Saint
Augustine’s view of creation as set forth in his book ‘Confessions’ is rather
involved, and here I'll seek to enlighten the reader on a few major points
regarding his particular interpretation of a fraction of the creation narrative.
When Augustine reads “In the beginning, God
created the heavens and the earth.”[1],
he does not conclude that the universe was just as complete then as after the
seventh day of creation. Rather, the ‘earth’ referred to is this sort of
formlessness which preceded the creation of earth as we know it. It was a
formlessness which was invisible, standing between the seemingly exclusive
camps of ‘form’ and ‘nothing’. This is a mystery that Augustine dwells on for a
time, and eventually concludes that our human minds simply cannot fathom this
formlessness; yet it existed. Since this formless matter was made ‘In the
beginning’ one might wonder why God didn’t start counting the days from this
point. To look into this matter through Augustine’s lenses, you’ll need to
understand his concept of time. First, time can only exist where there is
something mutable. If there was nothing to mark the passage of time, time
wouldn’t exist. Second, the mutable thing needs to actually change, not just
possess the ability to change.
“For
where there is no form, no order, nothing comes or goes into the past, and
where this does not happen, there are obviously no days and nothing of the
coming and passing of temporal periods.”[2]
With this in mind, it is clear that time
couldn’t have begun after heaven and earth were made before the first day, as
nothing in fact actually changed until day one. Now, doesn’t the very word
‘beginning’ imply that time exists? In the strictest sense, yes, it does. Yet
because our whole existence has been in time and we know nothing but time, we
can’t properly describe what we are trying to communicate with the words we
have available to us. So in this particular context time is not implied. This being
said then, it is clear that two things were created outside of time. The first
was, as Augustine says,
“…so given form that, although
mutable, yet without any cessation of its contemplation, without any
interruption caused by change, it experiences unswerving enjoyment of your
eternity and immutability.”[3]
This
is the ‘heaven’ spoken of in Gen. 1:1; not the firmament heaven, which was made
on day two out of the invisible unorganized formlessness, but rather it is the
heaven of heaven, the House of God. Notice that although the heaven is mutable,
it doesn’t change form while it experiences the enjoyment of all of God’s
eternity. And, since heaven is perpetually concentrated on God who is himself
immutable, heaven undergoes no change. As you’ll recall, something is subject
to time when it changes, either in movement or form. So, since heaven never
undergoes any change, even though it is able to, heaven is not subject to time.
Also, since God is himself immutable, by the very definition of time God cannot
possibly be subject to it. Thus, God is outside of the realm of time.
The
second thing created outside of time is the formless matter. This matter was so
formless that it couldn’t even move from form to form, or change in any way.
And so by its very nature the matter is not subject to time. Thus there was
nothing in existence over which time could preside, and therefore both ‘heaven’
and ‘earth’ were created outside of time.
It is
also important to point out that God created this formless matter ex nihilo,
out of nothing. For if the matter existed eternally with God, then we have a
God who is not all-powerful, for he needed something besides himself to exist
so he could create. This matter would then be equal to his Son, and therefore
to himself. This is an impossibility, Augustine says, as nothing besides God
can be equal to himself. And if instead the matter was made out of God, then we
begin to fall into the mindset of monism (Which would be too long a rabbit
trail to go down for the purposes of this paper.). Thus it is very important
that the matter, the formlessness, be made entirely out of nothing. Augustine
himself states,
“Nevertheless, all things were
made not of the very substance of God but out of nothing…”[4]
Augustine
is delighted by the fact that even in the very first book of the Bible, we have
mention of the Trinity. In confirmation of this he says,
“For first we have the
statement: ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’, by which it can be
understood that the Father created ‘in the Son’ an interpretation which is
supported by one of the psalms, where we read, ‘How glorified are your works,
Lord: you have made all things in Wisdom.’”[5]
So here
we have the Father and the Son; and, fittingly, the Holy Spirit is mentioned
soon after in Gen. 1:2 hovering over the face of the waters.
Now,
these waters were never specifically mentioned as being created, although
Augustine correctly reasons that God still must have created them, as the
waters could not have been coeternal with Him. Therefore, the ‘waters’ were
created under the heading ‘earth’ in Genesis 1:1. Since we know that the waters
are beautiful, how could the earth, being that same formless matter, not be
beautiful as the waters are? It follows then that at least at the onset, the
waters were not beautiful. As the waters are not still formless and invisible, but
are indeed beautiful, it must be that at some point the waters received their
form. Perhaps, Augustine conjectures, they received their form on day two, when
God separated the waters making the firmament heaven. Yet this cannot be, as
there is still no mention of the waters being created, or any reference to
their being given form. It merely says that they were ‘separated’. From here,
Augustine ponders the ramifications of believing that the waters received their
form on day three, when God gathered the waters under the firmament together.
This could make some sense, as this gathering could be seen as the bestowal of
form. This then brings forth a new
question, regarding the waters above the firmament. When did those waters
receive their form? For, as Augustine says,
“They
would not have deserved to receive so honorable a position had they lacked
form, and scripture does not record the utterance by which they received form.”[6]
In the
end then Augustine is left with more questions than he started with regarding
the waters, and he never really comes to a solid conclusion on this point.
Instead he satisfies himself with the belief that God certainly did create the
waters, both above and below the firmament, albeit we do not know exactly when
that was in the creation narrative.
To put
it all in one place, Augustine believed that God, the Three in One, created the
world out of complete and utter nothingness. Before day one of the creation
narrative, He had already made this indescribable formlessness and the heaven
of heaven, both of which preceded time. The word ‘beginning’ is understood not
to be the marker for the commencement of time, but rather as a word used in a
special context to describe the indescribable. The waters, which were present
before day one, most likely received their form sometime before day three.
Bibliography
Augustine. City of God, Translated by Henry Bettenson. New York, NY: Penguin
Books, 2003.
______. Confessions, Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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