augustine’s

ontology and trinitarianism. Brad Green, ‘The Protomodern

Augustine? Colin Gunton and the Failure of Augustine’,

International Journal of Systematic Theology 9:3 (2007), pp. 328-41.

5

environment, shaped in fundamental ways through its

relations, and never far-removed from a basic soteriological

dynamic that reaches to the depths of the soul’s formation.

Margaret Miles’ captures key aspects of the Augustinian soul

when she observes that: “Augustine’s ‘soul’ is primarily a

partially centered energy, initially barely distinguishable

from its cosmic, physical, and spiritual environment, which

comes to be cumulatively distinguished and defined by the

objects of its attention and affection.”6 Augustine himself

describes the relational, changeable nature of the soul

thus:

If the soul, you see, were something unchangeable, we

ought not to be inquiring in any way at all about its

quasi-material; but as it is, its changeableness is

obvious enough through its sometimes being misshapen by

vices and errors, sometimes being put into proper shape

by virtues and the teachings of truth, but all within

the nature it has of being soul.7

6 Margaret Miles, ‘Vision: The Eye of the Body and the Eye

of the Mind in Saint Augustine’s De Trinitate and Confessions’,

The Journal of Religion (1983), p. 129.7 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 7.6.9 (CSEL 28. 205). ‘si enim

quiddam incommutabile esset anima, nullo modo eius quasi materiem quaerere

deberemus; nunc autem mutabilitas eius satis indicat eam interim uitiis atque

fallaciis deformem reddi, formari autem uirtutibus ueritatis que doctrina, sed in

sua iam natura, qua est anima’. English citations of De Genesi ad

6

Miles’ characterization of the origin and formation of the

Augustinian soul moves at a general level to describe what

Augustine develops more specifically, especially through the

concepts of creatio ex nihilo and the imago dei. Together, these

concepts fundamentally shape the way Augustine describes the

emergence of the soul from its original nothingness and the

dynamic telos (formation) that guides its affections and

attachments. These concepts also highlight the way

Augustine’s intellectualism—his rooting human identity in

the soul—opens onto basic moral and soteriological issues.

One of the primary places Augustine develops the

concepts of creatio ex nihilo and the imago dei is in his exegesis

of the first chapter of Genesis. Like other patristic

authors, he draws a concept of creatio ex nihilo out of Genesis

1:1. Moving further into Genesis, Augustine argues that the

‘us’ in Genesis 1:26—“Let us make the human”—intimates that

litteram can be found in Augustine, On Genesis, trans. Edmund

Hill (New York: New City Press, 2002). See also, Augustine,

Confessiones 4.10.15 (CCSL 27. 48-9), 6.8.13 (CCSL 27. 82-3),

11.28.37-30.40 (CCSL 27. 213-5), 13.14.15 (CCSL 27. 250).

English citations of Confessiones can be found in Augustine,

Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford

University Press, 1991).

7

the divine image within the person, and more specifically

within the mind, is the image of the Trinity.8

Though not developed in conjunction with one another, I

would like to explore the way Augustine’s analysis of creatio

ex nihilo and the imago dei come together in his anthropology to

frame his analysis of the intellectual nature of the soul.

In particular, Augustine’s close handling of issues

surrounding creation and salvation, and the way the soul’s

identity is forged therein, develops out of his commentaries

on Genesis and indirectly in De Trinitate. The latter text is

Augustine’s most extensive and influential analysis of the

divine image, though it offers no overt discussion of creatio

ex nihilo. And for a range of scholars the text itself is

problematic, especially the latter half of the work where

Augustine famously moves into the interior reaches of his

soul in search of analogies between the divine image in the

soul and the Trinity. The polemical concerns of the first

8 For Augustine’s claims that the divine image is that of

the Trinity see: Augustine, De Trinitate 7.6.12 (CCSL 50.

266) ; Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 3.19.29 (CSEL 28. 85-6).

For his arguments on the location of the divine image within

the mind see: Augustine, De Trinitate 12.4.4 (CCSL 50. 358),

14.12.15 (CCSL 50a. 442-3); Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram

3.20.30 (CSEL 28. 86). English citations of De Trinitate can

be found in Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill (New

York: New City Press, 1991).

8

half of the work seem to disappear (e.g., anti-Homoian

issues), and Augustine’s meditative exercise appears more of

a Platonic ascent to the One than a Christian, trinitarian

model of incarnation and salvation.9 As a result, De Trinitate

is sometimes cast as an overly abstract, speculative

approach to questions of the nature of the soul, the

9 Scholars provide a range of answers to the question of

whether De Trinitate is modeled on a Neoplatonist ascent to the

One. Phillip Cary argues for a fairly strong relation

between Platonism and Augustine’s inward turn in De Trinitate.

Gerald O’Daly argues the relation is more formal, with

Platonism offering a basic structure that Augustine fills in

with Christian soteriology. John Cavadini maintains

Augustine moves through the inward exercises in De Trinitate to

demonstrate the failure of Platonism to reach God. Lewis

Ayres and Michel Barnes locate De Trinitate within a Pro-Nicene

and Christian Platonist matrix. Despite the diversity of

such scholarship, contemporary systematic scholars tend to a

negative and reductive read of Augustine vis-à-vis

Platonism. Phillip Cary, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self: The

Legacy of a Christian Platonist (New York: Oxford University Press,

2000); Gerald O’Daly, Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind (Berkeley and

Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987),

especially pp. 8-11; Gerald O’Daly, Augustine: Platonism Pagan

and Christian. Studies in Plotinus and Augustine (Burlington, Vermont:

Ashgate Publishing Company, 2001); John C. Cavadini, ‘The

9

Trinity, and salvation, making it a microcosm of sorts

through which we can vet the above-mentioned critiques

against Augustine’s anthropology.10

In this essay, I seek to offer something of a

rapprochement between Augustine and contemporary

interpretations of his anthropology by focusing on his

supposed intellectualism. The proposal I develop requires

that we examine specific facets of Augustine’s

interpretations of creatio ex nihilo and the imago dei: in

particular, his language of de nihilo rather than ex nihilo, and

the Pauline lens through which he explicates the imago dei.11

Quest for Truth in Augustine’s Augustine, De Trinitate’, Theological

Studies 58:3 (1997), pp. 429-440; Michel Barnes, ‘Augustine

in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology’, Theological Studies 56

(1995); Lewis Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2010).10 Catherine LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San

Francisco: Harper, 1973), pp. 81-10; Colin Gunton, The

Promise of Trinitarian Theology, pp. 42-43.11 The traditional interpretation of Augustine’s relation to

Paul, epitomized by scholars like Peter Brown, holds that

Augustine moves from his early Platonist thinking to a more

Christian, Nicene perspective through his reading of Paul.

