Augustine on Creation – Discourses on Minerva
Saint Augustine is the most important theologian and philosopher of Christianity in the western tradition. He is often remembered, erroneously, as the church father who “invented” the doctrine of original sin and total depravity, even though all Augustine scholars point out that neither original sin nor total depravity are unique to Augustine or, in the case of total depravity, is actually nowhere found in Augustine’s writings. On the contrary, Augustine articulated a view of creation where all is good and beautiful, all things are ordered to love, and that our rational souls act as the mediating conduit to loving the beautiful and good things God has created so as to love God through creation. Augustine’s theology of creation is, perhaps, one of his most enduring legacies even if most people are unaware of it.
The idea of unity in diversity is a quintessentially Augustinian principle. Augustine holds to a view of creation in which individual things exist in simplicity but that these individual things also exist as part of a composite whole, coming together in relationship to establish a holistic universality. As he wrote, “Simple things exist in themselves because they are one, but those which are not simple imitate unity through the harmony of their parts, and in the measure that they achieve this harmony they exist.” To illustrate the point: a tree exists in its individuality and simplicity, but together with other trees, many trees become a forest. It is correct to both say that the tree exists by itself and that the tree exists as part of a whole forest. Augustine understands creation not reductively but holistically – part of the problem of human folly, and, therefore, “sin,” which stems from deficient reasoning and understanding of the nature of existence, is that we often only look at things reductively rather than holistically.
Creation, for Augustine, is good and beautiful even if we cannot understand it. Augustine famously states, in writing a rebuttal to the Manicheans, “I admit that I do not know why mice and frogs were created, or flies or worms. Yet I see that all things are beautiful in their kind.” The beauty of creation is seen through individual things but is made more beautiful by the unity of all things in that holistic sense. Once we look over all creation from the standpoint of eternity, we find a beautiful harmony of every individual thing working together in a sort of orderly symmetry that brings about life.
Our modern view of the harmony of the cosmos, a holistic vision of existence, and the goodness and beauty of all things, while having pre-Socratic antecedents, owes more to Augustine than it does, say, to Pythagoras (who was, mind you, co-opted by Augustine for his theological agenda especially against the Manicheans). Our ability to know this holistic cosmos is also a result of the foundational intelligence and intelligibility of creation. Augustine understands creation as rational, understandable, and knowable. God, who is supreme intelligence and Love itself, imparted his imprint on creation through what Augustine called “Seminal Reason,” an intelligence and rationality to creation that permits the rational soul in humans to know about creation. The intelligibility of creation, our ability to know anything about the cosmos, is essential to it. As the scholar Joseph Torchia explains, “created reality exhibits the intelligibility, form, and order that runs to God’s very nature. Indeed, God imparts to creation everything that bespeaks the harmony and proportion inherent in a cosmic vision of reality as whole.”
This lends us to how we are to relate to the creation through Augustine’s philosophy of use and enjoyment. Because all things are created by God, all things exist as a sign pointing to Beauty, Goodness, and Love (i.e. God). By understanding God as the author of creation, humans are called to love the beauty and goodness in all individual things and together as a holistic composite to love God. We use the creation to love the Beauty, Goodness, and Love that is God himself. The idea that creation, all things therein, point to God and can – and should – be used to love God is another quintessentially Augustinian idea.
So, according to Augustine, the beauty and goodness of creation point to the reality of Love (since God is love) and exists to awaken the flame of love inside humans. To be made in the image of God is to be made in love for love, in wisdom for wisdom. By coming to understand the holistic reality of creation, we fulfill the part of our nature called for wisdom. In coming to understand the holistic reality of creation, we come to understand all things exist in and for love, thus fulfilling the highest aspect of our nature: to know and love love itself. Augustine famously reinterpreted the passage, “In the beginning” as meaning “In Love,” or “In Christ,” as he famously says in both the Confessions and Two Books on Genesis Against the Manicheans. Creation exists in love for love.
The triadic hierarchy of existence, complex as it can be, is actually quite simple. There is God, who is Beauty, Goodness, Truth, and Love. Then there is humanity, made in the image of God, capable of knowing truth which is to say knowing beauty, goodness, and love. Then there is creation in all its individual parts and simplicity. The human soul, the rational part of humanity called to wisdom, looks upon “lower” creation (all the individual parts of the cosmos) and realizes that things do not exist merely in-themselves but exist as part of a whole. This now flips our understanding of triadic reality. No longer is creation “lower” than humanity but to be used by humanity to love God. Man and creation become one in this moment of unitive wisdom for the purpose of love: the love of God. Triadic reality collapses into wholeness as God, man, and creation are united through the wisdom and love of the soul, integrating the entirety of creation into unity through wisdom and love. Once this is known, joy and happiness manifests itself. Our lack of understanding this, our insistence on reductionism and separationism, is what leads to misunderstanding and, ultimately, misery and ingratitude and jealousy and envy, etc. (the deprived passions which is what sin is).
In summary, then, what is Augustine’s account of creation? All creation must properly be understood holistically rather than reductively. All things exist with some level of beauty and goodness which is enhanced through that holistic understanding rather than reductive understanding. Creation exists in its beauty and goodness for the purpose of love, namely the knowledge and love of God. Brought together, God, man, and creation are united as one in wisdom and love.
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Paul Krause is the editor-in-chief of VoegelinView. He is writer, classicist, and historian. He has written on the arts, culture, classics, literature, philosophy, religion, and history for numerous journals, magazines, and newspapers. He is the author of Finding Arcadia, The Odyssey of Love and the Politics of Plato, and a contributor to the College Lecture Today and Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters. He holds master’s degrees in philosophy and religious studies (biblical studies & theology) from the University of Buckingham and Yale, and a bachelor’s degree in economics, history, and philosophy from Baldwin Wallace University.
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