1

*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 religious and
philosophical discussions of the human person.1 Despite this, his legacy and reception in
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

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 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 are imbued with an abstract intellectualism disconnected from time, history, and
material reality.3

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
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.
 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 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 environment, shaped in fundamental ways through its relations, and

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.
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.
 4

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

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.

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 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).
 5

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 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 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

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).
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.
 6

sometimes cast as an overly abstract, speculative approach to questions of the nature of

the soul, the 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 This focus will move the analysis beyond a purely exegetical

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 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 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
 7

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 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

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.
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
 8

delineation in use in the wider Latin tradition.14 Despite this, Augustine draws a
distinction between them at 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. This is because creation is brought into existence

(CCSL 27. 218-20), 12.22.31 (CCSL 27. 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.
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
 9

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
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 which God creates (i.e., the

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).
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 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.
 10

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 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

19
For example, Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 1.1.2 (CSEL 28. 4), 1.4.9 (CSEL 28. 7-
8).
20
For example, Augustine, Confessiones 4.10.15 (CCSL 27. 48), 12.29.40 (CCSL 27.
238-40).
 11

positive kind of substance.21 But he struggles with how to describe nihil, if not as a
substance.22
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:
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

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 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.
 12

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 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.

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’.
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).
 13

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 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 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

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).
 14

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 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, and blessedness are all the same for the Son because
the Son shares in God’s immutable goodness.29 The incomplete (informis) nature of

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.
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’.
 15

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 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
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.
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
 16

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
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

‘being that is nonbeing’ (est non est). And in Confessiones 12.3.3 (CCSL 27. 217-8)
Augustine again draws on esse to describe 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).
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’.
 17

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 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.
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

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).
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 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.
 18

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

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

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’.
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.
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
 19

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.
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.

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.
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’.
 20

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 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.
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

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’.
 21

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 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 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

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’.
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).
 22

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, 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

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
 23

differentiating 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 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

dicimus cum eam non cogitat quia de medicinae arte tunc cogitat’.
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), 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.
 24

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

58
Augustine, De Trinitate 14.4.6 (CCSL 50a. 428-9).
59
Augustine, De Trinitate 14.8.11 (CCSL 50a. 435-8).
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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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. 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

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