One of the confounding aspects of De Trinitate, a text late in

Augustine’s career and so within his Christian period, is

that it appears to many scholars to read more as a Platonist

10

This focus will move the analysis beyond a purely exegetical

undertaking and into a synthetic one since Augustine does

not develop these issues together. One of my central

contentions, however, is that Augustine’s handling of creatio

ex nihilo brings to the fore a moral and soteriological

dynamic at the root of the soul’s existence, and that this

dynamic helps highlight a similar set of concerns often

missed in De Trinitate that develop around the way he draws on

a Pauline lens to interpret the Genesis account of the

divine image.

II. The Soul de nihilo

When Augustine turns to questions on the origin of the

soul, his interpretation of creatio ex nihilo is central to his

work. In his recently completed trilogy on Augustine’s

anthropology, Phillip Cary argues against this view that

Augustine remains a Christian Platonist throughout his life

and interprets Paul through this lens. I am not here trying

to directly defend or refute either view, but rather to

indicate that howsoever Augustine is reading Paul he is

importing basic, Christian soteriological concerns from this

reading. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2000), pp. 96-7; Phillip

Cary, Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (New York,

Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 33-56.

11

understanding of the soul’s nature.12 Interestingly, he

often opts for the preposition ‘de’ rather than ‘ex’ to

account for how creation is ‘from’ nothing.13 In Latin,

both prepositions can mean “of, from, out of”, and there is

no clear delineation in use in the wider Latin tradition.14

Despite this, Augustine draws a distinction between them at

12 A good overview of Augustine’s formulation of the doctrine

of creatio ex nihilo can be found in N. Joseph Torchia, O.P.,

Creatio ex nihilo and the Theology of St. Augustine: The Anti-Manichaean Polemic

and Beyond (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). Augustine draws on

the doctrine to help ground his distinction between divine

immutability and creaturely finitude. This distinction is

axiomatic to Augustine’s thought. Various commentators have

raised this point. James J. O’Donnell, Confessions, vol. 2

(New York: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 394-5, 445-6; Robert

O’Connell, The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine’s Later Works (New

York: Fordham University Press, 1987), p. 239; Etienne

Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (New York: Random

House, 1960), p. 22; Bernard J. Cooke, S.J., ‘The

Mutability-Immutability Principle in St. Augustine’s

Metaphysics’, The Modern Schoolman 24/ 1 (1947), pp. 175-193.13 I would like to express a debt of gratitude to Jean-Luc

Marion for first bringing this distinction to my attention.

For Augustine’s statements that creation is de nihilo see:

Augustine, De Natura Boni 1 (CSEL 25. 855); Augustine,

Confessiones 12.6.6-7.7 (CCSL 27. 218-20), 12.22.31 (CCSL 27.

12

crucial points. This is especially true in his anti-

Manichaean polemics. In De Natura Boni, which is one of

Augustine’s more concise and mature critiques of the

Manichees, he distinguishes between ‘ex’ and ‘de’ within the

context of his exegesis of Exodus 3:14. Augustine argues

that the divine name (ego sum qui sum) points to God’s

immutability.15 The fact that creation is from God,

however, does not mean it shares in God’s immutability.

232-3), 12.29.40 (CCSL 27. 238-40), 13.33.48 (CCSL 27. 270-

1); Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 7.28.40 (CSEL 28. 225),

7.28.43 (CSEL 28. 228), 10.4.7 (CSEL 28. 300); Augustine, De

Genesi contra Manichaeos 1.2.4 (PL 34. 175-6), 1.6.10 (PL 34.

178), 1.7.11 (PL 34. 178-9), 2.7.8 (PL 34. 200), 2.29.43 (PL

34. 219-220). English citations of De Natura Boni can be

found in Augustine, Augustine: Earlier Writings. The Library of

Christian Classics, vol. 6, trans. John H. S. Burleigh

(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953). English

citations of De Genesi contra Manichaeos can be found in

Augustine, On Genesis, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City

Press, 2002).14 For example, in Adversus Hermogenes Tertullian alternates

interchangeably between ex nihilo (2.1, 2.4, 8.2, 14.2, 14.3,

16.3, 21.2) and de nihilo (2.1, 8.1, 14.2, 16.4, 21.2).

Tertullian, The Treatise Against Hermogenes, trans. J. H. Waszink

(Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1956). For an overview of

this issue see Torchia, Creatio ex nihilo, pp. 111-115.

13

This is because creation is brought into existence from

(‘ab/ ex’) God’s power not from (‘de’) God’s substance.16 In

De Natura Boni 27 Augustine illustrates the difference between

a substantial relation, denoted by ‘de’, and causal

relation, denoted by ‘ab/ ex’:

‘Of him’ [ex ipso] does not have the same meaning as

‘out of him’ [de ipso] . . . Of him are the heaven and

the earth for he made them. But they are not ‘out of

15 Exodus 3:14 is one of Augustine’s favorite verses to

support divine immutability. See also: Augustine, De vera

religione 49.97 (CCSL 32. 250); Augustine, De fide et symbolo 4.6-

7 (CSEL 41. 9-11); Augustine, Confessiones 7.10.16 (CCSL 27.

103-4), 13.31.46 (CCSL 27. 269-70); Augustine, De Genesi ad

litteram 5.16.34 (CSEL 28. 159); Augustine, De Trinitate 5.2.3

(CCSL 50. 207-8), 7.5.10 (CCSL 50. 260-1); Augustine, De

civitate Dei 8.11 (CCSL 47. 227-8). For a comprehensive list

of passages where Augustine draws on Exodus 3:14, see E. Zum

Brunn, Dieu et l’Être: Exégèses d’Exode 3,14 et de Coran 20,11-24 (Paris:

Études augustiniennes, 1978), p. 164. English citations of

De civitate Dei can be found in Augustine, The City of God against the

Pagans, trans. R.W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2005). English citations of De vera religione and De fide

et symbolo can be found in Augustine, Augustine: Earlier Writings.

The Library of Christian Classics, vol. 6, trans. John H. S.

Burleigh (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953).16 Augustine, De Natura Boni 19 (CSEL 25. 863).

