The City of God by Augustine - 11 - God's Good Creation
Book Eleven
Quote
📝 This also Plato has assigned as the most sufficient reason for the creation of the world, that good works might be made by a good God.
Notes
🔥 Having completed his arguments about false gods in the first 10 books, Augustine moves on now to talk about the origins of the city of God and the city of earth, and the way they are entangled together.
🔥 In a similar way to the last section, Augustine describes how God's presence in this world is invisible, but still experienced through a mysterious, spiritual sense that's within us: "For God speaks with a man not by means of some audible creature dinning in his ears, so that atmospheric vibrations connect Him that makes with him that hears the sound ... Not by these, then, does God speak, but by the truth itself, if any one is prepared to hear with the mind rather than with the body."
🔥 Man is made in God's image (and perhaps that's where we get this spiritual sense) and our minds help us rise above our bodies and the other beasts.
🔥 Jesus is the Mediator and the only way to God. And scriptures are our authoritative guide.
🔥 God created the world. It has a beginning in time. Some say this conflicts with the idea that God is eternal and unchanging. But Augustine doesn't think so.
🔥 Why did he create the world when he did? Not sooner? Or later? Actually, God created both the world and time itself. He is outside both space and time.
🔥 Augustine follows somewhat of a literal interpretation of the creation story in the Bible. He wonders about how day and night were made before the sun. He also infers the creation of angels from other passages and other sources, since they are not mentioned in the creation account.
🔥 The trinity — God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit — comprises three distinct things, but they are still one God (somehow...).
🔥 God is not the world, but God and the world are still related. He created the world. God is goodness and creation participates in that goodness.
🔥 How was it possible for any angels to fall away from God? The devil does not abide in or serve the truth. He was not created evil. Instead, he fell into pride and sin.
🔥 Evil comes not out of creation, but from the will (ie choice) to go against nature. But God is still ruler over this. Even knowing that the devil would rebel, God used the devil's will for God's own plan for good, for his own ultimate purpose. And there is beauty in these oppositions, how both good and evil coexist and ultimately come to serve God's perfect will.
🔥 Augustine quotes Paul to this effect: "By the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour ... as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things."
🔥 God called his creation good, and that includes all of it. Both what we consider good and what we consider evil. "For as the beauty of a picture is increased by well-managed shadows, so, to the eye that has skill to discern it, the universe is beautified even by sinners, though, considered by themselves, their deformity is a sad blemish."
🔥 God is eternal and he sees creation differently from us. "He beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness." He sees all of time at once.
🔥 Man is created in the image of God, and is above all other creatures in nature. We exist and we are aware that we exist.
🔥 But can we trust our perceptions? What if this is all an hallucination? To this, Augustine says, "If I am deceived, I am. For he who is not, cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am. And since I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am? For it is certain that I am if I am deceived." Willing to bet Rene Descartes drew some inspiration for this passage when he came up with his line, "I think therefore I am."
🔥 Existence is somehow inherently desirable. "Even the wretched don't want to die."
🔥 As creatures made in the image of God, we have a spiritual sense "by which we perceive what things are just and what unjust."
Key Takeaways
💬 Again I'm reading this book under the genre of history, which is colouring my sense of how to read it. Augustine is putting together a cosmic history in which we can place ourselves. This is much bigger than the history of a place or a people. It's the story of creation and our place within it. And even if we disagree with his more literal interpretation of the Bible, we still see him using reason to come to conclusions about this history. It's the story of creation backed up by compelling and (at least to some extent) rational arguments.