14

him’ because they are not parts of his substance. If a

man beget a son and make a house both are ‘of him’ but

the son is of [de] his substance, the house is of [de]

earth and wood . . . a man cannot make anything of

nothing [de nihilo]. But God, of whom and through whom

and in whom are all things, had no need of any material

which he had not made himself, to help his

omnipotence.17

In this passage Augustine aligns ‘de’ with a substantial

relation and ‘ex’ with a causal relation. That which is

begotten of (de) God shares a substantial relation to God—it

is God.18 This includes the Son and the Holy Spirit. That

17 Augustine, De Natura Boni 27 (CSEL 25. 868). ‘“ex ipso” autem

non hoc significat quod “de ipso”. quod enim de ipso est, potest dici “ex ipso;”

non autem omne, quod “ex ipso” est, recte dicitur “de ipso;” ex ipso enim caelum

et terra, quia ipse fecit ea, non autem de ipso, quia non de substantia sua. sicut

aliquis homo si gignat filium et faciat domum, ex ipso filius, ex ipso domus, sed

filius de ipso, domus de terra et de ligno. sed hoc quia homo est, qui non potest

aliquid etiam de nihilo facere; deus autem, ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, in

quo omnia, non opus habebat aliqua materia, quam ipse non fecerat, adiuuari

omnipotentiam suam’.18 Roland Teske points to three general contexts in which

Augustine uses ‘substantia’ in his account of God:

predications about God ad se (e.g., wisdom); as an equivalent

for essentia to describe God’s essence and existence; and in a

15

which God creates (i.e., the cosmos) shares a causal

relation to God and so is from (ex) God. Analogously, the

son of a man is from (de) the man in the sense of being from

the substance and nature of the man. A house is from (ex) a

man in the sense of being built by the man out of material—

stone and wood—that is of a different substance than the

man. Both kinds of relation are found in the creation of

the cosmos. The cosmos is ex ipso, that is from God, in the

sense that God creates the cosmos from that which is not God

(like the man who creates the house). The cosmos is also de

nihilo in that God creates the cosmos from nothingness, an

act only possible by the omnipotent God.

One of the results of this distinction is that humans

do not have a substantial nature to stabilize their

existence in the way God does—humans are de nihilo, from the

“substance” of nihil. Augustine’s association of nihil with

the “substance” of human existence deconstructs anything

other than God as the source of stability and identity for

human existence,19 and is an ontology aptly suited for

Augustine’s claims about the dependency of creation on

trinitarian context as a translation of homoousion. Roland

Teske, ‘Augustine’s Use of “Substantia” in Speaking about

God’, The Modern Schoolman 63 (1986), pp. 147-163.19 For example, Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.1.2 (CSEL 28.

4), 1.4.9 (CSEL 28. 7-8).

16

God.20 It also underscores the continued presence of nihil

(mutability) in human existence: nihil is not something from

which humans are created and then leave behind, but rather

is more like the abiding nature or substance (de nihilo) of

the creature.

At this point the logic of Augustine’s position and the

analogy drawn with human acts of creation in De Natura Boni 27

becomes treacherous. If the cosmos is de nihilo, and this is

interpreted substantially, it would mean that it is created

from the substance of nihil (like a child is created from the

substance of her parents). This would land Augustine in a

dualism reminiscent of Manichaeism. Augustine is aware of

this, and explicitly warns against interpreting the nihil

from which God creates the cosmos as a positive kind of

substance.21 But he struggles with how to describe nihil, if

not as a substance.22

20 For example, Augustine, Confessiones 4.10.15 (CCSL 27. 48),

12.29.40 (CCSL 27. 238-40).21 Augustine, De Natura Boni 25 (CSEL 25. 866). ‘neque enim

audienda sunt deliramenta hominum, qui nihil hoc loco aliquid intellegendum

putant’.22 See also Augustine, Confessiones 12.6.6 (CCSL 27. 218-9). It

is worth noting that Augustine draws on both the categories

of essence (essentia) and substance (substantia) in his

ontology. While he prefers the former term over the latter,

especially as an account of God’s existence, one finds

17

Despite this difficulty, in key places Augustine uses

de nihilo deliberately to describe the origin of creation.

Important for this analysis are the moral and soteriological

issues built into his discussion. Augustine opens De Natura

Boni with the distinction between that which is begotten of

God’s substance (‘de’) and made by God’s power (‘ab/ ex’),

noting that the distinction distances creation from God’s

stable goodness:

tendencies in his usage rather than a systematic delineation

and application of the terms. Teske argues that though

Augustine sometimes uses substantia and essentia as equivalent

terms, he clearly prefers the latter term (and its

Neoplatonist heritage) to describe the immutable and eternal

nature of God’s existence. See Teske, ‘Augustine’s Use of

“Substantia”’, pp. 151-160. Emmanuel Falque offers the

interesting argument that though Augustine uses essentia and

substantia synonymously in De Trinitate, he comes close to

offering a relational grounding to substantia (i.e., relation

generates substance, rather than vice versa in the more

traditional Aristotelian sense) and so of freeing essentia

(now as a relational term) from substantia. See Falque,

‘Metaphysics and Theology in Tension: A Reading of

Augustine’s De Trinitate’, L. Boeve, M. Lamberigts, M. Wisse,

eds. Augustine and Postmodern Thought: A New Alliance Against Modernity?

(Leuven: Peeters, 2009), pp. 21-55.

18

The Supreme Good beyond all others is God. It is

thereby unchangeable good, truly eternal, truly

immortal. All other good things derive their origin

from [ab] him but are not part of [de] him. That which

is part of [de] him is as he is, but the things he has

created are not as he is. Hence if he alone is

unchangeable, all things that he created are changeable

because he made them of nothing [ex nihilo]. Being

omnipotent he is able to make out of nothing [de nihilo],

i.e., out of [ex] what has no existence at all.23

As in De Natura Boni 27, Augustine uses the prepositions ‘ex/

ab’ and ‘de’ to mark the distinction between begotten and

created. That which is begotten of God (‘de’) shares a

substantial relation to God (i.e., it is God), while that

which God creates (‘ex/ ab’) shares a causal but not a

substantial relation to God. The created thing owes its

origin to God’s power but is not equal to God in substance

or attribute. This distinction provides a basic framework

23 Augustine, De Natura Boni 1 (CSEL 25. 855). ‘summum bonum,

quo superius non est, deus est; ac per hoc incommutabile bonum est; ideo uere

aeternum et uere inmortale. cetera omnia bona nonnisi ab illo sunt, sed non de

illo. de illo enim quod est, hoc quod ipse est; ab illo autem quae facta sunt, non

sunt quod ipse. ac per hoc si solus ipse incommutabilis, omnia quae fecit, quia

ex nihilo fecit, mutabilia sunt. tam enim omnipotens est, ut possit etiam de

nihilo, id est ex eo, quod omnino non est’.

19

for Augustine’s ensuing critique of Manichaean dualism.24

Created things derive their goodness from (ex) God, but do

not share essentially in God’s goodness. Evil is the

corruption of the goodness in creatures generated by their

rebellion against God’s power, but in this they cannot alter

the essential goodness of God. In this way, the basic

ontological mutability of the soul de nihilo opens the space,

as it were, for Augustine to formulate how the soul rebels

against God without undermining divine goodness or

immutability.25 In grounding the soul within a form

(identity) that is good but also continually open to its

mutable origin, de nihilo helps frame the moral dynamic that

shapes the soul—either according to God’s goodness or in

rebellion against it.

Augustine develops similar themes in book 1 of De Genesi

ad litteram, a text he begins around the same time as De Natura

Boni. Admittedly, he does not draw explicitly on the

language of de nihilo, but his exegesis of Genesis 1:1—a

24 See also: Augustine, Contra epistulam Manichaei 24.26-25.27

(CSEL 25. 221-4), 35.39-43.49 (CSEL 25. 239-48); Torchia,

Creatio ex nihilo, p. 153. English citations of Contra epistulam

Manichaei can be found in Augustine, Augustin: The Writings against

the Manichaeans, and against the Donatists. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,

vol. 4, First Series, ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, Mass.:

Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), pp. 129-150.25 See also Augustine, De Natura Boni 10 (CSEL 25. 859).

20

passage he elsewhere directly links with the language of de

nihilo—does lead him in a similar direction.26 In De Genesi ad

litteram 1 Augustine speculates that the language of “heaven

and earth” indicates that all creation: “is by so turning

[toward the creator], you see, that it [creation] is formed

and perfected, while if it does not so turn it is formless

[informis].”27 The Latin informis can mean both formless and

deformed, and Augustine appears to have both connotations in

mind. On the one hand, he suggests the creation of heaven

26 Augustine, Confessiones 12.7.7 (CCSL 27. 219-20).27 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.1.2 (CSEL 28. 4). ‘tali enim

conuersione formatur atque perficitur; si autem non conuertatur, informis est’.

Augustine’s language of formation and conversion may well

derive from Plotinus, who describes the formation of

creatures as their turning to the One. See, Plotinus,

Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna (Burdett, N.Y.: Larson

Publications, 1992), 1.6.8, 5.1.12, 5.8.11, 6.5.7, 6.9.7.

As we will see, however, this does not lead Augustine into

an abstract intellectualism divorced from basic Christian

soteriological concerns. For studies on the significance of

conversion language in Augustine’s doctrine of creation see:

Gerhart B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform. Its Impact on Christian Thought

and Action in the Age of the Fathers (New York: Harper Torch Books,

1967); Marie-Anne Vannier, ‘Creatio’, ‘Conversio’, ‘Formatio’ chez S.

Augustin (Fribourg: Éditions Universitaires Fribourge Suisse,

1991).

21

and earth in Genesis 1:1 may indicate a type of forming-

perfecting dynamic that moves creation from its formless

origin into existence. Informis here does not have a

negative connotation, but rather denotes the created,

mutable origin of all things.

On the other hand, a few paragraphs further on

Augustine associates this mutable origin with the

possibility of intellectual creatures rejecting the order of

God’s creation. In this case their movement back toward

formlessness is not simply a return to formlessness, but

also a rebellion against God’s creative act. As in De Natura

Boni, the framework within which Augustine develops this

claim is grounded in his distinction between that which is

essentially and causally related to God. In De Genesi ad

litteram, Augustine is interested in distinguishing the way

the Son is of the Father from the way creation is of the

Son. The Son is of the Father essentially and so shares the

Father’s immutable goodness. The cosmos is created through

the Son causally, and so shares in God’s goodness only

insofar as it is turned toward God. Augustine contrasts the

Son and creation in this way:

By so turning back and being formed creation imitates,

every element in its own way, God the Word, that is the

Son of God who always adheres to the Father in complete

likeness and equality of being, by which he and the

Father are one; but it does not imitate this form of

22

the Word if it turns away from the creator and remains

formless and imperfect, incomplete.28

In this context, the incomplete (informis) nature of the

cosmos does not denote a sinful, immoral status. Rather, it

demarcates a type of ontological contrast between the

immutable goodness of the Son, who essentially is good, and

the mutable nature of creation, which is only good through

participation in God. But in the following paragraph

Augustine moves on to differentiate the life of the

immutable Son from that of mutable creatures. Life, wisdom,

28 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.4.9 (CSEL 28. 7-8). ‘in qua

conuersione et formatione quia pro suo modo imitatur deum uerbum, hoc est

dei filium semper patri cohaerentem plena similitudine et essentia pari, qua ipse

et pater unum sunt, non autem imitatur hanc uerbi formam, si auersa a creatore

informis et inperfecta remaneat’. A Platonist theory of the forms

is most likely behind Augustine’s language of ‘imitatio’ here,

though again it does not lead him astray into a detached

intellectualism. For an overview of the philosophical

sources underlying Augustine’s thought here see: Theodore

Kondoleon, ‘Divine Exemplarism in Augustine’, Augustinian

Studies 1 (1970), pp. 181-195; Aime Solignac, ‘Analyse et

sources de la Question De Ideis’, Augustinus Magister I (Paris:

Études augustiniennes, 1954), pp. 307-315. Solignac

speculates Augustine is dependent on Plotinus, Celsus, and

Albinus.

23

and blessedness are all the same for the Son because the Son

shares in God’s immutable goodness.29 The incomplete

(informis) nature of intellectual creatures (e.g., the soul),

however, means that wisdom and blessedness are not

necessarily conjoined to its life. The soul may live and

reject God, and so live a miserable, wretched life.30 Here

again, we see that moral concerns are not far removed from

Augustine’s claims about the origin of the soul. The soul

is mutable, and so has an incomplete aspect to it that is

not inherently sinful but nevertheless morphs all too easily

from mutability into instability and sin.

Augustine takes up a similar set of issues in

Confessiones 12, a text written around the same time as De

Natura Boni.31 He begins with an examination of what it means

for the cosmos to be created from nothing. Augustine does

not refer to the distinction between ‘ex’ and ‘de’ he

29 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.5.10 (CSEL 28. 8). ‘non enim

habet informem uitam uerbum filius, cui non solum hoc est esse quod uiuere,

sed etiam hoc est ei uiuere, quod est sapienter ac beate uiuere’.30 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.5.10 (CSEL 28. 8-9).

‘creatura uero quamquam spiritalis et intellectualis uel rationalis, quae uidetur

esse illi uerbo propinquior, potest habere informem uitam, quia non, sicut hoc

est ei esse quod uiuere, ita hoc uiuere quod sapienter ac beate uiuere. auersa

enim a sapientia incommutabili stulte ac misere uiuit, quae informitas est’.31 De Natura Boni is written in 399, and Confessiones is written

between 397-400.

24

establishes in De Natura Boni, and it is speculation whether

he has it in mind. But he does differentiate the Son, who

is from God’s own substance, from creation which is from

nothing.32 And he repeatedly draws on de nihilo to describe

the nothingness from which creation emerges.33 The

distinction he draws between the Son (de substantia) and

creation (de nihilo) also imports in part the same substantial

undertones into his discussion of de nihilo as in De Natura

Boni.34

32 Augustine, Confessiones 12.7.7 (CCSL 27. 219-20). ‘in principio,

quod est de te, in sapientia tua, quae nata est de substantia tua, fecisti aliquid et

de nihilo’.33 Augustine, Confessiones 12.7.7-8.8 (CCSL 27. 219-20),

12.22.31 (CCSL 27. 232-3), 12.28.38-29.40 (CCSL 27. 237-40),

13.33.48 (CCSL 27. 270-1).34 It should be noted, however, that Augustine prefers the

language of esse to substantia in this context. He relies

almost solely on verbal variants of esse to describe both

the emergence of creatures de nihilo and the mutability

inherent in creatures that derives from their de nihilo

origin. This mirrors his preference for esse over substantia

to describe God’s immutability (as noted by Teske). In

Confessiones 12.6.6 (CCSL 27. 218-9) Augustine characterizes

mutability as a ‘nothing something’ (nihil aliquid) and a ‘being

that is nonbeing’ (est non est). And in Confessiones 12.3.3

(CCSL 27. 217-8) Augustine again draws on esse to describe

25

In Confessiones 12 Augustine is again ambivalent toward

the mutability that characterizes the soul de nihilo. On the

one hand, he draws on de nihilo to account for the difference

between the finite, mutable being of creation and the

eternal being of the creator.35 On the other hand, this

origin generates potential instability in the soul. Sorrows

accompany the soul that does not properly turn from the

nothingness of its origin to the immutable God.36 Angels

avoid this danger by adhering to God and sublating, as it

the basic existence of unformed matter that, on account of

its formlessness, is close to nothingness but still exists

—‘Non tamen omnino nihil: erat quaedam informitas sine ulla specie’.

Johannes Brachtendorf astutely points out that, in

postulating a formless something on the first day of

creation, Augustine breaks with the essentialism of

classical metaphysics that derived all being from essentia

(species/ forma). Johannes Brachtendorf, ‘Orthodoxy without

Augustine: A Response to Michael Hanby’s Augustine and

Modernity’, Ars Disputandi 6 (2006), paragraph 9.35 Augustine, Confessiones 12.7.7 (CCSL 27. 219-20). For

similar claims that mark difference between creation and God

according to the mutable/ immutable pairing see: Augustine,

Confessiones 12.5.6 (CCSL 27. 218-9), 12.11.11 (CCSL 27. 221-

2); Augustine, De Trinitate 9.11.16 (CCSL 50. 307-8), 15.4.6

(CCSL 50a. 467-8), 15.16.26 (CCSL 50a. 500-1); Augustine, De

Genesi ad litteram 7.28.43 (CSEL 28. 228).

26

were, their de nihilo origin: “In an unfailing purity it

satiates its thirst in you. It never at any point betrays

its mutability. You are always present to it, and it

concentrates all its affection on you. It has no future to

expect. It suffers no variation and experiences no

distending in the successiveness of time”.37 This is in

striking contrast to the soul that in sin has turned from

the immutable God to its mutable origin de nihilo, and

consequently has become lost in and torn by the vicissitudes

of time and creation.38 The angelic stability Augustine

desires continually eludes him, not only when he seeks it in

the misplaced trust of his friends (i.e., the nameless

36 Augustine, Confessiones 4.10.15 (CCSL 27. 48). ‘deus uirtutum,

conuerte nos et ostende faciem tuam, et salui erimus. nam quoquouersum se

uerterit anima hominis, ad dolores figitur alibi praeterquam in te, tametsi figitur

in pulchris extra te et extra se’.37 Augustine, Confessiones 12.11.12 (CCSL 27. 222). ‘es te que

perseuerantissima castitate hauriens mutabilitatem suam nusquam et

numquam exerit et te sibi semper praesente, ad quem toto affectu se tenet, non

habens futurum quod expectet nec in praeteritum traiciens quod meminerit,

nulla uice uariatur nec in tempora ulla distenditur’.38 Augustine, Confessiones 4.10.15 (CCSL 27. 48), 12.11.13

(CCSL 27. 222), 13.2.3 (CCSL 27. 243). The language of

turning (conversione) from nothing toward God parallels that

of Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.1.2 (CSEL 28. 4) (see

above).

27

friend) but even when he momentarily achieves it through a

(Platonist) mystical reunion with God.39 Augustine comes to

find that a stable adherence to God comes (as eschatological

promise) only through his acceptance of the Christian

soteriological narrative.

39 Augustine, Confessiones 7.17-23-18.24 (CCSL 27. 107-8), 7.20-

26-21.27 (CCSL 27. 109-12). The nature and relative success

of Augustine’s mystical ascents is controversial, especially

when compared with a Neoplatonist ascent to the One.

Richard Sorabji rightly points out that if one compares

Augustine’s accounts of mystical vision to that of Plotinus

it is important to remember that Augustine never moves

beyond a lower Plotinian ecstatic vision of God. This makes

any straightforward comparison with Plotinus difficult at

best. Such claims caution against interpretations, such as

that of Pierre Courcelle, that read the ascents in

Confessiones 7 as failed Neoplatonist ascents. Against

Courcelle, James O’Donnell maintains that Augustine’s

ascents to God do not fail but rather show the limited

success of Neoplatonist ascents apart from Christianity.

Underscoring the soteriological dynamic in the background of

Augustine’s account, O’Donnell argues that the Neoplatonist

ascents point Augustine toward the Christian soteriological

narrative in search of a permanent reunion with God. See:

Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity

28

Augustine’s prayer at the conclusion of Confessiones 11

illuminates well the contrasting states of the human soul

and the angels. In the concluding paragraphs the distention

of the soul is characterized as its dissipation into the

multitude of the world (in multis per multa). This is

contrasted with the extension and apprehension of the soul

through Christ into the unity of God. Augustine ends the

book with the prayer:

You are my eternal Father, but I am scattered in times

whose order I do not understand. The storms of

incoherent events tear to pieces my thoughts, the

inmost entrails of my soul, until that day when,

purified and molten by the fire of your love, I flow

together to merge into you. Then shall I find

stability and solidity in you, in your truth which

imparts form to me.40

and the Early Middle Ages (New York: Cornell University Press,

1983), pp. 170-1; Pierre Courcelle, Les Confessions de Saint

Augustin dans la tradition littéraire: antécédents et postérité (Paris: Études

augustiniennes, 1963), p. 47 n. 2; O’Donnell, Confessions,

vol. 2, pp. 454-5.40 Augustine, Confessiones 11.29.39-30.40 (CCSL 27. 215).

‘domine, pater meus aeternus es; at ego in tempora dissilui, quorum ordinem

nescio, et tumultuosis uarietatibus dilaniantur cogitationes meae, intima uiscera

animae meae, donec in te confluam purgatus et liquidus igne amoris tui. et

stabo atque solidabor in te, in forma mea, ueritate tua’.

29

As a conclusion to his argument on the nature of time in

Confessiones 11, his prayer also illustrates the way questions

about the mutable origin of the soul de nihilo slide into

moral and soteriological concerns. Famously, Augustine

proposes earlier in book 11 that time is measured through a

distending of the soul (distentio animi) in which it is

stretched through its attention to objects. This stretching

is the space, so to speak, onto which we map past, present,

and future.41 Initially, the distentio animi does not appear to

carry negative connotations, but is simply an aspect of the

mutable nature of the soul that explains our measurement of

time.42 But if O’Daly is right one ought not sharply

separate Augustine’s initial, supposedly neutral, account of

the distentio animi from the negative connotations the concept

takes on at the conclusion of book 11.43 O’Daly argues the

distentio animi is more a metaphor for the effects of time on

the sinful soul than a definition of time as humans may have

experienced it prior to the fall.44

41 Augustine, Confessiones 11.26.33-28.37 (CCSL 27. 211-14).42 Augustine, Confessiones 11.14.17-23.30 (CCSL 27. 202-09),

11.26.33 (CCSL 27. 211).43 Gerald O’Daly, ‘Time as Distentio and St. Augustine’s

Exegesis of Philippians 3, 12-14’, Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 23

(1977), pp. 265-71.

30

Here O’Daly traces the way Augustine’s reference to

Philippians 3:12-14 at the conclusion of Confessions 11 is

indicative of a wider pattern in his writings. Augustine

often links the terminology of distentio to a Pauline biblical

framework.45 This allows Augustine to draw on the term

‘extentio’, which appears in his Latin version of the

Philippians verses, as a contrast to distentio. In this

context, distentio tends to cluster around connotations of:

distraction, scattering, and the soul’s stretching thin

within the finite world. By contrast, extentio takes on the

meaning of: gathering, unifying, and the soul’s healing as

it stretches toward the infinite God. In this way,

Augustine’s Pauline framing of the distentio animi integrates a

basic soteriological theme—in the interplay between distentio

and extentio—into his account of the effects of time on the

soul.

44 Gerald O’Daly, Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind, p. 153. Augustine,

Confessiones 11.29.39 (CCSL 27. 214). ‘sed quoniam melior est

misericordia tua super uitas, ecce distentio est uita mea, et me suscepit dextera

tua in domino meo, mediatore filio hominis inter te unum et nos multos, in

multis per multa, ut per eum apprehendam, in quo et apprehensus sum, et a

ueteribus diebus conligar sequens unum, praeterita oblitus, non in ea quae

futura et transitura sunt, sed in ea quae ante sunt non distentus, sed extentus,

non secundum distentionem, sed secundum intentionem’.45 O’Daly, ‘Time as Distentio’, pp. 269-71.

31

Augustine’s reach for Pauline texts also intimates the

wider biblical grounding he gives his discussion of time in

Confessions 11. O’Donnell points to this context when he

notes that Augustine’s conclusion about time appears between

a biblical allusion to Joshua 10:12ff.—where the day is

stopped by God, allowing victory for the Israelites—and a

plea to God (lux, veritas) for help against the ravenous effects

of time.46 The distentio animi, which is introduced to solve

the psychological and metaphysical riddle of time, in the

end leaves the soul riddled with doubts and anxiety that

neither psychology nor metaphysics resolve. The distenio animi

is not only a stretching of the soul but also a spreading

thin of it, in which time pulls the soul in numerous, often

conflicting, directions and from which only Christ can

provide the soul unity and harmony.

III. The Imago Dei

Given the way moral and soteriological themes are

intertwined in Augustine’s account of the soul’s creation de

nihilo, it is not surprising that such themes find their way

into his discussion of the imago dei. The imago dei is central

in Augustine’s account of human identity and its relation to

46 James J. O’Donnell, Confessions, vol. 3 (New York: Clarendon

Press, 1992), p. 289. The passage in Confessiones 11.23.30

(CCSL 27. 209) reads: ‘uideo igitur tempus quandam esse distentionem.

sed uideo? an uidere mihi uideor? tu demonstrabis, lux, ueritas’.

32

God.47 His appropriation of Pauline language in this

account again brings with it one of the clearest examples of

how he integrates moral and soteriological themes into his

explication of the divine image.

In De Genesi ad litteram Augustine argues that though the

human person is part of material creation, human beings are

also rational and so have an irreducible intellectual

dimension. Augustine locates this dimension at the soul’s

origin in a type of primordial recognition of God: “being

made is the same thing for it as recognizing [agnoscere] the

Word of God by whom it is being made.”48 Augustine’s choice

of verbs (i.e., agnoscere) is significant for two reasons.

First, agnoscere has a directional, or intentional, aspect to

it. The English word ‘recognition’, with its connotation of

a recognition of, or orientation toward, something is

helpful because it indicates the type of intellectual act

Augustine has in mind. The primordial intellectual act of

the soul is recognition of God.

47 For a general study of Augustine’s doctrine of the divine

image see: J.E. Sullivan, The Image of God (Dubuque, Iowa:

Priority Press, 1963); Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of

Augustine’s Augustine, De Trinitate (New York: Oxford University

Press, 2008), pp. 232-97.48 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 3.20.31 (CSEL 28. 87). ‘est ei

fieri, quod est agnoscere uerbum dei, per quod fit’.

33

Augustine associates this act with the imago dei. The

divine image structures the soul’s primordial recognition of

God and so conditions its basic identity. In the paragraph

following the one quoted above, Augustine explicitly makes

this connection, and he does so within a Pauline context.

This raises the second reason Augustine’s choice of verbs is

significant. The verb echoes the Pauline language of

Colossians 3:9-10 and moves Augustine’s account of the

creation of the soul in the direction of a Pauline sin-grace

model:

Just as after man’s fall into sin he is being renewed

in the recognition of God [in agnitione Dei] according to

the image of him who created him, so too it was in that

recognition that he was created, before he grew old in

crime, so that he might again be renewed, rejuvenated

in the same recognition.49

Humans exist according to the image of God through a type of

recognition—their capacity as intellectual creatures—and it

is within this same primordial capacity that they are

deformed in sin and reformed in Christ. Here again

Augustine weaves soteriological themes into his account of

49 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 3.20.32 (CSEL 28. 87). ‘sicut

enim post lapsum peccati homo in agnitione dei renouatur secundum imaginem

eius, qui creauit eum, ita in ipsa agnitione creatus est, antequam delicto

ueterasceret, unde rursus in eadem agnitione renouaretur’.

34

creation, and in this case into his account of how the soul

is created according to the image of God.

Augustine returns to the same theme in later books of

De Genesi ad litteram. In book 12, for example, he begins by

differentiating the lower capacity of the soul (anima) from

its higher, rational function (mens). He then locates the

divine image at the level of mens, and draws on the language

of Colossians 3:9-10 to argue that Paul’s discussion of the

renewal of the mind refers to the reforming of the deformed

divine image.50 In book 6 Augustine argues that the divine

image Adam receives in creation is lost in sin, and is then

regained through God’s grace.51 In Retractationes Augustine

revises this claim, arguing that the imago dei is distorted

but not destroyed by sin.52 In either case, however, he

incorporates a soteriological dynamic into his discussion of

the divine image.

Interestingly, Augustine’s moves in De Genesi ad Litteram 6

and in Retractiones also illustrate how the notions of ex (de)

nihilo and informis seem to underlie and guide his thinking on

50 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 12.7.18 (CSEL 28. 389).51 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 6.27.38 (CSEL 28. 198-9).52 Augustine, Retractationes 2.24.2 (CCSL 57. 110). English

citations of Retractiones can be found in Augustine, Retractions.

The Fathers of the Church, volume 60, trans. Sister M. Inez

Bogan (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America

Press, 1968).

35

how sin and evil affect the imago dei. His initial

assessment that the imago dei is destroyed by sin makes sense

in a context in which sin acts against the creative work of

God that continually draws all things into existence de

nihilo. In such a context the imago dei is not a static,

psychological structure the soul possesses in its own right,

but rather the primary forming of the soul as it faces (and

so images) God in a continual process of being formed de

nihilo. In turning from God the soul would lose the divine

image as water loses its shape when poured out of a

container. Augustine’s subsequent revision of his statement

in De Genesi ad litteram also makes sense against the backdrop of

creatio ex (de) nihilo. The destruction of the imago dei is not

like the destruction of a building. When a building is

destroyed its pieces remain. Within the ontological context

of creation de nihilo, the destruction of the imago dei would

mean the literal annihilation of the soul’s basic identity.

In such a case the person would cease to exist. This would

imply that sin leads immediately to the destruction of the

sinner. There may be an eschatological sense in which this

is true, but clearly an historical sense is false: sinners

continue to exist. For this reason, Augustine must augment

his statement in De Genesi ad litteram, arguing that sin distorts

without undoing the imago dei.

In books 6 and 12 of De Genesi ad litteram we find then that

as in his discussions of the soul’s origin de nihilo,

36

Augustine is reading soteriological issues in close

proximity with those of creation. The soul is created de

nihilo according to the image of God. As Augustine’s

concerns about the mutable soul slide into the dilemma of

sin, so his analysis of the divine image within a Pauline

framework (e.g., Colossians 3:9-10, Ephesians 4:23-24) reads

in close proximity the events of creation, fall, and

redemption. The Word creates the soul according to the

divine image, human sin distorts this image, and the Word

incarnate reforms the image.

In De Trinitate Augustine returns to the question of the

primordial intellectual act that constitutes the abiding

identity of the soul, and here again interprets the act

through Pauline language. Augustine distinguishes between

two powers, or dimensions, within the mind: namely, a basic

knowledge (cognoscere) the mind has of itself and the mind’s

ability to think (cogitare) actively about itself: “So then

it is one thing not to know oneself [se nosse], another not

to thing about oneself [se cogitare]—after all we do not say

that a man learned in many subjects does not know the art of

grammar just because he does not think about it when he is

thinking about the art of medicine.”53 In differentiating

53 Augustine, De Trinitate 10.5.7 (CCSL 50. 321). ‘ita cum aliud sit

non se nosse, aliud non se cogitare (neque enim multarum doctrinarum peritum

ignorare grammaticam dicimus cum eam non cogitat quia de medicinae arte

tunc cogitat’.

37

cogitare and noscere Augustine is distinguishing the periodic

attempts at active, critical self-reflection (cogitare) from

the holistic level of immediate self-knowledge responsible

for the continuity of self-identity and so coterminous with

the existence of the mind (noscere).54 Augustine locates the

imago dei proper at the level of noscere, arguing that the

mind most fully and properly images the eternal, immutable

God at the level of mind that itself is most unchanging.55

When Augustine turns to the question of the deformation

and reformation of the imago dei in books 12-14 of De Trinitate

he repeatedly references Colossians 3:9-10, as in De Genesi ad

litteram, to interpret the reformation of the person. In De

Trinitate Augustine typically renders Colossians 3:9-10:

“Putting off the old man with his actions, put on the new

who is being renewed for the recognition [in agnitionem] of

God according to the image of him who created him.”56 The

54 Augustine, De Trinitate 10.4.6 (CCSL 50. 319-20). See also

Johannes Brachtendorf, Die Struktur des menschlichen Geistes nach

Augustinus: Selbstreflexion und Erkenntnis Gottes in ‘De Trinitate’ (Hamburg:

Felix Meiner Verlag, 2000), pp. 63-174.55 Augustine, De Trinitate 12.4.4 (CCSL 50. 358), 12.7.10 (CCSL

50. 364-5), 12.7.12 (CCSL 50. 366-7), 14.3.5-4.6 (CCSL 50a.

426-29), 14.8.11 (CCSL 50a. 435-38).56 ‘exuentes uos, inquit, ueterem hominem cum actibus eius induite nouum qui

renouatur in agnitionem dei secundum imaginem eius qui creauit eum’. See

for example, Augustine, De Trinitate 7.6.12 (CCSL 50. 265-7),

38

language of the verse is noteworthy because agnitionem is the

nominal form of agnoscere, which etymologically is a compound

of the preposition ad and the verb noscere. 57 Augustine does

not explicitly draw a connection between the language of

agnoscere in Colossians 3:9-10 and the nature of the mind at

the level of noscere, but there is textual evidence that he

is reading the terms close to one another.

In his discussion of the imago dei in De Trinitate 14

Augustine returns to the conclusions of book 10, arguing

that the imago dei is not found in the everyday activity of

the mind as much as in its abiding intellectual nature.58 A

few paragraphs later he explicitly identifies this abiding

nature as the mind se nosse.59 In both contexts Augustine

claims that sin distorts but does not destroy the imago dei

at this basic level of the mind. Further in book 14

Augustine picks up the question of how this deformation of

the imago dei is reformed. Drawing on Ephesians 4:23, he

11.1.1 (CCSL 50. 333-4), 12.7.12 (CCSL 50. 366-7), 14.16.22

(CCSL 50a. 451-54), 14.17.23 (CCSL 50a. 454-5), 15.3.5 (CCSL

50a. 463-7). Etymologically, the language of ‘in agnitionem’

is related to noscere: agnitionem is the nominal form of

agnoscere, which is derived from the root verb noscere.57 Chambers Murray, Latin-English Dictionary (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2005), p. 31.58 Augustine, De Trinitate 14.4.6 (CCSL 50a. 428-9).59 Augustine, De Trinitate 14.8.11 (CCSL 50a. 435-8).

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argues that just as the reformation of the imago dei means

being restored “in the justice and holiness of truth” so the

deformation of the imago dei constitutes the loss of justice

and truth.60 In this context, Augustine glosses Ephesians

4:23 with Colossians 3:9-10, equating the phrases “in the

justice and holiness of truth” with “in the recognition of

God”.61 Augustine thinks Paul means the same thing by both

phrases. The result is that, indirectly at least, Augustine

reads Colossians 3:9-10 into the original deformation of the

imago dei. The justice and truth lost in the deformation of

the imago dei is also the loss of the recognition of God,

just as the soul’s reformation restores justice and truth

and the recognition of God. In this, the language of

agnoscere is functioning as a characterization of the

deformation/ reformation dynamic that occurs at the level of

noscere. Augustine is using agnoscere to qualify the account

60 Augustine, De Trinitate 14.16.22 (CCSL 50a. 451-2). ‘dicit etiam

alibi: renouamini spiritu mentis uestrae et induite nouum hominem qui

secundum deum creatus est in iustitia et sanctitate ueritatis [Ephesians 4:23-4].

quod ait, secundum deum creatum, hoc alio loco dicitur, ad imaginem dei. sed

peccando iustitiam et sanctitatem ueritatis amisit, propter quod haec imago

deformis et decolor facta est; hanc recipit cum reformatur atque renouatur’.61 Augustine, De Trinitate 14.16.22 (CCSL 50a. 453). ‘pro eo uero

quod ibi posuit, in iustitia et sanctitate ueritatis, hoc posuit hic, in agnitione

dei’. See also Augustine, De Trinitate 14.17.23 (CCSL 50a. 454-

5).

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of the imago dei at the level of noscere. In couching the

formation of the imago dei in terms of the recognition of

God, agnoscere opens the mind at the primordial level of

noscere to its relation with God.

Thus, De Trinitate moves in a similar direction as De Genesi

ad litteram. In the latter work the deformation-reformation

is wrapped into Augustine’s account of the original creation

of the soul described in terms of a primordial recognition

(ag-noscere) read through Paul. Augustine’s conclusion in De

Trinitate that the imago dei proper is found at the level of

noscere, combined with the language of Colossians 3:9-10,

leads him to link issues of salvation not only to the mind’s

active, self-conscious level (cogitare), but also to its

primordial existence (noscere). Both De Trinitate (in terms of

nosse) and De Genesi ad litteram (in terms of agnoscere) intimate

this complex interweaving of the primordial identity of the

soul with its salvation. The bridge connecting both

dynamics is the Word of God: the soul is formed by the Word

of God according to the divine image; the soul is redeemed

when the divine image is restored through the Word incarnate

in Christ.62

IV. Conclusion

Soteriological questions are unavoidable for Augustine

in his examination of the inward nature of the soul.

62 Augustine, De Trinitate 9.7.12 (CCSL 50. 303-4).

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Textually, this is evident in De Trinitate books 12 and 13

where, in the midst of his search for analogies between the

soul and the Trinity, he launches into an extended

discussion of the Christian salvation narrative. This move

is not the exception to an otherwise speculative,

intellectual account of the soul in the second half of De

Trinitate,63 nor is it only a result of his attempt to develop

a larger spiritual program.64 The latter issue is certainly

true. But Augustine’s move to questions of salvation in the

midst of his probing of the soul also reflects the way

issues of salvation accompany his account of the soul’s

created origin and how its identity is formed according to

the image of God. Reading Augustine’s discussions on creatio

ex nihilo and the imago dei together, and more generally reading

De Trinitate in conjunction with his wider commentaries on

Genesis, gives us a more complete account of the nature of

Augustine’s inward movement into his soul in De Trinitate. It

shows the text is not mired in abstract, speculative

63 Luigi Gioia offers a good overview of the soteriological

strands that connect the early and later books of De Trinitate.

Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, pp. 68-

105.64 Lewis Ayres, ‘The Christological Context of Augustine's De

Trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII-XV’, Augustinian

Studies 29 (1998), pp. 111-139.

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intellectualism, but rather is an exercise anchored in moral

and soteriological concerns.

With regard to contemporary concerns that Augustine’s

intellectualism may undermine his commitments to Christian

soteriology, one of the significant implications of his

reading of the imago dei through Paul is that it means there

is no inward citadel of the mind immune to the torments and

tears of sin and the hope of grace. Indeed, the further

into the mind Augustine moves the more profound and serious

the question of sin becomes. Insofar as the essential

identity of the person is located at the inward level of the

imago dei, the further inward Augustine locates a sin-grace

dynamic the more fundamental the problems of sin become and

the more necessary grace is. If sin distorts one at one’s

basic level of self-identity, what resources lie within one

to correct the problems?

In such a context Augustine’s rehearsing of the

Christian salvation narrative in books 12 and 13 of De

Trinitate is not the anomaly within an otherwise Neoplatonist,

rational ascent to the One. Rather, the books are anchored

to basic Augustinian anthropological themes and become a

focal point in bringing the soteriological dynamic at the

heart of his anthropology to the fore. In defending an

orthodox (Nicene) reading of Christ and the Trinity, the

first seven books of De Trinitate also then become intimately

linked with the movement of the second half of the text.

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Without a correct view of Christ and the Trinity, one does

not participate in salvation and so move toward God.

We can also judge more correctly the significance of

Augustine’s meditative examination of the soul within the

larger context of his claims on the soul’s de nihilo origin.

The soul de nihilo indicates its fragility, mutability, and

dependence on God for its existence, identity, and

perfection. Unlike God, the soul lacks a stable substance

to ground its existence and goodness, and must look to God

for both. As moral and soteriological issues continually

arise for Augustine around the soul’s mutable nature, we

also find such issues wrapped into his discussion of the

soul’s imaging of God. This is not surprising considering

the divine image anchors human life amidst the temporal

maelstrom, forming the soul to God and God’s immutable

goodness. And as the dynamic nature of the soul’s identity

continually raises the danger of sin and immorality, so also

Augustine’s inward probing into his soul is the diligent

exercise of Christian spiritual practice.

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